The Education Gadfly
A Weekly Bulletin of News and Analysis from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute
August 25, 2005, Volume 5, Number 29
New From Fordham!
Charter School Funding: Inequity?s Next Frontier is the most comprehensive study to date on charter school finance and shows that charters receive, on average, $1,800 less per-pupil than district-operated public schools. The gap is even larger for charter schools in urban areas. Read the full press release here and Checker?s editorial below.
Contents
From Checker's Desk
Guest Editorial
Recommended Reading
- Robin Hood in reverse
- Schizophrenic nation
- Secretary Spellings: Aging Well
- Science class is for science
Short Reviews
- A Fiscal Analysis of Proposed Education Access Grants in Minneapolis
- Tapping America?s Potential: The Education for Innovation Initiative
- Focus on Results: An Academic Impact Analysis of the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP)
Help Wanted
From Checker's Desk
Making education bricks without straw
U.S. charter schools are being deprived of essential funding in nearly every community and state where they are found. A deadly combination of powerful enemies, political compromise, and wishful thinking has placed the fledgling charter-school experiment in grave jeopardy: expected to work educational miracles without the needed resources.
The fiscal gap between charter and district schools is as wide as $3,500 per student in Missouri and South Carolina. In Atlanta, Greenville, and San Diego, it exceeds 40 percent.
These data and many more are contained in Charter School Funding: Inequity's Next Frontier, an important and alarming new study released this week by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute in conjunction with the Progress Analytics Institute and Public Impact. Supported by the Gates and Walton foundations, and based on information from 2002-2003 in 17 states and 27 cities, it is the most comprehensive analysis ever undertaken of the public dollars that do and do not flow into public charter schools and how these compare with district-school budgets in the same places.
The bottom line should command the urgent attention of policymakers. Charter fans will likely grow angry (and perhaps litigious) based on what they read in this report, and they would be justified. The current arrangements bear the hallmark of a misguided or rigged policy process; the finance ground rules appear designed to produce failure, not success, on the part of charter schools across America.
Nice as it would be to develop a simple, national answer to the question, "Are charter schools fairly funded?", the analysts who undertook this challenging study recognized that it had to be done state by state. And with charter schools heavily concentrated in urban America, their financing also needed to be compared with that of the city systems in whose midst they operated. That argued for a state-and-city analysis of charter-school funding versus district-operated public schools.
This challenge consumed a top-notch research team for a long year?made longer by the woeful finance data provided by many states.
Relentless effort, however, yielded a clear conclusion: though states and districts vary greatly, the average discrepancy between charter-school and district-school funding in 2002-2003 was $1,801 per pupil, or 21.7 percent. That meant a total charter-funding shortfall (in 16 states and the District of Columbia) of $1 billion, which for an average-size charter school translates to a $450,250 hole in its budget.
Consider what a 250-pupil school could do with $450,000. It could hire eight more teachers or a dozen aides. It could build science labs, create Internet access, and stock the library. It could run an after-school or summer program. It could subsidize pupil transportation. It could fix the roof, run a full-day kindergarten program, or hire reading and math specialists. It could expand its extracurricular offerings and athletic or musical opportunities. The list goes on. If you asked charter schools' cash-strapped but enterprising principals, they would swiftly name a dozen more things that their schools urgently need to do right by their children. And since basic school financing is annual, not a one-time windfall like a charitable gift or federal start-up grant, the following year would bring another $450,000 with which to tackle still more urgent projects.
Wise folk know that money alone doesn't create good schools. We've all seen lavishly funded schools that produce dreadful results and meagerly funded schools that do awesomely well. Equalizing revenues alone would not cure all that afflicts sub-par charter schools any more than it would transform low-performing district schools into paragons of instructional effectiveness. But neither should charter schools be expected routinely to make bricks without enough straw. Or be subjected to fundamentally inequitable treatment.
States' self-imposed constitutional duty to provide all their citizens with free public education means they have an ineradicable obligation to provide every child with substantially equal education resources. That's true no matter where in the state a child lives?and whether he enrolls in a district-run or charter school. That's the core principle undergirding school finance equalization lawsuits.
