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It can be good to be an elected official
By adamg on Tue, 05/19/2009 - 9:45am
Kevin McCrea attended a School Committee hearing on redistricting yesterday:
... Councilors Turner and Yoon got to come in late, take the microphone and say they are against the 3 to 5 zone change and then leave early without having to listen to what all the people have to say. I waited for 2 hours to hear what the parents and students had to say and to hear the Superintendents responses.
There was a lot of concern for the Timilty and two way bilingual education. One young student got up and eloquently asked why we as a society are not funding the schools and not taking care of those less fortunate. She received loud cheers and applause and drum banging. The superintendent said that we need more revenue and mentioned the meals tax and casinos(!?) as possible forms of revenue. ...
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Comments
What was left unsaid was
What was left unsaid was that those same two Councilors most likely heading to another event and doing the same thing. Rinse, lather and repeat. I remember one particular string of events involving a State Senator where there were three meetings all across the district and myself and two of my collegues split up as to make them all (they all affected us in some way,)and when we met the next day we all stated that Senator so and so was there. So this guy jumped in his car and drove from event to event making sure he got them all in.
Perhaps
But when it comes to Boston school redistricting, there's only one hearing at a time.
Also, let's take a look at Yoon's education policy.
He says "all children deserve high-quality schools in their own neighborhood."
Going from three to five zones is not a return to neighborhood-only schools, but by making zones smaller, it is a step in that direction.
Also: "Great ideas come from parents, teachers, kids themselves and the community at large. That is why he wants to know what you think we should do to make Boston Public Schools the envy of our neighbors and of other cities."
But apparently you have to catch him before he leaves the meeting, because he won't stay around to hear what people who care enough about Boston schools to drag themselves to some hearing after a hard day at work have to say.
Well that is true, IF that
Well that is true, IF that is a huge part of his platform then maybe he should have cleared the schedule so he could stick around.
What is the point?
The point is to be seen and believed to care about issue x. The point is to be seen. Listening? Nawww.
In MA, that is always the point - cultivation of personality brand. Listening to constituents? Unless you are as completely lame as Ciampa was and have an opponent who makes a huge issue of your incompetence in that arena, who cares? Just show up and everybody thinks you stayed and listened, while you pull the same trick at other venues.
Despite your incessant need
Despite your incessant need to bash all things Massachusetts, I'm fairly certain this "cultivation of personality brand" among politicians exists in officeholders in all 50 states and is not limited to this Commonwealth.
In Russia
Personality brand cultivates you!
Me too
I took some time off to go up to the state house about 6 weeks ago to testify against the local options taxes. I prepared copies of some research I had done about how the city lowballs revenue projections to justify local options taxes, walked over to the state house, stood in the security line and signed up to speak and dutifully sat down in the morning. I then proceeded to hear various commissioners etc. speak. Mayor Menino came in about a half hour later and he was almost immediately invited to speak. Various senators and representatives came downstairs and they were then invited to speak. Our city councilors came in and in due course they were permitted to speak. Then all the paid lobbyists got to speak. Only after all the officials and lobbyists spoke were regular people allowed to speak. After literally 6 hours of testimony I started feeling nauseous from a lack of food and water and the stifling heat in the room so I finally left.
Here's a better rule - all public officials who wish to speak must be present at the beginning of the meeting. They must listen politely to the people who feel the issue is important enough to take unpaid time out of their day to address an issue. Then the lobbyists get to talk and only then can the politicians state their case. Only in government do the servants get higher priority than their masters.
Then tomorrow we will be
Then tomorrow we will be complaining that these elected officials spend 6 hours in a room listening to people talk. While it is the most important issue for YOU right now and you take the time out of your day to visit it is only one of 20 issues for them on any given day. There just are not enough hours in the day...
Probably not
Because if the politicians have to go last they won't let people drone on for 20 minutes at a crack (several groups got up to speak and we had to listen to 5 people repeat the same thing-sugar is bad, we need a sugar tax, here's my written evidence and research regarding same -then another group of 3 got up and said the same thing). This meeting goes from 6 hours to maybe 2 hours and we get the same amount of work done!
PLUS - priorities - politicians think everything is a priority - this makes them do the things they hate most - make a decision and a choice about what's important. Oh the horror!
