On its way out the door, the Obama administration quietly released the numbers on its $7 billion effort to turn around failing US schools — which failed.
The Bush administration actually started the School Improvement Grants program, but President Barack Obama upped the funding massively, spending billions more on it than on the higher-profile Race to the Top. It handed three-year grants (up to $2 million a year per school) to states that embraced its preferred “intervention models” for low-performing schools.
Oops: Last week’s numbers reveal that the schools that got the help showed no different results — in test scores, graduation rates and college enrollment — than did similar schools that didn’t receive the aid.
Part of the problem was surely that only 1 percent of the schools chose the most drastic change — converting to a charter. Most just replaced a principal, some staff and/or adopted new “instructional strategies.”
Yet the devil is in the details that Team Obama didn’t even try to monitor — which strategies work? Is the new principal really any different?
The $7 billion only proved that tossing cash at schools by itself makes no real difference — despite all the cries from teachers unions and their allies that the only problem in US public education is underfunding.
American Federation of Teachers chief Randi Weingarten was already calling the program a “terrible investment” in 2015 — but her main prescription is to focus the funds on “community schools.” Sadly, that’s just what Mayor de Blasio has done in his Renewal Schools program — which is likewise failing to make a difference.
President Trump’s approach will center on parental choice, with greater support for public charter schools and (potentially) vouchers that parents can use for either public or private education. That’s at least an effort to see that the money’s spent wisely, which has to be an improvement.
Because by now it ought to be clear that simply spending more on failure factories doesn’t change a thing.