Published in the Beacon Hill Paper, April 14, 1998

Our kids can't read, they think two and two is 22, and at age 18 they still spell graduation with an "s."

With all of these failures manifest, runs the question, why are we planning to spend even more money this year on Boston's public schools?

Boston's fiscal year 1999 budget (the fiscal year starts July 1st) proposes an eight percent increase in the education budget, bringing the total to $547 million. At that level, schools consume more than a third of the city's $1.52 billion operating budget.

City councilors and others who remember the days when the total school budget was under $100 million and the number of kids in the system was more than today are promising a fight. No matter what we spend, goes the chorus, the results are still lousy. So let's cut the schools and spend the money elsewhere.

It's one chorus I won't be joining. The problem with Boston's education budget is not that we're spending too much. In truth, we are probably spending too little.

With 64,384 kids in the system, the cost per student works out to $8,500. It's a high number, but deceptively so.

A true apples-to-apples comparison requires that one strip out the funds related to special education, which can cost in excess of $20,000 annually for each student. The per-pupil cost for regular education students is more like $5,000 a year. This is well lower than the cost of private education which, at a grade-school level, easily runs above $9,000 a year.

We're spending too little and a quick tour of Boston's public schools makes that clear. The student-teacher ratio is 27 to one. In private schools the ratio is in the teens; indeed, many private schools have two teachers per class (a master teacher and an assistant teacher) which brings the ratio down to the single digits.

Boston's schools are constantly strapped for cash and equipment. There are too few specialist teachers for areas such as science, the arts and physical education. The buildings themselves are often old, decaying and gloomy.

The fact is that a good education today costs more than it used to. Inflation is part of the reason. But times have changed as well. It used to be that only a small fraction of the population went to college. Most jobs didn't require much of an education and so, to be blunt, most kids didn't get much of an education.

Today it's different. Most good jobs (and eventually, all good jobs) require a college education. Kids have to be better educated today than they ever were before. Doing so takes money.

Money is not the only answer however. Education itself has to be different, and here the critics are right. Boston's traditional model of a highly centralized school system no longer works.

What does work? For the last few years, Boston has been experimenting with so-called pilot schools — city schools that are completely decentralized, with the authority to set their own policies with regard to virtually all matters, including hours and curriculum. Like the state's charter schools, pilot schools are the wave of the future: in effect, they are public schools that operate like independent schools.

Take for example, the soon-to-be-opened Arts Academy, which will be located in the Fenway. Patterned after the New York high school featured in the movie Fame, the new school will focus on providing students with traditional high school academics and a solid grounding in the performing arts.

This is the kind of stuff that can get parents and kids excited about education again.

This year, the right course for Boston is not to cut the budget, but to increase it. At the same time, we need to insist that the pace of innovation be accelerated.

The stakes are important. A reformed, decentralized school system populated by a range of independent, pilot-like schools would be a system of excellence. Instead of driving city parents out to the suburbs, it could actually draw them in. It's a goal upon which we need to agree.