What's the news here?
I'm a big fan of UH generally, but I'm a little unclear on the point -- and news value -- of this post. Certainly it's not that the schools need more money -- that's hardly news. Is it that a candidate for mayor made a campaign stop at a hearing and then blogged about it? Big news there. Or that said candidate took gratutious swipes at other politicians? Shocking. Or is the implication that because McCrea put more time in at this meeting he Really Cares and Turner and Yoon don't? Or that it was somehow inappropriate that Turner and Yoon had been allowed to speak even though they were tardy? And UH is trying to level the playing field by quoting commentary directly from McCrea's campaign blog as if it were news?
No, not news per se
The real news would have been what parents had to say at the hearing (which McCrea actually does write about).
What I found interesting was that two politicians show up at a public hearing with parents, give their shpiels, then up and leave.
Perhaps, as ShadyMilkMan writes, they didn't really need to stay because they've heard it all, they've made up their minds, they have too many competing issues to devote several hours to individual meetings, etc. Yoon has two kids in the BPS system, so I'm sure he really does care about its future. But to sort of just blow in and out (assuming McCrea is right, and, after reading his blog for a couple years now, I have no reason to doubt his basic reporting skills) seems just a bit too calculated, too, well, political.
"It can be good to be an elected official"
If the news was what students and parents had to say, then why not lead with that? And McCrea didn't say they "up and left" or "blew in and out" -- if McCrea's your source, you have no idea how long Turner and Yoon were at that meeting. And why is their not having attended the entire meeting more interesting to you than, say, listing all the elected officials who didn't attend at all?
My point here is, echoing ShadyMilkMan, alot about being a public official is balancing priorities -- you can't be everywhere, and no matter which meetings you choose to attend, and which you don't, someone will be unhappy. I get pretty tired of what seems to be reflexive "all politicians must be jerks because, well, they're politicians." If your beef with politicians is that they're political (and let's not pretend that McCrea isn't also political) -- well, if seems to me that you're damning yourself to some circle of purgatory from which you will not emerge. And these silly jabs just don't push the discussion is any useful direction.
The original post, and McCrea's complaint about Turner and Yoon, would have been far less annoying if McCrea were pledging, as Mayor, to never be late for a meeting, and never to leave one early, and to never jump the line for the microphone.
News, interesting or otherwise...
I think you have to extrapolate the point a little. Personally I think we need people in office who are more interested in RUNNING the city rather than RUNNING AROUND the city and that should start at the top which is personally why I'm supporting Kevin in his bid for mayor.
However, you bring up another point on the schools needing more money. Kevin's blog notes that Dr. Johnson stated that "we don't have enough of any of the things we need".
Amazing if you consider a little known fact that the city of Boston spends about $22,000 per year per student (higher and mostly significantly higher than every other large community in the state except Cambridge and possibly Waltham with whom we are neck and neck). This is literally enough to send every one of our kids to an exclusive private school. The city of Boston's schools do not need more money - they need more accountability.
Source?
Stevil, do you have a source for that 22K figure? I take it your calculation is somewhat more sophisticated than dividing the BPS budget by the BPS enrollment, which gives a figure under 15K for FY09.
City Audit
Sock puppet - see the city audit for 2008 - page 11:
http://www.cityofboston.gov/auditing/pdfs/fin2008.pdf
Total school expenditures are 1.273 billion - divided by 55,800 students actually comes to $22,800. Unfortunately they don't break it down further (I realized when I looked at the number again that it's possible this includes assessments for charters and Metco which would reduce the number to about $20,400 per pupil). I get about $21,000 when I add operating funds, external funds, capital funds, teacher pensions and an estimate for school retiree health care). The school budget increased almost 5% for FY 2009 - which would bring you up to between $21,500 and $24,000 depending on which students are included.
The figure you cite is operating funds only and excludes external funds (grants, federal aid etc.), capital, pensions and retiree health care.
What makes up the difference
Between the expense and the budget? The budget is more in the 800M range. This is 400M spent on schools that's not in the schools budget? Is it overhead in some sense?
