Follow the money: the business side; You can make a bigger difference in education reform by delving into financial incentives for success -- and failure. (The State of Education).

Admit it. How often have you written an education editorial in which the main point is, "The children are our future" or "Students really need to do better on their tests"?

If you're like me, too often. Vague editorials are as easy to skim -- or skip -- as they are to write. So our challenge is this. Let's double our value to the community by devoting ourselves to the business of education.

We can still write about test scores, school board candidates, and after-school programs. We should. But those editorials are often fundamentally reactive or squishy 

Writers can make more of a difference by following the money: How the contracts are written. What sort of financial incentives schools have for success -- or, more typically, for failure.

What follows are two sample questions and challenges that apply from Portland, Oregon, to Portland, Maine. Both could help crack a new window into the strange, sensitive, bloated, and starved world of education. After tackling such questions of money and management, you will have the information to write more useful and authoritative commentary about education.

How are individual schools funded by school districts, and how does that funding style affect education?

Some districts allocate money based on students' demographics. Others allocate based on programs or on student performance. Each funding style encourages different kinds of behavior.

For example, if a school gets a lot of extra money to improve low reading scores, it has a perverse incentive to continue underperforming. If a school gets money based on the number of children enrolled in bilingual education classes, it has an incentive to keep children in bilingual classes as long as possible.

The bigger the problem, the more staff members are hired to work on that problem -- and voila, the larger constituency of reading specialists or bilingual teachers whose jobs depend on children's continued low performance.

If all schools are equal, how do some schools become more equal than others?

District administrators insist that all schools are treated the same. Still, schools in higher-income neighborhoods seem to have the newest textbooks, the best course offerings, the nicest band uniforms, and so on. What gives?

Start by looking at teacher contracts and PTA organizations. Most school districts do not give financial incentives for teachers to work in more-challenging schools. Many teachers and other staff naturally gravitate from more-challenging schools as positions at better schools become available. (Wouldn't you?)

As a result, the better schools tend to have the most applicants and can cherry-pick the seasoned professionals and the most promising new hires. Low-performing schools still get a few "Stand and Deliver" saints, but often end up with the leftover staff. Over time, this creates a little death spiral of mediocrity and inexperience at schools that need excellence the most.

Parent-teacher organizations also make a tremendous difference in school quality. In one neighborhood, a PTA might work all year to raise a few thousand dollars. In another, a black-tie auction can bring in literally tens of thousands of dollars in one night -- enough to hire an art teacher, replace textbooks or buy violins for a school orchestra.

Editorial challenge: Compare PTAs at lowest-performing school in the district with PTAs at highest-performing school. Find out number of teaching applicants at each, especially in hard-to-fill jobs such as math, science, and special education. Find out the median years of teaching experience and the number of first-year teachers at both; the union can help you. Talk to teachers who've worked at both kinds of schools about why they transferred. Write about creative ways to draw talent and private funding toward lowest-performing schools.

School issues seem to be about educational policy. Most aren't. They're about money and management.

Once you put on the green visor, it's hard to get it off. (My favorite example: If "small schools" are all the rage, why are new suburban schools still modeled after giant shopping malls? Not because of district cluelessness, but because of how most states fund new construction and how local bond measures are passed.)

Editorial writers can perform a great public service by identifying specific ways for states and school districts to use their resources more wisely. Editorials like this do triple duty, because they affect readers' families, their tax bills, and their shared civic life.

So go ahead. Read the past few years of budgets. Read the entire teachers' contract. Scoop the newsroom, which may be too immersed in educational fluff to dig into the best stories in town.

Because after all, the children are our future. Or anyway, I think I read that somewhere.

RELATED ARTICLE: Editorial challenge: Find out how local schools gain or lose money in the current funding style. Propose specific ways for districts and states to move from failure-based funding to success-based funding. Write in a way that doesn't blame individuals or imply a vast anti-children conspiracy Instead, urge districts to realign their resources so that the organization can thrive on success.

NCEW board member Susan Nielsen is an associate editor with The Oregonian in Portland. Contact her at susannielsen@ news.oregonian.com