It should not be a surprise to learn that money matters. Certainly, affluent parents choose private schools and suburban districts with small classes, experienced teachers, and beautiful facilities.
Meanwhile, the children who live in the poorest communities have overcrowded classes in aging buildings and a steady churn of inexperienced teachers.
For years, we have been told by politicians and some economists that “throwing money” at schools in poor neighborhoods would not help the children.
However, new research demonstrates that spending does matter.
The authors–C. Kirabo Jackson, associate professor of human development and social policy at Northwestern University, Rucker C. Johnson, associate professor of public policy at University of California, Berkeley, and Claudia Persico, a doctoral candidate in human development and social policy at Northwestern University–show that “increased school spending is linked to improved outcomes for students, and for low-income students in particular…Increasing per-pupil spending yields large improvements in educational attainment, wages, and family income, and reductions in the annual incidence of adult poverty for children from low-income families.
As they also show, it matters how the new money is spent–such as on instruction, hiring more teachers, increasing teacher pay, hiring guidance counselors and social workers. Money well-spent “can profoundly shape the life outcomes of economically disadvantaged children and thereby reduce the intergenerational transmission of poverty. Money alone may not lift educational outcomes to desired levels, but our findings confirm that the provision of adequate funding may be critical.”
The only surprising fact about this study is that it appears in Education Next, a conservative journal whose contributors usually argue that money doesn’t matter, as compared to vouchers and charters.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
“Money Doesn’t Matter”
Money doesn’t matter
To those with clothes a-tatter
But money matters lots
To those who call the shots
Of course, money matters. It is the perception as much as the reality. We spent a lot of money on that school. They must be learning.
Money doesn’t matter to the people who have plenty of it. It only “matters” when someone suggests that more money is needed for poor kids.
With the current way we fund public education, the only hope for our poor students is integration. It is the only way poor students can attend a well resourced school. As an ESL teacher in a district that had about a 30% poverty level, our poor ESL students did not fall through the cracks, and many of them attended two and four year colleges. The poor students learned a great deal from being in class with middle class students, and the district provided support and extra help for these students along the way. The district invested wisely in these students both through tax dollars, grants and federal funding. A number of these poor students have now joined the middle class. Without adequate funding, it is impossible to tackle the challenges of poverty.
The “money doesn’t matter” approach also ignores that schools change. If family earnings and assets are dropping in your community your school changes, because the group of children attending have lower incomes than they may have had years prior, on the whole, as a group.
We were actually successful at explaining this to people here when we public school funding was cut at the state level and we had to ask for more money at the local level. We told them family income is dropping here so our schools are (essentially) bailing a leaky boat.- if wages stagnate or fall families are then in trouble and there’s blow-back on schools. They aren’t serving the same population- they’re serving more low income kids. People understood this when it was explained to them, partly (I think) because they are witnessing these changes and of course living this, so it wasn’t news to them and we were able to convince them to fund schools.
Money is very important as long as it actually makes it into the classroom where it can make a difference. I think one of the advantages of most charters is that 100% of the money is spent within the school.
Reading Russikoff’s book re Newark right now and she mentions 50% of district revenues made it to the classrooms in Newark a decade ago.
How much Race To The Top money made it to classrooms? In NY, 1/2 was spent by State Ed and never even made it to districts or schools, let alone classrooms.
There are plenty of people who don’t want to pay more in taxes because they can’t afford it on fixed salaries, and some people who just don’t want to pay more period. But, I think there are a lot who don’t want to spend more because they don’t think the money will be used efficiently to make a difference for children.
Did you read the parts of Russakoff’s book where she talks about how much of Zuckerberg’s money the politician types spent on $1,000/day consultants? Is that the fault of public schools? These same politician types, incidentally, support charter schools too.
She doesn’t say directly but I suspect when she’s talking about how charters pay less for schools services like cleaning and other support services she’s talking about the savings that come from hiring lower wage contractors to perform those services.
But that’s a trade-off because of course lower wages in a community ripple- families live on wages. If everyone is making 10 or 15 bucks an hour that will change communities, and not for the better.
Yes, also a huge waste of money.
