Can money buy a good education?–Part II
by Rachel Hicks on March 3, 2008 in Blog, The Blackboard
This post completes a two-part examination of whether giving schools more funding will improve student achievement.
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School Funding Homework Pop Quiz: What major policy change has the state of New Jersey just approved for its public schools? (Look here to cheat.)
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Last week, I presented findings from prominent education researchers who study school resources and their impact on student learning. I concluded that stronger, although not definitive, evidence exists to show that a rise in school funding is correlated to a rise in student learning as measured by achievement tests. Nonetheless, I left readers with a question, “How much [money] is enough, and what should our extra dollars be buying?”
These questions are nearly impossible to separate: how much money is adequate is relative to the cost of what schools need to buy in order to be effective. Determining what resources will be most likely to increase student achievement is the work of everyone in the education field. The debate will outlive all of us, as we are continually learning about the best ways to equip schools and personnel to do the hard work of educating.
Despite the evolving research, parents and policymakers want a useful answer now. Children are only children once, so waiting for a precise formula for success before acting is not an option. Isn’t there some amount that “good” schools have–and don’t all schools deserve at least that much?
This thinking is what led to the “adequacy” lawsuits of the 1980s, which focused on language in many states’ constitutions that granted residents a right to an education. (Sidebar: Education advocates resorted to lawsuits brought under state constitutions because a 1973 Supreme Court case, San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, found no federal constitutional right to an education that could require states to equalize school resources.) Here’s the basic logic of these cases: high-achieving districts also happen to spend a lot more money on their students than low-achieving districts, so the state should use the high-achieving districts’ budgets as a benchmark for what “adequate” must be.
The most famous of the “adequacy” cases is New Jersey’s Abbott v. Burke, originally argued in 1981. In Abbott, the New Jersey Supreme Court found that the wide funding disparities among districts serving rich and poor students were unconstitutional because they were based on a system of state and local financing that guaranteed districts serving poor areas would not be able to spend as much money as their counterparts serving rich areas. Because poor districts could not spend enough money, they were unable to provide a quality education to their students. As a remedy, the poor districts were given additional funds from the state to equalize their budgets. In theory, all districts can now provide students will what they need to be successful.
(Pop Quiz Answer: Recently, New Jersey created a new financing system which eliminated channelling addtional resources for poor students based on district-level characteristics. Now, additional money will go to schools within districts based on their enrollment of poor students. This change means that some of the former “Abbott districts” will not receive the same amount of money as in the past even though they still serve disadvantaged students. Although providing funding based on individual students may better ensure resources get to all poor students, the Abbott districts are worried that the gains in student achievement that they have made will be reversed.)
Unfortunately, if you get into the Abbott literature at all, you begin to worry that although funding has been equalized, student scores have not yet improved so much in the Abbott districts that the socioeconomic status of a student is not longer predictive of his/her achievement. Without returning to last week’s debate, the continued struggle to raise scores in New Jersey shows that even though an adequate amount of financing (should schools serving rich kids be this benchmark?) is necessary to ensuring a quality education, it is not sufficient.
So what should the Abbott districts be buying that they aren’t? Or, if they are buying the right things, then how can they put them to better use?
David Cohen, Stephen Raudenbush, and Deborah Ball are three education researchers who are trying to move the school funding debates in this direction. Their argument is that we need to stop focusing on the dollars and start focusing on the outcomes that we want. Then, we need to start funding what gets us those outcomes. The real problem, they say, is not that money can’t buy a good education, it’s that we don’t know what to buy. Without that knowledge, we’re going to experience diminishing returns to our additional dollars. To translate from last week’s story of my own experience–having books in a classroom are better than no books, but books on the appropriate grade level are even better!
I realize that all of this information is a little hard to digest. I hope you’re thinking to yourself that you didn’t realize how complicated “getting it right” in the field of education is. While appreciating the complexities of education is great, you probably would like to know how you should tell your member of Congress or the city council or school board to vote the next time a funding increase is up for consideration. Here’s my answer: find out what the money is for (curriculum? personnel? a new gym?) and talk to the teachers and principals about how that funding will help the school (or schools) be a more effective educational institution. If you want to know whether their plans for the funds can really help students learn, continue reading this blog because one of the biggest expenses in education is teacher salaries. Next week, we’ll turn to teachers and the role they play in student achievement.
Until then, your homework is to read this story on teachers in Time if you haven’t already. You never know when a pop quiz is coming.
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