It's amazing that charter schools and their students have not yet been plaintiffs in such lawsuits. The evidence set forth in this new report suggests that they would likely stand an excellent chance of prevailing.
Granted, charter partisans and their policymaking allies have not always paid close attention to the financing side, nor steadfastly demanded their fair share of the public-education dollar. Being insecure about their basic existence, accustomed to policy persecution of many kinds, and in the habit of making do with less, many have settled too meekly for crumbs from the school-finance table. Elected officials sometimes exacerbate this by promising not only that charter schools will deliver superior education but that they will do so for less money, thus leaving school operators hard-pressed to complain that they do not, in reality, have enough money to do the job properly.
It's one thing to say that quality public education can and should be provided more efficiently than it usually is. In most places, that's true. But it's quite another thing to expect charter schools to perform education miracles on a pittance?even as the per-pupil funding that remains in their surrounding school systems rises with every youngster who opts to enroll in a charter school. Particularly when one considers how far behind the education eight-ball are many of the children entering U.S. charter schools, how much needs to be done to catch them up, and how hard many charters struggle to provide more (longer days and years, for example), it's worse than na?ve to suggest that these schools will deliver the necessary results without the requisite resources.
The principal bases for short-funding of charter schools?above all, denial of access to local resources and facilities dollars?could be rectified in every jurisdiction by amending the state charter law. Either charter schools can be given full access to those funds or compensatory payments can be made to them by states, sufficient to stitch together the bleeding lacerations in their present budgets. A stroke of the policymaker's pen is all that's needed.
Nowhere is addressing the funding gap more urgent than in America's cities, where the country is bent upon narrowing the achievement gap. That's also where charter schools are most often located and where disadvantaged and minority families have the greatest need for decent education options for their daughters and sons. Yet it is America's cities where charter schools face the biggest discrepancies, the widest gaps, and the greatest injustices. If those schools are to do their part to deliver on the promise that these children will not be left behind, policymakers need to assure them enough straw to make sturdy bricks.
"Backer of Charter Schools Finds They Trail in Financing," by Sam Dillon, New York Times, August 23, 2005 (subscription required)
"Report Fans Flames in D.C. School Funding Debate," by V. Dion Haynes and Lori Montgomery, Washington Post, August 24, 2005
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Guest Editorial
Harold Stevenson, in memoriam
Harold Stevenson, one of the most eminent education researchers of our generation, died in July at the age of 80. A professor of psychology at the University of Michigan for thirty years, Stevenson was best known for his book (co-authored by James Stigler), The Learning Gap: Why Our Schools Are Failing and What We Can Learn from Japanese and Chinese Education, published in 1992. He was honored by the American Psychological Society for his ground-breaking work as a developmental psychologist and his contributions to cross-national research.
While serving in the Navy during World War II, Stevenson became fluent in Japanese, a skill that served him well in his later studies of Japanese schools. In 1973, Stevenson was among the first American researchers to visit the People's Republic of China. His comparative studies of American, Chinese, and Japanese educational systems were written with an eye to public policy. He carefully documented the differences among these systems and cultures that appeared to influence student achievement. His writings appeared in prestigious academic and scientific journals, and he was widely quoted for his insights into the sources of achievement.
Stevenson pinpointed differences in classroom activities, parent attitudes and behavior, and cultural values that were amenable to change. Among these were, for example, his finding that parents in Asian societies value effort and thus expect their children to work hard in school, while American parents tend to value their children's innate abilities and thus excuse their mediocre academic performance.
The Learning Gap was especially influential because it appeared at a time when there was a heated debate among education researchers about whether the performance of American students was or was not problematic. Defenders of the status quo claimed that critics of student performance were trying to "destroy" the public schools. They charged that international assessments?on which American students performed poorly, especially in high school?were technically flawed and therefore of no significance. Whatever the evidence, the defenders of the status quo belittled it as well as anyone who dared to say that poor academic achievement was a serious national concern, not only for children in the inner-city, but for students in leafy suburbs as well.
Into this debate, Stevenson waded with a mountain of unassailable empirical data comparing the results of the American educational system unfavorably to those in Asian countries. Stevenson was not by nature a controversialist or ideologue, and?unlike some of his adversaries?he never stooped to mudslinging or invective. He was by nature a reasonable, quiet, gentle, fair-minded man, who backed up his arguments with a wealth of evidence. He was also a courageous man who did not hesitate to engage in debate with others, ever hopeful that reason and evidence would win the day.