Was RttT intended to make it “into the classroom”? A big part of it was about setting up state data systems and elaborate teacher evaluation schemes. It seems to me the whole data component would entail paying experts and consultants and most of that would be state level.
“Make it into the classroom” is slippery anyway. I’m sure Arne Duncan would say a state scheme to rank teachers based on test scores is “going to into classrooms” and that could involve paying teams of experts and nothing else. Newark public schools people would probably say paying janitors and doing upkeep or repair of aging facilities is money “into the classrooms”.
100% of the money is spent within the classroom of the charter school? Really? You realize that I live in a state where the management organizations are for-profit. They have an abiding interest in slowing the flow of money to the classroom to line their own pockets.
I suggest you read the Detroit Free Press piece on charters from 2014. It notes that charter administrative costs are nearly double that of traditional public schools. Double. That money is going to the CEO and consultants, not the teachers.
I don’t know how you received that impression but it is wildly incorrect.
Now, now, he meant 100% of the money that isn’t going to shareholders, executive salaries, crony contractors, etc. goes into the classroom. Picky, picky.
Dienne:
Picky picky!
😎
Steve,
I don’t support for-profit charters or management companies, and luckily, I live in NY where they don’t exist (with I believe 6 grandfathered in).
Yes, by technical measures, most charter schools don’t spend less on administration than school districts. One would expect that districts would get economies of scale, but at least in my area, they don’t.
I think the main difference is that (here anyhow) all charter money stays within the school (some exceptions for not-for-profits that run multiple schools). No salaries are paid to people who are never in the school. I think the “district office” is a dinosaur instead of the service organizations they should be.
I’d like to see resources given to individual schools based on need and then “zero-based” budgeting for shared services. That means the budget is supplied by schools paying for the shared services to the degree that they need them. It’s used by businesses to minimize waste and initiatives that don’t actually support the educational mission of the schools.
John, read research by Bruce Baker and Mark Weber. What Russakoff missed is that 1) charter schools have more funding because of contributions by philanthropists and hedge funders; 2) charter schools have higher administrative costs than charters in Newark.
Diane, do you have data to back up that contention? For example, what do KIPP or Uncommon spend per student vs. what Newark Public Schools spend?
This says Philanthropy in NJ is $74 per charter student:
Click to access buckets-of-water-into-the-ocean-non-public-revenue-in-public-charter-and-traditional-public-schools.pdf
John – here’s the link to Jersey Jazzman (a/k/a Mark Weber) that Diane is referring to: http://jerseyjazzman.blogspot.com/2015/09/dont-believe-data-in-prize.html
Does money matter?
Even if the money goes to the class room does it make a difference?
Here is a simple comparison. New York state spends well over the national average per student. As a matter of fact it is 60 plus percent over the national average. California on the average spends slightly less than the national average. Both being large states, the educational quality outcome is nearly the same, with New York having a very slight edge. Does money make a difference? Does it really get all the way down to the class room? You be the judge.
The Race to the top funding announced by Obama in 2009 was about 4 billion. It is not a yearly funding. Compare this to over 600 Billion spent by localities, states and the federal government (Title1) for K-12 public education each year. The RTTP funding is miniscule as compared to the $600 billion per year spending.
I see no data showing that 100% of the money is spent within the charter school. Some of them are for profit although I believe that a majority are non-profit. Charter schools account for about 5% of the student population once again meaningless in the big picture of K-12 public school spending.
Another red herring is the mention of $1000/day consultants. How much money is actually spent on these consultants? A Million, Billion or a Trillion? Anybody has a clue? Please speak up.
“…the educational quality outcome….”
As measured by…?
“How much money is actually spent on these consultants?”
Read Russakoff’s book (you’ll like her teacher and union bashing) – no one knows exactly where Zuckerberg’s gift (and the matching gifts) went, but quite a bit was spent on consultants. Of course, she only covers one medium-sized city for a limited period. It would take armies of journalists to track down the money in every city and, unfortunately, we don’t have very many journalists these days. But I’d guess, along with testing and teaching to the test, these “consultants” soak up a huge portion of “education” spending these days.
Dienne,
Huge portion does not provide any information. You need to be more specific, is it millions, billions? Show the data source if you have one.
