Another Modest Proposal: End Them, Don’t Mend Them
Here’s P.J. O’Rourke‘s answer to the problem of bloated public schools:
O’Rourke cites a plethora of school statistics to support his argument to “end them, don’t mend them.” You’ll have to decide for yourself whether his alternative-to-what-we-have-now proposal for educating kids has any merit. But whether you agree with him or not, there’s no disputing the facts and figures he presents.
For instance: On average, public schools spend more per pupil than private schools do:
Figures in the Statistical Abstract of the United States show that we are spending $11,749 per pupil per year in the U.S. public schools, grades pre-K through 12. … According to an annual Gallup poll conducted from 2004 through 2007, Americans think insufficient funding is the top problem with the public schools in their communities. But if throwing money is what’s needed, American school kids are getting smacked in the head with gobs of cash aplenty. That $11,749 is a lot more than the $7,848 private school pre-K through 12 national spending norm. It’s also a lot more than the $7,171 median tuition at four-year public colleges.
The disparity in spending is even greater if you take into account a recent Cato Institute study that found schools spend more per pupil than what they claim.
In March the Cato Institute issued a report on the cost of public schools. Policy analyst Adam Schaeffer made a detailed examination of the budgets of 18 school districts in the five largest U.S. metro areas and the District of Columbia. He found that school districts were understating their per-pupil spending by between 23 and 90 percent. The school districts cried poor by excluding various categories of spending from their budgets—debt service, employee benefits, transportation costs, capital costs, and, presumably, those cans of aerosol spray used to give all public schools that special public school smell.
And per pupil spending has grown rapidly:
School districts also cheat by simple slowness in publishing their budgets. The $11,749 is from 2007, the most recent figure available. It’s certainly grown. The Digest of Educational Statistics (read by Monday, there will be a quiz) says inflation-adjusted per-pupil spending increased by 49 percent from 1984 to 2004 and by more than 100 percent from 1970 to 2005.
But an increased rate of education spending hasn’t brought with it evidence of increased student achievement:
National Assessment of Educational Progress reading test scores remained essentially the same from 1970 to 2004. SAT scores in 1970 averaged 537 in reading and 512 in math, and 38 years later the scores were 502 and 515. (More kids are taking SATs, but the nitwit factor can be discounted—scores below 400 have decreased slightly.) American College Testing (ACT) composite scores have increased only slightly from 20.6 (out of 36) in 1990 to 21.1 in 2008. And the extraordinary expense of the D.C. public school system produced a 2007 class of eighth graders in which, according to the NAEP, 12 percent of the students were at or above proficiency in reading and 8 percent were at or above proficiency in math.
Lake Wobegone kids aside:
The average IQ in America is—and this can be proven mathematically—average. Logic therefore dictates that National Assessment of Educational Progress [NAEP] eighth grade “at or above proficient” reading and math levels should average 50. This is true in only one of the 50 states. National averages are 29 and 31 percent. Either logic has nothing to do with public education or that NAEP test is a bear. Which I doubt….
O’Rourke’s second point is that there is no discernible connection between the amount states spend per pupil and how much kids learn, at least as measured by the NAEP. For instance, in assessment of reading proficiency:
Massachusetts (fifth in spending per student) and Vermont (first) do lead the reading proficiency list with 43 and 42 percent respectively. But there’s not much to choose between that and 25th-biggest spender Montana’s 39 percent.
Montana, in turn, is tied with third-most-expensive New Jersey.
And the four states with 37 percent proficiencies on the NAEP are sixth-in-spending hyper-literate Connecticut, 19th-in-spending rube Minnesota, eighth-in-spending canny Yankee Maine, and 43rd-in-spending hayseed South Dakota.
The same holds for math:
The NAEP math proficiencies are no more illuminating. Massachusetts leads with 51 percent. Second is Minnesota at 43 percent. Third place, with 41 percent, is shared by North Dakota (37th-in-spending) and champion spender Vermont. And both lavish New Jersey and 23rd-ranked middling Kansas have math proficiencies of 40 percent.
Looking at the bottom of the heap is just as confusing. Perhaps it’s possible to spend too little on public education, and 47th-ranked Mississippi is trying to prove it. The District of Columbia aside, Mississippi’s proficiency levels are the worst in the nation—17 percent in reading; 14 percent in math.
However, the state that spends the least, Utah, slightly exceeds national averages.
Meanwhile the second-worst state, New Mexico, is completely average in its school spending, ranked at 24. Tenth-in-spending Hawaii, with 20 percent in reading and 21 percent in math, is marginally inferior to 31st-in-spending California with 20 and 24 percent. And 49th-in-spending Arizona is a few points better than either.
O’Rourke also cites data that shows that an awful lot of school budgets goes to paying the salaries and benefits of adults who are not teachers:
As of 2006—of course the numbers are out of date—4,615,000 people were employed full-time by some 13,000 school districts (although if school districts used the same definition of “full-time” as the rest of us the number we’re talking about would be zero). Of these 4,615,000 there are 300,000 “clerical and secretarial staff” filling out No Child Left Behind paperwork and wondering why 64,000 “officials, administrators” aren’t doing it themselves, which they aren’t because they’re busy doing the jobs that 125,000 “principals and assistant principals” can’t because they’re supervising 383,000 “other professional staff” who are flirting with the 483,000 “teachers’ aides” who are spilling trail mix and low-fat yogurt in the teacher’s lounge making a mess for the 726,000 “service workers” …
“Classroom teachers” number 2,534,000. That makes for a nationwide student/teacher ratio of 15.4:1, which compares reasonably with the 13.3:1 ratio in private schools and is an improvement over the 22.3:1 public school ratio in 1970, when kids still occasionally learned something. But the people-doing-who-knows-what/teacher ratio is getting close to 1:1.
The Cato Institute report is here. Check out the video, too. “>.
For lots of useful education stats, put on your number-crunching hat and look here.
“Logic therefore dictates that National Assessment of Educational Progress [NAEP] eighth grade ‘at or above proficient’ reading and math levels should average 50. This is true in only one of the 50 states. National averages are 29 and 31 percent.” Really?
Consider this NAEP position: “State assessments often define ‘proficiency’ as solid grade-level performance, often indicating readiness for promotion to the next grade. NAEP’s policy definition of its ‘Proficient’ achievement level is ‘competency over challenging subject matter’ and is implicitly intended to be higher than grade-level performance.” — Andrew Kolstad, Senior Technical Advisor, Assessment Division, National Center for Education Statistics
If your “logic” were correct, we would be expecting average students to perform higher than grade level. NAEP describes these students performing higher than grade level as “some of the best students you know.” The cut-score for NAEP Proficient rates B+/A-, not C-/C.