About a week ago, I characterized “reformy” ideologies in a way that I myself even thought was extreme – so much so, that later on I added caveats to my description to say that this really isn’t what most “reformers” are advocating, but rather “reform” at the extremes.

• Reformy Ideology #1: Teacher quality is the one single factor that has the greatest effect on a child’s life chances. Get a bad teacher or two in a row, and you’re screwed for life. The “best possible” way to measure teacher quality is by estimating the teacher’s influence on student test scores (value-added). Hiring, retention and dismissal decisions must, that is, MUST be based primarily on this information. This information may be supplemented, but value-added must play the dominant single role.
• Reformy Ideology #2: Charter schools are the answer to most of the problems of poor urban school districts. Take any poor, failing urban school district, close those dreadfully failing schools and replace them as quickly as possible with charter schools and children in the urban core will have greatly expanded high-quality educational opportunities.

In that same post, I raised some questions about both ideologies, as I’ve done in many previous posts. In short, the “solution” part of reform ideology #1 is deeply problematic for a multitude of reasons and I urge you to read my entire thread on value-added models for assessing teacher effectiveness: https://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/category/race-to-the-top/value-added-teacher-evaluation/

In addition to discussing the multitude of technical issues with value-added measures specifically, I also discuss extensively the potential labor market consequences for high poverty schools.

As I noted on my post the other day the problem with Reform Ideology #2 is not so much about specific charter schools or specific models and/or whether some work well or don’t, but rather about the idea that massive charter expansion is a panacea for the problems of poor urban districts. I’ve written much about his topic on this blog in the past: https://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/category/charter-schools/

Who in their right mind would really argue that the solutions to all of our problems – or at least to urban education (code for poor and minority education) problems – is  as simple as charter school expansion, merit pay and tying teacher evaluation to test scores? Really, are there that many, or any, out there who still stick by this two-prong, unfounded, deeply problematic set of reform strategies?

Just when I thought I might have gone overboard and perhaps even been too unfair to the reform crowd, I read this editorial in New Jersey Spotlight today: http://www.njspotlight.com/stories/10/1024/1915/

Here are the conclusions of the editorial:

Here’s one way to get through the rational albeit provincial resistance from leaders of high-performing districts. Let’s just say, we have schools that are among “the very best in the nation.” But we also have schools that are among the nation’s worst. We’ve made this distinction for years, primarily through the State Supreme Court Abbott decisions, which mandate that we fund our poorest districts (recently revised to poorest students) at the same rate as our wealthiest. Why not take this acknowledgement of inequity to its logical conclusion and implement reform efforts — charter school expansion, school choice, higher compensation for great teachers, data-driven instruction — in our chronically failing districts?

Surely school leaders, legislators, New Jersey Education Association (NJEA) executives and the DOE can coalesce around charter school expansion in Pleasantville and Trenton; merit pay in Camden and Plainfield; or tying student growth to teacher evaluations in Newark and Asbury Park. While state-wide school reform will eventually come to New Jersey, our poorest students can’t wait. Targeting progressive educational strategies to failing schools may be politically distasteful, but it’s the only way to get those kids under that big white tent where they belong.

In short, the author is explaining in the first part of the editorial that many wealthy, successful New Jersey school districts haven’t supported aggressive statewide “reformy” strategies because they want no part in those strategies in their own districts. The same districts have been tentative about expanded choice for inter-district transfers. But, as this editorial argues, these districts should band together… should coalesce, to RAM DESTRUCTIVE, ILL-CONCEIVED POLICIES DOWN THE THROATS OF THEIR POOR URBAN NEIGHBORS. That’ll fix ’em! And without comparable adverse effects on their own districts!

I must say that this is about the most offensive call to arms I believe I’ve read in recent months. Yes, I’ve read some absurd arguments, like the argument that the “upper half of charters is better than average” or the argument that if current teacher evaluations are flawed, then the only answer is to replace them with student test scores (and other absurd false dichotomies).

The present NJ Spotlight argument begins with a deeply distorted, selective “factiness” about the failures of New Jersey’s urban districts (some of the nation’s worst! evidence?) and reasons for them (not enough charters, and no merit pay for teachers) and then jumps quickly to the most extreme and dreadfully oversimplified representation of the solutions (solutions, mind you, that may be far worse than the “disease”) to all of our – excuse me – their problems.