Based on his deep knowledge of Japanese national standards, Stevenson became a strong critic of the standards promulgated by the National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM). He spoke in various forums about their deficiencies, his main complaint being that they were vague aspirations, not curricular standards. They were strong on desirable student attitudes, he said, but unclear when it came to describing the skills to be taught and learned. They supported calculators and computers in the classroom, which were not permitted by Japanese and Chinese teachers who believed that students would learn how to operate the device rather than to understand the problems they were supposed to solve. The standards, he said, might prove helpful to highly prepared teachers and very bright children, but he predicted that they would offer little help to the majority of teachers and students.
Stevenson was a man of integrity who showed that education research could be a powerful instrument for the improvement of education. He will be missed.
A TIMSS Primer, by Harold Stevenson for the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, July 1, 1998
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Recommended Reading
Robin Hood in reverse
A riddle: Who has been talking a good game for forty years about equalizing resources for poor kids while creating obscure rules that do the exact opposite? Answer: Uncle Sam. Title I, the mother of all federal education programs, requires that high-poverty schools receive roughly comparable resources before adding funds from Washington. That's only fair?these dollars are meant to be extra, to compensate for the difficulties faced by poor children, to "supplement, not supplant" state and local education revenues, not to let local districts out of their funding responsibilities. But as Marguerite Roza and Paul Hill point out in their Washington Post op-ed (and their excellent study, "Strengthening Title I to Help High-Poverty Schools"), there's a glaring loophole: districts don't have to account for the vast differences in payroll between schools. Since virtually all districts budget for schools as if everyone was paid an average salary, rather than actuals, and since most urban districts face a talent drain from poor schools to more affluent ones (since teachers have seniority "bumping rights" built into union contracts?and no financial incentive to stay at tougher schools), this is no small oversight. In Houston, for example, high-poverty schools get $472 less in state and local funds than the district average. There's an easy solution: close the loophole. Listen for the howls of protest from the teachers unions, which to date have been more concerned with protecting the bumping rights of their veteran members than living up to their lofty rhetoric about equity.
"Equalizing Education Dollars," by Marguerite Roza and Paul Hill, Washington Post, August 21, 2005
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Schizophrenic nation
Good grief! Americans' famed ambivalence, not to say schizophrenia, deepens with respect to school reforms. The annual Phi Delta Kappa/Gallup Poll released Tuesday, which measures the nation's attitudes toward public schools, shows that while most Americans endorse the goals associated with the No Child Left Behind Act, few embrace its methods. For example, respondents overwhelmingly support closing the achievement gaps between white and minority students without compromising high standards, yet nearly 8 in 10 respondents would not send their child to another school if their local school was designated as needing improvement?a right ostensibly conferred by NCLB. Why? According to the poll, most reject the idea that student test scores in English and math alone produce a fair picture of how well a school is performing. Meanwhile, 75 percent of respondents say the achievement gap is due to factors other than the quality of schooling received, yet 58 percent believe it's the public schools' responsibility to close that gap.
"Americans grow skeptical as school reform takes toll," by Gail Russell Chaddock, Christian Science Monitor, August 24
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Secretary Spellings: Aging Well
The summer heat causes some to wilt, but it seems to have stiffened the spine of Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings. After giving in to a host of Florida "flexibilities" in the spring (see here), this month she wisely rejected the Sunshine State's brash request to let 380 low-performing schools off the NCLB accountability hook. Florida officials had labeled these schools "provisional AYP"?figure that one out, Mom and Dad?and petitioned for relief on their behalf because they received A's and B's under the state's own accountability scheme. Yet as Education Trust and others have shown, many of these schools are failing their poor and minority students. On the other hand, surely some are doing right by all their kids, making quick gains after starting out far behind?progress for which the Florida system (though not NCLB) rightfully gives credit. There is good news on that front: Spellings appears increasingly willing to consider such a value-added approach. She recently told columnist David Broder: "I think we were right to start with performance standards, but now that they are in place, we are working our way into more sophisticated approaches." Sounds good?but let's "work our way" to these new approaches in a hurry, before remaining support for NCLB evaporates.
