Learning is More Than A Test Score

It is Benjamin Franklin who said, “In this world nothing is certain but death and taxes.” For public school folks there is unfortunately a third certainty, and that is that their fiscal fortunes are closely aligned with the business cycle.

As the nation slips more deeply into recession it almost goes without saying that school budgets will be deeply impacted by the downward spiral. (see “States’ K-12 Efforts Feeling Budget Sting”) The reason is relatively simple, school finance in the United States with a few exceptions is excessively reliant on property taxes.

Local governments rely on state aid to fend off the increasing pressure from local property owners. Most states are seeing dramatic decreases in predicted revenues – it is particularly dramatic here in the Northeast. In my forty years of experience as a teacher and advocate, I’ve seen many of these cycles and the impact they have on schools. In today’s rarefied atmosphere of accountability and the blunt trauma of No Child Left Behind, the customary retreat to the storm cellar – teacher layoffs, increased class size, programmatic cuts, and school closings (usually premature and regretted later) – will send the targeted efforts promulgated by NCLB on a downward trajectory.

For even the most casual student of transformational change, it is axiomatic that predictable resources are a key ingredient for continuous improvement. If, as has been suggested by many studies, we have seen a narrowing of the curriculum since 2002 as schools are forced to focus on improving reading and math scores you can likely expect a further narrowing of that channel in the difficult days ahead.