According to a recent study by Edbuild, Arizona spends $7,613 more per student in predominantly white districts than predominantly nonwhite districts. That would make us the most inequitable state in the nation when it comes to funding our school districts.
Edbuild’s study was picked up by media outlets across the country. You can read all about it in the New York Times, the Washington Post and hear about it on CNN and NPR, to name a few major outlets that carried the story. It’s also been covered by Arizona media.
If the $7,613 figure comes from a reputable nonprofit which focuses on problems of funding inequality and segregation in the nation’s public schools and is repeated often enough in the media, it must be right. Right?
Wrong. As I explain in an article which will be running in Thursday’s print edition of the Weekly, the figure is not only wrong, it’s wildly wrong. Arizona may do a lousy job of funding its schools, but it does a reasonably good job of spreading the money out evenly across districts.
For almost 30 years, Arizona has used a funding equalization formula to distribute money to school districts. Before that, schools were funded primarily by local property taxes, which meant districts with expensive homes were rolling in education dough while districts with lower property values struggled to find enough money to run their schools.
Arizona’s equalization system is far from perfect. Some school districts, mainly in high rent areas, find ways to game the system and bring in extra money for their students. But compared to other states, we do a fairly good job of evening out the money each district receives.
Instead of being labeled as one of the worst offenders in the way we distribute our education funds, we should be praised as one of the best.
Here are three reasons I know we’re doing a reasonably good job of equalizing education funding:
First, I did most of my teaching in Oregon which didn’t equalize district funding. We had some districts in high rent areas with so much money, their children might as well have been attending lavishly funded private schools. Meanwhile, districts in low income areas were starving for funds. Some districts were forced to close weeks early because they ran out of money. We don’t see those kinds of funding highs and lows in Arizona.
Since I left Oregon, the state has taken steps to remedy its funding inequity. In other words, in this one area, Oregon is doing things more like we do them in Arizona.
Second, Arizona fares well in national studies on the way states distribute their education funds. One major study puts Arizona in the top 20 in funding equity. Even Edbuild, which created the recent study slamming Arizona, put us in the “revenue neutral” category in a four year old study.
Third, our Republican legislators would love to get rid of equalization system, so it must be doing something right. They tried and failed in 2009. If we’re going to devote as little money as possible to education, they reason, we might as well put as much as we can into educating children from high income families. After all, children of privilege need the best education we can give them so they can retain their privilege when they’re adults. No sense in spending money to educate the lower classes and give them a chance to compete for scarce, high paying jobs, is there? Better to keep their funding low. They only need to learn how to read, write and compute at the sixth grade level, and how to say, “Do you want fries with that burger?”
So how did Edbuild arrive at its wildly inaccurate conclusion that Arizona spends $7,613 more in predominantly white districts than in predominantly nonwhite districts? You can read all about it in my Thursday article.
This article appears in Mar 14-20, 2019.
So, what is the actual number?
And, here is how little it matters. We can compare Arizona with some other states that have been in the news: Maryland, West Virginia Connecticut and Kentucky.
Academic Achievement 8th Grade Math Scores / $ per student/Jobs
Demographic/Mother Education
____________________________Arizona***Kentucky***Connecticut**West Virginia**Maryland
Spending per student______$7,501____$10,508______$20,800________$14,271______ $14,774
Charter School Students___185,000_______0 _________10,000 __________0____________ 24,000
Demographic
Black 272 252 258 254 262
Hispanic 269 269 263 NA 267
White 296 282 295 274 295
Asian 316 303 311 NA 316
High school dropout 265 262 262 259 259
High school graduate 269 265 263 262 262
Some college 285 283 280 274 275
College graduate 296 288 295 282 295
The source of the spending numbers is the National Education Association Rankings and Estimates
and the job numbers come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The test scores are from the National Assessment of Educational Progress
As you can see, we best these other states who are spending the equivalent of billions per year more than us in every single category.
There are now only a few states that are competitive with us. Soon there will be none.
The only thing this huge extra tax burden did was to damage their economies and job creation for the high school graduates
Its not enough to have massive school choice, you also have to have very tight budgets and limited spending to weed out incompetent leaders and school systems.
hmmm… can’t format columns on this blog
Compare Arizona spending and 8th grade math scores with states in the news: Maryland, West Virginia Connecticut and Kentucky.
_____________________Arizona____Kentucky___Connecticut_____West Virginia_____Maryland
Spending per student__________$7,501____$10,508______$20,800________$14,271_______ $14,774
Charter School Students______185,000_______0 __________10,000 __________0_____________ 24,000
Test Scores Demographic
Black __________________________272 ________252___________ 258 _____________254 _________262
Hispanic _______________________269________269 ___________263 ______________NA _________267
White _________________________296 ________282 ___________295 _____________274__________295
Asian _________________________316 ________303 ___________311______________ NA _________316
Scores by Mothers education
High school dropout ___________265 _________262 _________262 _____________259 _________259
High school graduate __________269 _________265 _________263 _____________262 __________262
Some college __________________285 _________283 _________280 _____________274 __________275
College graduate ______________296 _________288 _________295 _____________282 __________295
The source of the spending numbers is the National Education Association Rankings and Estimates
and the job numbers come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The test scores are from the National Assessment of Educational Progress
These states spend billions more than us, Connecticut is triple our spending. Yet, we best them in every category.
Only a few states are competitive with us. Soon there will be none.
The only thing this huge extra tax burden did was to damage their economies and job creation for the high school graduates
Its not enough to have massive school choice, you also have to have very limited spending to weed out disorganized leaders and school systems
Forgot the job numbers
Jobs created in each state since the year 2000
Arizona___________400,000
Maryland_________280,000
Kentucky_________130,000
West Virginia______14,000
Connecticut _____ -14,000
Contrary to what you hear from the economics departments of Universities, tax burdens have a huge effect on job creation. If you go back 40 years and extract all the states who were in the bottom ten of taxation and stayed in the bottom ten of taxation for all forty years and compare them to the states who were in the top ten of taxation and stayed in the top ten all 40 years, the bottom states started out with less than half the jobs and now have more. Over 100% extra job growth.
Bottom line: increased education funding is extraordinarily detrimental to the future of our children.
It both decreases their educational achievement and is devastating to their future job opportunities.