It was interesting that only the DFL speakers showed up... Apparently the invited Republicans had something more important going on, or they were scared to set foot in a school given their current obsession with no increase in State taxes. One of the DFL speakers did ask for a show of hands of people who thought the gap should be closed with taxes only, cuts only, or a combination. One voted for taxes only, and everyone else including myself voted for a blend.
This linked presentation that was presented by Mary Cecconi from Parents United was fairly interesting. (especially slide 11) Also, she noted that this was based on the traditional Consumer Price Index, not the higher Implicit Price Deflator Index. If this chart is correct, it does look like the state and it's tax payers are falling down on the job.
2011 Legislative Kick-Off Realities, Rumors and Reactions
Especially when you look at pg 2 of this linked document that shows a huge growth in the number of local referendums that had to be passed to make up for the shortfall. Which of course means that schools in poor neighborhoods are less likely to pass the referendum to make up the difference. And if they do, it is at a higher tax rate because their properties are typical not worth as much.
A History of School Excess Operating Referendum Levy
This was especially scary when I wandered across some graphs that showed how many more kids we have that are classified as poor, non-English speaking and/or Special Ed... These all drive huge extra costs and are all way up from just 10 yrs ago. (unfortunately I lost the web pg address, oops)
The only thing that did frustrate me is that the Speakers and Mary seemed to truly believe that we had cut and tried everything, and that effectiveness and efficiency gains were unlikely. Which seemed odd since a few came to me as I sat there:
- Terminate the worst ~3-5% of Teachers (Supt and Principal's choice with no tenure constraints)
- Reduce the number of Districts from 360+ down to ~100.
- Convert the pensions to self directed 401k's.
- Pool more purchases across districts, or buy at the state level. (ie volume discounts)
MN Miracle Info
MN School Finance Guide
E-12 Education Finance
Legislative Education Links
23 comments:
When I saw the title, MN School Funding, my eyes immediately glazed over. But I made myself read it and, once again, your writing is quite clear and persuasive. When I clicked over to Parents United sight I didn't see the slide show. I'll probable go back, as it looked like there was other interestiing info.
Your ideas for increased for increased efficiencies seem reasonable, too, even terminating a few teachers. I think reducing number of school districts and pooling more purchases are your best suggestions. The district in which I live does community ed. with a couple of neighboring districts. I think there are some barriers to some types of pooling resources. I sort of remember the school board of my smallish district bringing up the idea of sharing a superindentent and saying it wasn't feasible.
I like to take a couple of facts, smack them together and see if I can make fire. Fact 1. Most school districts project spending increases of 8% per year and revenue increases at 2% per year. Fact 2: The amount of money spent is either irrelevant or NEGATIVELY correlated with student achievement. FIRE: If schools spent as much time trying to improve performance on the budget they had rather than chasing more dollars, they could make everybody happy. Except for the educrats who would actually have to produce results and set priorities.
Here's another: Fact 1: There is 9% more money in the revenue stream this year than last. Fact 2: You don't need to increase taxes to be able to spend 9% more than you did last year. Fact 3: State spending shouldn't be increasing 9% per year, that's unsustainable.
J. Ewing
FYI, the presentation links are under the paragraphs.
From what I understand,the biggest increases are in the Health and Human Services budgets. And at the rate it is going based on slide 5 of the Rumors presentation, it will devour the budget someday.
Maybe we will have to take up the old American Indian custom where the old and infirm walked out into the wilderness... (just joking) I love my Parents just as much as you do yours.
And as usual, I suspect that your "Fact 2: The amount of money spent is either irrelevant or NEGATIVELY correlated with student achievement." is terribly incorrect. You always seem to make the assumption that the Student starting points, capabilities and Parents are irrelevant in what education costs should be...
Whereas I see them as the MAIN driver of cost. So of course poor neighborhoods are expensive with bad results. These public schools need Social Workers, Drug Counselors, Psychiatrists, lots of Security, etc... Which have nothing to do with actually Teaching.
Then they have to try to break the student's bad behaviors and overcome any student capability issues. The causality issue that poor people may be poor due to their beliefs, addictions, academic capabilities, etc. (ie genetics/beliefs may factor in and take a lot to overcome)
However I do agree that 9% is not sustainable when the CPI is <3%. So government/society better become more effective/efficient or we will be in big trouble.
