School funding must be applied right way

In 2007, I was hired as principal to restructure Brandywine High School, which the Delaware Department of Education had designated as a “failing” school under the auspices of No Child Left Behind. Within minutes of beginning my first meeting with the faculty, one of the more respected and experienced members offered her view regarding the mission before us. “We love these kids, but you’re not taking into account the baggage they have that keeps them from learning,” she said.

I responded that if the implication in what she was sharing was true – that we did not know how to teach students of color from a poverty-challenged neighborhood how to meet the high expectations that I had just suggested we should have – then we should save taxpayers millions of dollars by shutting down the school. What was the point of paying for a school if a large percentage of the kids attending could not, in effect, learn.

What I knew that the teacher and most of her colleagues did not know was that the only factor shown by research to have a causative (not just correlative) impact on student achievement is teacher expectations. I began my career in education in 1970 and concluded it by overseeing the process that monitored school improvement planning for more than 800 failing schools in Pennsylvania, and that experience confirmed for me what bona fide research began to report as early as 1968. Don’t take my word for it: Google “Teacher expectations of students: a self-fulfilling prophecy?” And then sample the research that will be provided for you.

The commentary by legislators Pettyjohn and Yearick mirrors countless such pleas for increased funding put forward over decades by concerned folks from every state in the union, but too often (almost always?), money is thrown at school districts without a clear understanding of the importance of how that money would be best spent. For example, just increasing teacher compensation does not guarantee an increase in the achievement of marginalized students because as stated in the book “Building Teachers Capacity for Success,” the gap between knowing and doing is more famously vast in education than in any other profession. Said another way, despite research-based best practices having been presented in one form or another to most educators, the percentage of those educators who implement those best practices is the lowest of any profession.

If Pettyjohn and Yearick, et al, have their way, and policy changes are made that impact the amount and equity of educational funding, it is not likely that those dollars will have much of an impact upon student achievement unless those dollars are primarily used to teach principals and teachers not only about the essential importance of high teacher expectations, but most importantly, those dollars must also be allocated to the development of management systems that support and hold principals and teachers accountable for the implementation with fidelity of the teacher behaviors and strategies needed to convey teachers’ high expectations for all students.