The Unpopular Issues of Poverty and Isolation.

The new year has more than a calendar change in store for federally supported education programs. The year 2000 likely will see far-reaching changes that will reshape our federal programs more than any year since 1981 when the Reagan administration ushered in the era of flexibility in federal programs.

The federal focus is about to complete a dramatic shift away from addressing equal educational opportunity for the poorest children to interventions that affect all students. Because Title I, at approximately $8 billion this year, remains substantial, there will continue to be a significant focus on equal opportunity. However, the new money either has a more general focus or will be in the form of competitive grants available to just a few school districts.

This shift is the latest transformation in power over educational decisions to governors, state legislatures and state boards of education that happened in the 1980s. Now the federal government is getting involved in structure, governance, content and accountability--but most emphatically not finance.

An Elusive Fix

The desire to control the system to produce the changes that state officials wanted has resulted in the current state of public education. However, no matter what policies governors and state legislatures have enacted, the troublesome problems related to poverty and rural isolation remain undiminished.

The intractable issues of poverty and rural isolation are complex. They involve families, communities and peer relations and, as such, the solutions are beyond the purview of elementary and secondary schools. To be ready to learn and meet new academic standards, some children need much more than a typical school can provide. And governors, state legislatures and state boards of education find the political costs of producing the necessary system changes impossibly high.

At a minimum, addressing the educational problems associated with poverty and isolation requires mobilizing families and communities to act on their own accompanied by a massive redistribution of resources in education, social services, health, mental health and economic development. Stronger accountability for more than test scores is a lever for administrators, but we cannot pretend that somehow schools can overcome the family and community effects of concentrated poverty and rural isolation.

Uneven Support

The orphan in the changing face of education policy is finance. Where are President Clinton (the mega-governor) and the Congress (the mega-legislature) on school finance? Considering that nearly every state shortchanges children in poverty and rural isolation when it comes to educational funding, Congress and the president could provide a huge benefit by focusing on poverty, along with high accountability. For example, they could fully fund Title I and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (about $30 billion together). But it isn't popular to spend on the poor, so instead Congress and the president construct new competitive grant programs for more general purposes that middle-class communities can obtain. Such competition further disequalizes funding.

The principal feature of the current system of organizing and financing schools is unevenness in terms of financial resources and student needs. Although no one in the school business wants it, the complex interaction of public finance, private economy and personal rights ensures that the most needy children do not get the services they need to succeed. In fact only a few school districts receive adequate funding to meet the new standards.

The choices, therefore, are to engage in a huge public and private community action, play Robin Hood or punt. And we see a lot of punting.

The good news is that many policymakers are trying to figure out how to make public schools work for children for whom they have not worked so well in the past. Unfortunately, the president and Congress have lost interest in focusing on the needs of the poorest children and would rather attend to general governance, content and accountability. Watch the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act to see the new mega-governor and mega-legislature at work on matters that won't address the most intractable problems, but will produce some new funds for a few lucky school districts who employ good grants writers.

My advice is this: Argue for continued targeting of schools with concentrations of poor and isolated students. They have the hardest-to-solve problems and attend seriously underfunded schools. Be involved, do what you can to make your elected representatives see the complexities. Don't sell simple solutions because there aren't any for the most complex problems.

Without expert advice from you and your colleagues, the White House and the Congress will make as bad a hash of things as the governors and state legislatures. They will continue to pose solutions that ignore the most intractable problems while helping schools that already are inclined to succeed.

Bruce Hunter is AASA director of public policy.