For more evidence of racial bias, look no further than school funding The Hill
In Most States, Poorest School Districts Get Less Funding US News
Why White School Districts Have So Much More Money NPR
Jerry and I have been arguing about school funding over G2A The Poor Kids are Screwed :-( , so the above seemed timely.
If you did not know there is a 137 page guide to explain MN school funding. It can be found on this MN House Education Research page.
Since MN is a Liberal state, the funding formula tries to compensate based on student demographic and community factors. However even with this, the wealthy communities can always pass referendums to give their children more. Not necessarily a bad thing, except that as usual the rich kids get more and the poor kids get less..
Now if a poor kid lives in a conservative state, it can be much worse.
Now we know the answer to helping the Unlucky Kids.
In Most States, Poorest School Districts Get Less Funding US News
Why White School Districts Have So Much More Money NPR
Jerry and I have been arguing about school funding over G2A The Poor Kids are Screwed :-( , so the above seemed timely.
If you did not know there is a 137 page guide to explain MN school funding. It can be found on this MN House Education Research page.
Since MN is a Liberal state, the funding formula tries to compensate based on student demographic and community factors. However even with this, the wealthy communities can always pass referendums to give their children more. Not necessarily a bad thing, except that as usual the rich kids get more and the poor kids get less..
Now if a poor kid lives in a conservative state, it can be much worse.
For example, in St. Louis County (Mo.) the school districts with the highest proportion of Black students - Jennings and Riverview - take in less than half the money per student compared to nearby Brentwood, which generated more than $21,000 per student in 2017-18.The sad irony then is that the conservatives will blame the schools for not teaching as well in the poor communities while giving them half the money to teach very challenging students and families. (ie unlucky kids)
Now we know the answer to helping the Unlucky Kids.
"In the short term, states can account for current spending levels when reducing education budgets. While across-the-board cuts that take the same amount of state funding away from all districts might sound fair, a better approach would be to cut from high-spending districts first and only then make broader adjustments after things have been leveled so existing inequities aren't exacerbated or ignored.
Long term, more substantive school finance reforms are needed and the best solution is to untether the relationship between school funding and zip codes. Ideally, local property wealth should play no role in determining school funding levels. Dollars instead should be pooled at the state level and allocated transparently based on enrollment and student needs." The HillUnfortunately many folks are concerned about only their children and their schools. :-( Which of course is very shortsighted given how much children who fail academically will cost us all over time. (ie prison, welfare, lost productivity gains, lost tax revenues, etc)
51 comments:
As usual, your assumption doesn't seem to be matched by reality. The State DOE publishes information on school funding per pupil, and the inner cities consistently spend almost twice the state average, thanks to that generous state aid formula. Which, by the way, is incomprehensible. Yes, suburban districts have levy income (and urban districts more), but it is limited by the State, and heavily residential areas produce less revenue. It's also based on per pupil, not millage, which is a mistake.
I will agree with your experts this far: The current school funding formula for "compensatory funding" (to account for demographics) is not working. The State should pick up full funding at the "state average," whatever that is, (and without the endless regulations on how it is spent) and everything else should be by individual request from the school, WITH accountability for improving academic results.
Please provide that source if you do not like mine.
Please prove that Mpls spends twice as much per student as Wayzata.
Using the MDE website, I was unable to find the helpful data summary that I charted a few years back, showing exactly what I have said, that some districts spend twice the state average and achieve poorer academic results (by about 20%). That chart also shows that, for schools with the state average expenditure, academic achievement varies almost 2:1. I gave up looking, but I think the MDE figured out that they were giving away information that they did not want known. So, the best I can do is look at this overall analysis. Fiscal Year 2019 - Summary Statistics Expenditures per ADM Percentiles
What this chart says to me is that total per-ADM expenditures for all districts run from about $9000 to over $19000. That's certainly 2:1. The average is about 12k. And notice that it is ADM-- Average Daily Membership-- not "per pupil." Elementary kids only count as 1/2 an ADM.
