01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, July 16, 2006

The shape of the Starting Line," a new report by a coalition of unions, takes a highly victimized view of K-12 public education in Rhode Island. As these unions seem to see it, the educational level of a child's mother and the poverty status of the child's family virtually preordain whether that child can learn.

Since the child-poverty rate in Rhode Island is already high and increasing, high-quality educational outcomes -- in this view -- will be impossible in the future. As Marcia Reback, executive director of the Rhode Island Federation of Teachers, succinctly put it, "Until we find the key to breaking the poverty cycle, we're not going to be able to bring our kids to the high level of achievement they deserve."

But if we must break the cycle of poverty before we can educate students effectively, what are we paying generous teacher salaries and benefits for? What is going on in Rhode Island classrooms each and every day in high-poverty neighborhoods, if, by the unions' own admission, these children are preordained to fail and teachers should not be held accountable in any way?

In the view of the Education Partnership, this is an overly bleak and defeatist view of public education in Rhode Island. Frankly, even though correlations between child poverty and performance outcomes are very high, there are just too many excellent studies of schools that have "beaten the odds" to accept defeat so easily.

It makes far better sense to focus on teacher quality and instructional leadership -- things we can control in the foreseeable future -- than to try to conquer poverty first. Quality teachers, strong instructional leadership at the building level, insistence on a rigorous course curriculum, solid after-school programs, and appropriate or adequate resources do make a difference. Surely, everyone can agree about that!

To be sure, in Rhode Island, as in most states, the correlation of parents' income and a student's performance is very powerful. However, one finds certain districts outperforming what one might expect, given such demographic data. Conversely, we also find other districts whose actual performance falls well below what we might expect, given the statistics.

Improving the quality of teachers may be the best thing a district can do to beat the odds. Unfortunately, "The Shape of the Starting Line" is virtually silent on this point. But leading education researchers such as Linda Darling Hammond, at Stanford University, indicate that the percentage of well-qualified teachers in a district is typically 2.5 times to 3 times more important than student poverty in its net impact upon student achievement; and that the teacher-quality variable is typically 10 times more important in improving performance than the class-size variable.

The recommendation for further class-size reductions made in the unions' report is noteworthy, particularly since the National Education Association's own research division (Ranking & Estimates Update 2005, Table 4) indicates that Rhode Island already enjoys a student-teacher ratio of 11.3 to 1 -- a very rich staffing ratio, bettered nationally only by Vermont and the District of Columbia. (The national average was 15.6 to 1.) It is hard to make a compelling case that further class-size reductions in Rhode Island would turn things around.

Finally, we would be remiss if we did not carefully address one other major point made in this report. The union-backed document refers to studies on the effect of "unionization" on student performance. That research is described as demonstrating that unionized school districts achieve better outcomes than non-unionized districts. What the report does not mention is that these positive impacts are not only very slight; they are limited to middle-rung, average-achieving students. Indeed, these same studies consistently suggest that very low- or very high-achieving students fare worse on standardized tests in unionized schools. The report deceptively "cherry-picked" only the results its authors wanted to highlight.

Since it is the high-poverty, low-performing urban school districts that most concern us, one other fact is worth noting. A number of researchers have also recently pointed to the particularly pernicious impacts of highly rigid, contractually dictated personnel policies upon the autonomy of principals to effectively manage their teachers in such districts.

The lack of management flexibility that is a hallmark of virtually all union contracts now in effect in Rhode Island prevents the type of creativity and leadership needed to deal with more challenging student populations.

The Education Partnership strongly believes, based on its own extensive analysis of Rhode Island's teacher contracts, that these contracts are not designed to foster high-quality teams of teachers. Rather, these contractual rules are designed to ensure that seniority almost always trumps performance; that instructional leaders at the building level often have no flexibility to hire the way they would like to hire; and that critical shortages in the math and science areas cannot be addressed, because of union insistence upon lockstep, uniform salary schedules.

As we have long argued, it's time to do better with our public-education dollars. We don't have to accept and defend defeat. It is vital that all stakeholders in public education begin to move beyond excuses, and work together to focus more on what helps students, and less on what serves special interests.

For our analysis, research, and related articles, please go to www.edpartnership.org.

Valerie Forti is president of The Education Partnership, an association of corporate and public organizations focused on improving public education in Rhode Island.