By the way, checkout slide 8 in the Rumors presn, according to this our cost of govt has actually gone down.
Interesting post. Thanks for attending this forum--I admire and appreciate that you actively gather and interpret data. I need to dig into some of your links, but the historical info on referenda is especially sobering. Also the skyrocketing rate of poverty.
It's pretty disappointing that the representation was only from the Dems.
@J--"Fact 2: The amount of money spent is either irrelevant or NEGATIVELY correlated with student achievement."
Please refresh on cum hoc ergo propter hoc (aka, correlation does not imply causation), and get back to us with data that support your conclusions.
--Annie
John,
Thanks for attending and reporting on this meeting.
"Whereas I see them as the MAIN driver of cost. So of course poor neighborhoods are expensive with bad results." How does this statement explain the lower cost and higher performance that is happening in NY (Harlem) by Geoffrey Canada? I believe that your statement above is wrong and there is actual facts in "Waiting for Superman" that groups are working in poor neighborhoods at less cost and better performance than current public schools.
Yes, those groups are using reformed education models to success. Therefore, these changed models work and cost less than the current system.
Now, The question is why are these reformed models not being used more in America? In my opinion, the largest WALL to these changes are the teachers Unions (not the teachers). Another question, Why do most parents, taxpayers, Legislators and educator not REQUIRE better performance and accountibility of public schools?
Anyone have some thoughts?
Just a few thoughts John,
1) I love your ideas of 401K, less districts, get rid of bad teachers, but they aren't going to happen with unions holding the power they do over our school boards and legislatures.
2) If the state wanted "more taxes and less spending" which I call the "pay more and get less option" they would have elected Democrats last year. But they didn't. Democrats were annihilated in the election telling me that people don't think we are under-taxed. Republicans are the majority for the first time in 40 years and Dayton won by .04% even though he outspent Emmer 7 to 1. And most people who want more taxes just want to tax somebody else like the rich who will either leave the state or pass the cost off to us.
3) I want to keep up the reform rather than just throwing money at it. It looks like Alternative Teacher Licenses will go through and the January 15 deadline and repeal will go down also. I hope Republicans tackle other mandates as well as tenure. Hopefully that will take some power away from the unions and allow more flexibility for the locals.
Numbers Guy,
Do you have any links that explain what you believe the relative costs of the HCZ and NYC school are? And what is included?
Here is why I ask... According to my understanding from reading "Whatever It Takes", the HCZ system begins before the child is born, includes mandatory Parent education, mandatory Early childhood education, and a continued commitment by the student and parents all through the school years. (ie see pipeline below) And if they start slipping up, the students can be expelled back to the Public schools.
Also, Geoffrey's belief is that he needs at least 60% of the community families involved to ensure the kids have community support when they are not in school. Therefore there is a lot of Social Worker support to get and keep people engaged.
That is why I am curious what the details are behind. "How does this statement explain the lower cost and higher performance that is happening in NY (Harlem) by Geoffrey Canada?"
As for the obvious... HCZ Performance will be better and "School" Cost will be less because only engaged and hard working Parents/Students graduate from the program/pipeline. Not sure where all the Social Worker, Parent Ed, and Pre K costs show up...
NYC school Performance will be worse and Cost will be more since they end up with all the Unlucky students. (ie those with deadbeat parents or other serious problems) Besides still having the bad Teachers and Bureaucracy that the Unions and Bureaucrats protect.
HCZ Pipeline
Whatever it Takes Review
HCZ Project
HCZ Wiki
Imagine a social program on steroids that is run by a non-profit organization. I would think that might give the far Right folks the willies... Especially those that don't believe in Parent and Early Childhood Education in the first place...
By the way, I think it is great!!! Almost as good as licenses and reversible sterilization...(hahaha) 281 Exposed Universal Pre K
A reminder it still does not help us with that little problem of the unlucky Kids that have Deadbeat parents. Those costs still stay with the Public schools, welfare and prisons.
For those who have not seen my data driven guesstimated model before.G2A Why Pay More?
