In 2005, Arizona was part of a group of about eight states that ranked 49th out of 50 in education spending.
How can that happen? It’s all in how you combine the data sets. Anyway, the point is that states are competing to be at the bottom. Why is being at the bottom better than being at the top? There are few better arguments for increasing spending than being at the bottom: It’s all about the money. The stated goal of increased spending is to improve the quality of education, but does quality vary concomitantly with spending?
According to the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), Arizona’s score for fourth-grade reading achievement was significantly below the national average of public-school students nationwide. In fact, Arizona’s achievement level has been hovering around that same score since 1992. Fourth-grade reading is critical, because when reading skills at that grade level are substandard, students tend not to catch up; they become frustrated, act out and drop out.
Now let’s compare Arizona’s spending to our rather flat level of substandard achievement. According to Arizona’s Joint Legislative Budget Committee, public-school per-student spending saw an inflation-adjusted net increase of slightly more than 20 percent from 2000 to 2009. (This is the per-student rate; the total percentage increase is much more.)
Spending is up 20 percent while achievement is flat. What is the money doing? Who knows. The point is that something is stuck, and money is not shaking it loose.
If money does not have the desired affect, what will?
Florida, which has many of the same demographic challenges as Arizona, has made some dramatic strides in education. NAEP scoring placed Florida comparable to Arizona in that critical area of fourth-grade reading during most of the 1990s. In 1998, Florida took off and is now scoring well above Arizona. The success has been disproportionately enjoyed by Hispanic and African-American students. Hispanic students went from an abysmal score in 1994—well below Arizona’s students as a whole—to a level significantly higher than the average Arizona student over the same period. Florida’s African-American students went from scores similar to those of the Florida Hispanic students in 1994, to matching Arizona’s students as a whole in 2007. That’s right: Florida progressed from below Arizona’s score to above Arizona’s score in total student population, with the greatest gains seen in minority demographic groups.
So, what did Florida do? Florida took a two-pronged approach: It instituted programs that allowed parental choice, and rated individual schools based on performance through a program of high-stakes testing—a synergy developed between the principles of choice and accountability. The performance data available to parents helped them make good choices, which led to the better schools expanding, and the failing schools contracting. This improved the quality of education across the state, which is reflected in student performance.
Meanwhile, Arizona has made some modest gains in the area of choice. It has one of the best charter-school laws in the country. Charter schools, along with magnet schools, fill the choice bill. They tend to be diverse, are overrepresented in schools that excel, and are under-represented in schools that are failing. Parents tend to be much happier with charter, magnet or other choice-based schools since they can choose the one that matches their educational vision.
Alas, accountability is another story. Arizona developed the AIMS test to ensure that graduating students were properly educated, and to comply with the federal No Child Left Behind program. The test was dumbed down over time, primarily by continuously lowering the cut score, or the minimum score required to pass. In 2003, the cut score for eighth-grade reading was 73 percent for “proficient,” but in 2004, it was lowered to 59 percent. In this way, the state was able to show improvement without actually having to achieve it.
Speaking of choices, Arizonans have a big one to make: Do we want to continue spending more and more money for the same level of mediocrity—or do we want to fight the status quo, and those who appear willing to do anything to maintain it?
This article appears in May 27 – Jun 2, 2010.
Some of the reasons is/are punk ass kids who could care less about an education and disrupt classes and by doing such hold everybody back. Parents who are not involved with their kids education and who could care less. A lack of stringent requirements and
kids who can’t read or write gtting bumped to the next grade. Too many electives. Get back to basics,,,three R’s will do just fine.
While I agree with Jonathan that accurate academic & fiscal data is important, I don’t think that he validates his point by referring indirectly to information from special interest groups that churn out erroneous data in the name of “School Choice”. The opinion above sounds suspiciously like a rehashing of recent Goldwater Institute spin, and it just serves to toss more political and ideological mud on a vital state system that we need to examine with great clarity.
The first point Jonathan made is true. Arizona is ranked 48th, 49th or 50th on not just one national survey, but on every national education funding survey out there (NCES, ALEC, NEA, Census, etc.). We weren’t always ranked so low in educational investment & performance, however, and that leads me to some of his other points…
The JLBC actually reports that Arizona’s state investment in education went from $3,290 per student in 2000 to $3,942 per student in 2009. That’s an increase of $652 per student over nine years, and it includes both Prop 301 money (from 2002) and building funds.*
Why is that significant? Between 2000-2009, AZ also had one of the fastest growing school populations in the nation. We added around 200,000 new students to our schools and grew about 19% in that time period. That growth required local districts to build & improve facilities and allocate more dollars to expand the mandated services (bussing, lunch service, etc.) schools are required to provide.
