More on Education Funding

Allow me a trip in the wayback machine to, well, just a week or so ago, and a post I wanted to write before the iBook fritzed up.

In my essay below on the cost of education, I used a post by righty Wisconsin blogger Lance Burri as a jumping-off point. Lance's very next post was also about schools and education. It's sarcastically titled "Wisconsin has great schools," and Lance points out the seeming contradiction in Wisconsin ecucation advocates' asserting on the one hand that Wisconsin's schools are and excellent and, on the other hand, that funding levels provided by the Republicans in the state legislature are not sufficient to maintain them. In the process, Lance willfully misinterprets the arguments of education advocates, takes the requistite pot-shots and the teachers' union, and once again makes dismissive gestures toward Wisconsin's poor and minority students.

Let's take the willful misinterpretation. Lance writes,

Now, no matter how highly ranked WEAC says we are, or how many of my own criteria we’re meeting, public education in Wisconsin isn’t all sunshine and puppies. Our status as an educational giant is in great jeopardy, placed there by controls on teacher salaries and school spending.

At least, that’s what WEAC says. To combat this, they’re calling for “A revised system of school funding that ensures that every child has access to an adequately funded public education,” and “A fair collective bargaining law for teachers and education support professionals.”

There, again, we have a problem with definitions. What is “adequate funding?” What is a “fair collective bargaining law?”

WEAC’s website provides no further details, so let me fill in the blanks: it means we have to spend more. A lot more.

"Adequate funding," according to WEAC, has nothing to do with spending "a lot more." It has to do, rather, with spending a lot smarter.

In the past several years, there has been quite the to-do over Wisconsin's school-funding formula. Or, rather, there would have been quite the to-do if the Republicans controlling the Wisconsin state legislature weren't so busy fightin the homosexual agenda and the tax-hell chimera. Instead, the findings of the Governor's task force on school funding got buried. Gone. Sunk into oblivion.

But here's some facts for Lance that might make him rethink his position. As a caveat, these are 2003 data, in part because the Public Policy Forum wants $20 for their 2004 report on education in Southeastern Wisconsin. But I doubt there has been significant changes in the last year. The report ranks 50 SE Wisconsin districts. These startling numbers are taken from two neighboring districts in Milwaukee County. I know Lance is from central Wisconsin, but I tend to be Milwaukee-centric, and I have no intention of changing for him. Remember, a rank of one is highest, 50 is lowest:

District	Per-Pupil Spending (rank)	Prop. Tax Revnue Per Pupil (rank)	Free/reduced lunch Elligible (rank)
MPS	$9,565 (16)	$1,672 (50)	76% (1)
Nicolet	$13,532 (1)	$10,047 (1)	11% (22)

I included only a handful of data that are actually relevant to our discussion here. I want to point out, first of all, the striking difference in the two funding numbers. Nicolet Union School District actually collects more in property taxes per student than MPS spends from all sources. Milwaukee also proves to be an incredibly property-poor district, in that it simply cannot raise much revenue from the property tax. These two stats are key to dissecting Lance's argument, both in the current post under discussion, as well as in his overall opinion of public schools. Remember, for example, what Lance wrote in that first post I responded to:

Take two examples: one, a child from a college educated family, whose parents stress education, check homework, read. A house full of books. Two, a child of a single parent who works two jobs, never finished high school. No books in the house, no emphasis or even attention paid to schoolwork.

If we spend $5,000 on the first child’s public education, and $20,000 on the second child’s, which will grow up better educated?

Lance clearly believes that students from districts such as Nicolet, who are far more likely to grow up in in the former situation, and whose 82% of time outside of school is far less of a struggle for mere survival, do not need to have the highest levels of school spending. Of course, he also wants to write off the latter student as well, arguing that additional spending on that student is pointless. But here even Lance would have to concede that there is a schocking inequity, regardless of how effective various funding levels might be at schooling various children. What is it about students from the north shore suburbs that feed Nicloet that makes them worth $4,000 more than the students of Milwaukee? (Other districts are even worse; Burlington is ranked at 50 with just $7,105 in per-pupil spending. Are the students at Nicolet really worth twice those in Burlington?)

This points to the single most important part of school funding reform needs in Wisconsin: Equity. In 2000's Vincent v. Voight, the state Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of our current funding system, but they did note that “Wisconsin students have a fundamental right to an equal opportunity for a sound basic education [. . .] that will equip students for their roles as citizens and enable them to succeed economically and personally.” This decision led indirectly to the task force referenced earlier, and now, as Doug Haselow points out in that last link, funding equity has gotten worse since the veiled threats of Vincent's decision:

It has been almost five years since Vincent v. Voight, yet many districts continue to be held to below average revenues per pupil simply because they were below average when school district revenue limits were enacted in 1993. And some districts continue to have more than twice as much public money to invest in the education of their children as others.

For property taxpayers the inequities are even worse. Some continue to pay property tax rates more than five times as high as others for the purpose of financing the state’s responsibility of a free public education. This occurs because school districts must rely on local property wealth and property poor districts do not have equal access to property tax revenue. When other things are equal the district with the most property wealth will have the lowest tax rate.

The court clearly recognized that some students have additional educational needs and that school districts now bear the costs of meeting those educational needs. Generally, the state has provided some support for meeting those needs through sum-certain categorical aids, but that support seems to be slipping away. [Additional stats to support this at the link.]

