Rewarding Failing Schools

One of the problems with the business oriented view of education reveals itself in the use of the word "reward."

As long as the debate has raged, we can find commentators, thinky tanks, and policy makers arguing that giving more resources to struggling schools is "rewarding" them for failure. (Here's an example, and here's another.) For many folks, this seems simple and straightforward, but it's really not.

Imagine two small children. Pat is growing up in a poor home and not receiving the kind of food necessary to thrive. Chris is growing up in a wealthy home and gets all the food and nutrition necessary to do well. Chris is big and strong, well at the top of the charts for growth. Pat is thin and emaciated, near the bottom of the chart for growth.

Let's imagine a government program for distributing food to families of young children. Who would like to argue that Pat should not get any of this food because it would just be rewarding Pat for failing to grow big and strong?

For some folks, it seems impossible to view money as anything other than revenue. In business, money is your reward for doing a good job. That's the whole point.

But (at the risk of repeating myself) public schools are not businesses. They do not generate revenue. They do not produce a profit. And money is not a reward; it's a resource.

This idea hurts some people's heads. Health care and public education have always treated money mainly as a resource, something you spend in order to take care of people. Yes, there have been plenty of money-related arguments in public education, but they are virtually all (including teacher pay arguments) centered on how best to spend that money to best take care of the students in the system.

No, no, no, some folks have been screaming. That's not how you use money. That's not what money is for. It's supposed to reward people. It's supposed to be saved and used to reward people who earn it. God, you education people-- you need to operate more like a business. You need to watch your bottom line. You need to make sure you reward the right things.

But money in public education is not a reward-- it's a resource. It's food. It's the fuel needed to keep the machinery of education running.

Focusing on money as a reward, as revenue, changes the focus of a district. I think it's no coincidence that charters usually spend more money on administration than public schools; in a public school, the main job is to teach students, but in a business, the main job is to oversee a responsible and profitable use of the revenue. And charter schools are not public schools; they're businesses. As I've said a million times, that does not automatically mean that charters are evil, but it does that educating students is not their primary purpose.

Here are some things we shouldn't say:

That patient is losing heart and respiratory function; don't reward him with more blood and oxygen.

That child is starving; don't reward her with more food.

That veteran is failing to cope with PTSD; don't reward him with counseling.

Likewise, it makes no sense to say:

That school is failing; don't reward it with books.

That school is failing; don't reward it with a new roof that doesn't leak.

That schools is failing; don't reward it with more money.

Faced with a starving or sick person, you cannot punish them back to health. Faced with a struggling school, you cannot punish it to a state of greater effectiveness. Money is not a reward; it's a necessary resource for education. It matters. A finite resource that needs to be stewarded carefully and effectively, but a resource and not a reward. We need to make sure we talk about it that way.