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Geting less for more: A hard lesson to learn
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There's no other way to put it. Education Reform is a failure. The fact that new spending on public education has no effect on learning is an old story. But now there is evidence that new spending under this $3-billion-year program is actually making your kids learn less. You don't believe it? Then take a look at the Beacon Hill Institute's latest study, Getting Less for More: Lessons in Massachusetts Education Reform. One of the features of Education Reform is the annual testing of Bay State 4th, 8th and 10th graders under the Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System. In our study, we asked one question about the MCAS test: What do we have to know if we want to predict as accurately as possible how well a school district will perform on that test?
To answer this question, we identified ten factors, including four spending programs, that determine school performance on the test. We categorized test results by grade, subject and according to how well a school district had performed on prior tests. Then, using state-of-the-art statistical techniques, we conducted more than a hundred estimations to see what determined the 2001 results for each testing category.
Here's what we found: Increased spending either worsened or had no effect on performance in 62 of the 72 categories that we examined. Increased spending improved performance in only 10 of the categories.
What's most dismaying is what we found about the two programs that have accounted for most of the new spending: raising teachers' salaries and reducing student-teacher ratios. Increased spending in these areas either worsened or had no effect on performance in 35 of the 36 categories we examined and improved performance in only one.
What we have now, therefore, is a glaring double standard. The MCAS holds high school seniors accountable: If they don't pass, they don't graduate. But public school officials don't have to show results for the hundreds of millions of dollars they're spending under the aegis of Education Reform.
The one part of Education Reform that is making a difference is the accountability that the graduation requirement imposes on students. That's why our analysis shows an otherwise unexplained surge in the ability of students, especially 10th graders, to stay out of the “Warning” (which is to say, failing) category of test results.
Now the Massachusetts Teachers Association, which dismisses our statistics out of hand, wants to eviscerate that requirement, too. Statistics and standards – these are both anathema to the MTA, which wants taxpayers to spend more and more on Education Reform without asking any questions about the results. We have to wonder what effect so self-serving a mentality might have on the teachers in whose interests the MTA supposedly labors.
The fact that spending does so little to improve – and may even worsen – school performance should come as no surprise. Educators have known for years that socioeconomic factors outweigh all others in determining how well children learn. Claiming otherwise not only attributes false importance to spending but also causes us to misunderstand what MCAS scores tell us about a school's performance.
Because a school's performance on the MCAS test depends heavily on the socioeconomic character of the community from which that school draws students, we cannot necessarily conclude that a poor showing on that test reflects negatively on a school's teachers and administrators. We know that a school does a good job when and only when its students do better than we would predict knowing the socioeconomic factors that mostly determine their performance on these tests.
A good example of a school district that is beating the odds is Everett. By every objective measure, Everett students should have done poorly on the 2001 MCAS test. And by the usual standards, they did. Of 218 school districts, Everett ranked 186th in terms of its success in getting 10th graders to pass the test. Yet, when we take into account the socioeconomic conditions and financial resources it has to work with, Everett ranked 6th – a tribute to its teachers, principals, families and students.
There are other such school districts that we should study for their successes – and failures. But the guardians and beneficiaries of Education Reform de-emphasize these examples for one simple reason: Taking them into account would mean admitting that new spending has nothing to do with such successes as we can observe.
The 2002 MCAS test results are just being released. Be prepared for further celebration over the success of Education Reform, along with further hand wringing about the fact that many seniors won't be graduating next year.
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