Adrift in the edu-sphere
The Boston Globe, editorial, February 24, 2008

Governor Patrick has managed quietly to concentrate nearly all of the power over state education policies in his office. But still a mystery is how or whether this consolidation will advance his educational priorities or help pay for them.

Since October, more than 150 of the state's most talented educators and civic leaders have been toiling on 13 subcommittees for Patrick's "Readiness Project" - a 10-year strategic plan to ensure that Massachusetts students can compete in a global society. But other than a sapless interim update on the governor's website focusing on early childhood education, a longer school day, and higher education, there is no sign of what the project members are getting ready to do.

Patrick has an extraordinary opportunity to put his mark on education. After just 13 months in office, he has appointed new chairs for the state boards of education, higher education, and early education. A new commissioner for the state Department of Education takes office next month. Meanwhile, a search is underway for a new chancellor of higher education. Patrick already has won legislative approval for a new cabinet-level secretary of education to oversee the entire operation. Come spring, the governor will have firm control over an expanded state Board of Education through several new appointments.

It's essential that Patrick make the most of this opportunity. But there should be concern that the governor is focusing more on broad educational theories than on bringing forward specific reforms. The makeup of his Readiness Project subcommittees, which include the areas of high-stakes testing, accountability, early education, and long-term funding, suggests a problem. By placing long-time antagonists on the same subcommittees, Patrick assures debate, but not solutions.

The innovative schools subcommittee, for example, includes longtime rivals on the value of charter schools, which operate outside the control of teachers unions and school committees. But charter schools already have proven their worth by outperforming many district schools. What is needed now is consensus on a formula that ensures the growth of the charter school movement without requiring taxpayers to pay twice for the same student. (To keep political peace, taxpayers now pay some school costs to districts for three years after a student departs for charter school.) Unfortunately, there is no indication that the Readiness Project has tackled this problem.

Similar concerns are emerging in the long-term funding subcommittee, where leading finance experts from academia, business, and the nonprofit sector are analyzing education funding models from across the country. That's a challenging exercise. Meanwhile, Massachusetts already has a formula that it uses to determine how much each school district must spend to provide students with a good education, and it has not been updated adequately to reflect higher academic standards. Maybe the subcommittee's high-powered analysts should be tackling that.

Oddly, no one in the state Department of Education was picked by Patrick for any of the subcommittees. The idea was to liberate subcommittees from status-quo thinkers, but became a time waster when members started to propose programs that already existed. The presence of someone with institutional memory would have avoided such problems and steered the team toward setting a limited number of realistic priorities.

Come up with a plan
It will fall to an 18-member leadership council to sort through the subcommittees' work and make specific recommendations for action to the governor by the end of next month.

Dana Mohler-Faria, the governor's special adviser for education and president of Bridgewater State College, says the group knows it must deliver a bold plan to Patrick. "We have positioned ourselves to deliver great things in education," says Mohler-Faria. "My God, we have to deliver."

Thomas Payzant, the former Boston school superintendent who co-chairs the Readiness Project, reinforces that view. "It can't be a laundry list," says Payzant, who promises to focus on recommendations that can be backed up by reliable research.

Those areas should become obvious quickly. There is much evidence that universal early education is the surest way to eliminate the kind of achievement gap that often is firmly established by age 5 among low-income children. And early efforts to lengthen the school day in some Massachusetts schools are already paying off with higher test scores. By proposing funding increases in these areas in his 2009 budget, Patrick has proven already that he understands what works.

What he must resist is the urge to please everyone now. Patrick's idea for making community colleges tuition-free, for example, could cost upward of $500 million annually, according to a recent report from the nonprofit Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center. It's a great idea in theory, but a questionable priority in practice - when annual tuition at most community colleges is a relative bargain at a few thousand dollars.

Similar concerns should surround Patrick's "whole child" subcommittee. This may not be the right time for a discussion of children's emotional and spiritual needs. The money and effort would be better spent on finding ways for the state to improve chronically underperforming schools. The situation is so dire now that the Board of Education refuses even to label schools as underperforming because there is no reliable way to help them.

It's nice to explore the educational cosmos. But taxpayers can't be expected to pay for such a trip, not when the likely cost of implementing Patrick's full-blown plans could exceed $2 billion per year, according to the Budget and Policy Center report.

The Readiness Project was designed to be expansive. But Patrick's growing power over education policy doesn't free him from the limitations of time or economics. The public - not to mention the public treasury - may be ready only for a few well-designed, proven education initiatives. Patrick needs to make his opportunity count.