Well this MDE report says
MPLS $/ADM:$15,387
Wayzata $/ADM: $12,289
Definitely no 2 times here.
I will have to look into it further. I wonder if these are just the state dollars?
Now let's think about their demographics.
Category (Mpls) {Wayzata}
English learner: (19.0%) {3.8%}
Special Educat: (17.3%) {9.3%}
Free/Red Lunch: (55.4%) {10.7%}
Homeless Kids: (3.2%) {0.2%}
Mpls gets ~25% more (~$3,000) to try to help the poor, immigrant and disabled...
Here are numbers that sound closer:
MPLS:$654M/35800 students = $18324/student
WAYZ:$194M/12700 students = $15275/student
MPLS gets 20% (~$3,000) more...
Then compare that to Blake at $30,000+...
And pretty much no unlucky kids
So why would I make that comparison? Parents who can afford a better education get one, and parents who cannot get a crappy education for about $19,000 of somebody else's money. Parents who can afford a new home can choose to move to a place with "better schools" (a very important factor in real estate) and those that cannot are stuck with no choice except what the local public school deigns to provide. Now, I am all for free markets, but the whole concept of a free public education being the "great leveler" of opportunity (and preparation for citizenship) has been turned on its head by the government-run monopoly. The rich get better and the poor get less.
Now, you are partly correct, and I have always said that educating the disadvantaged (you call them unlucky) should cost more than average. But the current public school finance system DOES spend more on the (supposedly) disadvantaged kids, yet they do substantially WORSE in measures of academic achievement. That difference, in many schools, is simply unacceptable, yet we condemn lots of kids to it, year after year, always with the excuse that it's the parents' fault for being poor, or black.
Now if you want to correct that, you have to establish what it should cost to educate each child, or some average that allows all to learn up to some standard that others will exceed. The ONLY way I can imagine that is if competition is introduced into this "marketplace" and every parent can have similar choices to what currently only the middle/upper economic strata have. And I want the public school systems to be allowed to compete fairly, but of course they will need a lot of local autonomy to do that. The current school finance system makes that impossible.
I make the comparison because you like to blame the schools and refuse to acknowledge their reality...
Imagine if the challenging district only gets $3,000 more (~20%) with all those extra special education, security, language, etc expenses in MN, a liberal state...
Just imagine how underfunded similar schools are in the "Conservative" states.
Then we wondered why the unlucky kids are screwed.
And yet in those conservative states the "gap" is much smaller between black and white students. (And no, black scores are actually higher, not just lower for whites) You are thinking that more money equals better results, and it simply is not true. Since academic achievement varies by almost 2:1 for the same per-pupil expenditure, in MN, there must be a difference in HOW the money is spent.
Now if you want to say that we need to spend more money on the disadvantaged kids, even if it more than the premium we now provide, BUT that it will be directed to programs that actually and measurably improve achievement, I'm all for it. If you are going to say there is nothing the schools can do for "those kids," then I say cut out all the compensatory funding, and the kids are screwed for sure.
Sources please..
And please remember to account for the difference in number of immigrants in those states / schools.
You need a source to know that the gap in MN is the largest in the country? That would make the gap in every other state lower. Shouldn't be too hard to find one from that list. But as usual you miss the point. That being that in MN, black students achieve at 18% and whites at 75%, and it doesn't matter how much we spend, or don't spend, that is simply unacceptable. If these disadvantaged kids and their parents cannot fix this on their own, which I contend they would if they could, how are you going to make the schools do so?
You and your obsession with race...
Fed Report
"These gaps are not only racial; low-income white students significantly trail higher-income white students across Minnesota.
Variation in outcome gaps across schools also exist within the charter school system and across schools within traditional public school districts.
Minnesota has successfully reduced variation in education inputs, such as per capita expenditures across districts and class sizes across schools. However, achievement gaps across race and socioeconomic status have persisted for decades."
This is all about poverty, haves and have nots...
By the way, here is an excellent tool that seems to show that MN scores for Blacks and Whites are higher than most other states.