"ED Rejects Florida's bold move to waive NCLB sanctions," by Katherine Shek, Education Daily, August 17, 2005 (subscription required)
"The Divide In Education," by David S. Broder, Washington Post, August 14, 2005
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Science class is for science
Readers are surely aware that, while vacationing at the ranch, President Bush uttered a few unfortunate words about the teaching of so-called intelligent design: "Both sides ought to be properly taught...so people can understand what the debate is about...Part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought...You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas, and the answer is yes." In the "he-should-know-better department," Senate Majority Leader and heart surgeon Bill Frist said much the same a week later at a Rotary Club meeting in Nashville. Meanwhile, in Kansas, the state board of education approved draft science standards that criticize Darwin's theory (see previous coverage here). What's going on? Pundits explain that evolution will be "the new gay marriage" in the 2006 Congressional election; egad. Gadfly, a highly evolved species himself, is prepping to defend the next likely target: Copernicus. (Newton is already in trouble, reports The Onion.) After all, the idea that the Earth revolves around the sun is only a theory?no one has actually traveled to the sun to make sure the notion doesn't have any holes. Regarding the likely wedge issue of 2008, early money is on attacking Leonardo da Vinci?after all, he was a scientist and gay! If you don't find any of this particularly amusing, do not fear: Fordham's review of state science standards, complete with an analysis of their treatment of evolution, will arrive later this fall.
"Bush Remarks on 'Intelligent Design' Fuel Debate," by Peter Baker and Peter Slevin, Washington Post, August 3, 2005
"Frist's Tennessee Recess Is Puzzling for a Presidential Hopeful," by Shailagh Murray, Washington Post, August 21, 2005
"Kansas Board Advances a Draft Critical of Evolution," Associated Press, August 10, 2005
"Evangelical Scientists Refute Gravity With New 'Intelligent Falling' Theory," The Onion, August 17, 2005
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Short Reviews
A Fiscal Analysis of Proposed Education Access Grants in Minneapolis
Ericca Maas, Milton & Rose D. Friedman Foundation and the Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs
July 2005
Indiana?s New and (Somewhat) Improved K-12 School Finance System
Dr. Susan L. Aud, Milton & Rose D. Friedman Foundation
July 2005
Given the source, one might expect arguments in favor of school choice in Minnesota and Indiana in these two reports, both part of a series from the Friedman Foundation on "School Choice Issues in the State." In that respect, the Minneapolis study does not disappoint; it examines the projected impact that a proposed voucher plan?Education Access Grants, introduced in the legislature in February?would have on the budgets of both Minneapolis public schools and the state. (The bottom line: both the public schools and the state would benefit financially.) But these reports will prove most useful to readers seeking concise, clear explanations of each state's school finance systems. The Indiana study, for example, looks at the Hoosier State's K-12 funding formulas, which, though simplified in recent years, remain complicated. Further, the Indiana report compares that state's formulas and procedures with those in Illinois, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, and Ohio and uncovers some choice factoids. For example, schools in Indiana are typically allocated $12,600 per year for each severely disabled student, versus $29,000 in Ohio and $10,300 in Kentucky. Meanwhile, Minnesota pays ten times more to schools to educate English Language Learners ($700 per student) than does Michigan ($70 per student). Given the billions spent each year on education, more such transparency is essential. You can download a copy of the Minnesota report by visiting http://www.friedmanfoundation.org/news/2005-07-13.html. The Indiana report is available at http://www.friedmanfoundation.org/news/2005-07-12.html.
