Does money matter in schools? Not in Georgia, writes Benjamin Scafidi of the Center for an Educated Georgia in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He analyzed education statistics over the last 25 years.
I found that per-student spending over the last generation (adjusted for inflation) more than doubled in Georgia, while at the same time public high school graduation rates fell. This dramatic increase in operational spending led to large decreases in class sizes, huge improvements in instructional technology and large increases in administration. But it absolutely did not increase graduation rates over where we were when Jimmy Carter was president and “Urban Cowboy” was all the rage.
Joseph G. Martin Jr. of the Consortium for Adequate School Funding in Georgia says schools must spend more money on teacher pay now that educated women have other career options and on teaching students who aren’t fluent in English.
Via Bill Evers’ new Ed Policy blog, which has lots of posts.
About Joanne
If it’s not money, what could the issue possibly be? Hmm, I wonder. What’s different now?
Could it be our attitudes in society as a whole? Nah, couldn’t be.
All these posts about how money doesn’t help… but much much rarer is the case when cutting back the funding actually ever improved anything.
All that is being shown by posts such as this is that money alone is not a sufficient condition for improvement. What you be appearing to suggest with such examples, is that it is not necessary — and that is a fallacy. And if being done deliberately, a very disingenuous one.
Did he do an analysis of the student population? An analysis of mandates from the state and federal govts?
I thought so
Money is important, but not how much but how it is spent. Just hiring a bunch of consultants (for which our district is notorious) is not the way to spend money. Spend it on the kids and it does work. In 19 years I have seen this happen with the California Partnership Academy money that we receive. It all gets spent to help students and our kids attendance, test, and graduation rates all improved.
All that is being shown by posts such as this is that money alone is not a sufficient condition for improvement.
Which is worth a lot in and of itself, given the widespread popularity of the idea that schools in OECD countries are underfunded and more money should be spent on education to improve it.
What you be appearing to suggest with such examples, is that it is not necessary — and that is a fallacy. And if being done deliberately, a very disingenuous one.
Be very careful here. Yes, it is possible that increased funding is a necessary but not sufficient condition for increased outcomes. However you have cited no evidence in support of the idea that increased funding is necessary but not sufficient. I think you could equally well be accused of deliberately trying to mislead readers to think that the fallacy is that “spending is not necessary” by applying that blanket word “fallacy”.
While the study Joanne cites may not have considered changes in population or politicla mandates, the study is not without its usefulness.
Every politican will speak about the importance of education and every politician will offer some sort of “plan” which as we well know, usually involves more money or some other recent fad. I am not saying that more spending is either necessary or unnecessary in education, because quites simply, we don’t know what the money should be spent on.
However, what the study clearly points out is that while we spend massive amounts of money on education as a society, that money does not appear to be well spent.
So the question is posed, if quantity of funds does not appear to provide a solution, what does? Political mandates are usually just that, a function of politics and political pressures/compromises. Changes in demographics will clearly impact education, but do we know how (and simply asserting that there are more ESL students or more poor students or X,Y,Z is not helpful either.
I don’t think anyone involved or observing education would ever suggest that funding is not an important component of education policy. However, to dismiss the study as simplistic or lacking in relevance is improper.
> but much much rarer is the case when cutting back the funding actually ever improved anything.
One relevant question is whether we could cut back spending without making things worse. If we can spend less to get the same results, why shouldn’t we?
And, if increasing spending doesn’t help, why should we?
> And, if increasing spending doesn’t help, why should we?
Depends on who you ask.
If you’re asking someone whose livelihood depends on the public education system then no amount of money is sufficient so money only becomes a problem when there’s inarguably a whole bunch of it as in, for example, Washington D.C. Then the folks who depend on the public education system switch gears to socio-economic status as an excuse for lousy performance.