Geez, Raj, reading comprehension. We don’t have the data because we don’t have journalists anymore. We do have Russakoff’s book which gives a small slice of information about Newark. We have other bits and pieces from elsewhere in the country. We can only extrapolate from there. But the little information that we have is alarming in terms of how much money is being poured into “education” consultants.
Dienne,
I definitely have to agree re consultants. It seems like the minutes to every school board meeting have the hiring of another set along with the ending of a previous contract without results.
I think most of us can agree that there is a lot of dysfunctional spending that happens in schools.
So far (I’m halfway done), Russikoff’s book has plenty of lessons for anyone involved in education policy. I doubt there is anyone who thinks the money in Newark was well-spent, except possibly the consultants and the bought-out teachers.
Every time I hear “we’re spending more and more on schools and getting the same results!” I think of this:
“According to every major data source, the vast majority of U.S. workers—including white-collar and blue-collar workers and those with and without a college degree—have endured more than a decade of wage stagnation. Wage growth has significantly underperformed productivity growth regardless of occupation, gender, race/ethnicity, or education level.”
Could this have something to do with it? Can people reasonably put the entire burden for this situation on public schools? I guess they CAN, and doing so is certainly easier than talking about why families aren’t doing better which implicates all sorts of important people and decisions they made but it probably isn’t going to work 🙂
Who goes to the school? Are they poorer than they were in 1990 or 2000? If so, you probably have to admit that.
http://www.epi.org/publication/a-decade-of-flat-wages-the-key-barrier-to-shared-prosperity-and-a-rising-middle-class/
Can someone think of something that *doesn’t* matter?
As the old saying goes: “Money isn’t everything, but it’s what you buy everything with.”
Head of Lakeside School where Bill Gates went and where his two children now go. 8-25-15 thoughts on this school year.
[small excerpt start]
Each student needs to start the year with some serious reflection about time, assessing whether there are enough hours in the day for the student to do well in all of his or her classes, clubs, sports, and artistic commitments and still have time to reflect, to find joy in life, to be kind to others, and make a positive contribution to each activity. Every year I see some students load up their schedules with too many classes, clubs, and sports and then make themselves miserable by trying to do well in all of them. They frequently end up doing poorly nearly everywhere and feeling like a failure.
[small excerpt end]
Link: http://www.lakesideschool.org/podium/default.aspx?t=204&nid=988179
Classes, clubs, sports, and artistic endeavors. Folks, that calls for some serious cash.
Athletic calendar for just Wednesday, September 23, to Tuesday, September 29:
Varsity football; girls varsity swimming & diving; varsity boys golf; varsity girls golf; varsity girls soccer; jv girls soccer; varsity volleyball; jv volleyball; jvc volleyball; cross country coed; jv football. [A number of these repeat, and more than once, during the same time frame]
That’s just one week! And remember, that doesn’t include clubs or art.
So when it comes to OTHER PEOPLE’S CHILDREN, money doesn’t matter.
But for the heavyweights and the principal enablers and enforcers of self-proclaimed “education reform” and THEIR OWN CHILDREN, the sky’s the limit. Whatever it takes. Whatever it costs. No excuses.
So let’s make this fair and just: Lakeside School for everyone. Whatever it takes. Whatever it costs. No excuses.
😎
The hypocrisy and deceptiveness of the so-called reformers has no limits.
First, they seem to have no trouble throwing money at charters, even when they are substandard.
Second, the overwhelming majority of so-called reformers seem to have no trouble with “throwing” money at the elite private schools they send their own children to; it’s just a rich education for children of the Proles they don’t want to spend money on.
Finally, yes, spending on education has gone up, but has not kept pace with the inflation rate over the decades. Combine that with money being siphoned away by charters, which no matter what their boosters say, are not public schools, and public schools are being told to do more with much less.
You might want to provide a link supporting your claim that school spending is down vs. inflation, because all of the available evidence indicates that you’ve just told an enormous whopper.
Recently national K-12 spending has undergone a small dip after the stimulus money dried up, but overall it has increased massively over what was spent 10, 20, or 30 years ago: https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d14/tables/dt14_236.55.asp
And in New York City and State, the increase in spending would best be categorized as “runaway;” it has outstripped inflation by even larger margins than the national figures. Focusing on the relatively small amount spent on charter schools is, as it always is, a red herring.