All when I thought that I might be getting too tough on the overly simplistic, bombastic and misguided logic of reform.

This post is a revised version of my previous post – If money doesn’t matter…

Here is a draft set of slides to accompany this post: Resource Heterogeneity across Sectors

The theme du jour is that reform (very narrowly defined reform), not money will fix our schools. We’re already spending a lot, the pundits say. Too much in fact, for what we’re getting. We need more charter schools – which obviously do more with less – we need to treat teachers like workers in the private sector (?) by publicly ranking them based on their students’ test scores – and in general, we need to adopt “market” oriented strategies. But…

If money doesn’t matter then why do private independent schools (market driven schools?) spend, on average, so much more per child than nearby public schools?

First off, I am a supporter of private independent schools and former teacher in a private independent school in New York City – An exceptional school where tuition is now about $35,000 per child (where tuition covers only a portion of expense) in a city where the public system is being chastised by politicians and the popular media for spending about $20,000 per child. This despite the fact that the city school system must serve a more diverse and complex student population than the very selective private school where I taught.

About a year ago, I published a study on the private school marketplace in which I compiled the IRS financial filings of about 1,600 private schools around the country. And what did I find in this study? Among many other things, I found that private independent schools, a relatively large diverse sector of schools which includes many elite schools, and also some pretty average ones, spent on average 196% of public school average on same labor market (excluding boarding schools).

I also found that the pupil to teacher ratios in private independent day schools are about 8.8/1 (consistently from 2000 to 2008) compared to those of public schools at about 16.7/1 over the same period.

That is, private independent schools – ON AVERAGE – not just the elite of the elite – spend nearly double what public schools in the same area spend, and private independent schools leverage that money to purchase nearly double the teachers per child, offering much smaller class sizes, deeper and broader elective options, music, arts and other “frills” many public schools have seen evaporate with recent budget cuts.

I am by no means criticizing the choice to provide one’s own child with a more expensive education. That is a rational choice, when more expensive is coupled with substantive, observable differences in what a school offers. I am criticizing the outright hypocritical argument that money wouldn’t/couldn’t possibly help public schools provide opportunities (breadth of high school course offerings, smaller class sizes) more similar to those of elite private independent day schools, when this argument is made by individuals who prefer private schools that spend double what nearby public schools spend.

Private School Spending Study: http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/private-schooling-US

If money doesn’t matter then why do venture philanthropists continue to throw money at charter schools while throwing stones at traditional public schools?

The standard rhetoric, touted in the media these days is that charter schools are not only doing better than traditional public schools, but that they are doing so with far fewer financial resources. The reality is that charter schools have widely varied resources, from state to state and even from block to block within New York City. Let’s focus on New York City charters for a moment, because New York City charter schools have received so much media attention.

A New York City Independent Budget Office report suggested that charter schools housed in public school facilities have comparable public subsidy to traditional NYC public schools, but charter schools not housed in public school facilities have to make up about $2,500 (per pupil) in difference. In forthcoming report, I explain how the much lower need populations served by NYC charter schools, compared to nearby NYC traditional public schools, more than offsets this difference.  That is, from the start, NYC charter schools are on relatively level financial playing field with the traditional public schools against which they supposedly compete. In fact, charters provided with physical space have a head start, and serve fewer low income children, few or no ELL children and fewer children with disabilities.

And then there’s the philanthropy. Kim Gittleson of Gotham Schools points out that in 2008-09, NYC Charter schools raised an average of $1,654 per pupil through philanthropy. In 2009, Venture Philanthropists granted over $30 million to 77 NYC charter schools, excluding major gifts to management organizations associated with many of the NYC charter schools.

Some NYC charter schools raised more than $8,000 per pupil, and depending on how you calculate it, Harlem Children’s Zone comes in as high as $60,000 per pupil. As a result, some charters – those most favored by venture philanthropists – spend on a per pupil basis much more than traditional NYC public schools.

One might argue that the Venture Philanthropists are trying to spend their way to success – To outspend the public schools in order to beat them!

In fact, a recent study funded by the New Schools Venture Fund indicated “The average CMO relies on philanthropy for approximately 13 percent of its total operating revenues, but many CMO central offices could not exist today without philanthropy.” That is, they need this level of infusion just to stay afloat, running each year in the red, with no sign of break even years in the near future.