I am not obsessed with race, I merely use that because that is the number we have. If poverty is the determining factor and not race, which we would hope would be the case, then improving educational outcomes for poor black kids ALSO boosts educational outcomes for poor white kids, and that is a good thing, yes?
And once again you are measuring the wrong thing. If black students in MN are doing better than the national average (still 6 points behind Mississippi in improvement) but they are still 50 percentage points behind white students, then something is radically wrong with how the schools educate black OR poor students. Whatever is being done, regardless of "inputs," it has not made much of a dent in that gap. Yet we know the schools can make a difference because there are schools that DO make a difference, even without the extraordinary social programs of places like HCZ. So why the opposition of teachers' unions and public school leaders to charter schools?
Actually the FED report gives many numbers.
Many people resist charters because they play by different rules.
Remember the KIPP Contract that binds parent(s) to many commitments and actions.
So, your complaint is that the public schools don't have any rules or reasonable expectations on the kids? Why not? Doesn't that sound to you like a big part of the problem? I would be perfectly happy for some version of the KIPP contract to be a part of the public school policy. When I was younger, it was stated simply as "if you're not here to learn, then you should leave so everybody else can. If you are, we will help you as much as needed."
Jerry,
You flip flop like a fish...
The contract is in large part to hold the parent(s) accountable and gradable... And if the parent(s) or kid(s) screw up they can be let go...
Concepts that you have said are unacceptable in status quo public shools for as long as we have been discussing this topic.
Apparently Kicking them out is NOT an Option
What happens if the student is expelled?
Length of Expulsion: Expulsion means that the student is not allowed to go to the school for up to 12 months. The school board can expel the student for less than 12 months, but it is illegal for a student to be expelled for more than 12 months. If a gun or firearm is brought to school, a school can expel for at least 12 months.
Alternative Education: Schools still have to educate expelled students. Expelled students have a right to get “alternative educational services.” This may be things like enrollment in an Alternative Learning Center (ALC) or schooling at home that is supervised by a teacher. The services must be designed to make sure that the student keeps making progress towards graduation and to prepare the student for coming back to the school after the expulsion is over.
Enrolling in Other Districts: If a student has been expelled they are not automatically stopped from going to school in a different school district. The school district that expelled them cannot expel them from other districts. A different school district can only keep an expelled student from enrolling through a procedure called exclusion. Exclusion requires notice and a hearing much like the requirements for expulsion talked about above in this fact sheet. Exclusion can’t last past the end of the school year.
And I am pretty sure parent(s) not:
- attending conferences
- ensuring homework is complete
- ensuring child is fed, clean, etc
- ensuring kids are at school
- etc
Are not reasons more suspension or expulsion...
Where as it is in many privates and charters.
"'The pendulum of the mind oscillates between sense and nonsense, not between right and wrong.' — Carl Gustav Jung"
Oh, so you favor a one-sided accountability? I never saw that before. If parents are to do all those very sensible things as part of a "contract" (which should be at least implicit in a public school, explicit in the private) then the school must deliver on ITS part of the contract, and actually educate the child. And if the child is learning without the parents doing every one of those arbitrary things, and not being monitored by the public school to insure compliance) then this one-sided "accountability" doesn't matter.
Notice that when kids go to the alternative learning center they and their parents sign a contract. Gee, imagine that.
Do you ever actually read the sources?
You could learn SO MUCH if you opened your mind. :-)
What baffles me is how you can read those sources and come to a "conclusion" that aligns with your pre-formed opinion, yet defies not only a clear reading of it, but of common sense as well. I read most of them, but it seems obvious you are only posting them to convince yourself.
OK, let's look at the KIPP contract, /again/. Notice two things: the parents commit to those common sense things that most any parent would do in exchange for a better educational /opportunity/ for their child, and the SCHOOL commits to fully educate the child. Isn't that exactly what I just said?
No, you said this silliness...
"Oh, so you favor a one-sided accountability?"
