School Funding

Both the Lowell Sun and the Boston Herald printed editorials this past week about the pending Hancock v Driscoll case in which students from the state's poorer school districts (including Lowell) have sued the Commonwealth in an effort to increase state funding for education. Both newspapers took the position that more money won't solve the problems in education. The solution, in their opinion, is "more accountability." This is the typical head-in-the-sand approach to education championed by these two papers. Many of the biggest impediments to education are societal problems that have nothing to do with schools. Yet we completely ignore these societal problems when we assess the effectiveness of schools. If a child is absent six weeks of the year, that's not the school's fault. Yet we hold the school accountable when that child fails. If society wants our school systems to solve all of society's ills, it's going to cost a lot of money. The sooner that our leaders - and our local newspapers - take a more realistic approach to what's going on, the better our chances of making progress.