Beyond the Budget: Seeking Solutions in Delaware’s Education System
By: Jane Brady, Chair, A Better Delaware
This is the third in a series of articles that will take a look at how the policy principles and legislative priorities of A Better Delaware fared in the last legislative session, which ended on June 30. We have written over several years now about our perspective on healthcare, education, energy, the economy and workforce in Delaware, as well as the need for more accountability and better transparency in the way government works in Delaware.
In this series, we will look at how the action the legislature took promotes or inhibits achievement of those policy objectives we feel are important to make Delaware a better place for families, workers, businesses and the community at large.
Education Policy
You may already know all the numbers. Delaware is in the top ten in spending on education, and the bottom five in student performance. We have over a dozen schools with single digit proficiencies in math and reading, most of them minority majority. Delaware spends over $20,000 per student per year, according to the latest figures from the Department of Education. There has been an inverse correlation between increases in spending and lower achievement scores – as spending has gone up, performance has gone down. The Governor just recommended, and the General Assembly passed, a budget that increases spending in education significantly, and includes $3 million for “literacy specialists,” who will teach teachers how to teach reading.
So, what is the good news? Well, there really is a science to teaching reading, and many new teachers were never taught how to teach it the way you probably learned – phonics is the key. So, we commend the attention to reading. After all, if you can’t read, you can’t learn. But, once again, the Governor and legislature came up short. They did not provide specific goals for everyone – students, teachers and parents to reach – proficiency in reading at grade level by grade 3. That has proven to be the “secret” to success in Mississippi, a state that performed miserably for decades, but instituted a law that students cannot earn that moniker “4th grader” until they can read at a third-grade level. Mississippi, 6 or so years later, bests us by a mile. We need to establish goals and consequences in order to make change. Just “teaching children to read” has failed Delaware students for some time now.
We had the opportunity to address some of the issues and bring transparency to the failings of these schools in the last General Assembly session. The bill, HB 192 was proffered to require these poorly performing schools to present both short- and long-term plans to improve student performance to the Department of Education, and for the Department to issue an annual report on improvement (or the lack thereof). While it passed in the House last year, and successfully passed through both the House and Senate Education Committees with bipartisan support, it has now stalled in the Senate. Fearing that the bill will be a step toward school choice, the majority refused to bring it to a vote.
How arrogant! Because the other good news is that there are schools in Delaware that are succeeding. They just, mostly, are not public schools. You may have read in our previous newsletters that we at A Better Delaware support school choice, to give the poor students who are assigned to these poorly performing schools by a government that does not seem to be able to get the job done, a choice. Other jurisdictions which have tried a choice program, enabling students to attend a private or parochial school of their choice, have seen remarkable gains in student success. And, we have proposed ways to offer choice without taking money out of the public schools. Our current education system, bloated and ineffective, is consigning children who are required to attend poorly performing schools, solely by virtue of their zip code, to more difficult lives than any of them deserve.
We can improve education in Delaware, but it requires leadership that recognizes that more money is not the answer. Specific goals, consequences and rewards with respect to those goals, and more transparency and choice all will serve the children of Delaware better. Better job opportunities, better financial security and more personal satisfaction with their lives. The children of Delaware deserve that. The General Assembly should not stand in the way.
Jane Brady serves as Chair of A Better Delaware. She previously served as Attorney General of Delaware and as a Judge of the Delaware Superior Court.