Comment by hedora
3 hours ago
This is true. There are safeguards (that are currently failing) that my program would engage:
- The state is legally required to provide those kids with an education.
- There is funding allocated to help those districts.
If "we will not pay you if the kids do not learn" means there are zero schools in those districts then (1) the state government will get sued for not doing its job (because closing 100% of the schools makes the failure objective and obvious) and (2) it will have to update those funding formulas so that it is possible for some school (state run, or private) to break even while providing an education in those areas.
With sympathy to your appeal that 100% closures will force us to reckon with the problem, I suspect it'd only lead to missing the forest for the trees. This would come with substantial pains to the community. Potentially ones that knock-on to other pains.
You're at the root of why this is a tricky problem to solve. In fact there is no solution, just a wide basket of expensive things we should aspire to do to improve affairs.
What pain, exactly?
- The local public school goes from 80 kids per grade to 40, and a new school opens across the street or just rents an existing building from the existing school district.
- Funding stays flat, and academic performance goes up.
- Administrators get to decide which teachers to lay off, and they will be de facto fired if they get rid of the high performers while keeping the low performers.
- If the union contracts make it impossible to retain the high-performers, then the school eventually shuts down, and teachers that are competitive on the job market get hired by the new school for similar pay / benefits.
- Teachers at the new school get evaluated on whether they do their job, and the new administrators have a strong financial incentive to use performance-based evaluation instead of seniority / nepotism / whatever.
I see no downside whatsoever.
The pains I was thinking of largely occupy the transitionary period of a school closing before alternatives are open.
When does the deficient school close? After this new school is opened? If not, what happens to students and families that depend on an education in the interim?
Who pays for this new school? Must they immediately show improvement or do they get some years to show that their approach is working better?
Will the metrics even be accurate in the new school? Will there be a self-selecting bias in the newly formed student body?
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