Wednesday, September 08, 1999
Legislators tour Clifton elementary
GOP congressmen push local control for school reform
BY DANA DiFILIPPO
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Forget more money. Less red tape is what Cincinnati Public Schools officials asked federal lawmakers for Tuesday morning, when three Republican members of Congress stopped at Clifton School as part of a five-state tour to tout education reforms.
Reps. J.C. Watts of Oklahoma, Steve Chabot of Cincinnati and Anne Northup of Louisville promised to deliver on that request, saying keeping money and decision-making control in local communities is the best way to raise low student achievement.
“If you want to learn how to throw a football, you talk to a quarterback. In education, schools — not politicians in Washington, D.C. — know best how to get students to do better,” said Mr. Watts, a former University of Oklahoma football star who is the fourth-highest ranking GOP congressman as chair of the House Republican Conference.
Clifton was the first stop of the lawmakers' two-day, seven-city “Education Express” tour. The politicians visited a classroom and chatted with teachers, students, school board members and administrators during the hour-long visit.
Superintendent Steven Adamowski told lawmakers about the district's efforts to raise results by creating a market-based system that gives schools incentives to boost achievement and retain students.
For example, under a student-based budgeting system implemented this year, funding follows students, so schools lose money as they lose students.
Also, schools with persistently low performance face overhaul or intervention; Clifton was overhauled with a new staff and academic program this year after being identified last year as among the worst of the district's 79 schools. And schools meeting improvement goals can get cash awards.
Federal mandates — such as requiring small class size — can make reforms tough to implement, Mr. Adamowski added.
“It's very disconcerting to have state and federal overlap where someone else decides you should use your funds for
very specific purposes,” he said.
Lawmakers applauded such reforms, saying more failing schools need to take similar dramatic action.
Supporting schools through no-strings-attached block grants — instead of allocating money to support specific initiatives — will allow schools to spend money where it's most needed, Mr. Watts said. An “Ed-Flex” bill, signed by President Clinton in April, gives schools more flexibility in spending federal dollars.
Mr. Chabot also suggested trimming the U.S. Department of Education, which he said “wastes far too much money” in administrative overhead.
“The Department of Education can't tell Mr. Adamowski anything he doesn't already know,” Mr. Chabot said. “We need to trust our local level of government. We don't need Big Brother in Washington telling local communities what they should be about and how they should be spending their money.”
The lawmakers distanced themselves from presidential candidate George W. Bush's recent proposal to cut federal funding from persistently failing schools and use the money instead for vouchers.
All three said they support vouchers and charter schools to spur public schools to improve through competition. But forcing failing schools to improve by redesigning them like Clifton is a better answer than withholding money, Mr. Chabot added.
“It doesn't make any sense to dump money into failing schools, and we should demand that schools don't fail,” Mr. Chabot said. “But we should do it through local control of dollars.”
Cincinnati Federation of Teachers President Tom Mooney criticized the lawmakers' visit, saying their support of vouchers and charter schools represents a trend toward privatization that imperils public education.
But Clifton teachers welcomed the attention.
“Any attention focused on school reform will help further school reform,” sixth-grade teacher Tracy Adler said.
Literacy teacher Beth Corbo agreed: “It helps that people from Washington can see that we're making good decisions here and they're willing to give us some latitude.”
Added student Kevin Bowen, 11, of Avondale: “I'm happy they came out to our school to see what it's like.”
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