Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Fairfax Spends More, Teaches Less

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by

Bob Rayner
in , , ,

by Arthur Purves

(Editor’s note: Arthur Purves, president of the Fairfax County Taxpayers Alliance, addressed the Fairfax County School Board on Feb. 13, 2024. His remarks, with updated numbers, are posted below.)

At church I get to ask students and parents around Vienna about our schools. The feedback is positive, and we appreciate your dedicated teachers and administrators.

However, as FCPS spending goes up, achievement goes down. Over the past 5 years, per-student cost has increased, from $16K to $21K, while SAT scores fell, from 1212 to 1181. Never in half a century have FCPS SAT scores seen such a precipitous decline.

Your crucial failure is in teaching minority students mastery of reading and arithmetic by third grade. Most of our crime is committed by individuals whom the public schools failed to teach reading. The fault is the curriculum and unaccountable administrators,not the students, their race, nor their families. Your budget does not even mention Equal Access to Literacy, which was supposed to replace whole word reading instruction with phonics.

Proposed county and school raises for next year would cost $367 million, including 6% raises for all school employees. This would increase the real estate tax rate 11 cents and increase the average real estate tax bill $818. This follows 7% raises last year and again this year, making 20% raises in three years. My retirement income decreased over the last three years. Yes, there is a recruitment problem due to decreasing birth rates, but the budget provides no evidence that teachers are leaving en masse for more pay. There should be a salary freeze until achievement, especially in third grade minority reading and arithmetic, increases.

The Market Scale Adjustment plus the Step Increase incentivizes mediocrity because excellent teachers are paid the same as okay teachers. You should adopt a single, merit-based raise.

Your goal is to prepare students to become not American citizens but global citizens. American citizens believe we get our rights from God and that government gets its powers from “we the people.” Global government is government of the billionaires, by the billionaires, and for the billionaires. Another term for global citizen is slave. Global government would control us through digital currency.

We oppose spending $3.8 billion to acclimate 180,000 students to tyranny.

Arthur Purves is  president of the Fairfax County Taxpayers Alliance.

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Comments

29 responses to “Fairfax Spends More, Teaches Less”

  1. LarrytheG Avatar
    LarrytheG

    I was under the impression that SAT scores had declined nationally across the board, not just in Fairfax.

    1. Teddy007 Avatar
      Teddy007

      I do not believe that the SAT can, over the long term, decrease since the SAT is suppose to be center on a score of 1000. A question to raise is whether anything about the test has changed in the last five years.

      Also, if one is worried about poorer and minority students learning, then why are all conservatives supporting school choice where all of the students with activist parents will move into their own schools and leave the worst students behind?

    2. agpurves Avatar
      agpurves

      See table inserted into article after the post was originally published. US down 21, Virginia down 4, Fairfax down 31.

      1. LarrytheG Avatar
        LarrytheG

        is there a list of ALL Fairfax Schools? Virginia schools district averages?

        1. agpurves Avatar
          agpurves

          By all Fairfax schools, I assume you mean public and private. I’ve never seen a list of SAT scores for private schools. That is a great question.

          1. agpurves Avatar
            agpurves

            As for Virginia school district averages, the College Board does publish a statewide report with the averages for every school district. However, you have to get it from the Virginia Dept. of Ed. They sent it to me once or twice a few years ago and have ignored my requests the last couple of years, which is curious. What you find is that the Virginia SAT average, when you remove the affluent NoVa districts is the same as the national average. Another excellent question.

  2. Nancy Naive Avatar
    Nancy Naive

    Gee, could the goods and services in this article not be affected by the subject of the previous?

  3. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
    Dick Hall-Sizemore

    Except for the last paragraph and last sentence, the author makes some good points.

    1. agpurves Avatar
      agpurves

      You prefer being governed by the UN?

      1. Dick Hall-Sizemore Avatar
        Dick Hall-Sizemore

        You lost me when you started talking about preparing students to be global citizens. That was a leap from lower SAT scores and I don’t understand what connection there is.

        1. agpurves Avatar
          agpurves

          Good point. It is a leap. However, to spend our $3.8B to undermine the Constitution is something the school board should not do.

  4. kls Avatar
    kls

    What do you expect with no competition in the education market place?

  5. DJRippert Avatar
    DJRippert

    This pretty much says it all, “Over the past 5 years, per-student cost has increased, from $16K to $21K, while SAT scores fell, from 1212 to 1181.”

    A 31% increase in per-student costs over the last 5 years?

    Even given Bidenomics, that well ahead of inflation.

    At some point we’re going to have to admit that pouring more and more money into K-12 education isn’t solving the problem.

    1. Stephen Haner Avatar
      Stephen Haner

      When my wife was teaching I used to multiply the per pupil numbers by her head count, and then subtract her salary and benefits and some allowance for supplies….most of the money was not in that classroom!

      Over many, many years, Purves has stuck with two basic themes. One is phonics as the key to reading instruction, a point I agree with. The second is restoring religious instruction and even directed prayer to public schools, which is gone for good. Imagine trying to return to those practices in Fairfax with its scores of different national and religious cultures now.

