Let's Talk Money in Schools

"We can't keep throwing money at the problem" is a familiar line you'll hear from conservatives and ed reformers alike when we talk about funding public schools.

(I'll digress here a moment and state that I do think Seattle Schools needs more money.  But they also need to spend their money more wisely and more transparently.  Charlie loves to say, "Go look at the district's budget - it's all there."  It's there in vague piecharts but do we really know where all the money goes AND where all the money is held?  We do not.)

I saved an article from the end of 2016 from The Upshot section of the NY Times, "It Turns Out Spending More Probably Does Improve Education."  From the "C'mon, this is news?", is this a big surprise.  I don't think so and, when we look at state spending, those states at the top of spending appear to have the best outcomes. (bold mine)

Educators, politicians and unions have battled in court over that crucial question for decades, most recently in a sweeping decision this fall in Connecticut, where a judge ordered the state to revamp nearly every facet of its education policies, from graduation requirements to special education, along with its school funding.

So what other factors come into play when we talk about spending?

Many other factors, including student poverty, parental education and the way schools are organized, contribute to educational results.

Getting more notice - and rightfully so from the POV of equity in funding - is the money that comes from parents.  We've discussed this here before and I plan on asking the Seattle Council PTSA if this will be one of their focus points for the next school year.  I think it should be and I believe the PTSA really could help with equity issues. 

But new, first-of-its-kind research suggests that conclusion is mistaken. Money really does matter in education, which could provide fresh momentum for more lawsuits and judgments like the Connecticut decision.

The study, published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in July, was conducted by the economists Julien Lafortune and Jesse Rothstein of the University of California at Berkeley and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach of Northwestern. They examined student test scores in 26 states that have changed the way they fund schools since 1990, usually in response to a lawsuit like Connecticut’s, and compared them with those in 23 states that haven’t. While no two states did exactly the same thing, they all had the effect of increasing funding for the poorest districts.

The post-1990 time frame is important: That’s when courts changed how they think about states’ obligations to public schoolchildren. Previously, nearly all school funding lawsuits focused on the question of “equity” — did disadvantaged students receive funding equal to that of their well-off peers?

The problem with that perspective was the answer could be “yes,” even if funding was too low across the board. Starting with a 1990 court case in Kentucky, courts started asking about “adequacy” instead. Were school districts getting enough money, which might require giving extra money to districts that enroll many low-income, expensive-to-serve students?

So how is this research different besides the timeframe?

The researchers took advantage of the one test that is taken by a representative sample of schoolchildren nationwide: the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP, which is administered by the Department of Education.

Although NAEP results are usually published only for whole states and a small number of large urban school districts, the researchers got the education department to let them analyze individual student scores. Those results include information on the test-taker’s race and income, as well as school district attended. The researchers could compare performance in poor and wealthy districts before and after changes in spending.

The outcome?

They found a consistent pattern: In the long run, over comparable time frames, states that send additional money to their lowest-income school districts see more academic improvement in those districts than states that don’t. The size of the effect was significant. The changes bought at least twice as much achievement per dollar as a well-known experiment that decreased class sizes in the early grades.

More money works better than lower class sizes?  Interesting.

More data to back up the first study:

Another paper, published this year in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, looked at the same question through a different lens. That study examined longer-term outcomes, like how long students stayed in school and how much they earned as adults, for students in districts with and without court-ordered funding changes. Here, too, researchers saw gains with more money spent.

And Betsy DeVos doesn't have a big role in shaping this spending:

Because 92 percent of all K-12 funding comes from state and local sources, the decision won’t be up to her. It will lie with state lawmakers who now have a better reason to invest more in school districts educating children who have the least money.

Seattle Schools does not seem to believe the Washington State Legislature has fulfilled McCleary as witnessed from their recent statement. 

From the Seattle Times:

"District officials also have bristled at the idea that everyone’s a winner in the McCleary plan. They argue lawmakers simply swapped local revenues for state spending, so districts won’t be getting as much net new money as the data suggests.

OSPI, in fact, estimated the loss of local revenue actually brings the Legislature’s total $7.3 billion price tag for public education to just $5.6 billion through 2021."

From the Washington Association of School Administrators head, Bill Keim:

​The most common response to the Legislature’s June 30th McCleary plan seems to be, “Mission Accomplished.” That’s certainly the consistent message from our political leaders. Washington State Attorney General Bob Ferguson said as much this week when he filed a memo to the Court, asking for an end to McCleary. Wrote Ferguson, "it is time for this case to end."

So, as we learned with the Iraq war, “Mission Accomplished” depends on how you define the mission.

Hilariously, this is the headline at the right-wing thinktank, Washington Policy Center:

McCleary’s long-running, costly and controversial legal dispute is over

Still, Democrats, Republicans, the Governor and the Attorney General all recognize the McCleary process has run its course.  For good or ill, this long-running, costly and controversial legal dispute is over.  The legislature can now take education policy back from the courts and return to normal management and funding of public schools.

Mr. Keim seems prescient in saying this:

Regardless of the opinions expressed by our political leaders, the state Supreme Court will ultimately decide if the legislative plan meets the constitutional mission laid out in their January 2012 McCleary ruling and subsequent orders. 

What's up with the executive and legislative branches of government - both federal and state - thinking that the judicial branch is a pesky little brother to be brushed off.  Go tell that to the founding fathers.