What's silly about it? You have continually demanded that parents be "held accountable" and resisted every attempt to define how schools might better discharge /their/ fundamental responsibility. You have made parents the sole reason why schools (and more importantly, kids) fail. How is that not a one-sided accountability?
Do you actually believe anything you write?
"You have made parents the sole reason why schools (and more importantly, kids) fail."
My list has not changed much since 2011.
You are the single flaw person...
Very good. I am of course referring to your far more recent lists, of ten points whereby parents are solely responsible for their kids' failures in school. I merely point out that the "single flaw" whereby a child is not receiving a good education is that the school system is not GIVING them a good education, as they are chartered and tasked to do.
If you want to fall back to your far more lengthy list, I'm sure "school funding flaws" is in there. And then we can disagree about that small piece. Let me try again. You acknowledge that the State aid formula supposedly compensates for demographic barriers to learning. It does not, therefore that is THE major flaw in school funding, is it not? And the second is believing that better funding alone produces better results.
Actually 1, 2 & 3 are about public policy problems.
Never have I even implied that "parents are solely responsible for their kids' failures in school."
I think the number I have used is 60%... For better or worse, most apples do not fall too far from the tree... Unless someone catches the apple and helps it move.
OK, 1 and 2 are public policy, and you want to include the rest of them AS public policy. It's also a bit of bootstrapping to assume that we are doing this-- reducing poverty-- because that will help children learn better and ESCAPE poverty. A perfectly good motivation, if I thought it would work. But it's pushing on a very long string to suggest that poverty reduction, were it even possible, would result in educational progress when it is obvious that more direct interventions are not only possible, but highly likely if the proper public /education/ policies are put in place. I say take that direct and easy route. If you /also/ want to cure poverty, talk to LBJ; he had it all figured out.
Yes I do.
1. I want babies planned for, wanted and prepared for.
2. I want the social and educational systems improved and held accountable.
3. I want adult(s) improved and held accountable for being good to great parent(s).
Children have the Right to these simple things. Seems pretty simple to me...
Simple in concept, impossible in practice. You can't always get what you want. The best you can do is to, through government, control those things that can reasonably be controlled, like the public school system. You can make great changes to the welfare system, as a separate issue, but we've tried that for 50 years and look where we are. Whole lot of inertia built into it.
Actually my steps are pretty simple to enforce...
Do you hear yourself? "ENFORCE" has the word "force" in it, doesn't it? So how are you going to "enforce" millions of people to not have sex? How will you force them to feed their children if they don't have food? Who gets to set the standard for "good to great parents? What "improvements" do you want in the social and educational systems and how will you cause them to occur. VERY simple, conceptually, to want these things. Reality is a bit more difficult, and "we" have been trying for decades.
You are the one who believes in abstinence as a viable birth control method. I believe in thorough knowledge and readily available / free Long Acting Reversible Contraception.
I am not changing the welfare system significantly where as you want to blow it up with something else...
KIPP provided a good starting point for grading Parent(s). I am sure HCZ has even more since they start at birth.
Hopefully we can weaken the Unions and implement real improvement.
Weaken or eliminate the Public Employee Unions. Their primary purpose is to ensure the senior employees make the most money, receive the best positions and are secure in their employment. These goals are NOT aligned with cost effectively getting the most help to the people who need it. Pay for performance, not years and degrees.
Set hard knowledge attainment and/or poverty reduction targets that the bureaucracy managers must hit, and replace them if they don't. No more of these employment contracts where Superintendents get huge buy out clauses when they fail. Pay for performance, not degrees.
Make Long Acting Reversible Contraception and the Morning After Pill free and readily available for all. NO baby should be born unless the Baby Maker(s) are 100% wanting the child and feel prepared to care for it. (ie committed to being responsible capable Parents)
If a proven irresponsible Baby Maker who is on welfare (ie Angel Adams) gets pregnant. She should be forced to abort or give the Baby up for adoption. And if this happens more than once, her tubes should be tied.
The welfare payments and service should be set up to make recipients work, learn, mature and improve their self sufficiency.