Now imagine what happens as the "Lucky Kids" leave a district... And leave only the "Unlucky kids" to cover the overhead... Also as the percentage of Unlucky kids rises the class rooms would get harder to control... Wouldn't they?
"And as usual, I suspect that your 'Fact 2: The amount of money spent is either irrelevant or NEGATIVELY correlated with student achievement.' is terribly incorrect."
Sorry, but it IS a fact and I can prove it. Even your own experience should tell you it is true. We spend twice as much per pupil in Minneapolis as we do in some suburban white schools, yet we graduate only about half the percentage, and Mpls kids score only about half as well on standardized tests. "More poverty and Unlucky Kids," you say, but the state aid formula which produces that doubled spending FULLY compensates for poverty, non-English-speaking, etc. Right? And if it doesn't, then academic performance is not driven by the amount of money spent, thus proving my point. Yet, the only thing we ever hear about how to improve education is we have to "invest" more money in it. Balderdash.
"You get what you measure" is a pretty old adage. If you want to improve academic performance you need to measure and reward academic performance. If you want improvement, you measure and reward improvement, NOT continued failure. It's pretty simple, but as others have pointed out, it's not in the best interests of the unions.
I never said that the cost of education was irrelevant to the "starting points" or the various "disadvantages" that kids bring to school with them. I merely state that who instructs the child, and how, makes a vast difference in the result, and that the cost will generally be vastly different (and lower) than the nearby public school. The "causation vs correlation" is the reverse of what politicians say it is. Money doesn't drive results, results drive the cost.
J. Ewing
I agree, the data has proven that 2X surburban funding will not enable typical inner city schools to meet the results achieved in the outer suburb schools. Beyond this, I am not sure if anything is certain.
The magic number to implement the HCZ birth to college model in Minneapolis may be 3X, 5X, 10X... Now are we willing to pay that?
And are we willing to force deadbeat parents and uneducated parents to become caring, engaged and informed parents? Can we even do it? (ie boarding schools for kids w/ poor parents) Or is this too much "Government/Society Control"?
You know I agree there is room for improvement in the Public sector.. I'm just not out claim them as the sole contributor and root cause. Most of the Teachers I know are organized, caring and capable.
Choice by itself will not fix the whole problem, the kids in the worst situations are still left out in the cold.
My eyes glaze over when I look at all these numbers, either side. They just don't tell the story. When I buy a car, I want to know how much for my car, not the dealership's totals run various ways.
You take class size x avg expenditure, subtract the claimed 15-20% non-payroll, subtract teacher and benefits, a little more for "Gen & Admin" - typically well under 10% in private sector - and you're still staring at a staggering figure, money not going into the classroom.
Another issue is that an increasing portion of school budgets appears to be welfare, not education spending. We need to separate this out before doing further comparisons.
R-Five cites the vast confusion over numbers, and I'll agree. That's why I boil the data down and extract the information. Doing that for cost versus performance tells me that, right now, today, we could have essentially double the academic performance in the inner city schools that we have today, for the same cost. There are schools that do it; we know it can be done. We don't have to delve into complexities like what the parent or parents do or have or have not done. We just need to make the worst schools more like the best ones, whatever that is and I think we have a pretty good idea what those things are. But first, of course, we have to set aside the myths and political roadblocks that have crippled our childrens' futures for too long.
The biggest myth of all is that the amount of funding has something to do with academic outcomes and that our public schools would improve if we would just throw more money down that rathole. Time to end that excuse. You get what you measure. If you measure how much money is spent, then you are going to get more money spent. If you want kids to succeed, you have to measure and reward THAT with additional funding to FOLLOW, IF necessary.
J. Ewing
J,
Annie said it most memorably... If a bit confusingly...
"Please refresh on cum hoc ergo propter hoc (aka, correlation does not imply causation), and get back to us with data that support your conclusions."
I say it more simply...
"Enough talking and claiming, show us the data, assumptions and analysis..."
I think closing the achievemnt gap must be approached from a variety of angles. The biggest factor will have to be highly skilled, highly dedicated teachers and somehow slightly increasing and stretching the dollars we spend. Schools should negotiate a longer school year for teacher salary increases. Many charter school teachers already work more days, teachers in traditional school districts could as well. I think with creative scheduling the school day itself could be lengthened, without requiring teachers to (officially) put in more than 40 hours/wk.