I don’t think I have seen the study’s authors directly address the concern critics have had with their decision to treat court-ordered spending increases as an independent variable; if anyone has and can point me in the right direction, I’d be grateful.
The official “inflation rate” calculation has been tweeked often enough that
for many, in the private sector at least, it has lost all credibility.
As usual, Tim is wrong, and his loaded language betrays his ideology.
Of course just looking at the absolute dollar figures over the years makes it seem that we have “runaway” school spending; it’s a predictable right-wing cliche (though so-called reformers who insist, delusively so, they’re “progressives” can be heard saying it, too), and is being used here to hold up the truthy old “You can’t solve problems by throwing money at them” line. But it’s false, as five minutes on The Google will show:
– The Cato Institute, no friend of “government monopoly schools,” puts the increase in per pupil spending for New York State from 1972-2012 at 120%, in inflation-adjusted dollars.
Please note that this study was intended to cast the public schools in a negative light, so there was no incentive whatsoever to overlook or minimize per pupil spending in any way.
(object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa746/pdf)
The Consumer Price Index for Urban Consumers (CPI-U), gathered by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, shows the rate of inflation over the same period as a little under 165%.
(www.dlt.ri.gov/pdf/cpi/pdf)
Those are national figures; if you isolated NYC, it would no doubt be higher, given the immense increases in housing costs over that period. Even if spending in the city is higher, which it of course is, it can’t compare to price increases for housing, transportation, food, etc. over the same period.
So much for the runaway school spending trope; factor in the money siphoned off by Tim’s precious charter schools, and per pupil spending in the public schools is effectively that much lower.
Michael,
You call Tim a liar, but then the only information that you provide says that we’re spending 2.2x as much in inflation-adjusted dollars. You then provide inflation data. Are you not understanding that the 120% increase is already adjusted for inflation?
Yikes, Michael.
Column 4 of the table I linked to is the one you want, the one that displays per-pupil costs in constant 2013-2014 dollars. *Adjusted for inflation*, national K-12 public education spending increased by 105% between 1971-1972 and 2011-2012. But thanks for finding the link showing that the increase in New York State’s spending far outpaced the nation’s during roughly the same time frame!
Your initial claim was incorrect. Public K-12 spending has not only kept up with inflation, it has massively outpaced it.
Tim, do you really think the readers of this blog are fools, or were you not able to come up with a way to try and distort the facts that totally refuted your false claims?
You conveniently ignored the fact, as per BLS inflation statistics, that the consumer price index (which, if anything, is said to understate inflation) has risen far more than per pupil spending in New York State, and then have the chutzpah to claim you won the argument.
Trolls are as trolls do, and so-called reformers and their apologists seem incapable of speaking a word of truth about anything.
Michael,
No offense, but you seem to be having a problem with basic math, while shouting that other people are wrong.
The numbers you’ve shown are “inflation adjusted”. That means they were already adjusted for inflation. That means inflation was already subtracted from the actual growth to get the numbers.
You subtracting inflation again, or comparing those numbers to the inflation numbers, is what the problem is. If you’re still not getting it, please show your posts to the nearest math teacher.
You shouting at Tim, calling him a liar, and saying he is distorting the facts while all the while you are 100% wrong is pretty obnoxious.
Michael, inflation-adjusted dollars are dollars that have been adjusted for inflation, whatever its rate. If inflation-adjusted dollars increase by any amount — say, 0.1% — then they have necessarily increased more than the rate of inflation, whether inflation itself is zero or 1,000%. If inflation-adjusted dollars increase by 100%, then they have doubled relative to inflation — again, regardless of what the inflation rate is.
So if you spending increases by 120%, in inflation-adjusted dollars, that means it has grown by more than twice the rate of inflation.
The numbers in column 4 are “Constant dollars based on the Consumer Price Index, prepared by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, U.S. Department of Labor, adjusted to a school-year basis.”
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d14/tables/dt14_236.55.asp
For the last time, and as anyone with even a rudimentary grasp of math and statistics can see for themselves, the rise in inflation is built into these numbers.
Michael Fiorillo’s claim that education spending has not kept up with inflation is demonstrably and wildly incorrect.
