Revising Patrick's education agenda

GOVERNOR Deval Patrick has acted to stanch budgetary bleeding caused by the national financial crisis. He has demonstrated leadership by resisting the temptation to wait until after the election to make cuts and by slashing his own budget before calling on other constitutional officers to do the same.

With a sharp economic downturn that will put the Commonwealth's capital-gains revenue in freefall coming on top of a preexisting $1 billion structural deficit, even more cuts may be in the offing. New programs are off the table.

Among the likely casualties of the financial storm are several proposals included in the Readiness Project, Patrick's action agenda for education. For the foreseeable future, big-ticket items like free tuition at community colleges and universal early childhood education are unlikely at best.

But fiscal constraints cannot reduce the focus on bridging achievement gaps between rich and poor, white and minority, and preparing children to compete in the global marketplace. Nothing should deter the state from liberating more than 60,000 students from the Commonwealth's worst schools.

Achieving these goals amidst fiscal crisis requires leaders to focus on existing educational options that have demonstrated proven results, are relatively inexpensive, and are sought after by thousands of inner-city parents.

Vocational-technical schools: A new Pioneer Institute report finds that MCAS scores for the Commonwealth's regional voc-techs have increased by more than 40 percent since 2001. Last year, their MCAS pass rates and graduation rates outpaced state averages, despite voc-techs having a higher percentage of special-needs students.

Charter schools educate less than 2.5 percent of the Massachusetts public school population, but the most recent results show that charters finished first in the Commonwealth on seven different MCAS exams at the seventh-, eighth-, 10th- and 12th-grade levels. Among the top-ranked schools are charters in Boston, Lawrence, and Chelsea whose students are predominately African-American and Hispanic.

METCO allows about 3,300 Boston and Springfield students to be educated in surrounding suburban school districts. Almost 90 percent of those students go on to college, compared with just over half the graduates of Boston public schools.

Pilot school performance may not match that of charters, but students in these 20 semi-autonomous Boston schools outperform their counterparts in the city's traditional schools.

These educational options have proven records of success. The problem is that there is simply not enough supply to meet the demand, particularly among urban parents.

There are more than 2,800 students on vocational-technical school wait lists. About 20,000 languish on charter school waiting lists, almost as many as the 25,000 students who currently attend charters. In Boston, demand for seats in METCO is five times what the program can currently accommodate.

Every kindergarten seat in a Boston pilot school has more than two families who make it their first choice under the district's school-selection process, more than three times the demand for a comparable seat in Boston's traditional public schools.

Ensuring access to the American dream of social mobility demands that these pre-existing models be expanded in urban districts. Just doubling their number would address half the problem, at a direct cost of about $55 million. Transition expenses and overhead costs for district schools would add perhaps another $45 million.

While $100 million is a significant investment, especially during a fiscal crisis, it is dwarfed by the $1 billion to $3 billion it would cost to implement the governor's unproven proposals.

Scaling up pilot schools would require teachers unions - who must approve new pilots - to soften their resistance to them. An existing proposal would raise the charter cap from 9 percent to 20 percent in districts that score in the bottom 10 percent statewide on MCAS, making room for new charter schools in places like Boston, Springfield, Cambridge, and Lawrence.

The governor should be applauded for decisive moves to balance the Commonwealth's budget in the midst of daunting economic challenges. But these same challenges require a reassessment of his education agenda. Given the existence of successful and affordable options, this is no time to reinvent the wheel.

Jamie Gass is director of the Center for School Reform at the Pioneer Institute.