SECOND OPINION
Education: Let reforms begin
By Cliff Slater
The Edmonton Model offers a real chance to bring control to the local level.
We are now approaching a crucial time in public education reform. Deals will have to be cut, compromises made and losers will have to be portrayed as winners — if there is to be any reform.
Let us pray that the necessary legislation does not end up like School/Community-Based Management (SCBM), all slogans and no substance, but results instead with some variant of the Edmonton Model — North America's most successful example of reform (see "Hawai'i education: Here's the answer" March 17, 2003).
This is what Mike Strembitsky, the long-time head of the Edmonton School District, developed, which is essentially pushing nearly all decision-making down to the school level while maintaining "a sophisticated data-collection process that yields information on everything from student achievement to students' satisfaction with their school to parents' perceptions of their ability to influence school decisions."
The two core features of the Edmonton Model — the Weighted Student Formula to allow total school choice, and decentralization to allow the individual schools to control the education budget — are what reform must be.
SCBM was supposed to "shift a significant degree of decision-making authority from the state and district levels to the school's community."
This had to mean local budgetary control since virtually all-important decision-making is of a budgetary nature. Thus, there are no conflicts between the ideals of the original SCBM concept and the Edmonton Model.
I experienced a business model once that was similar: At one time I ran a subsidiary of a large conglomerate, which had hundreds of subsidiaries in disparate locations, including many international ones. The individual companies reported frequently, and in great detail, to the small corporate headquarters, but aside from that, the individual subsidiary heads had great latitude — as long as they performed well.
We should not be arguing over the number of school districts. Elected boards of education have been proven worthless unless the districts are so small that the electors personally know the candidates. Either have one appointed statewide board or have the boards elected at the school level.
Edmonton has strong unions for both teachers and principals, so that should not be an impediment to reform. Our principals might well accept revocation of some of the more undesirable aspects of their union contract in exchange for increased pay.
The Department of Education will not reform itself; it has ignored directives from the Legislature on its financial reporting and played games with SCBM. Reducing the size of the DOE to the point where the schools control 90 percent of the budget — as they do in Edmonton — will take monumental resolve.
First, the new superintendent to run such an operation will not be a reasonable person. As George Bernard Shaw once said, "Progress is not made by reasonable people."
Mike Strembitsky, for example, is not a reasonable man. You would not want to get between him and where he has to go.
Second, there will have to be ironclad requirements. Since with Weighted Student Funding we can accurately allocate funds to individual schools, why can't we have Weighted Bureaucrat Funding to allocate funding to the DOE?
The Legislature could mandate each year there be an increase of 20 percent in the funding percentage controlled by the schools and a decrease in the funding to the DOE by a like amount.
No one would be able to blame the new superintendent, who would have no choice but to make the personnel changes necessary to follow the mandate.
Cliff Slater is a regular columnist whose footnoted columns are at www.lava.net/cslater