During that time, voters also passed Proposition 301. The additional funding from this proposition should have led to a sizable increase in per-pupil investment…in 2009, Prop 301 monies equaled $463 million, or roughly $443 dollars per student that was not available before 2002. Unfortunately, our legislature has undermined that ‘additional’ money – introducing a slew of unfunded mandates to the schools (ESL teachers, etc.) and chipping away at other program funding.
While certain local lobbyists love to compare FL v. AZ education right now, they leave a lot of key details out of their comparisons. For starters, Florida spends roughly $1,400 more PER STUDENT than Arizona and averages around 10 fewer students per K-12 classroom.
Florida’s legislature also didn’t unleash a school choice free-for-all. They have much higher levels of both academic and fiscal accountability from both their charters and private school tuition aid programs…Arizona has little of both. As a whole, Arizona charters are academically underperforming compared to ‘traditional’ public schools, and some of our low-performing charters have been allowed to expand their operations. Though our legislature loves sending public tax dollars to private schools (they increased the amount of tax money sent to private schools THREE times in the last 12 months, despite our enormous deficit & cuts to public ed), Arizona private schools participating in the tax credit program have almost zero accountability – they don’t have to report academic results or even how they spend our tax dollars.
There’s more to it than that, of course, but I’m pretty sure I overstepped word count etiquette at this point 😉 I’m with Jonathan on his desire to improve our state’s academic performance….I just hope that we can all start digging a little deeper to get past the ideological and political fog that clouds this issue.
*(This JLBC number doesn’t include federal funding, etc. Total inflation-adjusted spending per student increased just under 17% between 2000-2009. The full report can be found here http://www.azleg.gov/jlbc/fiscal.htm under “Education Spending”.)
Wow, I never would have expected the Weekly to public any opinion that included such spin! I think Jonathan is getting his talking points from lobbyists like the Goldwater Institute. I’m glad there’s finally a group out there to counteract these factual misrepresentations. We ate paying $50 less in 2009 (even less now after all the cuts) than we were when I was in high school in the 80s in per pupil funding. There was a time, in fact, when Arizona wasn’t scraping the bottom of the barrel in per pupil funding and class size. Parent X above offered unbiased data, and I invite you to read:http://www.arizonaeducationnetwork.com/2010/03/arizona-auditor-general-report-on-classroom-spending-2009-a-closer-look/
Sorry, typed my reply on my phone and the predictive spelling altered words. But I think you understand their meaning in context.
These Goldwater Institute talking points, including the Florida education “miracle,” have already been refuted. The only people still spouting this drivel are Matthew Ladner and Al Melvin.
Oh my! Where to begin? I think your “choice” argument pretty much answers your “why” question…Private charters (no, they aren’t public because in my book, unless you have a constituency of students that you MUST take in your school, you are just a private school parading as public and sucking tax dollars from our struggling and truly public schools. For instance, how about Special Needs students? Are they “over represented” at your excelling charter schools? I saw a sign today outside a charter school that advertised “Free Tuition”. Public schools don’t charge tuition. ‘Nuff said) are not a choice for all students. For instance, the parents of my students this year have a variety of impediments to being able to drive their children to charter schools, including but not limited to: a job that prevents them from dropping/picking up their child, no car, impounded car, lack of money for insurance or registration fees, so, again, no car, and schools that are not on bus routes. If we really value a Free, Appropriate, Public Education for all our citizenry, we MUST have neighborhood schools in every neighborhood that provide our children a quality education. As to increased funding…hmmmm. I’m on my 4th year without a pay raise, have never had more than 2 computers in my classroom, and have only rarely had fine arts, and physical education fully funded for my students.
I grew up in Minnesota, a state that has a strong history of well-funded and highly regarded public schools. My elementary school in suburban Minneapolis had a science lab for our use that I have never seen in Arizona outside a high school. And even those aren’t as nice as the one I had in my K-6 school! We had a PE teacher, and music and art classes. I’ve been teaching for 22 years, and I’ve never seen schools what I would consider “fully funded”. I’d love to see my school, and every school, cap class sizes at 20, have full fine arts and physical education programs, and provide the technology necessary for students to truly be 21st century learners. Oh, and by the way, when the extraordinarily gifted (I assume) teachers at “excelling” charter Basis walk over to Doolen, and choose, say, 200 kids from the gen pop there, (including special needs and English Language Learner, refugee, and the myriad of other students we teach every day in public school, and suddenly turn them into Rhodes Scholars due to their extremely effective instructional techniques, then I’m buying what the charters have to sell. Until then, well, if you only accept students who are 1-2 years beyond their peers when they walk through your doors, you are just a brain drain on our struggling PUBLIC schools!
The Florida academic improvement is solid as a rock. It is independently verified (measured on both the FCAT and the NAEP), passes through to the 8th grade and traceable to the reforms enacted.