The community could do more as well. My church partners with a neighboring urban school and provides 55 volunteers who meet with their mentees once/wk. We also raised over $1000 from a recent Sunday's offering for Support our Schools, a St. Paul organization whose mission is fostering school community partnerships and building leadership capacity.
I believe that some/most of the $ cut from school budgets over recent years should be restored, but beyond that I don't think pouring lots of additional dollars into our current schools would have that of great impact. I do support Gov. Dayton's 7 point plan for achieving excelllence, which will cost some $, too.
I moved this from the Fed CB string.
"...show us the data..."
I'm sorry but I don't have the ability to post the chart, so let's leave this "as an exercise for the student." Here's what you have to do. Go to the State Department of Education website and download the data on total per-pupil spending for every school district in the state. It's a little difficult to find. Then download the data on student achievement – the basic skills tests for reading and math. Make sure that you use the sum of the raw scores rather than the "normalized" numbers so that you can see the full variability of the data. The normalized numbers hide the variability by assuming things such as that all fourth graders read at a fourth grade level and that a certain percentage of each class will excel. That isn't the reality and never was.
Then you have to go through and matchup, district by district, the spending and achievement numbers, and throw out a few outliers – districts where the numbers are "off the charts" or should be. Plot the remaining data, performance on the y-axis and expenditures on the X, for some 360 districts, and calculate a linear regression line through the reading and math sets.
You will find exactly what I have described. There is a very wide variation in the results obtained for a given amount of spending such that, at roughly the state average, performance varies by almost 2 to 1. And though this variability indicates that the amount of spending is essentially irrelevant to student achievement, the trendlines are clearly indicating a NEGATIVE correlation.
Notice I have said that these negative results are a correlation. I am not claiming that higher spending CAUSES poorer results, but since politicians and educrats continually insist that more spending causes BETTER results I don't think I am out of line to suggest we should CUT spending to improve student achievement! A more reasonable proposition would be to suggest that schools not get another nickel until they demonstrate significant and ongoing improvement in student achievement results. I would go further and demand that schools who fail to make such improvements should be reconstituted or voucherized out of existence.
J. Ewing
Where in this model do you factor in the typical starting point, capability, parent support level, community statistics, etc of the school's student body?
It will be hard to draw any useful conclusions without normalizing for these. I think all we will see is that it is more expensive and less successful to teach unlucky kids, and less expensive and more succesful to teach lucky kids... Which makes sense to me.
If you can not prove it with data... Let's try expalining it with logic... You say Educrats say more money will give better results. Whereas I hear them saying that with more money they can provide each student more individualized training, support, services, etc, which will improve the results. Intuitively this makes sense to me.
Now explain to me your rationale for believing that less money could improve results?
I assume that 90-95% of the Teachers are actually pretty competent and dedicated to helping the kids learn and succeed. Maybe not as energetic or motivated as they could be, but overall they do okay.
If this is true, where do you see the achievement gains coming from? How are the Public schools wasting the money? Other than not employing that 10%, how is choice going to achieve more bang for our buck? (including the unlucky kids)
You must have some thoughts on this.
And please do not go off on the high level "competition will work miracles" discussion. That never goes anywhere since it is so philosopical in nature.
Exasperating, J. "I don't think I am out of line to suggest we should CUT spending to improve student achievement"
Your logic honestly is pretty absurd. It's like saying--hey folks, here's data that shows some people who exercise and eat well are often still overweight, so logically (in your world), we should just close the health clubs and all eat McDonalds. If we can't consistently produce 16 BMI on every citizen, let's just throw in the towel. As John points out, there are 1,000,000 variables, and you saying they don't matter doesn't make it so.
And your "not another nickel" refrain? As often as you've said it, I still don't even know what you mean. Do you seriously think we should just zero out all schools until they magically--without any funding whatsoever for instruction, curriculum, bricks & mortar--produce the results you decree?
