K-12 Education

We cannot talk about progress, prosperity, and equality without first addressing our education system. A strong education is the great equalizer that allows a poor kid from a rough neighborhood to compete successfully with those from more privileged backgrounds and achieve their boldest dreams. But for too many children, Delaware’s government-run education system traps them in ineffective schools and mires them in mediocrity.

According to the most recent scores from the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 38 percent of 4^th graders and 31 percent of 8^th graders fail to perform at even the basic level for reading. In math, 21 percent of 4^th graders fail to perform at the basic level, rising to 35 percent who are not proficient by 8^th grade.   In each subject and each grade that is measured, Black and Hispanic students perform significantly worse than White students.

Nowhere is Delaware’s poor academic performance reflected more profoundly than in SAT scores, the scores most colleges use for admissions. SAT scores for Delaware students are the third lowest in the entire country. Among the eight states that require every student to take the test, Delaware is dead last. At 978, the average SAT score among Delaware students is nearly 200 points lower than the average score for students accepted to the University of Delaware.

In fact, the Delaware Department of Education reports that more than four in ten high school seniors are not college or career ready. Put simply, too many of our public schools are not doing their jobs. We are failing our kids and setting them up for failure. It’s indefensible.

It’s not because Delawareans aren’t paying a premium for education. Our K-12 public schools spend $15,049 per student, the 16^th highest in the nation. And overall K-12 education spending is $2.22 billion, ranking Delaware 15^th in the nation on a per pupil basis.

The sad fact is that Delaware’s children are not getting the education their parents are paying for, and there is no reason to believe that chronically failing public schools will suddenly reform themselves.

Delaware offers a limited public school choice program where some parents can enroll their kids in schools in public schools outside their assigned district, including charter and magnet schools. That’s good as far as it goes, but Delaware should address deficiencies in the current system that prevent too many families from participating and open up more options.

Students attending charter schools are significantly better off than traditional public school students on the whole when it comes to college readiness. While 64 percent of public charter school students perform at or above grade level in English Language Arts on the SAT, just 48 percent of all public school students do the same.

Similarly, in math, 28 percent of all Delaware public school students perform at or above grade level compared to 40 percent of public charter school students.

It should be a goal to provide more students with the ability to attend these higher performing charter schools, but for too many families they remain out of reach.

For instance, today, parents who enroll their children in the school choice program are on their own to provide transportation to and from schools. As a practical and financial matter, many families, especially low-income families who often need the choice option most, can’t provide transportation. In order to make school choice available to these needy families, Delaware should provide more transportation options or offer subsidies to cover the cost.

Delaware should explore an online learning option where any student can take online classes with the best teachers from the best schools either from home or in satellite classrooms around the state. Not only would this be a creative option that would give more students access to the best and brightest instructors, but it would help solve the transportation issue.

The school choice program should also be expanded to give families the freedom to send their children to one of the many fine independent schools that operate here. These schools should not be reserved only for the privileged few.

We also need to reward our best teachers with higher pay. According to the NEA, Delaware teachers average the 16^th highest salary in the nation, but those salaries can vary dramatically. The problem with how we compensate teachers is that it has nothing to do with how effectively they teach.

In any given district, teacher pay scales are determined strictly by length of tenure and education level. That means even the best teachers have to accept relatively low pay if they are early in their career while ineffective teachers are nevertheless rewarded with higher salaries the longer they stick around. That’s a backwards system if there ever was one.

Rather than incentivizing bad teachers to spend decades in the system, and punishing great younger teachers with low salaries, we ought to help bad teachers find another line of work and pay up to attract and retain our best talent in the classroom.

Further, we need to reverse the trend of dollars flowing away from instruction and toward overhead and support staff. In 2008, 82.6 percent of salaries went toward instruction and 17.4 percent toward administration, maintenance and the like. A decade later and just 73.2 percent went toward instruction and nearly 27 percent went toward administration.

We can and should reduce these administrative expenses by consolidating school districts and demand that more dollars make their way to the classroom. It is absurd that a state as small as Delaware has 19 different school districts all with their own set of overhead expenses.

Greater education equality and the future economic opportunity it endows requires that every student have equal access to the best education. That can best be accomplished when parents are given an equal choice in determining what schools are the best fit for their kids, with creative solutions to give all kids access to the best instruction, and when teachers are rewarded based on merit.