The bad education policy ideas just keep coming. Governor Brownback has proposed linking school funding to student performance. That’s another idea that for a split second sounds good until one considers all the implications and complications involved. We agree with Lynn Rogers quoted below.
“Wichita school board member Lynn Rogers, the board’s point man on finance issues, said he agrees with Brownback’s goals of students meeting grade levels and leaving high school prepared for college or the workforce.
“’But it takes money to do that,’ Rogers said. ‘There’s scientific evidence that justifies the cost behind those weightings. It takes more money to educate the kids of poverty. It takes more money when you’re in a high-density poverty school, all those kinds of things.
“’If we fund and we provide the services for kids of poverty, we get results,’ he added. ‘It’s a new group of kids that come every year, so if you penalize based on last year’s kids, next year’s kids aren’t going to get the services they need to do well.’
“He said he’s frustrated because most of the talk he’s heard from the governor and much of the Legislature has been little more than coded language for cutting schools.”
Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/news/local/article8639078.html#storylink=cpy