As follows for 2009 (approximate - * marks estimates)
Operating Budget - $833 million
External funds - $130 million (mostly miscellaneous grants/aid - includes school lunches/breakfasts as qualified)
Capital expenditures - $40 million
Teacher pensions - $118 million
Other school dept pensions - $20 million*
Retiree health care - $34 million*
Total school expenses roughly $1.175 billion
The other $100 million is probably state assessments for Metco and charters (6700 students times $15k per student?)
Shady - this comes out to $550,000 per class - on average with bennies it costs about $100k to put a teacher in a classroom leaving $450k for everything else - that's a heck of a lot of one on one time (and we don't have any real estate expenses except for maintenance)! Our performance is literally at the bottom of the pack if you take out the exam schools (in with Lynn, Lawrence, Springfield and New Bedford who all spend a fraction of what Boston spends).
Additionally, this doesn't include all the other youth programs and volunteer tutoring etc. that Boston has in abundance compared to our other less fortunate cities. Something's not happening.
To the original point of the post - the city councilors should be paying attention to some of THIS stuff - not making token appearances at community meetings.
Spending on the kids
It seems to me that some of this shouldn't really be described as spending per pupil. Existing pensions wouldn't go away if today's kids went to private school instead; that cost would persist (if not increase, in the short term). Likewise, money from external sources for explicit purposes wouldn't be available for something else if those activities ceased.
So I'm not sure whether it's accurate say that this 22K+ is a per-pupil cost comparable with the tuition of a private school. It looks more like if you went and paid 22K to a private school, you'd have to come up with 7K to fill the gap (pay those pensions and substitute for the external funds).
But, yeah, original point taken - the pols should pay attention to this stuff. (BTW, don't take the Latin School out of your calculations; it costs much less on a per-pupil basis than the other high schools do).
Do no fall into the
Do no fall into the "exclusive private school trap"
While quite a bit can be learned from these private schools, and Charter Schools (which I love by the way) it is not all that easy to compare. Boston schools have to worry about all the kids all the time. That means the poor students who need help with lunch, the immigrant students who do not know English, and the special needs kids who need 1/1 and sometimes 2/1 attention. I do not know much about the Boston schools so its possible there are glaring problems that I am not privy to that someone with a kid in the system would see, but you can not compare the Boston schools to elite private schools unless you take into account all the extra expenses.
Exclusivity = cherrypicking
I expect private school tuition would go up significantly if they had to stop cherrypicking. Private schools, in my experience, select students based on two factors: A) how cheap it will be to educate the kid (that's called academic qualification); and B) how much money the parents might donate above and beyond the tuition (that's called social commitment). As a third consideration, they'd like to have an attractive selection of tokens ("committment to diversity.")
Shady's quite right in that the service level could never be maintained for the same fee if they had to accept the same population as the BPS. The tuition does not cover all the actual costs at "exclusive" private schools, no matter how low they keep them by excluding kids who would be expensive to educate. If rich parents didn't donate great gobs of money, the schools would quickly go broke.
Are you familiar with Roxbury Prep charter school?
90% plus inner city minority, I think 60% single parent households, on average about 2 levels below grade level performance at entry in 6th grade. Over the past several years they have outperformed the W's (Wellesley, Winchester, Wayland) including one year with literally the highest math MCAS in the state. And it's not just academics - I've been to their annual fundraiser the past two years - these kids are amazing - smart, poised, well spoken, musical talent, dance talent etc. The key - LOOOONG school days, an additional "enrichment class", after school help until 5 or 6 pm I think Saturdays if needed, summer help etc. I believe the only requirement is they tell you upon entry they are going to work your derriere off and you have to sign a document to say you are willing to do the work. And they do it all in a one hallway building in Roxbury on less money than BPS (they hire young VERY enthusiastic teachers - I think they get a fair amount of turnover - but you can't argue the results).
We have to stop making excuses. These kids can do it - more money is not the answer. I taught in the Japanese public schools for two years - they look a lot like Roxbury prep - bare bones - long hours, low pay, minimal staff and they kick our butts all over the map. No pain, no gain.
How many of the children in
How many of the children in these children are deaf? Blind? ADD, ADHD, dyslexia...
