Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

More Proof that K-12 Education Is Broken

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by

James A. Bacon
in

Read the title of a new study by State Budget Solutions, “Throwing Money at Education Isn’t Working,” and you’ve read the main conclusion: Higher spending does not guarantee better student performance.

In 2010, the United States spent $809 billion on K-12 education, which represented twice as much per pupil as the nation spent in 1970. We spend more on schools than peer nations yet American students have lower standardized test scores. (Virginia, incidentally spent 34.9% of its General Fund budget on K-12 in 2009, the fourth highest percentage in the nation.)

The report, authored by Kristen de Peña, makes the case that there is little correlation between how much money a state spends on schools and the results those schools deliver. That’s not to say that money isn’t a factor. It’s just that so many other factors affect student performance that it’s easy to spend added funds unproductively. She is also skeptical of other commonly proffered panaceas such as charter schools and performance-based standards. “In the ten years since No Child Left Behind became law,” she writes, “it is clear that one-size-fits-all testing, sanctioning under-performing schools and rewarding high-performing schools, undermines actual education efforts.”

The solution? More decentralization. “Educators and elected officials need to look at what is working in various states with high ACT scores and graduation rates. What they will see is that states taking a more active role in educational outcomes produce better performance results. Taking a more active role in education includes developing flexible, practical education plans tailored to state students or prioritizing school district transparency to minimize waste and fraud.”

Bacon’s bottom line: The social science of education is so complex, so plagued by inadequate data and so polarized by ideology that I question whether anyone can decipher what is needed to turn schools around. My sense is that the system needs to be reinvented from the ground up. I question fundamental assumptions: that students should be organized in age cohorts and herded lockstep through entities called “schools.” No one-size-fits-all solution will work.  Education should be tailored to the needs and aptitudes of individual children. The bureaucratic, government-run structures we have erected are incapable of making the change. It’s time for radical experimentation. For a glimpse of the future, look to home schooling and online education.

— JAB

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Comments

  1. thebyurokrat Avatar
    thebyurokrat

    This is an awful report, and its findings should be ignored.

    Using K12 spending as a percent of total state spending is an absurd metric. Texas as the top-spending state? Doesn’t that seem odd to you?

    Anybody with a lick of sense knows that spending per pupil is the appropriate metric. And, as local spending is a large slice of the education spending pie, looking at only state spending obscures the full extent of education spending. A more appropriate look, such as found on table 27 of this report, finds that Texas is among the lowest spenders on K12 in total on a state and local funds per pupil basis. http://jlarc.virginia.gov/reports/Rpt419.pdf

    This error is egregious enough to make me dismiss the entire report.

  2. James A. Bacon Avatar
    James A. Bacon

    State fiscal effort *is* relevant. The primary cost of schools is the cost of teacher and administration compensation. Compensation levels vary widely from region to region depending upon the cost of living. Thus, a teacher in Massachusetts will cost more than a teacher in Texas. Thus, absolute spending is also a flawed measure for comparing state spending levels.

    I do agree, however, that it would have been useful to look at both measures.

    1. thebyurokrat Avatar
      thebyurokrat

      It’s not absolute spending, it’s normalized per pupil spending. That Texas spends a greater percentage of its total state budget on schools than Massachusetts is not really a useful piece of information. This is because Texas spends much less in other functional areas, and spends far, far less than Massachusetts on a per-pupil basis.

      Texas can spend much more as a percentage of its total State budget and still much, much less support for education than other states. This is because the measure used by the author does not assess how much is spent on education, but rather, how much is spent on education relative to everything else the state does. These are very different pieces of data. The author has simply used an invalid approach to assessing the legitimate question “How does spending on education impact student achievement?”

  3. Richard Avatar
    Richard

    Jim – as thebyyrokrat notes, your argument hangs by a mighty fine thread.

    But despite that I agree that more than money has to be applied to the education system. Intelligence needs to applied as well. But you need both.
    Home schooling? Maybe, but it doesn’t help students whose parents aren’t able to do it because they don’t have the time or the ability. Online training – maybe, but it’s unproven and currently I don’t trust the purveyors, many of whom seem (to me) be in it for a quick buck. Perhaps as an adjunct to home schooling, but again home schooling will have limited utility.

    The main point that I think you (Jim) don’t emphasize enough is that the state has a responsibility to provide an education to all of its children. I suspect that those whose focus is mostly on taxes and cost miss that point. The fact is it takes money to educate our children, and sometimes that money won’t have the desired effect, but the alternative is to do nothing, and nothing can’t be an option. We can’t have a system where public schools are neglected.

  4. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    the interesting thing is that we have not gotten worse at education. We have steadily improved it over the decades but we did not improve it as much as our competitors have and they have done it by adherence to robust academic standards which the parents in this country – are actually opposed to because they do not like the idea of bad grades for their kids – especially the kids who are building their high school record for admission to college.

    In Europe and Asia – the choice is not College or perceived failure. The choice is College or Technical education and the technical education is every bit as challenges and robust as the college track in terms of math and science standards. Just look at the world rankings to verify this.

    Home Schooling is not going to help kids excel in math and science if their parents are not essentially capable themselves of teaching things like Algebra or science. These parents would be the same proverbial “bad teachers” we keep hearing need to be fired and de-unionized.