But here’s the disconnect – These same Venture Philanthropists – who are committed to spending whatever it takes on charters in order to prove they can succeed, can be frequently heard arguing that public schools a) don’t need and b) could never use effectively any more money. They are trying to argue that charters are doing more with less, when some are doing more with more, others less with less, and some may be doing more with less, and others are actually doing less with more. Shouldn’t traditional public schools be given similar opportunity to do more with more? Blasphemy! Eh? And don’t give me that … “we’ve already tried that and it didn’t work” claim. I’ll gladly provide the evidence to refute that one!

If money doesn’t matter then why do affluent – and/or low poverty – suburban school districts continue in many parts of the country to dramatically outspend their poorer urban neighbors?

Last but not least, why do affluent suburban school districts in many states continue to far outspend poor urban ones? If there is no utility to the additional dollar spent and/or no effect produced by that additional dollar then why spend it?

In a recent article, co-author Kevin Welner and I point out that many pundits have prematurely argued that states have done away with – erased – differences in resources across wealthy and poor districts (article here: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/718) Really, anyone with a grain of information on this topic knows this assumption to be patently false. See also www.schoolfundingfairness.org.

Among other things Kevin Welner and I point out that nationally, there remains a positive relationship between school district spending per pupil and median household income but some progress was made through the early 1990s. It leveled off since. More importantly, that progress varies widely by state, with some states like New Jersey and Massachusetts providing more support in higher poverty settings, but many like Illinois or New York maintaining systems where affluent, predominantly white school districts continue to far outspend poor urban and urban fringe districts.

For example, in the New York Metropolitan area including only New York State districts (2007-08), lower poverty districts (those with fewer than 10% children below the poverty line) had state and local revenues per pupil ON AVERAGE, at about $23,000 to $24,000 per pupil, compared to those with over 20% poverty (census poverty rate) at just over $18,000 per pupil in state and local revenues in that same year. Yet pundits pick the $18,000 per pupil number out of context, call it too high, and argue they should get no more! No more I tell you! The waste is egregious! Kevin Welner and I identify 9 downstate suburban districts that spent more than $10,000 more per pupil than New York City in 2007-08.

If the waste in New York City, or in Newark, New Jersey is so gosh darn egregious – if we’re spending way beyond reasonable levels in poor urban districts, what about those districts spending so much more on kids who would do just fine on so much less? Isn’t that just a massive freakin’ waste? The people in these communities don’t seem to think so.

In conclusion…

Here’s the thing – I don’t believe that private independent schools or affluent local public school districts are just throwing money away. I believe they are trying to provide a high quality product to consumers who demand such a product and who expect such a product, be it through a system of local public financing or through a private market based system.

That’s the interesting twist in all of this. The “reformers” who are choosing expensive private schools for their own children and throwing money at charters are invoking the language of “market based reforms” for traditional public schools – market based reforms as a substitute for more money – because market based reforms will ALWAYS drive down per pupil spending. That’s what competition does, right?

Well, the one set of schools in this mix that are arguably most responsive to “market pressures” are the private independent schools. The schools most responsive to market pressures are the ones that a) spend the most, b) have the smallest class sizes and seem to use small class size in particular as a primary selling point, and c) I would venture to guess are least likely to be moving down the road of evaluating all of their teachers on the basis of test scores alone (most actually have relatively traditional experience driven step-scales). Yeah… yeah… but those are the luxury market products? Are small class sizes and diverse high school curriculum luxuries that should be reserved for only the few? I find this argument most offensive.

Really good education is expensive – and far more expensive than “reformers” are willing to admit or understand. If the “reform movement” is really about mimicking successful business models, these entrepreneurs should be paying close attention to the money being spent producing a high quality product – benchmarking against the “best” public and private schools, and then realizing that achieving comparable outcomes with more needy student populations will cost more – a lot more – not less. For some reason, in this case, they’ve ignored that conversation entirely!

I’ve been toying around for a while on this blog with different ways to compare state school finance systems. This new website presents a summary of much of that playing:

http://www.schoolfundingfairness.org/index.htm

After much discussion and debate, we landed on the following four indicators.

