The tools to turn schools around
THE RECENT House Ways and Means Committee budget recommendation ignited a firestorm by proposing more than $70 million less in state education aid than was included in Governor Romney's budget proposal. This money is critical to communities across the Commonwealth. But it is just as critical that the education debate not focus on so-called Chapter 70 funding to the exclusion of other crucial priorities.
While the state has made great progress in the 13 years since education reform was enacted, more than 60,000 children across Massachusetts still languish in schools in which more than half the students have failed either the English language arts or math MCAS exam at least two years in a row. In many of these schools, the record of failure goes back far longer, and in some the percentage of students scoring ''proficient" is consistently in single digits.
For too long, the Commonwealth has attempted to address the needs of students in these schools using an unwieldy bureaucratic process that includes ''panel reviews" and ''fact finding." But almost a decade and a generation of public school students later, too little help has reached the students who need it most.
A state that has lost population two years in a row doesn't have the luxury of sacrificing 60,000 young people. Fixing these troubled schools is both a moral and economic imperative.
Working with Mass Insight Education and the Great Schools Campaign, a coalition of business, education, and civic leaders, Senator Steven Baddour and Representative Stephen LeDuc filed legislation to get support to students in the lowest-performing schools. The bill would create the Commonwealth Turnaround Collaborative, an entity within the Department of Education, focused exclusively on school turnarounds. Targeted new funding would be used to extend the school day and provide schools with a menu of research-based support services.
There is growing consensus around strategies for turning around low-performing schools. The governor's education reform proposal includes provisions similar to those in the Baddour/LeDuc bill and a DOE plan to be unveiled at today's meeting of the State Board of Education is expected to contain comparable recommendations.
Fully funding the Great Schools legislation would cost $35 million, but a scaled-down version that would move toward providing the support these students need and still produce immediate results in our poorest-performing schools could be implemented for about half that much. Sadly, the House budget included less than $5 million for turnarounds -- too little to have meaningful impact.
Similar consensus has been growing around the need to improve K-12 math and science education. The United States ranks 25th out of 41 industrialized nations in math literacy; only 15 percent of our graduates earn undergraduate degrees in science and engineering, compared with fully half in China.
Research shows a clear correlation between teacher content knowledge and student achievement. Content training is particularly needed in math and science for elementary school teachers; not because the teachers aren't good, but because until now they have faced only minimal requirements in these disciplines.
The Great Schools Campaign recommends a $24 million investment in math and science content training, along with coaching for teachers. Here again, the House fell short. It recommends spending less than $3 million, just $1 million of which is free of earmarks and can go to the elementary school teachers most in need of math and science training.
Budget writers face an understandable dilemma in attempting to address infinite needs with finite resources. The frustration of municipal and school district officials is also understandable. In many cases, the level of state education aid proposed by the House wouldn't cover increases in fixed costs, and some communities would see no increase at all.
It is appropriate to have a full and open debate about Chapter 70 funding. But that debate should not come at the expense of other education priorities that are equally deserving of the state's attention and resources.
Gloria Larson of Foley Hoag LLP and Paul Grogan of the Boston Foundation are cochairs of the Great Schools Campaign. 