      Uh, nobody picked up on how TJ’s SAT tests are stable? Wasn’t the change in admissions supposed to destroy that school’s success? 🙂 Need a new white fragility narrative there.

      1. agpurves Avatar
        agpurves

        https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/edd0a3a9d3bd6ce74f8cc5173bbb0e39cecd2481938feb304b081c9b22dfdf0a.png

        1. LarrytheG Avatar
          LarrytheG

          Good ONE! That oughta convince Haner for sure!
          😉

          1. Stephen Haner Avatar
            Stephen Haner

            Well, Arthur made my point about his priorities! 🙂 I’m shocked to see they go back into the 19th C, and the seemed to be climbing before those court cases.

          2. agpurves Avatar
            agpurves

            Steve is correct about my priorities. Look how we’ve deteriorated since the Supreme Court’s (unconstitutional) ban on prayer, the Bible, and the Ten Commandments in public schools.

      2. LarrytheG Avatar
        LarrytheG

        re: ” When my wife was teaching I used to multiply the per pupil numbers by her head count, and then subtract her salary and benefits and some allowance for supplies….most of the money was not in that classroom!”

        that’s an interesting calculation…. and non classroom money would include stuff like transportation, cafeteria, maintenance, operations, etc….

        so curious what it might be …

        those primary categories are in the state Auditor comparisons..for localities..

      3. DJRippert Avatar
        DJRippert

        “Uh, nobody picked up on how TJ’s SAT tests are stable? Wasn’t the change in admissions supposed to destroy that school’s success? 🙂 Need a new white fragility narrative there.”

        Kids take the SATs their junior year.

        Have the admissions changes at TJ been in place long enough for the “lottery students” to have gotten to the point of taking the SAT?

        I honestly don’t know.

  6. Ronnie Chappell Avatar
    Ronnie Chappell

    It’s inflation. Pay more. Get less.

    I’m not opposed to spending more on education. Just to spending more on a system that pays poor teachers as much as classroom super stars. NFL quarterbacks make more than offensive guards. So I’d start by making it possible for k-4 teachers to double their take home pay by tying annual bonuses to what percentage of their students are reading at grade level at the end of the school year. 100 percent at grade level yields a 100 percent bonus. No bonus for less than 80 percent. Incremental increases for incremental improvement over 80 percent.

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      I’d agree to some extent with the caveat that the idea that one kid stays with one teacher for an entire year is not necessarily true especially for kids in the Title programs who get extra help from reading specialists. Not sure how you’d fairly calculate it unless you don’t count those kids for the classroom teacher the same way you would kids who stay in that class the whole time.

      The other thing – if a kid is “behind” already when they first start that grade – how do you count it? for one year of gain even if they still are behind at the end?

      What do you do about kids that miss class a lot – and don’t read well?

      It’s a simplistic idea with some real world issues.

      But fundamentally, I support the idea of paying more for teachers that perform better! And… getting rid of teachers that fail to perform per expected.

      That means we will end up paying even MORE for education!

      1. kls Avatar
        kls

        In true equity… give the school its entire staff salary amount based on last year’s student proficiency tests, then the staff can figure out how to distribute the money among themselves.

        1. LarrytheG Avatar
          LarrytheG

          the “staff” or the principal? Either way, you’d just let arbitrary votes for those who enjoy being “popular”?

  7. Bubba1855 Avatar
    Bubba1855

    I also do the ‘back of an envelope’ costs. How many students in a
    class? Average teacher salary? Cost per student? Wow…teacher salaries not the problem. It’s all of that ‘overhead’ or we used to say
    ‘indirect costs’. Now retired and having worked in corp American I am aware of all of those overhead and indirect costs. Since I’m now in my 70’s I am amazed at how much overhead and indirect costs the various school boards have added to the cost of public education. Is it worthit? I doubt it.

    1. agpurves Avatar
      agpurves

      Most of the overhead is benefits, mainly pensions and medical insurance. Salaries are about $2.2B, benefits are $1B. Total budget is $3.8B. So salaries and benefits are about 85%.

  8. James Wyatt Whitehead Avatar
    James Wyatt Whitehead

    I feel your pain Mr. Purves. The same sort of business with the school budget, school performance, and raises here in Fauquier. Nobody on the school board or board of supervisors had the guts to call the budget proposal into question.

    Unfortunately, your stand is a brave and valiant one. But will result in another Five Forks or Sayler’s Creek.

    1. agpurves Avatar
      agpurves

      A case study of socialism.

  9. Matt Hurt Avatar
    Matt Hurt

    I have always questioned the utility of evaluating student outcomes on SAT scores primarily because the percent of students assessed has never been disclosed. For example, if only 15% of students in School A takes the SAT, and 50% of students in School B takes the test, one would think that School A’s scores would be higher due to the fact that only the top students took the test. I think a better metric for the SAT would be an adjusted average that accounted for all of the students in the school or a graduating class.

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