The aftermath of Hancock v. Driscoll; the push for more taxes

The enduring myth of more money for better schools

from NEWSLINK, Vol. 8, No. 3, Spring 2004

It was with great expectations that Massachusetts passed the landmark Education Reform Act in 1993. In one stroke, the state injected both funds and accountability into its troubled public school system. Now, more than 10 years and $24 billion in state dollars later, we find that the new funding provided under Education Reform has failed to provide any measurable improvement in the performance of public schools.

Education Reform was, in part, mandated by the landmark McDuffy case, which deemed public education funding to be inadequate on constitutional grounds. It was also the result of sponsorship by a wide ensemble of elected officials, business and civic leaders, teachers and other academics who set out to revamp, once and for all, the state’s education system. Much rode on the idea of education reform, not least of all the hope that the learning – as well as the funding – inequality between prosperous suburban and poorer urban schools would close. Foundation funding, the great leveler, would close the academic achievement gap. Schools wouldn’t just get more money: There would be greater accountability, as well. The MCAS test, teacher testing and charter schools would assure that the money was well spent.

But a closer look at the evolution of education reform in Massachusetts tells another story, following an almost entirely different script than reformers had drafted. Now we find that the money was almost entirely wasted, the only result being that the state spent more money with the same dismal results. The ten-year experiment in school funding is a breathtaking failure, exceeded in scope and magnitude by the confidence in its success exuded by its architects then and now.

Nothing proves the endurance of the education reform myth more than the recent Hancock v. Driscoll ruling. In late April, Suffolk Superior Court Judge Margot Botsford ruled decisively in favor of the plaintiffs who claimed that poor school districts such as Brockton, Lowell, Springfield and Winchendon had been underfunded by Education Reform. In declaring the funding of these districts inadequate, Botsford outlined a remedy that directed the Commonwealth to spend more on special education, additional teacher training, remedial and preschool programs for urban children

Hancock ensures that over the next year the debate will center once again on funding, rather than rational reform. Hancock ratchets up pressure to raise taxes that would, in turn, increase the burden of education reform on the state’s economy.
Generating support for new taxes was and remains the unstated goal of the lawsuit.

But before the Commonwealth raises taxes or reallocates school funding from rich to poor districts, legislators and the judiciary should re-examine their assumptions that increased school spending, as opposed to other options such as choice and vouchers in poorer districts will lead to a superior level of education. They should also consider the fact that the Commonwealth has done nothing over the years to learn, in any systematic way, how schools succeed or fail.

In an attempt to identify the factors that influence achievement, the Beacon Hill Institute developed the BHI Educational Assessment Model (BEAM) to analyze the effects of spending and class size on MCAS test results. The conclusion, consistent with earlier findings, is that increased education spending is failing to improve performance as measured by those results.

Using this model, the Institute found that:

• Reduced class size does not lead to improved performance and, indeed, may worsen performance.
• Spending more, whether for higher teachers’ salaries or for non-instructional purposes, worsens or has no effect on school performance.
• Socioeconomic factors and prior performance on standardized tests, along with various “intangible” factors, are far more important than increased spending as determinants of performance.

Most models look at levels of spending rather than changes in spending and thereby consider contemporaneous relationships only. A value-added model like BEAM differs from this approach by showing how changes in policy variables “add value” to – which is to say, improve upon – school performance. BEAM bases current student performance on the track record of a school district, measured by its prior performance. Any change in performance is attributed to percentage changes in variables that measure spending and in other variables.

Interpreting the Results

As with BHI’s earlier studies, these results lead to the question: How is it that higher teachers’ average salary and lower student-teacher ratios generally worsen performance? The answer could lie partly with the procedures that determine teachers’ salaries. Perhaps schools offer higher salaries to attract better teachers but, in the process, divert funds from other, more urgent needs. Perhaps, on the contrary, education funding has operated to reward veteran teachers who enjoy the most job security at the expense of their newer, more energetic counterparts. Either interpretation is feasible.

As for class size, perhaps students benefit from the more competitive environment created by larger classes than they do from the personal attention made possible by smaller classes. Perhaps large classes are conducive to learning of the kind that is required for success on standardized tests.

Part of the explanation might reflect critically on the MCAS test. To improve MCAS test results, the job of the teacher is not to encourage discussion, criticism and the general-give-and-take that small classes encourage. Rather the job is to drill the students on methods for providing the right answers to test questions.

Whatever the explanation, there is nothing in the data to suggest that increased education spending has improved performance. This is not to say that only lesson that BEAM has to offer is a negative one. Indeed, the model provides what might be the best available method of finding schools that are doing an exceptionally good – or an exceptionally bad – job of teaching their students.

Rankings based on reported scores – the scores one finds in local newspapers – are not useful, insofar as they do not control for socioeconomic factors beyond the reach of school administrators and teachers. Education officials and other interested persons who wish to rate schools according to their performance on the MCAS test should eschew the reported data and consider instead the school’s ability to perform well despite socioeconomic factors. BEAM makes it possible to identify those schools and to avoid the mistake of rewarding schools for success that has more to do with external, socioeconomic factors than with the efforts of administrators, teachers, and even judges! The entire study and a database of BEAM school rankings can be found at http://www.beaconhill.org.

Updated on 26-May-2004 16:24