1%
1% of the students have disabilities that cause them to go to special schools. ADD,ADHD etc. - don't know - but probably no more than other state inner city schools like Lynn, Lawrence, Springfield etc. - and they spend a lot less for apparently superior results in lower grades and similar results in higher grades (excluding exam schools) at least as measured by MCAS as a common point of reference.
Remarkable
Yes, I'd like more of that, please. I am all for it. It looks great, and kudos to you for being involved.
It does look like a certain amount of cherry-picking is necessary for this school, too, however: the stats show 0% English learners and 7% special ed, compared to about 20% for each in the BPS as a whole.
I'm not sure it demonstrates your financial point, either.
That 13K is the same kind of apple as the approximately 15K per-pupil of the BPS budget. And the reduced numbers of English learners and special ed fill in a fair piece of the 2K gap.
So yeah, I'll say that's a very good way to spend pretty much the same amount of money the BPS spends at every other school.
So yeah, I'll say that's a
I can agree with that... it looks like have great results for the money they spend compared to comparable money spent in the Boston general system. They are obviously doing something right and should be emulated. I also appreciate your efforts to break down the numbers so its more in the face of reality. I think a problem many people have is they try to puff up their side as much as possible and that causes others to look at the numbers and assume something is wrong with them. When schools are compared its important to compare apples to apples.
I'd settle for average
To S_P's point - there are more issues in the BPS - but I don't see more money being the solution and I'm not looking for them to duplicate those results - maybe on par with the rest of the state - say middle quintile on par with say a Plymouth or a Peabody rather than Lynn and Lawrence - would be absolutely phenomenal.
(while $2k may not seem like much - that works out to about $100 million for the BPS or 12% of the city's school operating budget-and remember that's the TOTAL cost of sending a kid to Rox Prep - including school lunches, grants, capital, rent, 401k/pensions etc.).
In the end I don't mind spending it (and paying the taxes) as long as we get some decent results. The long term payoffs would be enormous.
Plenty of problems
There are plenty of problems. One thing I notice as both a result and a problem is how dispirited some BPS teachers are. I know a couple of BPS teachers at schools in Roxbury who seem utterly burnt out and discouraged. I bet the teachers at Roxbury Prep are pretty pumped about their jobs. I think a lot of other factors in the quality of education might well pale next to teacher enthusiasm.
On the other hand, it's pretty clear that the Teacher's Union feels threatened by Charter Schools; the new BTU school seems to be an attempt to prove they can do it too.
As far as the numbers go, don't underestimate how much more it costs to educate special ed and ESL students. That could easily eat up that 2K average and more. It seems to me that the costs at Rox Prep are pretty much in line with what I would expect, given the population and the lack of frills. As far as cost, there's no magic difference there. But it sounds like they've got a good thing going there, I congratulate you for being part of the solution, and I agree with you that this model should be extended.
Not really 22K per student
if you look at the expense of regular ed alone, per pupil spending is far less and well below many towns/cities. the 22K figure includes all costs for educating all students in and out of district. not to say all the money is well spent, obviously there is tremendous inefficiency in the system. but if you look at other school budgets for similarly sized cities across the country or other towns in mass, i think you will notice that special education and other support programs (many are legally mandated) in boston account for a greater portion of the budget, and are much more expensive proportionally.
Time to stop with the excuses
I maintain a database of the 25 largest cities and towns in the state with a variety of financial and academic statistics. Boston is second really only to Cambridge in spending and many of these cities have problems as bad or far worse than Boston - Springfield, Lynn, Lawrence, New Bedford, Brockton etc. spend a fraction of what we spend (25-33% less) for similar results. The point is if you are going to spend this kind of money - have something to show for it.
What does Boston have - 71% of our 3rd graders scored below passing on the 2008 English MCAS and 64% below passing on the math - absolute worst in the state - worse than those cities mentioned above - and we supposedly have an extensive (and expensive) early learning program in this city. We get only marginally better as the kids get older.
As you state - some kids cost less -especially in the lower grades which are very inexpensive - but that means that if we are spending $15k on one decent student - we are spending $29k on another student - essentially the special ed kid has the equivalent of a semi-private tutor and we are getting absolutely zero to show for it.