The Fairness Measures
All 50 states are evaluated on the basis of four separate, but interrelated, fairness measures:

• Funding Level: Using figures adjusted to account for a variety of interstate differences, this measure allows for a comparison of the average state and local revenue per pupil across states. States are ranked from the highest to lowest per pupil funding.
• Funding Distribution: This measure shows whether a state provides more or less funding to schools based on their poverty concentration. States are evaluated as “regressive”, “progressive”, or “flat” and are given letter grades that correspond to their relative position compared to other states.
• Effort: This measures differences in state spending relative to the state’s fiscal capacity. States are ranked according to the ratio of state spending on education to per-capita gross domestic product.
• Coverage: This measures the proportion of school-age children attending the state’s public schools and also addresses the income disparity between families using private, rather than public, schools. States are ranked according to both the proportion of children in public schools and the income ratio of private and public school families.

It is important to understand that two of these indicators are much more in control of the states than others – Effort and Funding distribution, or Fairness. States control the amount financial effort they put into their schools, as a percent of their capacity. States have less control over their overall funding level produced by that effort. I encourage you to look carefully at differences between states like Louisiana and Tennessee, compared to Mississippi. The first two simply don’t put up the effort. Hence my constant lambasting of Tennessee on this blog, especially in the context of RttT.

Coverage and funding level are not as controlled by states, but that’s not to say they are not significantly controlled by states. Funding levels vary about 50/50 on the basis of state wealth and on the basis of state effort. Effort seems to matter as much as wealth in predicting state spending levels, and that makes sense. Hence we grade on effort.

Coverage is included for a few reasons, and is included along with the ratio of family income of those in and not in the public education system. First, coverage is included because for many states this indicator shows just how many kids we are leaving out of our equity analysis by comparing revenues across only the public system. In a handful of states, the excluded share is around 20% and in some of those states that 20% are from much higher income households – likely increasing the “regressiveness” of the system as a whole (public/private schooling). Second, we include coverage because long term, systemic deprivation of the public system can, in fact, lead to significant flight from the public system. That should not be ignored and should not be treated, as one reader of a previous post argued (comments section), as a smart state policy decision toward further reducing long run costs- by encouraging more affluent families to independently finance their child’s education. Call it a value-laden decision, but we do not accept the argument that depriving the public education system to the point where more kids opt out, so we don’t have to use tax dollars to pay for them, is smart policy.

I also encourage readers not to try to make too much of the between state comparisons of overall spending level. I discuss many angles on these comparisons in a recent post: https://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2010/10/04/state-ranking-madness-who-spends-mostleast/ The bottom line is that it’s really hard to make reasonable comparisons of the cost differences of operating schools in Vermont versus Nevada. However, the within region comparisons may be more useful.

I especially encourage comparisons among the “profiles” or those sloped lines among states sharing regions. The New York/New Jersey profile comparisons are particularly interesting. New York affluent suburban districts have far more resources than New Jersey affluent suburban districts, but for poor urban districts, the differences flip.

Be sure also to check out the updated tables with the 2007-08 NCES data.

This week, Bruce Baker from Rutgers University discusses his paper co-authored with Kevin Welner regarding research on school finance reform litigation. For more video, visit The Voice.

http://thevoice.pressible.org/edlabteam/school-finance-and-courts-does-reform-matter-and-how-can-we-tell

Ranking the states by different methods

Every year, through many different sources, state politicians and political activists make great waves over which state spends more on public education, and which spends less. Who’s in first place? Who’s in last? Those from differing perspectives have different motives. Politicians and anti-tax, anti-government activists search for their way to find that “our states spends more than everyone else and gets nothing for it,” while others hoping to increase education spending search frantically for low ratings – “We’re in last place and that’s a disgrace!” Of course, not everyone can be in first or last place and it’s pretty damn hard to tweak the numbers to move a state from near the top to near the bottom. Here, I’ll present a few alternative, reasonable rankings – the last two of which, I believe are most reasonable, though for some states still differ significantly.

First, let’s begin with the simplest version of the numbers- the straight up averages of school district state and local revenue per pupil (weighted by the number of pupils in each district). Now, I use the state and local revenue per pupil instead of current expenditures per pupil because state and local revenue gives a complete picture of state and local resources allocated to local public school systems and excludes expenditures of federal funds.

Politicians in New Jersey and New York love to make claims that their state is highest spending in the nation (and we get nothing for it!). Even at this most basic level, these claims are wrong. Close, but still wrong. Hooray for Vermont! But isn’t that really part of Canada anyway?

