School Funding

[horhangi]

In another thread, Shadowy Man said,
“ And yet the structural methods for how those schools get resources is skewed towards the already wealthy.

If education is supposed to be the great equalizer then shouldn’t all students get an equal chance?”

I do not know about elsewhere as school funding is a complex system, but this is not true in Ca. Local taxes do not make up the bulk of school funding. The majority of a school districts funding comes from state ADA numbers: Average Daily Attendance. This is the majority of a school districts budget. 22% of the budget is drawn from local property taxes. This is a pittance. Somewhere close to 90% of a school districts budget is salaries. Education is a people heavy enterprise. I work in a district with annual budget constraints, partly due to mismanagement in the last 5-10 years but also due to enrollment declines, federal and state mandates especially regarding special education that are not funded, and insufficient state funding in recent years. It is the state ADA rate that overwhelmingly controls the budget of a school district. If the stare decides there will be no cola in the ADA rate for the year due to the state budget, then the district must absorb those inflationary costs in salary raises, vendor prices, cost of energy and everything else with no increase in funding.

 

[Trausti]

Inflation-adjusted education spending per student:

1950: $2,784
1960: $4,060
1970: $6,403
1980: $8,125
1990: $11,064
2000: $12,849
2010: $15,232
2017: $15,424

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_236.55.asp?current=yes

 

[Worldtraveller]

AZ used to have a huge disparity between the wealthy neighborhoods and the poorer, even within the same school district.

The state had to be sued (I want to say this happened in the late 80s, early 90s time frame) to get the districts to equally fund all schools. Many of the wealthier areas eventually got around this by forming new school districts carved out of the old larger district.

I suspect in another couple decades, they will be sued again, but unless the courts make it blanket state wide, we'll just keep iterating on the problem while the wealthy people try to keep the riffraff out.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

AZ used to have a huge disparity between the wealthy neighborhoods and the poorer, even within the same school district.

The state had to be sued (I want to say this happened in the late 80s, early 90s time frame) to get the districts to equally fund all schools. Many of the wealthier areas eventually got around this by forming new school districts carved out of the old larger district.

I suspect in another couple decades, they will be sued again, but unless the courts make it blanket state wide, we'll just keep iterating on the problem while the wealthy people try to keep the riffraff out.

Ohio's Supreme Court has ruled the funding mechanism for schools is unconstitutional multiple times. Nada solution from Columbus.

 

[ronburgundy]

Inflation-adjusted education spending per student:

1950: $2,784
1960: $4,060
1970: $6,403
1980: $8,125
1990: $11,064
2000: $12,849
2010: $15,232
2017: $15,424

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_236.55.asp?current=yes

And you'd see the exact same thing if you looked at the per employee costs to any company in any industry. The current costs to the schools are much higher and include many more things than they did in 1950. Just one of countless examples would be computing equipment, not just for students, but for teachers, administrators, janitors, security, etc., plus IT staff to manage that equipment and computing equipment for them too. Oh, and since I mentioned security, they were largely non-existent at schools in the 1950s, but are now expected by all parents. How much has your computing budget increased compared to what your grandparents paid for computing in 1950?

Inflation adjusted Teacher salaries have actually declined over the past 20 years. In 1995, public school teachers made 90% of the average of other college graduates and made 30% more than the average of all US workers (including min wage and H.S. dropouts). 20 years later, in 2015, they were making only 77% of what other college grads were making and only 5.6% more than the average of all US workers.
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-04-05-the-data-tells-all-teacher-salaries-have-been-declining-for-years


Also, your post doesn't even have any relevance to the OP, which is about inequality in amount of funding among current students.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

So that is the funding for every student gets or an average across 50 states that renders the number useless?

 

[Shadowy Man]

And yet if you look up a list of the so-called "best" public school districts in California, they all reside in rich neighborhoods. Why is that?

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

They don't waste all their money on rims?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Inflation-adjusted education spending per student:

1950: $2,784
1960: $4,060
1970: $6,403
1980: $8,125
1990: $11,064
2000: $12,849
2010: $15,232
2017: $15,424

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_236.55.asp?current=yes

How much of this is special ed, though? That totally confuses the picture.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And yet if you look up a list of the so-called "best" public school districts in California, they all reside in rich neighborhoods. Why is that?