Inflation-adjusted K-12 public school spending in the United States more than doubled — 105% — between the 1971-1972 and 2011-2012 school years (in unadjusted dollars, the increase was 1034%). In New York State, inflation-adjusted K-12 public school spending increased by a whopping 120% during the same time frame.
These are the undisputable facts. The interesting question becomes why you, Michael Fiorillo, continue to dispute them.
Is it because you don’t understand the math or the concept of adjusting for inflation? Is it because you are engaging in the kind of Orwellian flimflammery that you are so quick to accuse others of doing? Is it the old Sinclair saw about a man’s salary and a lack of understanding?
Is it some combination of all of the above, fueled by desperation? The pipeline that had been reliably supplying schools with warm bodies and the dollars that travel with them has sprung more leaks than can be patched. Times are hard and who cares about the truth, right?
John, please don’t put words in my mouth: I said Tim was wrong, not a liar (though I stand by my statement that he is a Troll), and that his “facts” are ideologically based and open to challenge.
My comments are ideological, too, but i don’t try to hide it.
And, yes, while the inflation-adjusted dollars referred to in the Cato institute report don’t correspond identically to the BLS statistics, the point remains: there is nothing resembling “runaway” public school spending over the past forty-plus years. The “runaway” spending in NYC referred to by Tim has in fact been ruled by the State Court of Appeals as insufficient and discriminatory, in its decision in the Campaign For Fiscal Equity suit. That money has yet to be fully provided to the NYC schools
Michael,
I apologize, you are right that you did not call Tim a liar. But he is still correct and you are still incorrect.
Based on this comment: “inflation-adjusted dollars referred to in the Cato institute report don’t correspond identically to the BLS statistics”, it appears that you are still not getting it.
Do you understand that spending is 2.2 times what it was previously in today’s dollars? One could argue whether more than doubling is “runaway”, but it seems you are still comparing a number that already has inflation subtracted out to the inflation rate.
John,
In your response to Michael, were you saying that public schools spend too much? That charter school spending is just right?
Diane,
No, I think we should be spending more on public education across the board. I was just trying to correct his math.
I know it’s de rigueur here to lump all “reformers” together, but who exactly are the reformers looking to spend less on public education?
Gates, Walton, and Broad haven’t called for cuts to spending, true? In fact, they look to get district spending increased in order to make programs they provide grants for sustainable.
If you’re thinking of Scott Walker et al, those are not ed “reformers”, they are public education destroyers. Their focus has nothing to do with education, and everything to do with cutting the size and cost of *all* government. I admit that the interests overlap in some small places (e.g. lessening power of unions), but they don’t overlap in most (e.g. spending).
And, as Tim points out, education “cuts” are a rarity; smaller than usual growth over the last 4-5 years followed by big increases last year is way more the norm. We have “locked in” increases in spending that unfortunately frequently result in staff reductions even as spending is going up.
I, for one, think we should be spending more on public education. That is especially true in states that spend <$10k per student, which seems an amazingly small amount to me. I don't see how that could possibly provide a quality education regardless of cost of living and other variables.
John:
“Gates, Walton, and Broad haven’t called for cuts to spending, true?”
False. Bill Gates at the Davos conference, 2013: “We’re taking the internet revolution and we’re applying it in more areas. So for example in education, the idea that not only are the best lectures online but you can interact with people, talk to other students, ah, that we ought to be able to deliver education that’s higher quality but dramatically lower cost.”
(The education part of the CNBC interview starts at about 3:43: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100409068 . . .)
“Dramatically lower cost” means fewer teachers in bigger classes. It also means he believes in the “delivery” model of education. He does pay lip service to the idea of student interaction, but he apparently believes that robots (computer algorithms) will be able to manage that interaction–no teachers necessary.
Yes, Bill Gates believes in cuts to education spending. So do the Waltons. Their anti-union and pro-charter activities have the built-in goal of reducing teacher salaries.
The Broad academy playbook for superintendents calls for policies that force out experienced teachers. See this 2011 article from Education Week on criticisms of the Broad Superintendents Academy: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2011/06/08/33broad_ep.h30.html
Through word and deed, these venture philanthropists clearly want to make cuts in public education spending. They’re being stealthy about it, but that’s a big part of what they’re up to.