FIGURE 1

Of course, the cost of running a school varies quite significantly across states with a large share (though not all) of that variation being tied to regional differences in the competitive wage one must pay to teachers. Here, I use a competitive wage index developed by the National Center for Education Statistics (by Lori Taylor and Bill Fowler) which uses variation in non-teacher wages across labor markets to correct for variation in teacher wages. http://nces.ed.gov/edfin/adjustments.asp

FIGURE 2

Some reshuffling occurs. States like California, for example drop quite a bit because California is certainly a more expensive place to live and higher wage state. But, we may be assuming too strong a role for the wage adjustment here – assuming that state and local revenues per pupil should move on a 1 for 1 basis with wage variation. Nonetheless, not a totally unreasonable comparison.

We might also wish to consider the student populations that states must educate with their funding at present levels. That is, how much are these current dollars worth toward achieving common outcomes across students? Many cost factors influence the cost of achieving common outcomes across children, as discussed in this paper –http://surface.syr.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1102&context=cpr – by William Duncombe and John Yinger of the Maxwell School at Syracuse University. But, this particular paper focuses on the additional costs associated with children in poverty. Duncombe and Yinger determine that the additional cost per child falling below the federal poverty line is approximately 150% of the cost of achieving the same outcomes with a non-poor child. They also find that the additional costs associated with counts of children falling below the 185% poverty threshold are approximately 100% above average costs. Now, I go very conservative here, and I apply only a 100% weight of additional cost to children qualifying as being in poverty, using U.S. Census Bureau Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates.

FIGURE 3

But, we’ve been learning more of late about problems with using the same income thresholds for poverty across states with very different costs of living. Recently, the U.S. Census Bureau put out this exceptional paper which includes adjusted poverty measures for each state, based on three different adjustment methods – http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/povmeas/papers/Geo-Adj-Pov-Thld8.pdf. In general, the adjustments lead to much higher actual poverty rates in states with very high costs of living such as New York and California. If we use those poverty rates instead of the previous ones to adjust spending for poverty, we get this:

FIGURE 4

In this case, California moves into 49^th place, or third from bottom with Washington DC in the analysis.

We’re still missing a pretty big piece of the puzzle here – additional costs associated with economies of scale and population sparsity (for more information on economies of scale see: http://www-cpr.maxwell.syr.edu/efap/Publications/Revisiting_Economies.pdf). Notice that Wyoming and Alaska are our big spenders here. Now, there’s probably no adjustment we can find to fully account for the many ways in which Alaska is different from the lower 48. Nor do the poverty corrections seem to fully address the difficulties of Washington DC. It’s all pretty imperfect. That said, I take one more stab at things, based on a regression model which attempts to control for a) competitive wage variation, b) economies of scale and population density and c) poverty. The idea here is to account for the fact that some states have a need for very small schools and districts because of their small populations which are spread across vast rural expanses. The model attempts to avoid giving a break to other states like New Jersey or Illinois that have many tiny racially segregated enclaves in densely populated suburbs. And here are the results:

FIGURE 5

An important difference when using a regression model to determine relationships between cost factors and revenue levels – instead of just dividing by the cost factors – is that the model determines the weight of those cost factors. On thing that happens in the figure above is that the influence of wage differentials is “softened.” The model-based projections do not assume a 1 for 1 relationship between competitive wages and revenue. As a result, California does not come out as low as in previous figures. Also, the model is projecting state and local revenues for a district with X% poor children. The projection is for an “equated” condition. But, if the state has far more children in higher poverty settings, and those settings have fewer resources, the model projection does not necessarily reflect the average actual conditions. However, for California in particular, there really isn’t a systematic relationship between poverty and revenues across districts – a finding that is as bad as it might seem good. In fact, it’s just bad!

Aren’t the differences really all about state wealth?

I would be remiss if I didn’t include at least a few ugly scatterplots in this post. So here goes. The first two scatterplots here show that state and local revenues per pupil are somewhat modestly related to state average poverty rates (not adjusted regionally) and to the household income levels of families with children in the public school system.