Because the real issue is the students. Parents that care and put the time in = better schools.

 

[Shadowy Man]

And yet if you look up a list of the so-called "best" public school districts in California, they all reside in rich neighborhoods. Why is that?

Because the real issue is the students. Parents that care and put the time in = better schools.

So you are saying that poor people care less about education?

 

[J842P]

And yet if you look up a list of the so-called "best" public school districts in California, they all reside in rich neighborhoods. Why is that?

As is almost always the case, it's the students themselves that are the main factor.

 

[J842P]

And yet if you look up a list of the so-called "best" public school districts in California, they all reside in rich neighborhoods. Why is that?

Because the real issue is the students. Parents that care and put the time in = better schools.

So you are saying that poor people care less about education?

In the aggregate? Yeah, probably. Of course, most parents probably care about their kids education. What you have in poorer neighborhoods, though, is a higher incidence of extremely pathological home environments. And a lot of parents who don't have the skills necessary to help their kids "in the game", so to speak, because a) they have to work two jobs to barely stay afloat, b) they themselves likely weren't taught it by their parents.

Note, you see this effect even within the poor cohorts, I think, in the example of charter schools, which select for motivated students and kids who parents are motivated. I am skeptical about a lot of the claims that any particular method is useful due to this factor alone. Although, charter schools are a mixed bag.

I think one thing you can do is encourage more economic integration in school systems, where kids can then at least emulate their peers. And this should go along with more economic integration of housing.

 

[Shadowy Man]

So you are saying that poor people care less about education?

In the aggregate? Yeah, probably. Of course, most parents probably care about their kids education. What you have in poorer neighborhoods, though, is a higher incidence of extremely pathological home environments. And a lot of parents who don't have the skills necessary to help their kids "in the game", so to speak, because a) they have to work two jobs to barely stay afloat, b) they themselves likely weren't taught it by their parents.

Note, you see this effect even within the poor cohorts, I think, in the example of charter schools, which select for motivated students and kids who parents are motivated. I am skeptical about a lot of the claims that any particular method is useful due to this factor alone. Although, charter schools are a mixed bag.

I think one thing you can do is encourage more economic integration in school systems, where kids can then at least emulate their peers. And this should go along with more economic integration of housing.

So, would you, and Loren, say that the schools themselves have equal resources, infrastructure, and opportunities in poor neighborhoods as in rich neighborhoods, and it is only the students themselves who, for whatever reasons, aren't taking advantage of them? There are no systemic differences, nothing holding them back but their own motivations?

 

[TV and credit cards]

And yet if you look up a list of the so-called "best" public school districts in California, they all reside in rich neighborhoods. Why is that?

Assume the funding is level, poor to wealthy areas. As long as children in poor communities have to tolerate an unstable and often dangerous environment outside the school, their educational achievement will always be subpar.
Worried about whether a parent is available to help with educational needs? The worries are navigating a safe route home, parent availability, food availability, functioning utilities, housing availability.
State funded boarding schools will not only alleviate this problem but free up the additional time and financial resources for the parent(s) to perhaps improve the child’s environment.

 

[ronburgundy]

Inflation-adjusted education spending per student:

1950: $2,784
1960: $4,060
1970: $6,403
1980: $8,125
1990: $11,064
2000: $12,849
2010: $15,232
2017: $15,424

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_236.55.asp?current=yes

How much of this is special ed, though? That totally confuses the picture.

Not just special ed, but countless expenses that schools did not have to pay in prior decades, from computing, to security, and even A/C costs b/c not only have the # of hot days increasing but cultural expectations of A/C are much higher and places that rarely used it now do (the prevalence of central A/C in homes has doubled since 1950). Plus, the kind of expenses that schools have rise faster than general inflation of the CPI, b/c they are concentrated in areas like land and construction, energy, insurance, and healthcare. In fact, the CPI doesn't even include any inflation related to construction which is a primary cost schools face due to ever growing populations, and usually has an inflation rate 2-4 times as high as the CPI.

