An editor once told us never to start a sentence with, "Let's be honest." He stressed that we should always be honest. He also said to suspect a politician who begins a monologue with "honestly" or "to be honest" or "frankly." Because you could infer that when he doesn't use those words that he's not being honest. (Sound familiar?)
A story appeared in the paper this week about tying money to reading scores in schools. Senate Bill 349 proposes decreasing the amount of National School Lunch State Categorical Funding if schools fall behind, for more than one year in a row, in reading scores.
If you didn't get the paper, and got your news from sources on the Internet, you might think that the bill--and its sponsor--were going to punish kids by withholding food if they got bad grades in reading. Or, more likely, that the state was going to punish school districts if those kids fell behind in reading. Fact is, one headline on some website went this far: "Arkansas school literacy vs. lunch."
Oh my.
Thankfully, your friendly statewide newspaper has reporters like Hunter Field over at the capitol, and a covey of editors here at Scott and Capitol, to guide you (and us) through the haze. Nobody's talking about taking lunch away from anybody. From Mr. Field's story Wednesday:
"National School Lunch State Categorical Funding is often confused with the federal program of a similar name that provides free or reduced-price lunches to students from poor families. The state program simply uses the federal initiative's poverty metrics to distribute additional funding to school districts with high concentrations of kids living in poverty."
It is important to remember that despite the name, this is not a national program, but a state program. It had a good intention: provide more money to lower-income schools so they would spend the money on disadvantaged kids to help them improve. The part that was missing is that there was no accountability for the extra funds if there was no improvement.
The point of the bill seems to be to encourage reading, or the teaching of it, at public schools. Its sponsor, Alan Clark of Lonsdale, told the paper that he thought it'd be rare for a school district to actually lose money because a district would have to have falling numbers two years in a row. And one year of declining achievement scores brings with it more training for teachers in reading education.
It seems to us that this bill could be considered more of a stick, in a state educational system full of carrots. And school districts are nothing if not motivated by money, whether it's the normal kind or this special funding based on different formulas.
It is worth noting this is a major part of education funding. For the five years ending in the 2017-2018 school year, a total of over a billion dollars was paid out to almost all of the school districts in the state. With more than $200 million a year of taxpayer money spent, there needs to be some results.
But let's not frame this bill--a good bill--as something that's going to take food away from children.
In other words, let's be honest.
Editorial on 02/21/2019