The male Baby Makers must bear the consequences of their behavior. The female Baby Maker must name the Father so the State can ensure the required child support is paid. The cost may be higher than the money received, but the "free loading Baby Daddy" behavior must be dissuaded.
The State must ensure that Baby Makers and the Babies receive training, care, etc until they become a functional family. (ie Parents and Kids) This includes mandatory Parenting classes, Early Childhood Education, Inexpensive quality childcare, etc. Many of the Baby Makers are in this position because their role models were Baby Makers (ie not Parents). Someone has to train them what it means to be a Parent.
Let's just take the first one, the one that most directly affects education. How do you want to achieve this? Do you think the DFL legislature is going to outlaw the MEA or AFT? Nonsense. What you CAN do is to permit another education system, using state funding, that can operate a non-union school. Once enough students take their funding there, the remaining union schools will lose some of their legislative clout, financing, and ability to rig the system to the benefit of the adults and not the children. Of course, we could get the Janus decision enforced here. That would be a start, and immediate.
I believe the science, which says abstinence IS a reliable method of birth control, when used. Considering the very low cost of birth control now, and the obvious knowledge of people who are having sex, regardless of where learned, I don't see how your solution to unwanted pregnancies is the right one. Perhaps your solution would help in one way, because right now over half of all black pregnancies end in abortion. That is "widely available birth control" like Margaret Sanger wanted.
Charters and Janus are good starts.
Neither Quality Sex education nor Birth control are easily available enough.
Or we would have fewer unplanned pregnancies and abortions.
As you said...
"So how are you going to "enforce" millions of people to not have sex?"
And yet you resist the simple solution.
Maybe you like your bare foot and pregnant?
Interesting source. Why do you suppose it has not been universally rolled out? And did you notice that all these women were volunteers, whom we assume would act differently than the norm, with or without the contraceptive service? And I didn't see "quality sex education" anywhere in this prescription.
We've sort of strayed from the topic, again. If the problems of education are in the education system (and the flaws in its funding), then we need to address the children who are already born, regardless of their provenance. The biggest flaw in funding is assuming that more funding equals better results.
Bare foot and pregnant it is...
So, you have nothing to add to the debate except willful misunderstanding and ad hominem?
Not really... You are obsessed with only one aspect of what keeps poor people poor.
Not much to discuss that we have not already covered dozens of times before.
Well, one can hope for a convincing argument that would change that, but /I/ have not seen one. My "obsession" is based on the entire premise of universal public education as the great "leveler" of opportunity in this country. It is even enshrined in the MN Constitution. The State government is even being sued in court, not for not providing universal free contraception, but for failing to provide an adequate education to every child. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending, they have a good chance to prevail on the merits.
Your solution doesn't do much for the kids already born, and your general solution is to prevent them from being born at all.
You will believe as you will.
Well, until somebody offers a convincing argument to the contrary, it is fairly easy, especially when I believe some fundamental truths, such as that the fundamental, stated purpose of universal public education is to create equal opportunity.
The State government IS being sued in court for educational equality. They are not being sued for not providing universal free contraception. You don't want kids to be born to poor (in either sense of the word) parents. Tell me why I should not believe any of these things???
Jerry,
As noted many times, you simply get an idea in your head and can not consider other concepts.
It is unfortunate.
And where do you suppose I get such "ideas"? Could it be they are IOTTMCO? Or backed by solid science or known fact? Sure, I can imagine "other concepts." I read a lot of science fiction. Including yours.
Jerry,
"IOTTMCO, Intuitively Obvious To the Most Casual Observer."
I am not sure how or why you are so narrow / rigid in your considerations and solutions?
Since you are often in the minority position / perspective... It is not "IOTTMCO".
IOTTMCO includes: government spends too much, and government schools are failing too many kids, despite increased spending.
Even a minority of one, with the facts and evidence, can be right. Especially here.
Yep... Singular thinking...
As opposed to a muddled mind?
You definitely are not muddled...
More like a horse with very restrictive blinders and a tight bridle...
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