Pay Me Now or Pay Me Later

School Administrator, March, 1994 by Allan S. Vann

District-level administrators face agonizingly difficult decisions when they are forced to choose between elementary school and secondary school programs.

Do you recommend allocating scarce dollars to support early intervention services for floundering primary grade children or fund that badly needed calculus or vocational training course at the high school? If classes are overcrowded throughout the system but there is sufficient funding to alleviate this problem in only one grade, do you create another first grade class or add a chemistry section?

School systems should provide for children's needs at all levels of schooling. But with many states currently reducing their aid to local school districts and taxpayers already reeling from recessionary effects, either-or choices are becoming more common.

When superintendents and their deputies are forced to choose among admittedly difficult alternatives, most of my elementary school colleagues observe that dollars seem to flow more readily to the secondary level.

Perhaps this is because the high school serves as an identifiable community symbol. Residents relate to the exploits of the athletic teams and applaud the marching band at holiday parades. Perhaps it is because high school students win academic and athletic scholarships and are heralded in local newspapers. Or perhaps it is because some school board members feel a greater sense of urgency when dealing with high school concerns, acknowledging that elementary needs may be real but that for high school students, "time is running out."

Obvious Solution

Assigning a higher priority to high school needs, however, may be shortsighted. At first blush, for example, the "obvious" solution to a high school dropout problem may be to introduce a preventive program at the high school. However, most potential dropouts are identified by third grade due to severe academic weaknesses or aggressively antisocial behavior. Therefore, perhaps the more obvious solution to solving the dropout problem is to introduce a preventive program at the elementary school.

Too often, school boards and district administrators overlook the importance and long-range potential of allocating sufficient funds for early intervention programs that can make a significant difference in children's lives. These programs are particularly important for very young children having trouble learning to read and write, as well as children having difficulty learning to play and cooperate with their classmates.

A well-known oil filter commercial once noted, "You can pay me now ... or pay me later." Programs designed for young at-risk children will have neither an immediately observable effect on lowering the high school dropout rate nor a noticeable impact on diminishing high school remedial and special education programs.

However, if early intervention is successful, many of the problems present at the secondary level should, in time, diminish markedly. Remedial reading, writing, and math courses now being taught to college students bear witness to the ineffectiveness of our current attempts to remediate academic deficiencies at the high school level.

Society's Toll

Any building supported by a weak foundation eventually will crack, crumble and fall. Educational systems are no different. Neglecting the long-term needs of the younger elementary school child to resolve an immediate problem at the high school may sometimes be necessary. However, over the long haul, short-term solutions usually provide only short-term results, ensuring a steady succession of problems in the future.

Knowing that future high school problems are being created while they are still preventable--and then not providing programs in the earliest grades of schooling before those needs become too severe to remediate--indicates myopic vision and a poor sense of priorities.

The cost to school district residents will become needlessly greater due to increased demands for even more expensive remedial and special education programs in later years.

The cost to society at large will be greater still. Increasing numbers of illiterate dropouts or barely literate high school graduates, along with increasing numbers of teen-agers and young adults who are socially irresponsible will place ever-growing demands upon governmental and social services. Yet instead of allocating more dollars for education, we somehow find it politically easier to spend much more money to house juveniles and young adults in jail.

Until our society places a greater value upon children and education, school boards and administrators will continue to operate at a great disadvantage. However, such a disadvantage makes it even that much more important that district administrators consider whether some of their endemic high school problems can be predicted--and either more easily treated or actually prevented--if greater resources are spent at the elementary school level.