School Districts Don't Use New Money Effectively--Too Bad There's Nothing we Can Do =)

In our last post, we listed a number of articles and books discussing whether increases in school funding result in measurable improvement in achievement.   There is an entire branch of scholarly research seeking to use statistical measures for this purpose.  Stanford's Hanushek is the most shamelessly aggressive at attempting to propagate the idea that increasing school funding has little, if any measurable impact on student performance.  More recently, Baker and many others, have sought to show through elaborate statistical measures that, in fact, "Money Matters."   Baker, Does Money Matter in Education, (2016 Shanker Inst, 2d Edition).  

A rather strange line of argument in this vein suggests that we should not increase school funding, because it will not be properly spent.  This theory draws on evidence that when school districts are actually supplied with significant funding increases, they don't spend it where it can do the most good. It follows, the argument goes, it is wasteful to appropriate significantly more money to public education, because powerful forces allocate that money away from the students who need it the most.

Let's unpack that argument to see if it really makes sense.  Let's imagine the governor and legislative leadership sitting at the table discussing the profound failure of their state's school system to meet the educational needs of a large group of students who are being left behind.  A proponent of more spending urges a significant increase in funding to solve this problem.  The others shout the proposal down:  even if we give "them" more money, they say, "they will not spend it where it is needed the most."  The advocate for more funding stands responds:

"wait a minute, we are the ones who decide where the money goes.   When we give them significantly more money, we can tell them that they have to use it for programs that work.  We aren't helpless: we are in charge.   Let's give school districts more money, but only if they use it effectively." 

No, the others argue, we can't do that.   Hanushek and others have done statistical studies that prove that we are powerless to make that happen.  They've studied Ohio and Kentucky, and they've proven that its simply inevitable that money will not be used efficiently.  Its a fundamental principle of American education, proven by statistics, that throwing more money at education will simply wind up wasting money.   That's too bad, the Governor says.  We'd like to make things better for our children, but we just don't know how to make our school districts use it the way we want them to.

A more sophisticated version of this idea, that more money won't work, because it will be reallocated where it is not needed is found in an otherwise outstanding work by Odden and Archibald:  Dr. Allan R. Odden;Sarah J. Archibald. Doubling Student Performance: . . . And Finding the Resources to Do It (pp. x-xi). Kindle Edition.  They write:

from assessing the research on the education system's use of new resources over time, Odden and Picus (2008) concluded that the education system has used the bulk of new resources for programs outside the core instructional program-not the best strategy if the goal is to dramatically improve student performance in core subjects.

Moreover:

 from recent studies of use of funds after an adequacy-oriented school finance reform (Mangan, 2007; Mangan, Odden, & Picus, 2007; Odden, Picus, Aportela, Mangan, & Goetz, 2008), it also seems schools and districts do not use new resources for strategies that we have concluded will have the largest impact on improvements in student learning-such as ongoing professional development with instructional coaches, tutoring for struggling students, and extended learning time.

This is the "we are the powerless" excuse--or should we say rationalization-- for under-funding public education.  It's as if the legislature and governor aren't constitutionally charged with the administration of the public schools.  Oh dear, we can't give them more money, because we aren't smart enough to require that they use it for "strategies that...will have the largest impact on improvements in student learning...." 

Odden, otherwise one of the most thoughtful writers on school funding exclaims:

if districts in the top half of spending received more funds, they would retain all or nearly all of their current programs and practices and potentially layer new initiatives on top-a strategy that would not result in dramatic improvements in student learning.

If the state sends money needed to implement necessary reforms to districts, but they misuse it, who is to blame after all.   Starving children of a critical education, because we at the legislature lack the fortitude and creativity to require that adequate funding be used efficiently, is legislative malpractice.  An article by Gordon suggests an other reason for this legislative malpractice:  that the legislators and Governors don't really care about the students who are getting left behind to demand that money be properly directed.   She writes:

I find that school revenues and spending initially experience dollar-for-dollar increases with Title I, but that—over time— school districts’ revenues respond, significantly offsetting the impact of the Title I revenue. Three years after receiving increases in Title I, poor school districts have little to no increases in school spending over what would have been the case without the Title I increase.  Gordon, Do federal grants boost school spending? Evidence from Title I Journal of Public Economics 88 (2004) 1771– 1792

Please, don't tell me that we can't fund our schools properly, because they will merely waste the money.   Minnesota's constitution demands that the legislature establish a thorough and efficient system of public education.   There's no room in the language "thorough and efficient" for evading the constitutional responsibility by asserting that the system that the legislature has established in unfit to implement the programs strategically necessary to meet its intended purpose. 

In the next post, we'll analyze some of the forces, and some of the rationalizations for failing to allocate more money to the programs that do the most good, and in subsequent posts, we'll describe a strategy designed to circumvent the inefficient allocation of new resources in creative ways.