by David Safier
Here are more gems from the Goldwater Institute: money doesn't matter much in education, and providing early childhood education doesn't have much lasting educational value.
In Dan Lips' words, from a Fool's Gold email blast:
· Past experience shows that more K-12 spending does not significantly improve educational performance.
· Federal early childhood education programs have not provided lasting benefits to disadvantaged children. [The links are Lips', to two Heritage Institute studies]
Let's start with his second point. Recent research has indicated (I will never use the words "proven" or "shown" together with the word "research") that the one place where you see genuine, long lasting educational benefits is when you offer quality early childhood education, especially to children who come from low income homes and whose parents have low educational attainment. Pre-K is considered the most cost effective way to spend money on education.
I'm not going to dig up the research right now. If I have to, I will later. You can be sure it doesn't come from the Heritage Institute. And you can also be sure it isn't definitive. No research is.
As for more money not improving education . . . it's hard to even take that statement seriously.
The Institute's recommendation is to have
fewer teachers, all excellent and making good salaries, teaching larger classes.
So if excellent teachers improve education (and I agree, they are the single most important factor), wouldn't adding more excellent teachers and keeping class sizes low add even more educational benefit? And wouldn't well equipped science labs improve science education? And wouldn't . . . I'm not going to continue the list. You get the idea.
The real point the Goldwater folks are making, if you pin them down, is that spending more money on schools isn't cost effective, meaning that the improvement isn't worth the extra money spent. That, of course, is a value judgment, not a statement of fact, and one I disagree with, because of my values. They probably won't convince me, and I certainly won't convince them. This is a philosophical disagreement.
I wonder if the Goldwater folks think the charter schools in D.C., whose successes conservatives like to crow about, would do just as well if they didn't spend as much as
$12,000 to $15,000 per student per year. Conservatives should put their frugality where their mouth is and bring those schools down to $5,000 per student to show the rest of us how to give students quality education at WalMart prices.
STOP HERE UNLESS YOU WANT TO GET PRETTY DEEP IN THE WEEDS. I'm going to take a look at something Dan Lips wrote for the Goldwater Institute. It's gonna get a little windy, so back away from the post if you don't want to read an analysis of dry information from a dry study.
Dan Lips co-authored a report for the Goldwater Institute with Matthew Ladner in September, 2008, about
Florida's educational successes. If their figures are accurate, from 1998 to 2007, Florida students increased their reading scores dramatically, and minority students' scores made the biggest jump.
I have no reason to doubt their numbers,since I haven't seen anything to refute them. So let's take that as a given, that Florida really did do something special with their kids during those years.
Lips and Lardner Ladner mention lots of things Florida did to raise students' scores. One of them was, spend money.
. . . funding would be tied to performance—rewarding successful schools with additional funding and autonomy. . . . the state would provide additional funding for struggling schools while allowing parents the option of transferring their child to a better school.
Schools weren't the only ones getting more money for better performance.
Florida implemented reforms to provide bonuses to highly effective teachers. In 2007, Florida’s performance pay system offered a total of $147 million annually in state aid to school districts to pay performance bonuses to teachers.
And what about early childhood education?
In 2002, Florida voters approved a ballot initiative requiring that state-funded prekindergarten (pre-K) be offered to all four-year-olds in the state by 2005. In 2005, the program was launched with more than 100,000 children participating. The program is universal and voluntary.
. . . To be eligible, providers must meet certain state requirements, which include hiring licensed teachers (teachers must earn a Child Development Associate certificate) and implementing content standards that focus on literacy readiness. In 2008, 121,000 children are enrolled in the program. In 2007, approximately 55 percent of all four-year-olds participated.
Let me comment as an aside that the Goldwater Institute often poo-poos the idea that you need credentialed teachers to provide good education.
To be fair, the study states that Florida increased test scores without increasing its funding for education as much as many other states — at least from 1998 until 2004. But then . . .
Since 2004, government spending on Florida’s public schools has increased, likely at a faster rate than in the previous six years. For example, the initiative to reduce class size was projected to cost between $22 billion and $26.5 billion, with costs increasing as full implementation occurs in 2010-2011.
Let's recap. Republican Governor Jeb Bush initiated educational reform that involved giving more money to schools that were either especially successful or struggling. I can only assume Jeb wanted to make the successful schools even better, and he wanted to help the struggling schools — by spending more money on education.
And the state initiated a universal pre-K program. I can only assume Jeb wanted to improve elementary school achievement — by spending more money, this time on early childhood education.
And the state increased its spending on education — one of the reasons was to reduce class size — starting in 2004. I can only assume Jeb wanted to improve student achievement — by spending more money and reducing class size.
Whenever student achievement goes up, lots of variables come into play. I've only spotlighted the use of money, early childhood education and reduced class sizes — they discuss others as well — because these are three factors Lips and Lardner say elsewhere have no effect on student achievement. Yet they're in the mix in the "Florida Miracle," which means they very possibly are partially responsible for the students' success.
I must admit, I get the sense that Lips and Ladner are contradicting themselves.
Note: I inadvertently misspelled Mr. Ladner's name when I first wrote this, then I went back and did what I always do when I make corrections — I crossed out the mistake and wrote in the change afterward. I have removed the misspelling. I apologize for the error.
