Phil Robbins
Apparently, the Oregon State Legislature is set to pass a $6.245 billion K-12 budget to fund schools for the next two years. When added to local tax revenues, the means that K-12 schools will be getting about $9 billion dollars representing a 14 percent increase to spend on school operations. Unfortunately, there is no guarantee that class sizes will be reduced or even more important that academic performance will be enhanced.
Where the Money Goes
First, some districts will get more money, some less. Those that have increasing enrollments will get more because funding is based on the number of students. Portland and Lake Oswego will get less because their enrollments are shrinking. Second, the money will be spent to finance full-day kindergarten classes, an idea obviously popular with parents, especially those who are working and have child care needs. In the same way, hiring more teachers reduces class size. A large share of new money goes into increasing salaries and benefits of teachers and others as well as higher energy and insurance costs. Hopefully, districts will spend more money on textbooks and learning materials, things that directly affect student achievement.
Funding and Student Achievement
In my previous post I had high hopes that Senator Schrader and Rep. Mary Nolan of the Ways and Means Committee had found a way of guaranteeing student achievement by making funding contingent upon producing results. My mistake! Rep. Dave Hunt, House Majority Leader, explained at his town hall meeting, May 21, results are more likely to mean things like full-day kindergarten and lower class sizes, not higher levels of student achievement. He said in effect that the legislature must walk a fine line between some degree of accountability and management of what goes on in the classroom.
Steven Carter of The Oregonian wrote in his article Legislators Agree on Schools Budget, May 25, 2007, "School leaders said it will take more than one budget cycle (2 years) for improvements to be measurable. Hunsaker, of the Oregon school administrators' group, said schools are committed to performance in exchange for the new money." No one says how much improvement he hopes to make. And it doesn't sound like anyone is in a hurry. Meanwhile, kids weak in the basic skills continue to graduate, experience difficulty finding a decent job or going on to college and take expensive remedial courses because the schools didn't do an adequate job of educating them.
Why Throwing Money at the Problem Won't Work
Money going into salaries, benefits, insurance, heating fuels, and other overhead costs will not change student achievement one iota. School leaders say that Governor Kulongoski's 750 million dollars funding increase will have very little effect on education improvements (The Oregonian, 12-31-06, Bigger Budget Won't End Crowding). In spite of the public's misconception that smaller class sizes automatically lead to better student learning, most research studies indicate that this is hardly the case. This conclusion is based on over 1,100 studies as of 1999 dealing with class size and student performance.
In fact, Eric A. Hanushek, (Bio) a key researcher in this area, concludes:
Existing evidence indicates that achievement for the typical student will be unaffected by instituting the types of class size reductions that have been recently proposed or undertaken. The most noticeable feature of policies to reduce overall class sizes will be a dramatic increase in the cost of schooling, an increase unaccompanied by achievement gains.
Anyone interested in exploring this topic in depth need only type "class size and student achievement" in Yahoo or Google search engines.
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