I should point out that Milwaukee, which ranks dead last for per-pupil property tax revenues, is essentially at the upper limit of its statutory ability to tax under the legislature's 1993 revenue limits law. Nicolet is not even close. Is that fair to the taxpayers of Milwaukee?

I also included in the table above the figure about students elligible for free and reduced lunch, since Lance makes such a big deal about those students in his post:

In 2003, 35% of all Wisconsin 4th graders scored in the top two categories--proficient and advanced--on the NAEP math test. Only 16% of “eligible” students scored the same.

On the 8th grade math test, 35% of all students scored in the top two categories, compared with only 11% of “eligible” students. Reading tests yielded similar results: the average of all students was 33% and 37% on 4th and 8th grade tests, respectively. The average for “eligible” students: 18% and 16%.

One might suggest that we aren’t providing “great schools” to those students. How can we do better? Is more money the answer?

It's these "elligible" students, as Lance calls them, who suffer the most from what happens in the 82% of their lives spent outside of school. As I pointed out last time, Lance is willing to leave these children behind, in contrast to the national education law and my own attitude as a teacher of these children. Given the dictates of that law--No Child Left Behind--and the clear words of Vincent, we must make the effort to guarantee these children the same opportunity as their more successful peers, and, indeed, teach them until they are equally successful.

At any rate, Lance answers the rhetorical question from above: "Is more money the answer? It might be, if 'eligible' students weren’t sitting right next to their 'non-eligible' peers in class. They all share the same schools, the same classrooms, the same teachers. The opportunities available to one student in a public school are also available to every other student." This is almost laughable, when given the numbers I cited above. In the Milwaukee Public Schools, the odds of one "elligible" student sitting next another in class is extremely good. At Nicolet, not so much. Also consider that Milwaukee ranks 50 out of 50 in every proficiency level and graduation rate. The district with the second-most "elligible" students, Delavan-Darien (whose 35% is less than half Milwaukee's!), is consistently in the high 40s. Racine, also at 35% but ranked third, does slightly worse than Delavan-Darien.

It is these children, these districts that No Child Left Behind was intended to reach (and, I think in my more cynical moments, to punish), and it is these districts' funding issues that we need to look at under Vincent (Delavan Darien is 49 in per-pupil spending; Racine 26). Lance Burri is willing to leave them behind, and, it seems, to consider the "opportunity" provided in these districts--full of poor and minority students--equivalent to districts that spends thousands more per student. WEAC and other education advocates in the state see the inequity here, and want to rectify it. It doesn't necessarily take spending "a lot more," as Lance writes, but rather in a much more equitable distribution of the funds that we currently have--assuming that the legislature no longer reneges on its 2/3 funding promise, of course. (Further reductions in that figure, as the Republicans in Madison tend to want, run the risk of violating Vincent's measures of "adequacy.")

Finally (boy, when my blogging self has been bottled up for so long, it certainly makes no bones about speaking its mind, eh?), Lance pokes the teachers' unions for wanting a "fair collective bargaining law." His response--he ties it in to the "spend a lot more" answer--is another willful distortion of what WEAC and others actually want. Like the straightjacket that limits school districts' ability to raise their own funds, districts and unions are also bound by the Qualified Economic Offer law. The QEO, designed originally to protect those revenue-limited distrcits, allows administration to unilaterally impose a compensation increase of 3.8% to settle a contract. That increase includes both salary and benefits.

This is bad in two ways: First, of course, it does absolutely destroy the collective bargaining process in the state. Wisconsin's teachers are the only organized employees in the state--possibly in the entrie country--who, by state law, can have contracts settled for them, without input or a vote by the represented employees. How is this fair? I know that teacher-union-bashing is reflexive for conservatives (as is union-bashing in general), stemming from the belief that we teachers are to blame for the cost of our benefits rather than, say, double-digit annual health care inflation unchecked by any government agency with the authority to control it. And, since we are responsible for our high benefits (can we talk about our low salaries sometime?), we are clearly responsible for the high taxes they pay, and, since being anti-tax is even more reflexive for conservatives, well, you can do the math.

But consider for a moment the position of teachers in Milwaukee, or Delevan-Darien, or Racine, with the high number of students burdened by the other 82% of their lives, the high number of "elligble" students, the sword of No Child Left Behind's draconian penalties hanging over our heads. What is keeping us in these jobs? Certainly it has something to do with Nicolet's lack of job openings every year. But it also has to do with our benefits--specifically, our health care and our pension. We have bargained away salary increases, especially in the boom-time of the 1990s, in exchange for keeping our benefits and pension. Conservatives want to take those away from us, and, consequently, drive us to Minnesota or, perhaps, out of teaching altogether. Can you imagine the chaos if, for example, the fine people at Google, Inc., stopped offering compensation that would attract qualified people to work there? The internet would almost have to shut down--either that or rely on (shudder) MSN's search functions.

But the second reason why the QEO is killing us is something the conservatives never bother to consider; they bash the union as being greedy and the root of all evil and leave it there. But the QEO has hamstrung distrcits as well. Only the compensation portion of the contract can be adjusted under the QEO, meaning any other issues facing a district have to be deferred another two years. Perhaps more importantly, the QEO allows change in the levels of funding for benefit plans, not for changes within them. So a too-expensive health care provider, for example, can keep milking a district for two more years if the administration imposes the QEO. This is not fair to the students, parents, taxpayers, teachers, or anyone else in that district.

But this is what conservatives want: A preservation of inequity, a preservation of the QEO, and a "too bad" attitude toward poor and minority students in the state. I believe we can do better.