Stretching the School Dollar

I am pretty good at math. Unsurprisingly, the story about why I am good at math has a lot to do with a few exceptional teachers I had growing up in a small coal-mining town in Illinois.

One in particular was Mr. Nagrodski, my high-school math team coach, who seemed to conjure talented mathematicians out of thin air. In the late 80s, he pushed for a major acceleration in the junior-high math curriculum in our district so that more kids were ready for tough math classes in high school. He convinced the district to let him teach those tough math classes, which hadn't been offered before he arrived. As a result, his teams won state math competitions year after year after year—and not incidentally, turned out far more talented students of mathematics than anyone would have guessed could come from a little town of four thousand. (Among many other accolades, Mr. Nagrodski, was profiled in Fortune magazine back in 1991 as one of “25 Who Help the U.S. Win.")

By the time I was a middle schooler gearing up for Mr. Nagrodski's infamously difficult math team practices, roughly half of my class of 75 or so kids had been identified as...

Maybe not, is the answer from a recent poll of New York State teachers conducted by the Empire Center. The poll found that 70 percent of public-school teachers would have considered a defined-contribution retirement option had they been given the chance, and a quarter felt they definitely would have chosen a 401k-style plan over a traditional pension. Perhaps more interesting is the fact that most teachers (about two-thirds of those surveyed) felt such non-traditional plans were good retirement options, roughly the same number as approved of traditional pensions.

It's not clear that young workers value a benefit that many of them will never receive.

The cost of providing teacher pensions is on the rise in many states, New York included. It's also not clear that young workers value a benefit that many of them will never receive. Only a minority of educators teaches for a full career in the same pension system and receives the full retirement benefit offered.

The Empire Center poll asked teachers about one possible alternative, a hybrid plan that would provide a basic level of financial security through a small traditional pension, with a 401k-style individual account on top. Raegen Miller at the Center...

Ask
almost any leader of a growing urban charter school about their biggest
worries, and real estate is likely to be at the top of the list. City-dwelling
young parents want schools that are convenient to their homes and—increasingly—public
transit. Government has (appropriately) high expectations of school buildings
but provides little to no money for charter school facilities in most
jurisdictions. Educators and school leaders want all of the above to provide a
fantastic experience for their students—without breaking the bank. This is not
something the real estate market can provide in most cities. 

Cities like Newark, New Jersey are experimenting with creative uses of space to improve education options. Photo by William F. Yurasko.

To
make the problem even more difficult, city centers are redeveloping, with
entire neighborhoods gentrifying, building mixed-use housing and innovative
commercial spaces. Young professionals who a generation ago might have fled for
the ‘burbs as they settled...

Guest
blogger Layla Bonnot is a research intern at the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.

Is the number of free and reduced-price lunch
participants an accurate proxy for the number of poor kids in America’s schools? New Jersey’s acting education
commissioner, Chris Cerf, isn’t so sure. A recent article in The Star-Ledger highlights Cerf’s two concerns: first, that the
self-reported basis of Free and Reduced Lunch Program (FRLP) participation
makes the count prone to errors and—potentially—fraud, and second, that this
number alone might not be a reliable proxy for the number of students living in
poverty.

Mr. Cerf, I wouldn’t throw out school lunches quite yet—maybe just add a few other ingredients into the mix. Photo by U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The issue of fraud in the lunch room pops up every couple of years. Detailed audits
have shown that some students who should receive benefits do not, some parents or
schools make honest mistakes...