The Math Mojo Chronicles » Arts-in-Ed

Lessons from The Case of the Missing Dollar

Brian — Thu, 21 Feb 2008 22:35:28 +0000

Q: When is a Compromise not a Compromise?
A: When it’s a Red Herring

We talked about “red herrings” in the previous posts about “The Case of the Missing Dollar.”

I occasionally do after-school presentations of MathMagic for the C.R.O.P. program in rural upstate New York. I’ve been participating in the program for years, as a local artist (magician). The program pays a very small honorarium, and a travel budget (Monday I drove 120 miles round-trip for peanuts) Most of the artists do it out of love of bringing their art to children who otherwise may never get exposed to it. It is a labor of love to all concerned, but it is a great mission.

The Creating Rural Opportunities Partnership (CROP) After School and Summer Program is a program which does just what it is named.

In it’s mission statement:

The goal of CROP is to provide intellectual development and opportunities for academic achievement for students grades K-8 with a strong focus on middle school. In addition, CROP provides enrichment, health, wellness, life skills, recreational and cultural opportunities for 1260 middle school and primary grade students, community members and parents through a 21st Century Community Learning Center Partnership.

Over the last few years, funding for this excellent program has dwindled. Sound familiar? Art and after-school programs are typically among the first to get their throats cut when the government feels it needs to cut costs.

Last year the C.R.O.P. program for many schools in our area got wiped out. This year it looks like more of them will be hobbled or totally destroyed.

My heart goes out to the children, their parents and also to the facilitators of this program (the local Arts Councils are usually the people that make the C.R.O.P programs possible).

I’ve talked to the CROP facilitators and aides recently about how they are getting their program decimated. I admit, I don’t know the details (the system of how things like this get funded are abysmally convoluted and hard to track down). But some patterns seem to evolve as the program dwindles, and I’ve noticed how the government goes about it in a devious way.

They pretend to like the program and support it, but complain about the budget. So they “compromise” and say we’ll make only a small budget cut (even though they’d love to cut it entirely). The gambit goes something like this: “We’ll fund the artists, the facilitators, administrators, the space, etc. but we’ll have to cut the transportation budget.”

Transportation is the “late bus” for the kids who stay for the program. They are generally the kids who’s parents either work two jobs and have one car, or both work, and can’t pick the kids up at 4:45 or later, because of late shifts, second shifts or otherwise. In other words, the less affluent parents. Not all, but most.

So if the late bus is cut from the budget, these kids can’t get home from school, except for the normal school bus at about 3:15.

What follows, is that a lot of those kids can no longer take advantage of the after-school program. So attendance goes down. The three facilitators I talked to so far said that it’s down in their programs by about 50%

That gives the bean-counting weasels who want to de-fund the program for next year this red-herring: “Well, since attendance is down, that shows that the kids don’t really want the program. It doesn’t make sense for us to fund a program that nobody wants. So we have to cut the program.”

What the weasels do is first look for the place they can place their fulcrum where it will be most effective (or destructive), so they can cut the least money in the first round. That makes them look like they are compromising, but in reality, even though they are cutting maybe 5% from the budget in the first year, they know that will enable them to gut the program entirely the next year, with less of a fight.

This is a classic case of disenfranchisement. It’s like when African-Americans got the right to vote, but certain southern states passed laws that required people to be able to read and write to vote, or demanded a poll-tax that many couldn’t afford. That effectively eliminated a large percentage of the African-American population, who had recently been slaves, and had been forbidden to learn how to read and write, and had never been paid anything for their work.

In essence, the weasels are offering something that they know no one can take advantage of, because of circumstances that the weasels caused in the first place.

And who gets screwed in all of this? Classically it is the less fortunate part of the population. What a tragic shame. Not just for for the less-fortunate, but for everyone.

One of the consequences of this problem, is that some parents will reconsider working a second job, or will otherwise have to suffer financially, which also hurts the economy in general. Also, the CROP program gives kids a structured environment to do their homework in, with adult supervision and help if they need it. Sometimes they don’t have that at home at all. So CROP gives the kids a chance to actually re-enforce what they’ve learned in school, and perhaps actually retain it. Imagine that!

If that portion of the population doesn’t get that extra chance, their prospects for growing up to be fully enfranchised citizens suffers, the potential for them becoming burdens on the state grows, the economy suffers, the crime-rate possibly goes up, ad infinitum. All because some selfish weasels want to cut the throat of a program they are not bright enough to see is helping their own.

This is pretty much the de facto way administrators and policy makers work. Especially in the public school sector. Why not? It’s only your children and the world’s future at stake.

Of course, the weasels responsible will probably forever remain nameless and faceless. That’s their nature. That’s one of the reasons the system is so convoluted, to protect the guilty. I wish I could truly pinpoint the weasels who are responsible so we could bring them to justice. Or maybe we could just egg their houses.

Eyes Wide Shut

Brian — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 12:29:17 +0000

Students and parents, and most teachers are aware of the crisis in American schools today.

It’s fair to say that elements of all of them are part of the problem. But wait…that doesn’t mean that they are the problem.

Important: This post and these observations do not deal with the problem of crime in schools and neighborhoods. If your school is in a high-crime area, your administrators may have their hands full with problems I am in no way capable of addressing. My heart goes out to them and you, and I hope you will support anything they do to protect you and your schools.

Although some students are spoiled little snots, most are good kids with the pie-eyed Idea that they can get a decent education at their school. They are curious and eager enough to try hard. Some of them have been beaten down by the injustice of a “one-size-fits-all” testing system, and a “this-size-doesn’t-fit-anyone” curriculum, but most still show up to class, pay attention, and do the homework.

