Dollars per Scholar
By John Butcher • Apr 14th, 2009 • Category: Education, Top StoryOn the 2008 data, tiny Poquoson continues to deliver more educational bang for the buck than any other Virginia locality.
The SOL scores for 2008 are on the Education Department Web site. As of the end of March, the annual disbursement data also were up (finally!).
Placed together, these data let us see what kind of SOL performance we are getting for our educational expenditures for each school division in the state. The graph shows the raw numbers for the English test. (Note: The disbursement numbers are total disbursements less payments to reserves and less disbursements for new or remodeled facilities. “ADM” is educratese for Average Daily Membership, i.e., the number of kids).
A glance at this graph suggests that increased spending does nothing for SOL scores. Indeed, the least squares fit to the data asserts that an extra $1,000 per kid lowers the SOL by 0.4 points. The R2, however, tells us that cost and score are essentially uncorrelated.
The ideal school division would obtain high SOL scores at low cost. To see which Virginia divisions approach that ideal, let’s reverse the expenditure axis so low costs appear at the high end of the axis. To emphasize relative performance, we’ll plot the scores and per-pupil disbursements as deviations from the average (State average English SOL = 87; average disbursement/student = $11,781).
We might call the resulting graph the Bacon’s Rebellion Bang per Buck graph. On that graph high test scores are at the top and low expenditures are at the right. The best performance for the lowest cost — the biggest bang per buck — will be at upper right.
The blue point at upper right is Poquoson. That small Tidewater division turned out an English SOL pass rate of 94, seven points above the state average, at the lowest cost per student, $8,888, which is $2,893 below the state average.
In contrast, the good citizens of Alexandria (the red point) paid $7,210 more than the state average ($18,991 per pupil) and got an SOL performance seven points below the state average.
The low-cost, low-performance jurisdiction, the yellow point at bottom right, is Petersburg, where $11,145, $636 less than average, produced an English score of 64, 23 below the state average.
To see how badly Poquoson beat your school system, follow this link.
Here are the graphs for the math test:
Poquoson again leads the pack. The other blue point is Scott County, which got one point more math performance than Poquoson at an additional cost of $823 per pupil. The entire math dataset is here.
Send an email to john{at}crankytaxpayer{dot]org if you would like the spreadsheets with these data.
John Butcher was born in Sarasota Florida in 1940. He denies the reports that he escaped from the circus.
John holds a B.S. and PhD in Chemistry from Georgia Tech. In 1976 he was teaching chemistry at Hampden-Sydney when he received The Call. As John tells it: “I had been in science for ten years. I knew about the truth. I wanted to go to law school and learn about advantage.”
Upon receiving a J.D. from the University of Virginia in 1979, John joined the staff of Attorney General Marshall Coleman as an Assistant Attorney General. In the following 23 years John represented all of the Virginia environmental agencies, as well as the Health Department, the OSHA program, and the Game Commission. When he retired he was a Senior Assistant Attorney General responsible for bankruptcy matters and all major litigation for the Natural Resources Section.
In the spring of 2002 John looked at a calendar and noticed they had named a day for him. So he retired on April 1. Since retiring John has worked very part time representing the Virginia Petroleum Storage Tank Fund and he has conducted a handful of arbitrations for the Better Business Bureau. He also has served as Safety Chair for the Old South Neighborhood Team and on the Executive Committee of Richmond’s Community Assisted Public Safety program. John reports that he now sleeps later in the morning and none of his former clients can automatically say: “My lawyer is uglier than your lawyer.”
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Not to take away from anything they’re doing, you might want to keep in mind that Poquoson is 1) a very small system and 2) generally speaking, quite affluent. Consequently, the majority of Poquoson’s students likely show up to school healthy, well nourished, ready to learn and supported by parents who value education. This is a public school principal’s dream. Poquoson’s poor, many of them the children of watermen, probably take to the water at a young age and drop off the public school system’s radar.
Mr. Butcher’s analysis is akin to the chemistry professor who decides to test Bunsen burners and decides which one is more effective on the basis of the time each takes to boil water and the amount of propane used.
But wait: Did we mention that one burner was tested in 90 degree heat at the equator and another at minus 75 degrees at the South Pole? Or that one was tested at sea level and another on top of Mt. Everest, where the boiling point is about 56 degrees Farenheit lower?
Drawing a conclusion without considering externalities like temperature and air pressure is a little like drawing conclusion about how education dollars are spent without considering all external factors.
Few informed people doubt that it is much harder to teach reading, for example, to low-income kids (who come from a less literature rich environment) or those for whom English is a second language.
So a legitimate comparison of Poquoson and Alexandria also needs to consider a comparison of school-aged poverty rates (53.33% in Alexandria vs. 10.73% in Poquoson) and the non-English-speaking population (25% in Alexandria vs. 4/10ths of a percent in Poquoson). And did we mention the differences in cost of living (and thus, salaries) in the two jurisdictions?
Looking at the “bang for the buck” is something school systems (like most bureaucracies) don’t do well, but that taxpayers ought to demand. But unless its done right, it only gives those same educational bureaucracies an excuse to continue avoiding a real and legitimate analysis of their effectiveness.
Chris and Chris :
You are actually arguing John’s point. His assertion is that throwing more money at school systems does not correlate to higher scores. You both are arguing, with John, that there are other factors (not $) that really govern learning and test scores. Everybody is in agreement!
Giving more money to schools is NOT the solution.
We all owe John, a.k.a., The Cranky Taxpayer, a large debt of gratitude for generating data comparisons that the State DOE does not.
Rather than having recently traveled, at public expense, to San Diego, CA, for the annual National School Board Association Meeting, School Board members from around Virginia should be traveling to Poquoson and, Appomattox, Botetort, Charlotte, Goochland, Hanover, Mecklenburg, Scott, and West Point. All of which passed 92% of students in English, while spending below the per pupil state average.
Rather than courting candidates for Governor promising higher salaries, Superintendents, Principals, Teachers and other VEA members should be flocking to Poquoson and, Buchanan, Chesapeake, Franklin Co., Goochland, Hanover, Lexington, Patrick, Radford, Roanoke Co., Rockingham, Mecklenberg, Salem, Scott, and West Point. Alls of which passed 89% of students in Math, while spending less than the state average.
Certainly there are differences in student populations and home environments rich in books and learning resources; stimulating, supportive parents; and a civically engaged community can surely enhance learning, help students flourish, and even overcome mediocre schooling. However, For many decades, we have known what needs to be done to make schools effective—and, it is not blaming those whose attendance is required for more than 1,000 hours per year of control by the Schools or those whose hard earned tax dollars provide funding. William Ryan published “Blaming the Victim” in 1971; Ron Edmonds is credited with research beginning the Effective Schools Movement in 1982 and, more recently Karin Chenoweth authored “It’s Being Done”. The common theme that runs through the writings of those whose research and analysis demonstrate that public schools can be effectively reformed is this: the primary effect of family, race and poverty is not on a child, but rather on the expectations of schools and teachers. High expectations by teachers and schools empower high achievement. Low expectation learning environments destroy student futures.
“Every system is perfectly designed to achieve the results it gets.” is attributed to W. Edwards Deming. In Virginia, we should be relentlessly studying ways of the successful to redesign systems so that no child is left behind.