    Kids who fail to get the basic education they need in K-4 are not going to be helped by parental instruction. Most of them have parents who are unwilling and/or unable to help their kids especially if they have reading deficits that require specialized attention.

    and yet we continue to deal with these issue on ideological grounds as if somehow ideology is a cause. Nope. The cause is that we think education is not a specialized occupation. We denigrate it, in fact, by saying that anyone can do it, including home schooling and online.

    The failures reveal themselves in 9-12 where some kids simply do not have the K-6 basics in reading and writing and others are warned away from “tough” material because it will look bad on their transcript.

    we blame our system – but our system is a product of the kind of education system we really want – one that bolsters self-esteem and give kids a ride on tougher curricula.

  5. James A. Bacon Avatar
    James A. Bacon

    For the record, I’m not advocating home schooling for everyone. I’m just saying that, as a crucible of innovation, it represents the future of education.

  6. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    re: ” I’m just saying that, as a crucible of innovation, it represents the future of education.”

    I think there is a bit of a disconnect on home schooling in that we have some serious discussions these days as to what constitutes a “bad” teacher and we also have developing standards for what are known as “highly qualified teachers”.

    I know from personal experience that some kids reading issues take specialists that deal specifically with certain kinds of deficits and it’s not something that any person, even a highly-intelligent person can do – without training.

    We are competing with other countries whose teachers are exceptionally well qualified. Some European countries have such tough standards that almost half of candidates wash out.

    Then we have folks in this country who believe that mom/dad can teach better than a trained professional can – the idea that a teacher is not really a trained professional and that it is work than any intelligent person with time available can do.

    Believe me, when you realize that schools these days not only have teachers but they have so-called “reading specialists” and you realize that some kids in the mainstream classes, once properly assessed – by a trained teacher – then end up getting specialized assistance from another trained professional – and we think that mom or dad can do this at home… we are not really considering what the real meaning of trained professional means – IMHO of course.

    Contrary to beliefs, our schools are BETTER than they used to be but they have not kept up with their European and Asian counterparts who have pushed the envelope even further.

    We did not fall behind; we got passed.

  7. DJRippert Avatar
    DJRippert

    “Then we have folks in this country who believe that mom/dad can teach better than a trained professional can – the idea that a teacher is not really a trained professional and that it is work than any intelligent person with time available can do.”.

    Mom and Dad teach 1:1 or 1:2 or 1:3. The trained professional teaches 1:28.

    Meanwhile, if Mom and Dad have college degrees, they probably had higher SAT scores than the teacher. Here is an illuminating story from CBS:

    http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505145_162-37245744/heres-the-nations-easiest-college-major/

    As for our schools being BETTER than they used to be …

    I’d love to see some evidence of that.

    The first step in solving this problem is to get the real facts on the table.

    1. larryg Avatar
      larryg

      evidence:

      http://www.nytimes.com/1992/04/08/education/renegade-researchers-offer-rebuttal-us-schools-are-better-than-many-say.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

  8. James A. Bacon Avatar
    James A. Bacon

    Adding to Don’s comments on the subject of mom/dad teaching better than trained professionals… The notion that “home school” kids stay at home where they are tutored by mom and dad is increasingly antiquated, especially for higher grades. Many home schools today are really parent cooperatives, in which parents share teaching responsibilities and utilize online teaching programs.

  9. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    ” Mom and Dad teach 1:1 or 1:2 or 1:3. The trained professional teaches 1:28.”

    not in most K-3 classes and not for kids who test out with deficits. Kids with identified deficits get 1:1 time with a person who is specifically trained in recognizing what kind of deficit it is and what needs to be done to re-mediate it.

    Even for regular kids, there is ongoing assessments on 30-50 different sub-areas of reading and writing and math.

    A kid could be great at adding numbers but terrible at fractions.

    How do you know with homeshooling if the kids who need assistance are getting it?

    re: schools getting better rather than worse.

    let me work on this.. I saw something about it recently and you already know that for many at-risk kids with NCLB and SOLs that there are more kids doing better in that demographic.

    in terms of “trained professionals”, if you have even seen a reading assessment like PALS – you realize that there are a dozen or more sub-areas and the average person – will not recognize them much less know how to fix it.

    I’m not opposed to home schooling but as per my usual – we need to be honest about it’s strong points and it’s weak points – and I cannot stand ideological perspectives that cherry-pick and ignore things that home schooling is not good at.

    Let’s get the diversity and competition in schooling but let’s also be honest about it.

  10. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    More evidence that the narrative about education being “broke” is
    just plain wrong.

    Mathematics Scores from 1973 until 2008

    http://nationsreportcard.gov/ltt_2008/ltt0002.asp?tab_id=tab1&subtab_id=Tab_1#chart

    what has happened – the true story – is that the US has basically done what it has always done while education in the rest of the world has gotten better and better.

    for the folks who say they are truly interested in solutions, understanding the basic issue first is important.

    Our system is not “broke” in terms of it once working really good and then “breaking”.

    Instead, we just have not advanced…. while other countries have.

    it’s important to get this narrative right.

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