Does More Money Buy Better Education--Minneapolis edition (2)

 My facebook friend recently pointed out that Minneapolis spends substantially more per student than the average school district in Minnesota.   So why, he implied, can't Minneapolis do a better job educating its students of color, English language learners, students with dyslexia, and lower income students, the students it is disproportionately leaving behind?!   He posted a comparison chart showing that Minneapolis spent $16,967 of general fund dollars per student, whereas the average Minnesota public school district spent $13,912.    And, after all, Minneapolis academic outcomes as measured by proficiency rates and a number of measures are far behind the state average.   Can we then assert, based on this comparison, that Minneapolis doesn't have a money problem, it simply has a spending problem?  Is the extra $3,000 to take on the obviously greater task that the average district enough, or woefully inadequate.   Can we answer that by just announcing our favorite guess?

Now before you jump all over me, let me say from the outset, I am not writing to endorse Minneapolis approach to spending or curriculum.  No, I am writing to make the point that we can't draw conclusions with apples to oranges comparisons.   Minneapolis serves over 20 percent English Language learners.  The statewide average is 8.4%.  The state of Minnesota recognizes that it way underfunds English Language Learner mandated education.   For every dollar of money that Minneapolis spends on ELL education, it runs a state mandated significant defiit, and it carries that loss on twenty percent of its students, whereas the average district runs a loss on only 8.4%.  Greater spending on the books in that category corresponds to a far greater deficit that requires the district to subtract funds elsewhere  And where does Minneapolis get the money to cover its deficit.  Counting the extra ELL spending as a plus, for example, would be the same as if I took $100 out of your wallet and gave you $50 and congratulated you for having a fifty dollar bill to spend.

Minneapolis runs a huge state mandated on special education, a loss that runs about double the statewide average per student.   So it is an accounting mistake to count Minneapolis's above average spending on special education as a benefit.  Every special education dollar that a school district spends is a deficit creating dollar, and so the more it is required to spend the worse off the rest of its budget is.  More is less, here again.  Counting those extra dollars as suggesting Minneapolis is doing better is turning accounting upside down.  The extra dollars covering that spending is getting subtracted from English language learners, average students, students of color and lower income students. 

The difference in spending in Minneapolis as compared to the state average is $3,000 per student.   When we assert that Minneapolis is rolling in dough as it were, we are making the unsupported assertion that it is possible to take care of the educational needs of the demographic groups Minneapolis serves and do it for $3,000.  And too often, advocates for "they have enough money" just do that on faith.   It must be true, because we want it to be true.  And, we want it to be true, to justify evading our responsibility to provide an adequate education to the children of powerless parents.

So here is a counter argument from one of the leading students of equitable funding, Bruce Baker.  In a study for the New Century Foundation, Baker led a team of investigators to estimate the  investment needed to lift up students in the country that are currently falling behind. The study provided an estimate for each district in the country, and I'm not advocating that it was perfect, but I am saying that more work and diligence went into that study, by far, than the people who claim without evidence that Minneapolis is overfunded.   The New Century Foundation study estimates what it would cost for students in each district "to achieve national average outcomes on reading and math assessments in 2021."  

The estimated shortfall for Minneapolis is $4,389 per student, so say about a total of $21,000 per student plus or minus in total.   Now before you dismiss this figure out of hand, that difference is just about what the outstandingly successful charter school Brooke East Boston spends to achieve stellar results for a population of students largely lower income, students of color and English language learners.   

What gives us the right, after all, to take the amount of money that Minneapolis is spending on a failing program, as measured by results, and assert  that it must be the right amount of money to produce educational results that almost no school district in Minnesota is producing for a similar student population?  Maybe the popular, but totally unsupported claim, that Minneapolis has enough money, is just a rationalization for abdicating our responsibility to provide an adequate education for the students that Minnesota's power structure doesn't really care all that much about.    Maybe a lot of the dysfunctionality we see in our urban metro districts stems from decades of trying to do a job that is impossible to do on grossly inadequate funding.   More to come.