Enrollment Preferences Task Force meeting tonight

The last few meetings of the Enrollment Preferences Task Force have been cancelled or postponed for various reasons, but it looks like it is back on track now. The third meeting is tonight at 6:30.

Note the new location in Dover (Townsend Building, Cabinet Room, second floor). Public notice is here.

As a bonus, the Charter/District Collaboration Study Group is meeting in the same room at 4:30, so if you are going to Dover you can make it a two-fer. Public notice is here; no agenda is posted.

At the October meeting of the Enrollment Preferences Task Force, questions were raised about the kinds of questions charters and choice schools were asking on their admission applications prior to their admission decision, and whether those questions were permissible. These discussions were documented here in Does your momma pick watermelons?

After the meeting, Rep. Kim Williams submitted the questions to the Delaware Attorney General’s office for clarification. This was a serious enough issue that when the AG had not responded, the November meeting of the Task Force was cancelled pending the information.

The December meeting of the Task Force was also cancelled because of a scheduling problem with the venue (Buena Vista).

But tonight the meeting will resume the discussion and share the response from the Attorney General, plus some other interesting items. Agenda is here.

I Welcome and Introductions

II Approve minutes from meeting held on 10/24/2013

III Reviewing HB90 purpose, accomplishments and current meeting goals
Brief overview of forwarded documents:
Blue Collar Task Force Recommendations
Repairing Delaware’s Fractured Public Education System by Dan Rich, UD
Deputy Attorney General’s Letter dated 12/16/2013

IV Examining application – categories and questions

V Public comment

VI Next steps

VII Adjourn

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To fix education, fix income inequality

Ted Kaufnan recently wrote a piece in the News Journal to the effect that increased investment in education now “will lay the groundwork for economic growth.” While investing in education is a good in its own right, if we don’t begin to reverse income inequality we will just be pouring money into a leaky bucket, and the money will be funneled upward and end up in the portfolios of the already wealthy. The best incentive to succeed in education is the promise of a good job, and right now that promise is shaky.

Senator Ted is probably the best we have ever sent to Washington. Too good perhaps. Too bad he couldn’t stay.

But when he says “The correlation between educational achievement and economic opportunity will grow even stronger in the years ahead,’” he is correct, but probably not in the way he intends.

Increased educational success will not necessarily lead to jobs. Our workforce is more educated than ever, but even as education levels increase, employment and real wages have been declining.

Look at it from the other end of the telescope: Increased economic opportunity will lead to greater educational success. That is, if we put economic policies in place for a more broadly shared prosperity, opportunities for education will also increase in a virtuous circle.

The key is reducing income inequality. We have become a rich country filled with poor people. When you are poor you have less opportunity for educational success.

This is now desperately obvious in Delaware, where the students with the most economic advantages have always gone to private schools but are now ending up in “high performing” economically segregated public charters. And those who are left behind economically are also left behind in education.

Addressing income inequality doesn’t mean everybody has to make the same amount. It just means that the extreme trend needs to begin to be reversed. People need jobs, and working people need to keep more of the profits they generate.

Kaufman says:

Let’s clear the air about income inequality. I’m not arguing, nor are any people I take seriously, that we should try to end it. There has always been income inequality, and always will be in a capitalist society. That’s not the reason so many have lost faith in the American Dream.

They don’t mind inequality as long as they feel there is equal opportunity. When they don’t believe that, when they feel the deck is stacked against them and in favor of the very rich, we lose something that has been perhaps the most vital part of the American experience.

The best incentive to succeed in education is the promise of a good job. When that promise is restored, parents and students will demand more of their educators, and will be willing to fund their demands.

In Delaware, NCC especially, we used to enjoy a broad prosperity with only pockets of poverty (most notably the city of Wilmington). But now the poverty is county-wide.

So Senator Ted is correct about the correlation, but he has cause and effect reversed. When we have economic policies that reduce income inequality and restore our broad middle-class prosperity, then we will begin to enjoy educational success for all students, not just the segregated charters and private schools.