John, did you ever hear a word from the so-called reformers when local school budgets faced austerity and cutbacks in the aftermath of the financial crisis?
Indeed, you did not, since, they used the crisis, via Race to the Top, to their advantage by imposing Common Core and the entire testing/teacher scapegoating/school closing/charter proliferating regime that accompanies it.
Naomi Klein’s term, has entered the language and is fitting: the Shock Doctrine.
Michael,
Most charters schools, whose spending is determined by the amount spent by host districts, faced the same “austerity and cutbacks”.
Come, John, don’t try to play us for chumps: you know as well as I do that charters had, and continue to have, their Overclass angels subsidizing them and covering their budgetary shortfalls.
Michael,
Very few charters get much money from philanthropists (typically some startup funds, but nothing ongoing). There are notable exceptions in NYC, but exceptions don’t make the rule.
Also, studies have shown that district schools get more money from non-public sources than charter schools.
Next time you see these “overclass angels”, please give them my contact info. Maybe we could stop doing bake sales up here.
In Texas we have an organization that fights for the schools. The Equity Center wrote a paper a couple of years ago called “Money Does Matter” It spell out why money matters when it comes to improving schools.
Click to access moneymatters.pdf
A higher level of poverty requires smaller classes. Unfortunately in most cases the poorer the school, the larger the class sizes. This is completely opposite of what is needed to improve the success level of the students in a high poverty school.
https://davidrtayloreducation.wordpress.com/2015/04/06/a-big-step-towards-improving-education-in-texas/
School spending should be at an all time high because childhood poverty is at an all time high in this country. I would venture to guess that the rate of poverty has outpaced the rate of inflation. Now we have to figure out if the rate of education spending is on par with the rate of poverty. I would venture to guess, no way.
Table 3 at the following link shows that there have been peaks and troughs in the child poverty rate during the last 30 years, nothing like an explosion in the number of kids living in poverty that might have caused a concomitant increase in K-12 spending. In fact, there are fewer kids in poverty in the US today, in both percentage and *absolute* terms, than there were in 1993 (still have a long way to go to get the rate down to what it was during Bush’s two terms, though):
https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/historical/people.html
Here’s the predictable result of the “money doesn’t matter” crowd:
“Even with the marketing campaign, which recruited slightly more than 1,700 teachers to Clark County, the school district still started the school year short about 800 teachers. While it’s tempting to imagine teachers swooping in to fill the gap, red capes flowing in the wind, these openings will be filled with long-term subs who may have no experience in the classroom.”
Las Vegas underpays teachers, so to remedy that they developed a “brand” where teachers are “superheroes”. They’re relying on silly gimmicks instead of adequate public funding.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/schooled/2015/09/22/las_vegas_teacher_shortage_can_the_city_of_sin_fix_its_teacher_shortage.html
“This study is that it appears in Education Next, a conservative journal whose contributors usually argue that money doesn’t matter, as compared to vouchers and charters.”
I think the answer is simple. They must think the time is right to admit this fact becasue then corporate Charters can go to court and demand more money.
The double standard will still hold.
Public schools will continue to be deliberately starved while the corporate Charters will demand more money to achieve their glorious goals to save the children they are neglecting.
Money has been thrown at schools with a huge lack of increased test scores. What have not been thrown are resources – community volunteers? Schools don’t need a huge pocket of money, but they need committed supporters who can aide in the development of sports, athletics, etc. A lot of Catholic schools have done it.
Just the other day a grandma was complaining her grandson (in a highly ranked suburban school district) had an overcrowded Kindergarden class of twenty two.
I thought of the Kindergardens in the high poverty Buffalo Public Schools which have thirty or more kids in a class. To make matters worse, teacher aides in the primary grades have been reduced (shared duties between teachers to cover prep periods or assist office staff) due to budget cuts, so these teachers are lucky if they have assistance for a few hours a day. I’m sure suburban schools have full time help for their early grades.
I wonder if I can go back to “JB”?
Sure money makes a difference as long as it is spent for the better eduction of poor–instead of throwing into the jaw of snobbish charcoal miners, gorilla-cookie monsters, and zombie creators, and billionaire VAMpires staying in the Castlevania.