Shell Game?
Kevin Gray
“Spend the money on the lower grades, and we won’t have the problems we have to deal with in the upper grades,” I used to tell my colleagues and administrators over my 30 years as a high school English teacher.
“The way we spend money is turned around,” I used to harp, meaning the way school districts devoted funding high school programs, both academic, extra-curricular, and sports, at the expense of lower elementary students, thinking, I guess, that kids would pick it up as they went along. Encouraging my district to hire more teachers and para-professionals for the lower elementary grades to provide more individualized attention on reading and math seemed like a great idea to me.
Identify problems early, stay with each student the whole way, then by the time they would get to us at the high school, those students would be in much better shape to take on what we offer, I thought, plus more, and graduate to become productive citizens and go on to higher degrees, if they wanted.
Recently, I read the headline, “Governor says Kansas’ economic recovery tied to higher education.” Great! Once again, we’re going to the high end – really high this time – at the expense of the earliest and earlier learners. Three different schools, Kansas University, Kansas State University and Wichita State will receive $5 million each, if they can match that amount through fundraising or reallocation of existing sources.
KU would continue conducting cancer research. So important! K-State would continue on with animal health research. Also important! And Wichita would focus on aviation. I like that one, too, considering the history of airplane manufacturing in Kansas and Amelia Earhart.
I was very surprised – glad at first – to see another $6 million going to early childhood education centers in mostly “needy areas.” Reading further, I was confused as to why that money was being pulled from an already popular and successful Head Start program designed to meet the needs of early learners and their families in “needy areas,” and already partnered with school districts.
The Kansas Health Institute said the governor now plans to create something called Reading Roadmap, noting that Kansas fourth graders are not reading at grade-appropriate levels. State Rehabilitation Services would administer the program; only the governor has yet to define the program’s approach or describe its details.
Someone is making up a new program – as they go – at the expense of a program already targeting the kinds of families he proposes to help. Specifically, $11.3 million will be eliminated from Early Head Start’s budget and $3.1 million placed into the $79 million child-care assistance program at SRS. Another $6 million will go to the still developing Reading Roadmap. And, if they say one is broken, then fix it, tweak it, because but why kill it?
Early Head Start currently reaches 1,177 children, whereas the expanded SRS program would benefit 850 children. Talk about children – 327 – falling through the cracks, no I mean, a huge gap.
Teachers, including elementary librarians, music and art teachers, and support staff had already gotten their pink slips for this school year; more will get theirs for next year, even as the rest of our teachers state-wide are already being stretched too thin.
Public education naysayers love to say, “More money doesn’t make any difference. Money’s not the answer to children learning.” If money doesn’t matter, how are you going to buy materials, textbooks, computers, provide manageable classroom sizes, provide safe and updated facilities without worry of asbestos, attract and keep highly qualified teachers, provide a full-range of educational objectives including library, language classes, art, music, sports, and so on? Run school buses?
You can cut all you want, but those kids will keep on coming in larger numbers. Cut teachers, para-professionals and specially developed programs, and, like holes in a levee system, too many of our young people will slip, slide and shoot through and through no fault of their own.
What good will the “high-end” programs be, when Kansas students approach the high end and are not properly prepared because we’ve lost the educators and means necessary having short-changed many early learners in the process through a shell game, I mean, reallocation of funds.
Short URL: http://osawatominews.com/?p=890
Posted by admin
on Feb 16 2011. Filed under Kevin Gray, Opinion.
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