A Political & Societal Toxic Stew Makes This a Dangerous Time for K-12 Education

By Tim DeRoche, The 74

This story first appeared at The 74, a nonprofit news site covering education. Sign up for free newsletters from The 74 to get more like this in your inbox.

The decline of local education coverage. Shrinking enrollment. An angry workforce. Disillusioned parents. The gutting of the federal Department of Education. A political system that is distracted at best.

With this toxic stew of factors both internal and external, I fear America may be entering a dangerous period for K-12 public education, with an increased risk of corruption and malfeasance.

Look at what’s happening in Illinois. The state Board of Education recently voted to change how scores are calculated for the Illinois Assessment of Readiness, the standardized test used in the public schools. The result: 53% of students will now be judged to be proficient in reading, rather than 38%. It appears to be a blatant effort to lower standards in order to make the public schools in Illinois look better.

The board claims that it has to do this, because so many of those students are going on to college despite falling short of proficiency. But talk to anyone who works with incoming university freshmen and you will realize that, in the current era, college enrollment is not a good measure of college readiness.

The K-12 school system is embattled: Enrollment declines just keep coming, and public support is at an all-time low. Since the pandemic, student achievement has gone from stagnant to declining, especially when compared with that of other wealthy countries. Many districts have unfunded pension plans that will add even more financial strain. And the current workforce, especially in the big urban districts, is stressed-out and pessimistic about the future of public education.

K-12 districts are largely controlled by local politicians — school board members — who often have strong incentives to keep powerful interest groups happy in the short term, whether they are parent organizations or union leaders, instead of making difficult decisions that would protect their school system’s long-term integrity. These include closing schools, reducing administrative positions or redrawing (or eliminating) attendance zone lines. These board members control hundreds of billions of dollars in taxpayer funding every year and what may be over a trillion dollars worth of underutilized real estate assets.

This is a powder keg of risk with vast amounts of money at stake, not to mention the public trust and the educational opportunities of a generation of children.

Adding to the problem, local journalism has deteriorated in the last two decades, as newspapers around the country have gone out of business or cut their news desks. The education beat seems to have taken a particularly big hit. What’s more, after being gutted by the Trump administration, it’s unlikely that the federal Department of Education is going to be able to play much of a watchdog role in coming years.

The legal oversight of the public schools mainly falls to state legislatures. But most Republican lawmakers have other fish to fry, focusing on culture war issues and giving families escape routes from the system in the form of tax credit scholarships or educational savings accounts.

Democrats, reeling from recent electoral losses and paralyzed by internal divisions, are reluctant to even acknowledge the potential for bad behavior in the school system, as the public districts and their unions are a tremendous store of political power for them — even in red states. As Dana Goldstein observed in The New York Times, “Democrats, for their part, often find themselves standing up for a status quo that seems to satisfy no one.”

As a result, powerful interest groups can often exert their influence over the system and extract special privileges or take advantage of wasteful spending. Here are just a handful of recent stories, many of which received little to no coverage in the mainstream press:

• In Chicago, the district proposes to sell 20 empty school buildings, which could be worth tens of millions of dollars. But, in a classic case of anti-competitive behavior, the district prohibits future owners from operating charter schools there, meaning the properties will go for millions below their true market value. “Our goal is not to sell them for the highest dollar amount,” admits a district spokesperson.

• In New Jersey, the state teachers union spends $17 million in dues to fund the gubernatorial campaign of a candidate — the union’s president — who finishes fifth in the Democratic primary.
• In Tampa, the district shuts down Just Elementary School, a failing school serving African-American students. The nearest school for many of these families is A-rated Gorrie Elementary, which primarily serves wealthy white families. But not one of the Just students is allowed to enroll in Gorrie, instead getting bused to C-rated schools farther from their homes.
• In Los Angeles, the district spends $70 million to increase permanent capacity at Ivanhoe Elementary School, one of the most coveted in the district, despite thousands of empty seats in schools just five to six minutes away.

• Outside Sacramento, the Center Joint Unified School District fights efforts of local families to be allowed to attend the brand-new public school that is just blocks from their home, because the district fears losing funding if its archaic district boundaries are redrawn.

Strong investigative journalists are needed to step into this void, for there will be important stories to tell. Nonprofit watchdogs, like my organization, Available to All, will play a role, too.

Most importantly, state legislators need to step up their oversight of local districts. Legislators need to ensure they do not lower our academic standards to make their schools look better. There also need to be strong transparency laws, and districts should be subject to external audits of their financials and real estate holdings.

Public education can survive the current crisis and emerge stronger than ever, but only if those of us who believe in public education work together to ensure that trust in the system is restored.

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This story was produced by The 74, a non-profit, independent news organization focused on education in America.

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