Plan for Failure

Here's an op-ed piece from the Pittsburgh Tribune Review about the high cost of education and the even higher cost of failure.

It sounds very much like the bleatings of the Emperor and his sheep. All you hear are variations on the themes of "Fix it!" and "It costs too much!" There's no focus on the very messy and very real problem of "how."

Waiter! We'd like at least some cheese with all this whine.

We're seeing it play out over and over again right here at home. "Stop the School!" Never a "what's next" plan. We've been waiting just about one year now for the people in power to show us their Nixonian secret plan.

Then we got the "it's too expensive" speeches and they slashed the budget, as well as the taxes. That's all good, but we constantly ask about next year, and there's never one word about a plan there either. In just two short months, the budget cycle for 2009-10 begins, and even the Emperor is telling you to hold on to your wallet.

Let's really focus on the performance of our current current board.

They may make even soon-to-be former President George W. Bush look good.

The costs of Pittsburgh's school failures

By Frank Gamrat & Jake Haulk
Wednesday, November 12, 2008

Pittsburgh Public Schools faces serious problems -- high per pupil spending (almost $20,000) and a rapidly declining enrollment (18 percent over the last four years) -- that are seemingly intractable.

Not even the hype surrounding the plan to provide college scholarships to graduating seniors through the Pittsburgh Promise has been able to stem the losses. Another major problem confronting the district is the large number of dropouts. High dropout rates lead to significant additional costs to society.

A RAND Institute study prepared for the district estimated the graduation rate for high school freshmen to be 64 percent. A study by Jay Greene and Marcus Winters (for the Center for Civic Innovation), using a different methodology, estimates Pittsburgh's graduation rate to be 65 percent. The latter study estimates the national graduation rate to be 70 percent.

The corresponding dropout rate for the district's freshmen is roughly 35 percent, as estimated by RAND and corroborated by Greene and Winters.

This is an important figure because students who do not achieve a high school diploma are less likely to be successful in the local economy and more likely to rely on social services and be a burden on taxpayers.

Moreover, high school dropouts also have a higher rate of incarceration than those who complete their education. This has the dual effect of both raising the cost of government while decreasing the tax base.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, a high school dropout earns on average $8,500 per year less than someone with a high school diploma. Lower wages translate to lower taxes paid. Furthermore, dropouts not only earn lower wages than those who graduate but they are more likely to be unemployed and need taxpayer-funded assistance.

A recent case study from the Maryland Public Policy Institute found that, on average, a high school dropout costs that state over $1,500 per year. This cost estimate included forgone state tax revenue (sales and income), incarceration costs, and Medicaid costs. It did not include forgone local wage taxes (as collected in Pennsylvania) or other public assistance costs such as welfare or housing.

Thus, in Pennsylvania, specifically Pittsburgh, the total cost of an average dropout is likely to be much higher than $1,500.

Finally, it is important to bear in mind that the dropout rate does not capture the cost impact of the poor quality of education being received by a large percentage of Pittsburgh high school graduates.

For example, 2007 scores for the district's 11th-grade students show that only 53 percent rated as proficient in reading. In math the students showed a dismally low proficiency rate of 44 percent. In some high schools fewer than 20 percent of 11th-graders managed to score at the proficient level.

At the same time, SAT scores in all but one city high school are below the national average with several schools averaging hundreds of points below the 1,017 national combined score. And what's worse, it appears the percentage of students taking the SAT exam in several schools is quite low, which suggests that only the better students even bother to take the test.

All this means that a very large fraction of graduates who are able to take advantage of the Pittsburgh Promise scholarship program will be ill-prepared for post-secondary education and will probably require heavy remediation if they enroll in college -- adding to the enormous cost already incurred getting them through 13 years of public education in Pittsburgh.

Neither the students nor taxpayers can be benefiting much from such a system.

Without question, taxpayers and parents of city students should be clamoring to have the system fixed. But it appears easier to move and/or take the children out of Pittsburgh schools than to challenge politicians to address seriously the underlying problems.

So, the failed system will go on. Indeed, it is reasonable to speculate that $25,000 per student annual spending is only a few years down the road. Maybe by then 60 percent of 11th-graders will be proficient in reading.

Committee and Agenda Meeting Reminder

Board of Ed, Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Policy Committee Meeting
The Policy Committee Meeting will be held in the G Hall Conference Room at 6:30PM in the Middle Senior High School.
Site: HS G Hall Conference Room
Time: 6:30PM

Board Agenda Meeting
The monthly Board Agenda Meeting will be held at 7:30PM in the LGI Room of the Morrisville Middle Senior High School, 550 W. Palmer Street, Morrisville, PA.
Site: HS LGI
Time: 7:30PM