Getting Down to Facts

Well, we can all rest a lot easier. The root cause of the gross failure of the California education system has been discerned, and the solution is at hand.

A year ago Governor Arnold S. appointed a blue-ribbon commission to take a comprehensive look at the education system. Democrats and Republicans alike say a wholesale transformation of the public schools is essential. “Our system is broken, and only major fundamental change can fix it,” said Chairman Ted Mitchell of the Gov's education committee.

The commission’s findings are being offered as a blueprint for fixing CA schools. In 1700 pages of light reading, "Getting Down to Facts" has all the answers, boiled down to the 3-Rs for education: revenue and revenue and mo revenue.

Just to get an idea of the financial ballpark, let’s look at the baseline. Today CA spends $43 Billion on K-12 education or $11,600 per year on each of its 3.7 million students. Yet California’s education problems are massive, with students ranking 48th out of 50 states in both reading and math.

Something must be done! Drum roll please: According to the report, $1.5 Trillion more each year will be needed to make all California students academically proficient. That’s $1.5 Trillion or $1,500 Billion for all you kids who flunked 5th grade math. That tidy sum works out to a bit over $400,000 per pupil per year. Thus education funding would increase from 50% of the state budget to 95%, each and every year.

Perhaps that figure is a bit inflated says report co-author Jennifer Imazeki, an assistant professor of economics at San Diego State. Her calculation was not a serious proposal for funding but rather an exercise to demonstrate how broken things are. “The relationship between money and performance is weak and noisy in California” she said. I’ll bet she is right!

After the laughter died down, economist Jon Sonstelie of the Public Policy Institute of California reported on a different approach. He interviewed 567 teachers, principals and superintendents and put them in charge of a hypothetical school budget that was, hypothetically, 50 percent higher than in real life. Without raising salaries, interviewees had to decide how to spend the extra loot so as to best maximize achievement. They lowered class size, added administrators, hired a lot more support staff and increased collaboration among teachers. All nice to-do’s.

Sonstelie’s conclusion: School spending would have to grow by $17 Billion for even half of the schools to hover in the 800-point range of the Academic Performance Index, the CA goal. The new spending would be just $16,200 per pupil per year, a bargain compared to $400 grand.

But notice how this result was obtained. Sonstelie conducted interviews, asking school officials how they would spend more money, and to guess how much of an effect it would have. Spend 40% more money to improve 50% of the test scores, based on gut feel, with data pulled out of you know where.

Such studies should be interpreted as political documents not as scientific studies, according to Stanford University’s Eric Hanushek. “The important question for assessing costing out studies is whether they can describe policies and resources that will reliably lead to the new, higher achievement levels. None can.”

Hanushek, who is a “Getting Down to Facts” contributor, examined every scientific study available on the effects of spending and educational outcomes, 163 in all, and found that “dramatic increases in resources have not led to improvement in performance of our students.” One wonders why he was not banished from the commission.

Fortunately there were a few good ideas in the report. More than anything else — even increased funds or more teachers — principals said they needed greater power to fire ineffective teachers. With typical insight, the head of the California Teachers Assn. criticized the focus on ineffective teachers. “Frankly, firing one or two teachers isn't what this is about,” said Barbara Kerr. “It's about big-picture reform. I'm sure if you ask teachers what they want, they would say to get rid of bad administrators. Let's get over this part.”

Hey, here’s an idea: How about if we fire all the bad ones, and ruthlessly reduce bureaucracy (“RRB”) everywhere.

But as with all discussions of education reform in California, the liberals always have the last word. “We already know what needs to be done, and now we have the research and data to back it up,” said Soledad Padilla of the grass-roots group California ACORN. We need money, mo money, really humongous money, and you taxpayers had better give it to us.

Meanwhile, more money is already starting to flow to schools in need as a result of the $2.9 Billion settlement between Gov. Arnold and the California Teachers Assn. Although the money belonged equally to all schools, the parties to the lawsuit opted for a plan that targeted one third of the 20 percent of worst performing schools (not the bottom 6.7%, but that’s another story). LA Unified school board member David Tokofsky called the infusion significant: “This is not permanent money, and this is not a very well thought-out program, but it is being driven by all of our feelings that we can wait no longer,” said Tokofsky.

In lower education, feelings trump everything else.