FIGURE 6

FIGURE 7

However, this final figure shows that state and local revenues per pupil are equally related to the effort a state puts up, where effort is measured in terms of state and local revenue per pupil as a share of gross domestic product by state, or gross state product. That is, some states that don’t raise much revenue per pupil simply don’t try that hard. Very few high spending states have low effort. Tennessee, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arizona and South Dakota are near the bottom because they don’t put up much effort. Mississippi puts up average effort, but just can’t raise much revenue. I’m far more empathetic to Mississipi’s plight! Well, our highest spender, Vermont in some cases, is off the charts on effort. Despite having less capacity than states like New York or New Jersey, Vermont still manages to outspend them.

FIGURE 8

While it makes great rhetoric to claim “first in the nation” or “last in the nation” or “most expensive,” the best one can really do here is to delineate in terms of relatively high or relatively low. Not great headline stuff, but that’s how it goes. New Jersey – NOT THE HIGHEST IN THE NATION – rather, “relatively high.” California – NOT LAST IN THE NATION – but damn close to it by some measures, and still low by others!

About a week ago, The College Board released their latest status report in their college completion series.

http://completionagenda.collegeboard.org/sites/default/files/reports_pdf/Progress_Executive_Summary.pdf

The parts of the report that seemed to grab the most media attention were those related to a) comparing the US to other countries on the percent of 25 to 34 year olds who hold an associates degree or higher and b) comparing US states to one another on the same measure.

Newspapers across the country ran with this stuff and Twitter was buzzing with punditry on what these indicators meant about the quality of K-12 public schools in each state. Our public schools must be failing us if we’re only 24th on the education level of our younger adults – one Missouri pundit tweeted (related news story here).

The first thing that caught my eye was that Washington, DC was first in the rankings of percent of 25 to 34 year olds with an associates degree or higher.  Of course it is. Washington DC is a magnet for recent college graduates. Clearly, this particular indicator says as much about the employment options for a young, college educated workforce as it does about a state’s own education system. This indicator also tells us something about the education level and expectations of the previous generation – parents of these 25 to 34 year olds, whether in the same state or elsewhere. And, this indicator may also tell us something about the extent to which a state imports or exports college students.

So, I decided to play with some data…’cuz that’s what I like to do… just to see how these rankings might change if I tweaked them a bit.

I decided it might be fun to look at the differences in the rates of college educated adults – % of 25 to 34 year olds with a bachelors degree or higher – across states in three different ways:

1. percent of 25 to 34 year old current adult residents who hold a BA or higher
2. percent of 25 to 34 year old adult current residents who were born in the state who hold a BA or higher
3. percent of 25 to 34 year old adults who were born in the state, whether they continue to reside there or not, who hold a BA or higher

It would seem to me that the second of these measures is most on target – the percent of the native population that holds a certain level of education. Needless to say, when I focus on the second measure, the rankings change somewhat. Here it is:

Table 1

Education Level (% BA or Higher) of the 25 to 34 Year Old Population by State

U.S. Census – American Community Survey 2006 to 2008

Data Source: Steven Ruggles, J. Trent Alexander, Katie Genadek, Ronald Goeken, Matthew B. Schroeder, and Matthew Sobek. Integrated Public Use Microdata Series: Version 5.0 [Machine-readable database]. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2010.

Washington DC which ranks 1st on resident college graduates drops to 24th on native college graduates. MA, NY and NJ which were 2, 5 & 4, are now 1, 2, 3. Virginia goes from 9th to 26th and Maryland goes from 6th to 15th when only natives are considered. This is likely a DC effect as well. NH also drops quite a bit. Wisconsin rises quite a bit. Overall, there are some pretty big changes here.

Here are a few scatterplots – ‘cuz nothin’ is more fun than a good scatterplot.

This one shows on the horizontal axis, the share of 25 to 34 year old residents who are natives (born there).  On the vertical axis is the % BA or higher for all current residents. There’s DC, way above the rest on the vertical axis and pretty far to the left on the horizontal – that is, not too many 25 to 34 year olds who live there, were born there. The native share is only lower in Nevada. But Nevada doesn’t seem to be importing college grads!

This one shows the relationship between the % BA or higher among all current residents (horizontal axis) and % BA or higher among native residents (born and live there). Clearly there’s a pretty strong relationship between the two. But, there is enough variation to really change some rankings. Mass is high either way.  The big movers are those identified above, like Maryland, Virginia and New Hampshire, which have much more educated resident young adult populations than native resident young adult populations.