Some parents discourage their children every step of the way, and take no positive interest in their children’s education, except as a baby-sitting service, or when it’s time to complain about some issue that has nothing to do with learning. But most send their precious children off to school, with the expectation (or at least hope) that they will be educated, kept safe, and helped to become better people. Most take an interest in their children’s education despite the other demands on their time by modern society. Most support their school, and appreciate the teachers. And they pay for all of it with their taxes. By the way, so do people who have no children in the schools. They have a right to expect good schools in their neighborhoods, as well.

Although there are some teachers who just don’t have the talent or inclination to teach, most are dedicated and trained to do a good job. Some of them have had the will to do it beaten out of them by a broken system, but most still are trying to do the best job they are allowed to. They are in the “trenches” all day, having to be nurses, lawyers, social-workers and psychologists as well as teachers. Their workload increases each year with more paperwork and larger class sizes, as their benefits are cut more and more. These people, just like nurses and firefighters, are doing amazing work, at unbelievably stressful jobs.

So where’s the problem?

I’m going to go out on a limb here, and say it’s everyone above the teaching level. That starts with administrators. If you’re not in the trenches, and don’t support the people who are fighting the good fight, you are the problem.

Look, to be fair, I have to say that there might be a principal or a superintendent who isn’t a political, self-important glorified bean-counter. To be realistic, I have to say I haven’t met one. And I have met dozens and dozens (and dozens) of them.

How can I say that? I’ve been doing math programs in schools from Europe to California for years. Lately I have been doing the after-school programs in a few dozen schools around my state. They are paid for by arts councils as part of the “Arts-in-Education” programs, which are run by county arts councils (more about these valuable and endangered programs in a future post). The students and teachers who attend them get psyched, and eat the stuff like candy. They want more. But every time I approach an administrator to offer a school-day workshop, they usually have had no time for me. They are busy at “meetings.”

Those people love their board meetings; apparently more than they care about students. It makes me want to strangle them. When I call to to try to make appointments, my calls generally aren’t returned. When I do get to meet with them, they almost invariably tell me how good their school is with math, and how well their kids do on the standardized tests, and how they don’t need some outside help. (That reminds me of Lake Woebegon, where, “… all of the students are above average”.)

(Un?)Fortunately, I usually come armed with the school’s actual scores, which I glean from the internet. When I take them out to show the offending administrator, they never want to know about it. They won’t look at it. They live in denial, eyes wide shut, because, “our school is doing a fine job, we have pride, we’re doing our best… blah, blah, blah.”

STFU. I’m so not interested in some bean-counter covering his or her heinie. I care about kids getting a good education.

They love to complain that there are no funds. The arts councils in our area still have some funds left (until next year, when the “No Child Left Unstressed” act will decimate them) which they can apply to my program. I have also offered to cut my fee until their budget can easily handle it. I’ve also offered to do fundraisers for them so they can actually make money, and they can keep whatever they make. I’ve occasionally offered to do the program for free (which I’ll never do again).

It is a pathetic sight to see the “deer-in-the-headlights” look that these grown adults give me when they hear this. “What do you mean by this?” it’s like they were saying. “We don’t do things like that around here.” The fear of trying something new makes big men small and mighty women whimper.

Could it be that they don’t like my attitude? I think it might. I can understand that. It is threatening to an ineffective person to have the teachers, parents and students benefit from something that does not fit their paradigm. Should I change my attitude and be like them? Maybe then I could get a sinecure, too.

Nahhhh.

This is causing me to leave the “Twilight Zone” of public education. I’m tired of driving sometimes over a hundred miles to do after-school gigs that barely cover the gas it takes to get there. I’d rather do my work on the web, or give public seminars, and help home- and unschool groups. But my complaint isn’t about how I’m being treated. It’s about education and politics, and how children are being cheated.

It’s about the kids, parents and teachers that are getting shafted by these bloated apologists for a defective system. And by bloated, I mean check out an administrator’s salary compared to a teacher’s, who actually does something positive for children.

Kids, parents and teachers are generally stuck in the public school system. Their administrators should be their to facilititate their education, not funding new air-conditioning for the principal’s office.

Thought for the day: You can usually do twice the job with half the money. Focus on the job.

Until the system is completely overhauled (which will be around the same time Venus collides with the moon), the people affected by that system should organize to change their schools. They should also look to outside sources, like the net, public libraries (the best, under-utilized resource I know of), and home- and unschool groups.

“But…but we administrators have a hard job! You don’t know what we go through…”

That’s why you get paid more. That’s why you get the good parking spaces. Put a little more effort into fighting the idiots who make policy in your state and federal capitols, and less time defending your ineffectiveness.

I sincerely apologize to the (very few) administrators who do not fit the description I have painted here. There must be some good, dedicated principals and superintendents out there. But if your first inclination is to defend yourself against these accusations, instead of getting inspired to fight the goons above you who put you in this position, and help the people you’re hired to help, you’re not one of them.

Ah, that was fun. Was it good for you, too?

Now, after the venting, what do we do about it?

You can start by paying a visit to your local library, and supporting it.

Please send in your constructive, evidence-based observations or possible solutions. As I am neither a public school teacher, student nor parent of a student, so I don’t have as much insight as you might. Do you know of a way Mathmojo can be of help?

In one of the next posts we’ll get to another of the needless failings of the public school system – CCD (Curriculum Dysfunction Disorder).

Hotcha!