Go to 7-8 hour school days, Saturdays as necessary, 220 days a year like our Asian competition and you'll get the job done. All due respect to the teachers but if they don't like it for the same salary/bennies they are welcome to look elsewhere for employment.
Noncomparable Populations
Our Asian Competition only spends that kind of money and effort on the best and brightest. Most of the kids who are in the Boston schools would be expected to leave school by 8th grade or go to a vocational track after 6th grade if they were in Asia, because they don't need or want well educated factory drones.
And your source on this?
I know that's not true in Japan (I taught 2 years in the Japanese public schools-although I do think they've limited or eliminated Saturdays) and have never heard of this in the other countries I've traveled to extensively (most of Asia) or lived in (Singapore). It's school til 18 for all those reasonably willing and able with college to follow(of course they do have vocational and technical schools like other places).
Do you have a website or article that discusses this?
China = "Asian Competition"
Source.
Singapore and Japan do not have the sheer size and resources of China, so I wouldn't exactly use their systems to charactarize "Asian Competition". Other developing Asian nations like Vietnam are struggling just to universalize education, and even then the upper grades are reserved for the few wealthy people and those who show aptitude. Singapore and Japan are developed nations - but they are the exception in Asia, rather than the rule.
I would agree. While Japans
I would agree. While Japans best compete with our best India and China are the only two countries in the world that have the populations big enough to swamp ours if we fall behind.
Besides WWII Japan has never been a real threat to US power at any level (cultural, military, economic, even tech wise) because it is a numbers game. They lack natural resources and people.
China on the other hand has resources AND people. They can be the new us (us not u.s., although it is one in the same) with their vast natural resources, nationalistic population, and population numbers. They are the real competition out there. All they are missing is the safety of benign neighbors (even with Mexicos problems we are lucky to share a border with them and Canada.) China has some real wackos as neighbors, and even the sane ones give them more problems then out biggest offshore neighbor issue (Cuba is not a problem at all when compared to Taiwan.)
Japan
Really? Seems like their auto industry has pretty much killed ours. I also think of them as the leader in consumer electronics.
My friends Toyota was built
My friends Toyota was built in Tennesse. I think people are looking past the Japanese car facilities in the US when they complain of the US lost jobs. Many US based cars are made in Mexico and Canada. At the end of the day which is better?
They have no place to make this stuff anymore and their population is aging fast. Japan was a flash in the pan, and with the exception of Detroit being stung they have not done lasting damage to our economy.
China on the other hand is growing strong, and hey look at that they are making cars now and heck they own the IBM name.
Japan does not concern me. Its one thing to get bested on one or two counts, but China has the ability, in the future, to compete with us and possibly win on ALL levels. Even the Soviet Union of post WWII looks lame in comparison to China 2020. China has more people studying things like engireering RIGHT NOW then Japan has people. Its an economy of scale, and China owns the scale. That is where we should balance out scale, because focusing on Japan is short sighted.
I don't consider China competition - yet
China is still a third world communist (in name and government) country. I am talking Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore - China will get there - I believe this 9 year law was similar to Japan prior to WW II - but then they caught up and in many ways passed us (actually I think the mandatory law in Japan is still 9 years - but only a tiny fraction of kids go only 9 years and most go on to get a GED type diploma). Although their economy will struggle with an aging and shrinking population don't underestimate Japan. They are very smart and industrious country with huge capital and human resources (and they are still one of the largest countries in the world by population).
I lived in Singapore and traveled frequently to China in the mid-1990's - I used to come home and joke to my wife that some day we will all be renting our homes from the Chinese. If you understand the link between our low mortgage rates and US treasuries, it appears that my only mistake was thinking that this would be a time further in the future because we are essentially already there.
Bottom line and back to the point - Boston's kids aren't cutting it (actually the Asian kids are doing pretty well coming out of the same classrooms - no surprise). They may not ever be Albert Einstein (who also apparently struggled in school), but if we are ever going to educate them it's not going to happen in a 6 hour traditional school day or 180 day school year. Some kids need more and we should either demand our money's worth or just not bother and spend the money elsewhere - currently we have the worst of both worlds - high cost, crappy product. I'm happy to eat McD's occasionally - but I'm not going to pay for filet mignon at the Golden Arches and that's the equivalent of what we are doing.
