Comments on: Opponents of choice, accountability and transparency trying to make a move

By: Al Rode

Al Rode — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:36:25 +0000

I can think of all kinds of ways that administrators are using loopholes and deceiving the public through private entities to gain public money. It is impossible for any state agency to investigate the number of private vendors who might be overreporting students – a school official has only to apply for a vendor number and begin submitting rosters of students to show they are managing a support service. Erate is an example of another program that’s been exposed for all sorts of abuse. What about a principal with a district administrator who uses district funds to visit support programs, then creates an alternative program especially tailored for their school district and convinces the school board that they should purchase it. NCLB created the loophole and the Title I Coordinator is bypassed with the School Improvement Plan. The grant coordinator does not even have to be a certified teacher. How else could Bersin and Alvarado have taken control of all the Title I funding in San Diego Unified – amongst a host of abuses, Alvarado got a free condo in Coronado and his coast-to-coast travel expenses paid for. Bersin had a budget number for his booze. So perhaps Republicans should recraft NCLB a little bit more carefully. Were these stellar reformers ever reprimanded for abusing their power? No, instead they are some of the most highly paid administrators in the United States. NCLB created black holes as far as funding of schools goes – money goes into them, but you don’t ever see it coming back.

By: Al Rode

Al Rode — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 18:06:33 +0000

What Republicans are calling school accountability is performance based assessment using standardized testing, this is not the same as fiscal accountability. Standardized testing has already been shown to be a useless measure of performance, since each state chooses its own achievemnt bar. What the NEA and NSBA opposes is institutional mismanagement, not outcome based assessment which is mandated by Title I.

By: Al Rode

Al Rode — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 17:36:38 +0000

NCLB skirted accountability when it created an umbrella around Title I and schools became flow-through entities for private vendors (e.g. Mark Olds and CAMST). Principals are curriculum specialists, not business people. The best fiscal safeguard was the resource teacher who managed those funds. It is not surprising that since NCLB’s enactment, we see problems within charters and public schools mostly created by over reporting student enrollments. States that no longer have whistle-blower laws protecting state employees will soon find out why public schools at one time had the lowest cases of reported fraud of any business sector. This is not the case any longer. The former superintendent of Sweetwater Union is an excellent case of how NCLB was used by a district official to ‘recapture’ Title I money. If public schools are using poor curriculum, then they are spending more money for testing, curriculum, more staff, more buildings, staff development, etc. When you multiply costs, you are multiplying opportunities for fraud and mismanagement. Poor curriculum is shaping educational policy and costing Americans 10-50 times more for an education than it should. Its not reform that I mind, its the way we go about doing it.