On Asses and Carts

Every once in a great while, the intuitively obvious answer is the correct one. For example, if you took two schoolchildren from the same race, and stipulated that one came from a home where the parents' educational attainment and household income were less than that of the other, you would predict that the child of the ill-starred family would have lower educational outcomes that his more fortunate peer.

We also assume that factors such as a stable home environment, minimal exposure to television and having a two-parent family can impact a student's educational outcomes. Furthermore, we can rightly presume that all of these things would impact cross-racial comparisons, particularly between African Americans and whites. And indeed, we see evidence of race-based educational disparities as evidenced by the much-vaunted "achievement gap."

It's a good thing (he says tongue grafted to cheek) that Rev. Al Sharpton has distracted himself from other matters such that he can turn his attention to the education of black pupils. Predictably, Rev. Sharpton has directed his preponderance to advocate for the one thing that has been repeatedly demonstrated to have zero impact on school performance: namely, per-pupil spending (PPS). Over the weekend, Sharpton added his voice to those calling for a boycott of Chicago public schools on the first day of class next month.

Sharpton's fulminations aside, PPS has exactly no bearing on children's school performance (as discussed ad infinitum elsewhere.) Even the definition thereof is sufficiently nebulous as to account for funding of activities that are well upstream of what goes on in the classroom. Everything from plush retirements for bootlicking bureaucrats to "educational" seminars for administrative pogues to filling the hog troughs of teacher's unions with the swill of new property tax dollars can be accounted for as per-pupil spending.

And as mentioned elsewhere, if PPS had a direct impact on education, we would see evidence of improvements in academic achievement.

While not entirely surprising, the most disturbing fact is that these sorts of abysmal performance outcomes come with an exorbitant cost. According to data from the website of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), over a relatively brief timescale - 1961 to 2003, to be precise - expenditures per pupil for primary and secondary education have more than tripled, from $2,507 to $8,468 in 2004-05 dollars. And according to the IES' Common Core of Data, for the 2004-05 fiscal year, per student expenditures ranged from $14,117 for students in New Jersey to $5,216 for Utah students, with absolutely no correlation between per pupil spending and educational outcomes.

Everywhere we look - from the Abbott districts in New Jersey, to the hardscrabble streets of South Central Los Angeles to the killing fields of Chicago - we have seen no return whatever for this level of investment in education.

I've also noted that what besets African Americans vis-a-vis education is only minimally about economics, and reflects more of a poverty of culture rather than material goods. (So as not to seem to self-obsessed, I am loathe to reference posts to that effect.) In reviewing the situation here in Chicago, a fellow blogger cites a Schott Foundation for Public Education study, and concludes that "African American males in Chicago's public schools are less than half as likely to graduate as their white peers." Dennis Byrne surmises that culture - particularly that embraced by young black males - is the predominant factor contributing to any observed gaps in achievement between the races.

[I]f resource inequities account for the poor performance, why don't their white male, Hispanic and black female counterparts do as badly? After all, they are going to the same public schools in Chicago... Is it part of the state funding formula to somehow apportion less funding to black males? Are black males forced to use 20-year-old textbooks, while everyone else gets new ones? What precisely is there about how money is spent that mainly leaves black males so dismally out of it?

Maybe a complex of factors, other than funding disparities, explains the troubling performance of black males, and thus, a large part of the schools' problems. Perhaps the same thing that accounts for the decay of neighborhoods at the hands of black male gangs, or for the absence of fathers in the unraveling African-American family. These are symptoms of a cultural climate—corrupted by loosening morals, radical individualism, materialism, Hollywood's adulation of violence and parental irresponsibility, among other strands—that converges on African-American males in particular with all the focused and destructive force of a tornado... What is needed is not so much a change in the school funding formula, but a fundamental change in attitudes about family and society.

Even as Al Sharpton and his confederates bray for more money for their student constituents, it is curious that they never specify a dollar amount that would bring black students up to par academically with whites and Asians. The cry is always for more, with PPS serving as the perfect bogeyman to explain black underachievement. More accurately, it is a tool with which to deflect attention away from the singular shame of African Americans. As long as other races outperform blacks academically, our innate equality remains an open question. In a convoluted sort of way, Sharpton is performing a service of sorts as a champion of the idea of black intellectualism. But his "good" intentions do not make up for the fact that the cart remains before the donkey.

The only gap that matters, pt. 3 - There are few elements of education in this country that have been as extensively researched (all to no apparent gain in the view of this lowly scribbler) than per-pupil spending (PPS) and its impact on educational outcomes. An article presented in the New York Times last week highlighted the variances in per-pupil spending between New Jersey school districts. (A separate Times graphic noted the most significant disparities in state classroom expenditures.) In describing New Jersey's Sea Isle school district spending $33,805 per child versus the Guttenberg district spending $7,426 per child, the Times joined the education establishment on the mourner's bench as it waxed melodramatically about the differences in spending between districts.

The disparity in student spending has prompted renewed calls from school officials and parents for an overhaul of the school financing system, which critics say has shortchanged many districts while directing the bulk of state aid to 31 poor urban areas identified as Abbott districts under a landmark court case.

State legislators have been working on a new state aid formula, but their efforts appear to have stalled in recent weeks.

"That is a big spread, and equity is something that needs to be addressed in the anticipated new school funding formula," said Lynne Strickland, executive director of the Garden State Coalition of Schools, which represents 150 suburban school districts.

As discussed elsewhere, New Jersey's Abbott districts came about as part a "remedy" for educational disparities that the New Jersey Supreme Court found to be inadequate and unconstitutional. Based on that 1990 ruling, 31 urban districts were slated to receive additional state monies to bring PPS up to, or in many cases above what is spent in other districts (as noted by the Times.)