This one puts the “native share” again on the horizontal axis. On the vertical axis is a measure of the difference in the education level of all current residents (25 to 34) and native current residents. It’s somewhat of a net “import” effect measure. How much more educated is the current resident population than the born and raised population? Now, this is net difference, including the fact that some individuals who were born and raised in a state might have left and become more educated. Big net importers here appear to be Maryland, Virginia and Vermont and New Hampshire (Vermont surprised me a bit here… since there isn’t a whole lot of industry to attract college grads, but Burlington does always make those “great places to live” lists). It might also be a small sample size issue with the Vermont data. At the other end of the picture are Nebraska and Nevada, which don’t appear to importing a more educated adult population. Strangely, all but Nebraska are in the positive zone on this measure (note that this measure does not have to be net-zero across states because between state migration is not the only type of migration occurring. International migration may also affect these differences. This may also reflect the fact that more educated individuals tend to be more mobile. Just pondering).

In this one, we have the “native share” again on the horizontal axis, and the difference between the education level of those born in the state – whether they stayed or not – and those who reside in the state. This is somewhat of a net “export” measure. In this case, it would appear that Wyoming is the big loser. So too are Nebraska and Wisconsin. This is the one interesting piece about Wyoming. In the rankings above, Wyoming doesn’t move much. It’s 47th in % BA for current residents and 48th for native residents. But, Wyoming does much better on the education level of those born in the state, whether they stay or not – which apparently they don’t if they have a BA or higher.

So what does all of this mean? Probably not much. These figures and additional analyses certainly tell a more nuanced story than the media buzz of last week. But, it’s hard to really link much of this back to the quality of states’ underlying elementary and secondary education systems. Far too many factors are in play here, and even tweaking this one factor – whether residents are native residents or not- has significant consequences for state rankings.

So much for attaching any simple, bold statement about [YOUR STATE HERE] to that huge, pull-out multi-color map in the College Board Report!

The spin is on. As soon as the annual school district level U.S. Census fiscal survey data are released, news outlets across the country take their shot a spinning the data to show just where their state stands. New York #1! Utah… dead last! Hawaii “above average.” Spending just really high (totally out of context)! Typically, news outlets point out spending is high when they wish to argue that it’s too high… and we should do something to curb it. No mention is made of outcomes achieved with that spending, or which districts in the state are responsible for the high average. When spending is reported as low, the spin is generally that it is too low, and that state policymakers should do something about it.

Allow me to briefly present a slightly more nuanced picture. For the past few years, and in a number of publications, I have used a statistical model of the national school finance data to correct for such issues as a) economies of scale and population density, b) regional variation in competitive wages, and c) variations in student needs. I use this model to project what a school district, with comparable characteristics, would have in state and local revenue per pupil in each state. The methods of this madness were used in this study: http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/viewFile/718/831

Here are some of the results with the 2007-08 Census Fiscal Survey data (with the model built on data from 2005-06, 2006-07  & 2007-08).

Before getting to the modeled estimates of comparable state and local revenue, lets take a quick look at the relative educational effort of each state, or the combined State and Local Revenues for K-12 education as a share of Gross State Product. Vermont and New Jersey lead the pack on this on, with other states including Maryland and New York in the mix. Note, however, that this effort can be quite unevenly distributed. In fact, it may be the case that a significant amount of effort is going into local property tax revenues being raised by the richest communities in a state. Yeah… it’s still a lot of effort, but selectively distributed among those who can put up that effort and choose to as long as it benefits (or is perceived to benefit) their own children. Total effort provides a limited window, but important one nonetheless.

Fun Fact about this first table – TAKE A LOOK AT OUR RACE TO THE TOP, ROUND 1 WINNERS! (47TH & 50TH ON EFFORT!!!!)

Now to the model based estimates of who’s really in the top and bottom ten on state and local revenue per pupil for elementary and secondary education. Let’s begin by looking at those states where the lowest poverty districts have the highest and lowest resources.

Yep, New York is #1 in per pupil state and local revenues for very low poverty districts! Indeed, very affluent Long Island and Westchester County school districts in New York State spend about as much as any districts in the nation, largely because they have the financial capacity to do so (and partly because the state has enabled them to!)

