Alabama Doesn't Begin to Fully Fund Critical Education Programs, Such as a Reading Initiative That Makes a Big Difference in Student Achievement

     When the University of Alabama hired Nick Saban three years ago and agreed to pay him $4 million a year to coach football, UA officials had some lofty expectations: that he would return what had become a middlin' football program to its greatest heights, and it would compete for national championships year in and year out.
     Saban has everything he needs to make that happen: a hefty recruiting budget, well-paid assistants, great facilities and strong support from administration, alumni and fans, for starters.
     But what if UA had hired a coach and paid him less than most other Division I football coaches, with very little money to hire good assistants and recruit? Would Alabama have won its past 23 regular-season games and be contending for a national championship for a second straight year?
     Of course not.
     The moral to this little football story is simple, really, and hardly earth-shattering: You get what you pay for.
     It's true of college football coaches, just as it's true of almost everything in life, including public education. Alabama, which ranks 50th in the country in the amount it collects per person in state and local taxes, doesn't do much better in the amount it spends per pupil in K-12 schools. In 2007, the latest year available, the state ranked 41st, spending $9,509 per pupil, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That compares to a national average of $11,496. That difference of almost $2,000 per pupil means Alabama has an average of $39,740 less to spend in a classroom of 20 students.
     Those were the good old days. For the 2010 fiscal year that began Oct. 1, expected spending in Alabama's Education Trust Fund, which pays for K-12 schools, colleges and universities, is about $700 million lower than in 2007.
     It is true that throwing money at a problem isn't a solution. But money does pay for salaries and benefits, books, computers, school construction, electricity, fuel, teacher professional development and, maybe most important, one of the nation's most successful reading programs. That's because reading is key to every other kind of learning. The good news: Alabama doesn't have to look far to find it. It's already here in the form of the acclaimed Alabama Reading Initiative. The bad news: Alabama can't come close to fully funding the initiative, as a package of stories in The News on Sunday made clear.
     It took more than a decade of slowly growing the program to be able to fund reading initiative programs in all K-3 school by the 2007 fiscal year. Since then, as tax collections have collapsed and led to spending cuts in schools, it has been a struggle to maintain. Meanwhile, most other schools, particularly high schools do without.
     So it shouldn't be a surprise that a News analysis of 367 high schools shows that 130 high schools either failed reading or were classified as "borderline" failing, based on 11th-graders' performance on the Alabama High School Graduation Exam. That includes 32 high schools in the Birmingham area that failed or borderline failed. Few of the schools that failed or borderline failed have the reading initiative, and most high school students in Alabama did not have the reading initiative when they were in elementary school.
     State educators estimate at least half of students are "struggling readers," meaning they can't read on grade level. It is especially shameful that we -- Alabamians -- are willing to settle for this, because we know how to change those numbers. We saw the payoff in 2007 from having the reading initiative in even a limited number of schools. That year, Alabama fourth-graders had the nation's largest gain in reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress test, often referred to as the nation's report card. But Alabama needs the reading initiative in all 1,538 public schools, especially in middle and high schools where test scores are flat and many children missed reading initiative instruction the first time around.
     As a state, we are only as good as our people. When we settle for less than the best when it comes to investing in their education, all of us suffer. Children who can't read are more likely to drop out of school, to live in poverty, to be unemployed, to turn to a life of crime. The cost to the state for dealing with all that -- from lost wages to spending more on police, courts, prisons, welfare programs and the like -- far outweighs what investing on the front end would cost.
     When a college football program doesn't invest wisely in a coach, it will lose more than its share of football games for that coach's tenure. When a state doesn't invest wisely in its children, it will lose more than its share of them, for life.

LIMITED FUNDING

     Some of the state's most promising education programs have had to struggle for funding, despite their success. Among them:
     Alabama Reading Initiative: Begun in 1998, the program took almost a full decade before it was funded in every K-3 school, even as other states were copying the initiative. The state has struggled to expand a reading program based on ARI for middle schools beyond a pilot project that this past school year included 30 schools.
     Alabama Math, Science and Technology Initiative: Expected to boost math and science results the way the Reading Initiative has with reading, AMSTI is in about 40 percent of schools after five years.
     Prekindergarten: Alabama and North Carolina are the only two states that meet all 10 of the high-quality standards of the National Institute for Early Education Research. The state has offered voluntary pre-K since 2000, but funds enough programs to reach only about 7 percent of eligible 4-year-olds. (Birmingham News)

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