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Tapping America?s Potential: The Education for Innovation Initiative
The Business Roundtable
August 2005
Yes, you've seen myriad manifestos, statements, studies, and reports about the country's need to do more to sustain its leadership in science and technology, but please suppress that yawn. This one is different. This time, fifteen leading business groups have sounded the alarm, and have done so with oomph, facts, and plenty of anxiety showing. This new report notes, for example, that China is graduating four times as many engineers as the United States; that fewer than 6 percent of today's college-bound high school seniors plan to pursue such a degree; that even South Korea is graduating as many engineers as we are. Though the report praises NCLB (whose science-testing requirement kicks in next year), it contends that school reform is "necessary but insufficient" and that urgent attention is also needed to other vital changes, including an overhaul of the preparation and compensation of science/math teachers, expedited security clearances for those aspiring to careers in science and technology, a boost in federal spending for basic research, and more. In effect, this report says that, if America's future safety and prosperity are going to hinge on our prowess in science, engineering, and technology (rather than our proficiency with plows and assembly lines), we must urgently ready ourselves to succeed in that world, mindful that the rest of the planet isn't just installing call centers and low-wage garment factories; it's also investing in the human capital and research infrastructure needed for scientific leadership. This short but compelling report deserves your attention, as does the breadth of business leadership participation in it. You can access the press release and link to the report's full text by surfing to http://www.businessroundtable.org/newsroom/Document.aspx?qs=5876BF807822B0F1AD1448722FB51711FCF50C8.
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Focus on Results: An Academic Impact Analysis of the Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP)
Educational Policy Institute
August 2005
Knowledge Is Power Program (KIPP) charter schools are famous for using cheers and chants to reinforce instruction among middle-school-age students. This report by the Educational Policy Institute, an education research group engaged by KIPP to perform the study, gives the 48 KIPP schools nationwide something else to cheer about. EPI analyzed school-level Stanford Achievement Test scores for 27 fifth-grade cohorts at 24 KIPP schools over roughly one year and found substantially greater academic gains than what is normally expected. KIPP students?who are overwhelmingly black and Hispanic, with 78 percent receiving free and reduced-price lunch?showed a mean gain of 10.1 "normal curve equivalents" in reading, 10.9 in language, and 17.4 in mathematics from the fall of 2003 to the spring of 2004. A smaller group of students who took the exam in fall 2003 and a follow-up exam in fall 2004 realized mean gains of 7.5 in reading, 9.1 in language, and 11.6 in mathematics. While KIPP hasn't "found 'the answer' to the educational woes of urban schools," say the report's authors, they are "doing something right." The report would be even stronger if EPI had access to individual student scores?a point the authors concede?and several areas require further investigation. For example, do students continue to realize significant gains in later grades? Still, the results are encouraging. The authors express it well. "The findings ... illustrate that students who are generally expected to perform poorly by the larger society ... outperformed the greatest of expectations." Three cheers for that. The report is available at http://www.educationalpolicy.org/.
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Help Wanted
Stellar Dayton organization seeks director of education programs
Keys to Improving Dayton Schools, Inc. (k.i.d.s.), a non-profit organization based in Dayton, Ohio, seeks an exceptional educator to work closely in partnership with area charter schools to guide, assist, and strengthen their academic improvement efforts. Do you have a graduate degree and at least three years of successful experience as a principal, curriculum officer, assistant superintendent, or superintendent? Do you enjoy working with school leaders on curriculum, instruction, performance, and evaluation? Are you 100 percent committed to excellence? If so, please see more information here.
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About Us
The Education Gadfly is published weekly (ordinarily on Thursdays), with occasional breaks, by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute. Regular contributors include Amy Fagan, Chester E. Finn, Jr., Kyle Kennedy, Mickey Muldoon, Jamie Davies O’Leary, Eric Osberg, Stafford Palmieri, Emmy Partin, Michael J. Petrilli, Laura Elizabeth Pohl, Terry Ryan, Janie Scull, Saul Spady, and Amber Winkler. Have something to say? Email us at thegadfly@edexcellence.net. Would you like to be spared from the Gadfly? Email thegadfly@edexcellence.net with “unsubscribe gadfly” in the text of your message. You are welcome to forward Gadfly to others, and from our website you can also email individual articles. If you have been forwarded a copy of Gadfly and would like to subscribe, you may either email thegadfly@edexcellence.net with “subscribe gadfly” in the text of the message or sign up online here.
The Thomas B. Fordham Institute is a nonprofit organization that conducts research, issues publications, and directs action projects in elementary and secondary education reform at the national level and in Ohio, with a special emphasis on our hometown of Dayton. (For Ohio news, check out our Ohio Education Gadfly, published bi-weekly, ordinarily on Wednesdays.) The Institute is neither connected with nor sponsored by Fordham University.