 

[laughing dog]

Inflation-adjusted education spending per student:

1950: $2,784
1960: $4,060
1970: $6,403
1980: $8,125
1990: $11,064
2000: $12,849
2010: $15,232
2017: $15,424

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_236.55.asp?current=yes

And you'd see the exact same thing if you looked at the per employee costs to any company in any industry. The current costs to the schools are much higher and include many more things than they did in 1950. Just one of countless examples would be computing equipment, not just for students, but for teachers, administrators, janitors, security, etc., plus IT staff to manage that equipment and computing equipment for them too. Oh, and since I mentioned security, they were largely non-existent at schools in the 1950s, but are now expected by all parents. How much has your computing budget increased compared to what your grandparents paid for computing in 1950?

Inflation adjusted Teacher salaries have actually declined over the past 20 years. In 1995, public school teachers made 90% of the average of other college graduates and made 30% more than the average of all US workers (including min wage and H.S. dropouts). 20 years later, in 2015, they were making only 77% of what other college grads were making and only 5.6% more than the average of all US workers.
https://www.edsurge.com/news/2018-04-05-the-data-tells-all-teacher-salaries-have-been-declining-for-years

It includes extra-curricular activities and transportation (which has risen since there are fewer neighborhood schools). Comparing spending in the 1950s to post 2000s is comparing apples to laptops.

 

[Toni]

There are multiple ways that so called equal funding per student results in unequally funded school districts. I’ll use the example of my school district as an example:

Our school districts ct encompasses the small city where I reside as well as a few small towns and a significant amount of rural land—which means significant transportation costs. An urban or metropolitan suburban school district serving the same number of students woukd have significantly lower transportation costs, freeing up those dollars to be spent on other things, such as enrichment classes and programming.

Another significant issue is the composition of the student body. My school district prided itself on its special education program. In fact that program was a draw for some families to telicate to our area and even our state. Which sounds great, right? In theory, yes. In reality, we had a couple —just two or three students who were so profoundly disabled that providing for their educational needs consumed most of the special ed budget. For profoundly disabled students, there can be a very blurred line between what is educational needand what is health care. Elementary teachers in the building where my kids went to school rebelled at being expected to be responsible for suctioning one stident’s airway—and they should have. I need to mention that in our state, students were mainstreamed to the full extent possible. Even if it meant hiring someone to suction someone’s airway and change their ostemy bag. Or a sign language interpreter as well as someone to manage the same student’s behavior issues, help adapt materials for the same hearing impaired student who was also vision impaired. No one questioned the need or the right of these students to receive the best possible education. But it came at a very high financial cost and depending on the Student and situation, also sometimes had a negative impact on the education delivery to other students.

I’ve said before that I spent time working in an anti-povert preschool education program. These were kids whose older siblings attended the same school, in the same classrooms as my kids. Most of the parents were poorly educated and struggled to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table and utilities on. That was how they grew up. And they grew up in a school system and a community who firmly expected that hey would, at best, finish high school and be able to read and write enough to work in a factory but not enough to ask many questions or make any demands. They grew up feeling that education was too good for them—and struggled mightily to not convey the same message to their kids. Those kids were as likely to be intelligent and eager to learn, as creative and as well behaved as the children of the doctors and lawyers and professors and millionaire factory owners. They deserved as much of a chance as any other kid. They just were not going to get it—no matter how much their parents lived them and wanted a better future.

 

[ronburgundy]

About 25% of US students attend schools that are > 75% white, while another 25% attend schools that are > 75% non-white.

Despite the same number of students in each of these types of schools, the majority white districts get $23 billion more per year, about 20% more or $2300 more per student.

And while poverty levels in majority black districts are part of the problem, that's not all of it. High poverty districts (> 20% poverty rate) that are majority white not only get 13% more funding per student that high poverty black districts, but even get almost 7% more funding than low poverty black districts. IOW, race trumps (pun intended) poverty in school funding disparities. That appears to be due to a number of factors which includes the highly political (and often racial) nature of how district boundaries are drawn with massively differing sizes of districts,

https://edbuild.org/content/23-billion

 

[Loren Pechtel]

And yet if you look up a list of the so-called "best" public school districts in California, they all reside in rich neighborhoods. Why is that?

Because the real issue is the students. Parents that care and put the time in = better schools.

So you are saying that poor people care less about education?

To a large degree, yes--their not caring about education is a big factor in being poor.