Reversing trend, too?

September 15, 2006
Vincent Carroll, Rocky Mountain News

When state bureaucrats recently shut off funding for a program at Denver's Lincoln High that encouraged kids to seek two-year college degrees while still enrolled at the school, they cited a confidential opinion that such programs were illegal. "This would be a wonderful program for everyone," said Education Commissioner William Moloney, "but you've got to have a law authorizing that."

Not really. Colorado law already lets students take college-level courses at local districts' expense. But four years ago the State Board of Education passed a rule banning such "fifth-year programs," citing a state audit as its excuse.

Lousy excuse. That audit didn't say the programs should be banned. And it certainly didn't suggest they were illegal. So it's not the legislature that needs to step out of the way. It's the board of education, which happens to be meeting today.

Fortunately, some board members are determined to reverse themselves, including vice chairman Jared Polis. He told me the board made a mistake in 2001 based upon faulty information. It's time, he said, to see if these programs can live up to their promise of boosting graduation rates among disadvantaged kids as well as interest in additional schooling.

Lincoln reportedly tripled the number of students in college courses in a single year before the state rose up as spoiler.

Ah, but won't the state owe local districts more if hundreds of lower-income students are suddenly motivated to head off to community college? Of course. And we should only be so lucky.

More is not always better

There's a quiet moment in John le Carre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy when Control reminds us that the human appetite is boundless. "Like everyone who's had enough," Control warns, "he wants more."

And so it is with advocates for K-12 education. Always more.

Never mind that public schools have been constitutionally protected in this state from recent budget cuts and that Amendment 23 requires school funding to exceed inflation by at least 1 percent. And forget the fact that while K-12 is sporting a cummerbund and dinner jacket, some programs have been stripped to their skivvies.

Pay no attention to this reality. Because if a task force for the legislature's Committee on School Finance is to be believed, what Colorado desperately needs is a new tax or taxes to boost K-12 funding still further. By $800 million to $1.5 billion, its members insist.

And why wouldn't they? A News story notes that the task force relied for analysis on the Colorado School Finance Project, "a private, Denver-based think tank." What the story didn't mention is that according to the think tank's Web site, it is funded by school districts, the association of school boards, the association of school executives and the Colorado Education Association.

Thank goodness no one lacking a direct self-interest in higher taxes was allowed into the mix. Why, it might have jeopardized the preordained outcome.

Fortunately, curious minds can look elsewhere for data to judge the relationship between funding and student achievement. Just this week, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development - an international outfit whose members include virtually all developed and a few developing countries - released its annual report on trends in education. In the Associated Press' words, it concluded the U.S. "is losing ground in education as American students' peers across the globe zoom by with bigger gains in achievement and graduation."

Because our schools are underfunded? Let's consult the OECD study itself for the answer. Ah, here we are: Of the 30 member countries, "Switzerland and the U.S. spend the most (per student) . . . Spending is not necessarily a guarantee of higher quality in terms of education, though: Australia, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Finland, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands and New Zealand all have moderate expenditure on education per student at the primary and lower secondary levels but are among the countries where 15-year-olds perform strongest in key subject areas."

All of which suggests, as an OECD official told AP, that America's schools are "clearly inefficient."

Jared Polis, vice chair of the Colorado State Board of Education

Copyright (c) 2005 Rocky Mountain News