I have watched the budget debates across the country with a sense of alarm bordering on panic. The question on the table is how many trillions we must cut to bring fiscal sanity back to our country. At the same time, we must not make decisions that save money in the short term, but leave our country unable to prepare for a more competitive future.

This brings me to our schools. As the recent Times articlepointed out, our schools are making decisions to shorten the school year and reduce summer school to balance their budgets. I have seen no real evidence that giving American children less time in school will help close the widening gap between our children and their foreign peers, nor the disgraceful gap between black and Latino children and their white peers. In fact, the evidence is clear that poor children lose a significant amount of their skills over the summer. So while we must make tough decisions to balance our budgets, are we making smart ones?

I would argue that the small amount of money that we will save by cutting the school year and summer programs will do little to close our huge local and state budget gaps. But this strategy might cause irreparable harm to successive generations of American children.

Schools have to be more accountable. We need to hold teachers and principals responsible for student performance, even in summer school. Evaluation measures must be in place to ensure that only the best teachers and administrators work in our schools. Money alone won’t improve education. But we should be clear that creating even more ineffective schools will make things worse, not better.

NY Times