Here's a more sensible approach, which relies not only on budgets, but also on best practices and community cooperation:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/coming-together-to-give-schools-a-boost/?hp
--Annie
From Annie
Exasperating, J. "I don't think I am out of line to suggest we should CUT spending to improve student achievement"
Your logic honestly is pretty absurd. It's like saying--hey folks, here's data that shows some people who exercise and eat well are often still overweight, so logically (in your world), we should just close the health clubs and all eat McDonalds. If we can't consistently produce 16 BMI on every citizen, let's just throw in the towel. As John points out, there are 1,000,000 variables, and you saying they don't matter doesn't make it so.
And your "not another nickel" refrain? As often as you've said it, I still don't even know what you mean. Do you seriously think we should just zero out all schools until they magically--without any funding whatsoever for instruction, curriculum, bricks & mortar--produce the results you decree?
Here's a more sensible approach, which relies not only on budgets, but also on best practices and community cooperation:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/coming-together-to-give-schools-a-boost/?hp
--Annie
NY Times Schools a Boost
I am not sure why the links are giving Blogspot a headache lately... And it is kind of hard to complain about a free service... Keep putting them in and I'll take care of them.
Or study up on your html skills.
W3Schools Links
Use HTML syntax format... Simple and works everywhere so far except Typepad...
"And your "not another nickel" refrain? As often as you've said it, I still don't even know what you mean." - Annie
Ah. I see the confusion. What I mean is that we should stop simply spending MORE on education than we now do, and end the constant excuse-making that they need more money to improve. Year after year we pour more money into education, in real dollar terms, and academic results NEVER improve because of it. It's because we are measuring the wrong things. We want to simply measure the amount of money spent and claim that that is going to improve education, but as you have pointed out the only way to improve education is to deliberately measure that improvement and to do things which create it. If we always give the public schools more money, with zero accountability, they will always have zero incentive to improve.
The notion of cutting funding for schools to gain improvement derives from the chart, which shows that educational attainment goes DOWN when spending goes UP. It's a mathematical fact. It is also a deliberate jibe at those who blindly insist that spending more money creates academic attainment. There is a rational argument, as well. We know for a fact that districts with high costs spend a smaller portion of their budget in the classroom and tend to have poor academic results. There was tremendous opposition to Gov. Pawlenty's proposal to require 70% of the budget be spent in the classroom, mostly from districts spending less than 60%, which seems ridiculous. We also know that school districts, just like legislators, will not prioritize their spending so long as they have the option of raising taxes. Telling them that they must raise performance BEFORE getting a revenue increase, similar to execution at dawn, would tend to focus their minds.
J Ewing
"Where in this model do you factor in the typical starting point, capability, parent support level, community statistics, etc of the school's student body?" -- John
I don't. But the State school aid formula DOES. Therefore, any deviation from the state constitutional requirement for "a general and uniform system of public schools" is because the amount of money spent is NOT, I repeat NOT, predictive of educational attainment. Some money is necessary, of course. But there is absolutely no reason to believe that pouring more money into our worst schools will improve results UNLESS many other things are changed, and we know enough now to be able to say that those changes do not necessarily cost more money.
We know that some schools do better with "unlucky" kids, sometimes far better, than others. Instead of giving these failing schools more money to continue to fail, why not give them an ultimatum to improve or die? Why should children continue to be held hostage in such a destructive environment?
J. Ewing
The punish schools that don't perform methodology of No Child Left Behind worked for me... But man the Public School folks kicked and screamed, instead of taking action... I hope they don't throw the baby out with the bath water if they ever get around to "so called improving" it...
Some past post for new readers...
G2A RAS Improvement
G2A No More NCLB?
G2A High Stds Not Optional
G2A Sir Class is Too Hard
G2A NCLB and Teach to the Test
G2A Deadbeat Parents
I don't think vouchers for failing school parents is the perfect approach in general, but I do think it is a perfect remedy for individual kids trapped in failing schools because it is an immediate end to the abuse. To me it is essential that we "save the children" rather than "save the system." To some extent it's a hardship because the alternative schools won't be in place for months if not years, which is why I favor "reconstituting" a failed school instead. Something dramatic happens when you walk in and fire every teacher and all the staff, then hire back only "good teachers" and set high expectations.
J.
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