Many of the state’s Abbott districts also spend much more than the state average. Asbury Park schools, for instance, are spending $19,102 per student this year, according to the survey, and Newark schools $17,974 per student.

The NYT greek chorus notwithstanding, for the most part, per-pupil spending is in and of itself is a useless metric, as it can include things as diverse as expenses for school construction, teacher's salaries, administration and nursing/guidance counselor services. And while educators bleat about the effects of variances in PPS on the quality of the educational experience, there is not a scintilla of data showing a direct link between PPS and educational outcomes. As discussed here and here, PPS is no more of a determinant of success in school than is the ratio of sunny school days to cloudy days per year.

The best proof of this underlies the very "disparities" that the Times purports to expose. Thanks to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) legislation, schools are required to report on, among other things, their Adequate Yearly Progress in improving student achievement and test scores. If we look at New Jersey's NCLB reporting for test scores, particularly those of elementary school students taking the 2004-5 New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge (NJ ASK), many of the school districts spending the least per pupil outperformed districts that spent more than twice as much.

Although exact year-to-year comparisons are not available presently, the following may be informative as it pertains to PPS. According to the Times, New Jersey's Harrison Township district will spend $8,286 per student in the 2006-7 school year - well below the state average of $12,098 per pupil. Nevertheless, a higher percentage of Harrison Township students tested "proficient" in reading and math on the 2004-5 NJ ASK than did students in the Hoboken City district. This was in spite of the fact that the Hoboken City district spent $19,102 per child in the 2006-7 school year, and presumably spent more than Harrison Township in 2004-5. (86.8 percent of students were proficient in reading and 54.6 percent proficient in math for Harrison Township versus 69.3 percent of students displaying proficiency in reading and 48.6 percent in math for Hoboken City.)

Similarly, students in the Alpine Boro district were bested by their peers in the afore-mentioned Guttenberg Town district on the order of 73.4 percent proficiency in reading and 59.3 percent in math on the 2004-5 NJ ASK for the Guttenberg district versus 68.2 percent proficiency in reading and 26.1 percent math proficiency for Alpine Boro. (Never mind that Alpine Boro will spend nearly three times as much per student in 2006-7 as will Guttenberg Town, at $21,534 versus $7,426 for Alpine Boro and Guttenberg Town respectively.)

When all of this is taken in the broadest context, the Left's pining for more money for education is part and parcel of two longstanding trends of liberal behavior. First, progressives are enamored with simple-minded reductionism. Whether they are distilling multifactoral climate systems down to the impact of CO2 concentrations on weather, concluding that poverty is the sole cause of crime or overstating the case for increased spending as a means of improving educational outcomes, the Left is especially wont to provide dumbed-down answers to complex problems.

More significantly, no matter the concern, the Left proposes exactly the same solutions. Irrespective of the situation, the fix always involves increased spending and taxation, an expansion of government intervention and more onerous regulation. To be sure, "solving" the problem is a mere stop on the road (or perhaps more accurately, a bump in the road) to collectivism.

The Blackboard Hustle - Periodically we are treated to the spectacle of jurists attempting to act as legislators in deciding exactly how much a municipality should spend to educate it's students. Today's exhibit "A" comes from the NYT. In a 4-2 decision, the New York state Court of Appeals ruled that an additional $1.93 billion must be spent annually on the education of New York City school children. According to the story, the amount specified in the ruling was less than the $4.7 billion mandated by lower courts.

But again, we have seen this movie before. Most of these efforts to increase per-pupil spending are at least well-intentioned, if not misguided; they all appear focused on closing the "performance gap" between urban and suburban school districts. Most Americans are aware of the liberal canon regarding the obstacles that black students face in terms of classroom achievement, not the least of which are, in the Left’s view, low teacher expectations, high class sizes, a disparity in per pupil spending between inner city and suburban schools, and a lack of a culturally relevant curriculum.

Conventional wisdom tells us that the biggest disparities in per pupil spending exist between majority black inner-city and mostly white suburban metropolitan schools. But data from a December 2002 General Accounting Office report suggest that there is no consistent pattern of higher per-pupil spending between inner-city and suburban schools. The inner-city schools that the GAO reviewed generally spent more per pupil than suburban schools in Boston, Chicago and St. Louis. On the other hand, suburban schools in Fort Worth and New York spent more per pupil than the inner city schools. In Denver and Oakland, spending differences between urban and suburban schools were mixed.

Also, the available Census data seem to suggest that the biggest consistent disparities in per-pupil spending are between metropolitan school districts and rural school districts (which are usually majority white.) In any event, there seems to be little relationship between per-pupil spending and academic performance, as evidenced by the amount of money spent in Washington, D.C. versus other areas, and the associated performance on standardized tests. The fact of the matter is that whatever the factors are that impact student performance, per-pupil spending is not among them. Were there any sort of linkage, most black students would outperform a sizable plurality of white students, based upon nationwide differences in education spending between urban and rural areas.

In every instance where increased per-pupil spending has been mandated, particularly by judicial fiat, there has been no observable increase in student performance. Whether it's been the Kansas City, Missouri school system or New Jersey's Abbott Districts, no improvement in educational outcomes has manifested itself. But even if such improvements were evident, it still seems that educators have no idea how much improvement might accrue from a specific increase in expenditures. Legislators and school administrators also seem to have no idea of where best to deploy education dollars. Do we stand to reap our greatest reward by spending on new textbooks or new buildings, better trained teachers or more competent principals? Are we best served by spending monies on universal pre-school programs, K-8 education or on more academic rigor in high schools?

To be sure, these are not merely theoretical concerns, as, at least for African Americans, the opportunity to receive a high-quality education is the last civil right yet to be won. The fact that the educationistas do not have good answers to these questions undercuts the Left’s arguments for unchecked increased in education spending.