Next in line in funding for very low poverty districts are Wyoming and Vermont, which really don’t have many children attending incredibly high poverty districts. Notably, New Jersey falls well behind New York state for low poverty districts, and many of New Jersey’s affluent suburbs lie in the same labor market with the higher spending affluent New York suburbs. And then there’s Tennessee – one of our great RttT winners.  Of course, as I have shown on a previous post, this works fine for TN, which as the lowest state assessment cut scores – so most of the kids pass the tests anyway (low standards & low funding – a winning combination indeed)!  

The next table ranks per pupil funding for high poverty districts.  Notably, New York is NOT in first place on this one. New York drops to 6th, but the situation is somewhat more complicated. While this might appear okay, it can be particularly difficult for high poverty New York state school districts to recruit and retain high quality teachers when they are surrounded by so many affluent districts which already hold the recruitment and retention advantage, and have substantially more resources. For high poverty districts, New Jersey and Wyoming come in first. Wyoming is simply high across the board. And yep… there’s Tennessee again – our RttT winner in 47th place!

This next table ranks the within-state FAIRNESS of the state school funding distribution – where fairness is determined by taking the ratio of high poverty funding to low poverty funding – with the implicit assumption that state school finance systems should provide for additional support in districts serving children with greater needs. Now, this table must be taken in the context of the previous two. For example, Utah comes in first on “fairness.” But, in this case, this merely means that low poverty districts in Utah get nothing, and high poverty districts in Utah get next to nothing! In a twisted sense, that’s “fair?????”

Among states not at the bottom in overall resources, New Jersey, Ohio, Minnesota and Massachusetts seem to be driving additional resources into higher need, higher poverty districts.

States  at the other end of the spectrum include New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois. These are among the historically least equitable large, diverse states in the country. Now, to Pennsylvania’s credit, these calculations precede the phase-in of their new funding formula which the governor has continued to support even during the recession. New York and Illinois are another story. Yeah… New York also implemented – okay – kind of planned to implement a new formula. That didn’t get very far, and it is highly unlikely (okay, almost entirely unlikely based on other analysis I’ve conducted on more recent NY data) that NY has actually improved since 2007-08.  Illinois hasn’t even tried – in fact, Illinois just keeps getting worse and worse!

Now for an obligatory point – Many argue that the overall funding level in states is simply a function of their wealth. Wealthier states, like wealthier school districts within states simply have the ability to spend more. That is indeed partly true. But effort also matters – remember that first slide above?  This scatterplot shows the relationship between state effort and funding levels in a hypothetical average poverty school district. There’s actually a reasonably strong relationship here, but for a few quirky outliers. In fact, based on additional analyses, a state’s effort explains about as much of the funding level as does a state’s wealth.

So, Mississippi is a very poor state that puts up relatively average effort, but simply can’t get very far with that effort. By contrast, Tennessee and Louisiana both have much higher fiscal capacity (measured by gross state product per capita) than Mississippi, but they simply don’t use it. Tennessee has little excuse for its spending level! Nor does Louisiana!

Finally, here’s a snapshot of the association between 8th grade reading and math NAEP performance and funding levels across states. As it turns out, funding levels for high poverty settings were most strongly associated with NAEP performance for all students. As one can see, there exists a reasonable correlation between funding levels and NAEP mean scale scores. That said, as I have noted in previous posts regarding such relationships, there’s a lot of circular stuff all tangled up in here. Wealthier states with more educated adult populations supporting higher education spending – and supporting and encouraging their children to do well in school, etc.  But, it is difficult to conceive how a state in the bottom left corner of this picture (very low funding in high poverty districts – and most likely, low funding across the board) can begin to lift itself out of that corner – or Race to the Top. Financial resources are a necessary underlying condition, albeit easier to achieve in some states than in others.

Note: Difficulties arise when trying to make simple comparisons of funding levels and funding gaps with achievement gaps between poor and non-poor children in each state a) because income thresholds used for subsidized lunch status characterize very different populations from one region of the country to another and from rural to urban settings within states, and b) because gaps between non-poor and poor children in states depend significantly on how wealthy are the non-poor and how poor are the poor. Sadly, these complexities make it very difficult if not impossible to use NAEP data to untangle the relationship between funding differences between lower and higher poverty districts, and outcome differences between children attending those districts in different states:

I discuss the poverty measurement problems here:

https://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2009/11/27/title-i-does-not-make-rich-states-richer/

Kevin Welner and I discuss evaluating the relationship between state school funding distribution and student outcomes here:

https://schoolfinance101.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/doreformsmatter_formatted.pdf