Vocational training
Stevil, don't Korea and Japan have a split between vocational and educational training at about the high school level, where 30-40% or so of students split off into the vocational track with a terminal degree of HS diploma?
Not Japan
I'm not as familiar with Korea - but have never heard of this tracking program. In Japan you have to test to get into high school. That is pretty much the weeding out (however by middle school you have 99% literacy and most kids can do basic math). At the HS level your academic skills essentially sort you out - top scorers on the entry exam go to top schools and so on down the line. The higher level school you are the more likely you are to go to college - but there's a separate test for college - independent of the high school test (in theory you could be in a mediocre high school and get into a top college and vice versa - but not common) There is a separate test for private schools I believe which are actually not as prestigious and I think some private schools will let you in if you "fail" the entrance exams. It's not a perfect system either - but as for basic education they blow us away. Japan does have some vocational schools - I taught at a "business school" - which was for kids basically looking for jobs in administration without college or just junior college - bank tellers and "office girls" for females and perhaps a small family business for boys (really just had some basic computer classes, accounting etc.). My understanding is that places like Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore have their own twists but are relatively similar.
Japanese high schools
I was surprised to learn recently that the real competition was to get into public high schools (which are cheap, but not totally free) -- and that most ptivate high schools (which are fairly expensive) are for people who did not do well enough on the entrance exams to get a place in a public high school.
Mt wife and I were in Japan in February -- and we saw lots of signs of kids going to school on Saturday. We also saw lots and lots of very well-behaved school kids -- and none that behaved particularly badly.
Some cute middle-school kids from Saitama, who were visiting Nara at the same time we were:
http://i9.photobucket.com/albums/a59/mkerpan/japan...
Absolutely correct
your comments about public and private schools are accurate.
Loved the picture - some things never change in japan - i think I have that exact same picture in my album from 1986! :-)
We kept bumping into these kids...
throughout the morning (and they kept sayig "hi", rather shyly)..
At the end of the tour, they (very politely) asked US to pose for them. So, I agreed -- in exchange for getting a picture of them. ;~}
Strange
The online sources I can find indicate a variety of things related to tracking, such as:
-10% of Japanese students don't even make it to (senior) high school (which is not compulsory).
-30% of Japanese high school students are enrolled in a non-academic (non-college bound) track.
-About 56% of Japanese students don't go on to college at all.
-Fewer than 1 in 5 Japanese high school students continues education at a 4-year university.
That looks like a pretty rigid tracking system to me, very different from what we have here, and more similar to a European system. Probably almost all of the special ed kids have either dropped out by high school or are placed in the vocational track. That ought to keep costs down. But here we'd see that as "giving up on them."
Different understanding of vocational
When you said vocational I was thinking of the trade schools in Japan (business focus, industrial arts focus etc). These are a very small minority of schools. In a sense you are correct on the tracking - you take an exam and each school has a cutoff - for example in my town the "North" school had the highest academic cutoff and these students typically went on to elite colleges - by 9th grade your academic abilities are pretty well established. The "West" school had good students who probably went on to the "state" colleges. The "south" school probably had few kids go on to college. However, in theory a "south" student could take the national entrance exam and go to a prestigious school if they did well - but it would be like turning a 450 on your PSAT into an 800 on your SAT. As I said - you are all mainstreamed through 9th grade and then you take a test - the "weeding out" process. Nobody is "placed" on any level - you do your own placing based on your skills and work ethic (and test-taking ability).
As for costs - the casual observer would never be able to tell the difference between the North School, the West school, the South School or my vocational school. The teachers are all on the same salary grade based on level and seniority and may teach at one school one year, another the next, the schools are all generally postwar era, 30 kids per class, barebones facilities no central heat (except maybe far up north), no AC (the baseball fields have no grass to keep maintenance down and they are "groomed" by the team), minimal labs and computers etc. The "cost per student" for a similar size of school probably doesn't vary by more than a few percent from one school to the next regardless of academic level based on my observations and experience - and that would be true nationwide as the system is controlled from Tokyo with prefectural administration.
Very different - far from perfect - but highly effective in getting almost all the students to at least a basic social competency level by 9th grade (newspaper level reading skills and basic arithmetic).