Education spending is up dramatically; performance is stagnant
Paul J. Gessing
During her campaign, Gov. Susana Martinez said that she would not cut education. Based on revised budget numbers that were released immediately after she was elected, that went out the window. Now, Martinez is proposing very modest cuts of 1.5 percent for K-12.
It didn’t take long for the unions and other supporters of more spending to draw lines in the sand. Albuquerque Federation of Teachers President Ellen Bernstein said education “can’t take any more cuts,” while Dr. Jose Armas of the Latino/Hispano Education Improvement Task Force recently wrote, “Let’s dispel the myth that we’re throwing money at education. New Mexico has been steadily cutting education budgets for decades.”
Instead of being “cut to the bone,” however, New Mexico’s K-12 system has seen funding rise dramatically for the better part of two decades. A new study, “K-12 Spending in New Mexico: More Money, Few Results,” which relies on data from the Census Bureau’s annual “Public Education Finances” report, clearly shows that K-12 spending per-pupil has risen far faster than the rate of inflation since the late 1990s.
Back during the 1994-1995 school year, New Mexico schools spent $4,100 per pupil annually. Quickly, that number started to rise at a rate that was far faster than inflation, with both Gary Johnson and Bill Richardson approving ever-growing education budgets. By the 2007-2008 school year, the last year available, New Mexico was spending $9,068 per year, per-pupil, according to the Census.
If per-pupil spending had grown at the same rate as inflation over that time period, we’d be spending less than $6,000 annually to educate that same student.
Room for modest cuts
Education budgets have not grown as quickly during the past few years (for which the Census does not have data yet) as they did during the massive run-up of past few decades, but clearly, there is room for modest cuts.
Of course, the massive increase in spending might lead the tax-paying reader to wonder what they got for all of that money. The answer, quite simply is, not much.
In 1997, according to a report called “Graduation by the Numbers,” New Mexico graduated 56.3 percent of its students. By 2007, that number had actually declined to 54.9 percent. Also, over that time period, New Mexico remained mired at the very bottom of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, where it remains today.
Obviously, higher spending alone is not going to achieve better results. Real reforms and accountability are needed in order to boost results.
Real reforms
Gov. Martinez has embraced “The Florida Model,” which includes a variety of reforms now being considered in the Legislature. She even looked to Florida to hire Hanna Skandera to head up the Public Education Department.
Other specific reforms proposed by Gov. Martinez include grading schools on an “A-F” score, halting social promotion, and focusing a greater percentage of education resources on the classroom instead of bureaucracies and fancy buildings. If implemented correctly, these ideas will go a long way toward raising New Mexico’s poor K-12 performance.
And, although they were not specifically outlined in the governor’s initial reform proposals, parents and students must have educational options. This should include strengthening and demanding accountability from charter schools, the adoption of educational tax credits to create real choice beyond the government system, and expansion of virtual schooling options.
These and other reforms, not more money, are the keys to improving educational attainment in New Mexico. If cuts are needed in the short-term as part of the effort to close the current budget hole, the schools should do their part. Until dramatic reforms are undertaken, more money won’t save a failing system.
Gessing is the president of New Mexico’s Rio Grande Foundation, an independent, nonpartisan, tax-exempt research and educational organization dedicated to promoting prosperity for New Mexico based on principles of limited government, economic freedom and individual responsibility.
Molitor says, “The problem with tracking per-pupil spending with the rate of inflation is the reliability of data. Does anybody believe the government’s reported rate of inflation? It is much higher than is being reported in my opinion.”
Brilliant! Just brilliant! His opinion is better than a government report–take his word for it. His data, non-existant or nowhere evident, are more reliable. Where does he get them? My guess: Glenn Beck.
Can you support teachers and bash teacher unions? The myths and truths.
Teacher and union bashing is the solution? What are the myths and truths about teachers and unions?
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/02/15/945308/-Can-you-support-teachers-and-bash-teacher-unions-The-myths-and-truths
That’s exactly my point, Pinkie; Mr. Molitor’s proposal would not only do anything about rectifying that particular system, but would make the already-failing schools quite a bit worse.
“And which students are losers.”
Forcing children into a school based on the amount of real estate their parents can afford is quite possibly the worst way to organize education.
The government school system needs a major overhaul. The first thing up needs to be the end of districting. All schools need to be open to all students that want to attend. If we stick with the same tired educational model that we have now, we should appoint kids to schools based on current education level. Each year our kiddos should take a standardized test that discovers where a child is in their development. Children are then appointed to the school that is handling that level of development (this will not be perfect and exceptions can be made). Grouping children together by education level, and not age or geography, would allow for more efficient development going forward, rather than having to hold back the whole class for a couple of slower students or holding back the brightest in our classrooms.
But we need to take an honest look at restructuring the way we educate in the classroom. The dictated model of education works for some, but not all…or even most. Ideally we create various styles of education thruout our government school system. This means going virtual, utilizing a PACE system (minus the religion of course), using the current model in some but varying to different degrees (disciplinary action, textbooks, sports, etc.), or any other model that has proved viable.
One thing we can probably all agree on, continuing the same failing model and hoping more money will patch it up is a losing proposition. We do the worst for our kids and our country/state’s future by continuing the status quo.
And which students are losers.
The problem with tracking per-pupil spending with the rate of inflation is the reliability of data. Does anybody believe the government’s reported rate of inflation? It is much higher than is being reported in my opinion.
In the main, I ask the question, Does a government have the right to force a parent to send their children to a bad school?
We need to give parents more choice, more voice, more accountability in the process of educating their children.
We need to create “competition for students” among the educational alternatives. Let the free market decide which schools will be the winners. If politicians depend on the solicitation of voters for the formation of our educational policies – remember – there are more parents (voters) than there are teachers.
Hemingway, it is worse than wasting money on consultants; it is how ideologically driven consultants with no experience as educators, teachers, or educational managers from outside the state will urge solutions inappropriate anywhere but worse than inappropriate here. see my column tomorrow.
I am not a great believer in a correlation between the amount of money spent on education and the resulting education. Still, I take Paul’s numbers with a grain of salt. Without going over his work, I note that he does not indicate any indication of NM expenditures in the years covered. It may be that NM increased spending on education more rapidly than inflation, but he does not note that the rate of inflation was low during that period or whether the increased rate of education expenditures was NM’s attempt to “catch up.”
What I am not is a believe, great or otherwise, in the “Florida Plan.” But even so sensible a step as an end to social promotion cannot be done responsibly without corresponding changes elsewhere in the education system. I would argue that it comes after those changes, not before them. Grading schools is a terrible idea in many ways. It stigmatizes individual students, groups, teachers without regard to differences, provides no remedy for those without alternatives schools (and those with space available for transfers); and affects real estate values.
Paul is right that education needs reforms, and I have offered many which are low- or no-cost. But it does not require a piecemeal approach for the right or the left. Legislators, in their always infinite wisdom, have been to-ing and fro-ing for years with this or that solution to this or that problem, and have left us right where we are–in deep doo-doo. The current regime, given the temporary indulgence of a post-election honeymoon, is about to yank the system in an ideologically defined direction, to no good effect.
It is disappointing that in the entire state, Skandera could not find one consultant worthy of hire.
Hanna Skandera is to head up the Public Education Department. However she is not sure of her abilities. So she spends $151,000 for consultants on NO BID contracts. This sounds like the Richardson Administration – hire your buddies.
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