The Bobster
Senior News Editor since 2004
http://nypost.com/2017/01/20/obama-spent-billions-trying-to-fix-public-schools-and-failed/
Obama spent billions trying to fix public schools — and failed
By Bob Fredericks
January 20, 2017 | 1:21pm
The Obama administration spent billions to fix the country’s worst public schools — and accomplished virtually nothing, according to a government analysis of the program.
Test scores, graduation rates and college enrollment were no different in schools that received big bucks through the School Improvement Grants program than in schools that did not, The Washington Post reported.
The US Department of Education released the results of its study of the single largest government spending program to improve failing schools on Wednesday.
“We’re talking about millions of kids who are assigned to these failing schools, and we just spent several billion dollars promising them things were going to get better,” Andy Smarick, a resident fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, told the paper.
“Think of what all that money could have been spent on instead.”
School Improvement Grants were launched by President George W. Bush, but the budget soared under President Obama.
His administration poured $7 billion into the program between 2010 and 2015, with the money going to the states to distribute to schools with lousy graduation rates, poor math and reading test scores or both.
Schools could get up to $2 million per year for three years if they played ball with one of the Obama administration’s recommended measures that supposedly would make them better:
• Replacing the principal and at least half the teachers.
•Converting into a charter school.
•Undergoing a “transformation,” which would mean hiring a new principal, adopting new instructional strategies, new teacher evaluations and a longer school day.
The Education Department did not track how the money was spent, other than to keep a record of which of the strategies schools chose to implement.
Arne Duncan, Obama’s education secretary from 2009 to 2016, told the paper that his goal was to turn around 1,000 schools every year for five years.
“We could really move the needle, lift the bottom and change the lives of tens of millions of underserved children,” Duncan said in 2009.
But the effort, Duncan told The Washington Post days before he left office in 2016, was the administration’s “biggest bet.”
He and other Obama educrats sought to highlight individual schools that made big improvements after getting the cash.
But the study showed that overall, the School Improvement Grants program was a bust.
“This outcome reminds us that turning around our lowest-performing schools is some of the hardest, most complex work in education and that we don’t yet have solid evidence on effective, replicable, comprehensive school improvement strategies,” Dorie Nolt, an Education Department spokeswoman, told the paper.
The results could help Donald Trump’s effort to increase school choice, including expanding the number of charter schools.
“I can imagine Betsy DeVos and Donald Trump saying this is exactly why kids need school choice,” said the AEI’s Smarick, referring to Trump’s pick to head up the department.
Obama spent billions trying to fix public schools — and failed
By Bob Fredericks
January 20, 2017 | 1:21pm
The Obama administration spent billions to fix the country’s worst public schools — and accomplished virtually nothing, according to a government analysis of the program.
Test scores, graduation rates and college enrollment were no different in schools that received big bucks through the School Improvement Grants program than in schools that did not, The Washington Post reported.
The US Department of Education released the results of its study of the single largest government spending program to improve failing schools on Wednesday.
“We’re talking about millions of kids who are assigned to these failing schools, and we just spent several billion dollars promising them things were going to get better,” Andy Smarick, a resident fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, told the paper.
“Think of what all that money could have been spent on instead.”
School Improvement Grants were launched by President George W. Bush, but the budget soared under President Obama.
His administration poured $7 billion into the program between 2010 and 2015, with the money going to the states to distribute to schools with lousy graduation rates, poor math and reading test scores or both.
Schools could get up to $2 million per year for three years if they played ball with one of the Obama administration’s recommended measures that supposedly would make them better:
• Replacing the principal and at least half the teachers.
•Converting into a charter school.
•Undergoing a “transformation,” which would mean hiring a new principal, adopting new instructional strategies, new teacher evaluations and a longer school day.
The Education Department did not track how the money was spent, other than to keep a record of which of the strategies schools chose to implement.
Arne Duncan, Obama’s education secretary from 2009 to 2016, told the paper that his goal was to turn around 1,000 schools every year for five years.
“We could really move the needle, lift the bottom and change the lives of tens of millions of underserved children,” Duncan said in 2009.
But the effort, Duncan told The Washington Post days before he left office in 2016, was the administration’s “biggest bet.”
He and other Obama educrats sought to highlight individual schools that made big improvements after getting the cash.
But the study showed that overall, the School Improvement Grants program was a bust.
“This outcome reminds us that turning around our lowest-performing schools is some of the hardest, most complex work in education and that we don’t yet have solid evidence on effective, replicable, comprehensive school improvement strategies,” Dorie Nolt, an Education Department spokeswoman, told the paper.
The results could help Donald Trump’s effort to increase school choice, including expanding the number of charter schools.
“I can imagine Betsy DeVos and Donald Trump saying this is exactly why kids need school choice,” said the AEI’s Smarick, referring to Trump’s pick to head up the department.