Chamber Study Might Point Way to Help Schools
By LANNY KELLER
Advocate staff writer
Published: Sep 6, 2006
The new Baton Rouge Area Chamber study of public education might at first glance seem to repeat uncritically the mantra of the public education establishment: How can you blame us?
Again and again, the study noted only 13 percent of a student’s waking hours to age 18 is spent in school. That is the kind of statistic thrown out for decades to oppose every proposal for school accountability in Louisiana.
To accept that at face value is to dilute almost to meaninglessness the responsibility of public schools for student performance.
Not many people in business, faced with lagging sales or poor productivity, can argue it’s no one’s fault because customers spend most of their time elsewhere.
Part three of the chamber’s projected five-part series on this topic is not the apologia it might have been. Instead, it’s a fairly good summary of the kinds of challenges facing public schools.
The study outlines a set of “in-school factors” that affect educational performance, according to most of the significant national studies. Those factors include characteristics of faculty and administrators, district funding and resources and classroom quality and activities.
The “nonschool” factors are a broader sweep of the ills of society. The factors cited include student life outside of school, parental involvement in education and family and household characteristics.
Schools have limited influence on nonschool influences, the study said.
“Nevertheless, there also are clearly many factors that schools control more directly.”
The entire study is at the chamber’s Web site, http://www.brchamber.org. Parts four and five of the study are coming shortly, the latter including recommendations for reform in area public education.
The chamber’s “Economic Entree” luncheon Tuesday will feature a discussion of the recommendations. The study encompasses the public school districts in Ascension, Livingston, Iberville, Pointe Coupee, East and West Feliciana, East and West Baton Rouge and St. Helena parishes, and the Baker and Zachary community school districts.
The third part of the report, on factors affecting student achievement, has some surprises.
The oft-criticized local school systems actually do measure reasonably well in some key indicators that national studies show are important to school achievement.
We hear much about underfunded public education, but the chamber compared area schools to similar regions in the South: “The average PPE (per-pupil expenditure) across the Baton Rouge area is greater than that of any of the selected peer regions except Austin.”
While that doesn’t mean local schools are paved with gold, and the crumbling facilities at many local schools are identified as a particular problem in the study, this analysis shows mere funding isn’t the only issue on the table for education reform.
The chamber does not flinch at examining some of the chronic social problems that have caused the East Baton Rouge Parish schools, in particular, to be the subject of much criticism. An urban district has much-larger problems with students in poverty.
When the chamber formulates its recommendations for change, it will be interesting what tack it will take.
As a business organization, the chamber will perhaps most be credible with the management problems of public education: Not only reducing overhead and targeting resources where most needed, but improving the management practices of schools and systems.
Still, are those kinds of ideas really striking at the roots of problems?
Maybe students spend only 13 percent of their time in school, but most students in Japan and Europe spend a lot more time in the classroom than do Americans.
Longer school days, and longer school years, are the kind of expensive remedies that might actually make a difference.
A list of small-caliber remedies from the chamber might be more readily achieved, but are they the kind of reforms that will lift the region into national prominence?
For that, we have a long way to go.
Lanny Keller is an editorial writer for The Advocate. His e-mail address is lkeller@theadvocate.com.
Story originally published in The Advocate
