I found it noteworthy about the same time as the Tax Day Tea Party protests against mounting federal spending and deficits that leading U.S. Senator Tom Harkin is talking about another bailout for schools. I will refrain from further comment at this point, but instead point readers back to my February 11 post: “It’s time to face the fiscal tidal wave.” Most directly, research scholars James Guthrie and Arthur Peng make a salient point about the rapidly increasing share of federal funding in the K-12 system:
The Obama Administration’s stimulus injection of unprecedented billions in additional federal funding likely ensures that education’s comfortably cushioned resource condition will continue for the current economic downturn.
However, the stimulus injection may have dramatically added to the federal function in education. Unlike ever before in history, the federal government now appears to be the fiscal flywheel protecting the nation’s schools during economic downturns. This change has occurred with hardly any national debate.
Ironically, the federal government as a major funding partner may portend the end of automatic spending increases for schools. As school funding become more centralized, both at the state and federal level, it is forced to compete more intensely with other public sector services and is subjected to a far less favorable political backdrop. Whereas local school districts are often free to job future salary increases, pension liabilities, and retiree health care costs onto state authorities, the greater the federal and state funding roles, the larger these previously extraneous conditions become as funding obstacles.
Such fiscal dynamics, coupled with the long-standing static nature of student achievement, do not bode well for future school revenues. A new era of fiscal stringency is emerging and it may come quickly.
I’m not sure what the entire answer is at this point. It is time to pursue serious structural reforms, for sure. Expanded choices for students, changes in how school employees are paid, as well as clear and simple policies that promote accountability and transparency, all are needed. But local and state leaders may require even further creativity to help overcome a critical challenge on behalf of the long-term health of Colorado K-12 education: Wean schools off the growing dependence on federal dollars to go the extra mile in building trust and keeping faith with cash-strapped taxpayers.
I see no way to avoid pain entirely. But truly bold leadership could put Colorado schools in a much better place to serve the students of today and of the next generation.
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I’m getting a malware alert for the Harkin article’s website. But where to start deconstructing the Guthrie and Peng screed dressed up as a piece of legitimate research?
The authors contend school funding is tied to certain dynamics of the political economy. No question. But their hidden agenda is really to implicate unions and decry the special protect they feel schools have during economic downturns. They predict things will soon get so bad thanks ironically to greater state and federal influence, that public schools are going to…to…well what exactly is going to happen they don’t say.
Allow me to fill in their empty thought bubble: “…public schools are going to be replaced with accountability structures and sustainable financing possible only through privatization.” There, that is worthy of researchers shilling for the AEI. But I give them credit for crying crocodile tears for public schooling as an American institution. I could be wrong but I would guess the Defense Department has been even more insulated and coddled by the political economy than schools. the authors note that the US has the most decentralized system in the world (but not for long)–I wonder if it has occurred to them that maybe that might be one of the issues with student performance, too many cooks and all that.
Figure 9 shows federal funding returning to 1970s levels–I don’t get how that is a bad thing. On page 15, they admit school funding disparities needed redress but there were many ways to go about it and that what happened was states took over more of that funding burden as opposed to local tax authorities. Well, I wonder if that was because segregated, poor districts didn’t have the bloody tax base to begin with?! And they go on to make a case that school funding is in a more competitive arena now, jeopardizing its future. On p.16 they say fed funding is now 10% but then imply it will soon be 1/3 (see their sly use of the word, “tripartite”. I guess they also don’t like how ARRA money was spent on education–only they don’t go into the details and just make it seem like the Feds will always inject that money and try to take over when in reality, if you look at the budget line items, one might come to another conclusion and besides, a lot of the ARRA money went simply to keep preexisting jobs, not to fatten district coffers. But again, I don’t expect less from the GW Bush Institute.
Would that the be the same George W. Bush who increased federal education spending at the rate of 58 percent above inflation? No need to drag partisan jabs into this debate.
Doubtless the Defense Department has been insulated to a degree by the political economy. But compare U.S. education and defense spending as a share of GDP over time: http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/downchart_gs.php?year=1903_2010&view=1&expand=&units=p&fy=fy11&chart=20-total&bar=0&stack=1&size=m&title=&state=US&color=c&local=s
(Of course, there is the Constitutional issue, too, unless that thinking is too archaic for you. National defense is far more suited to the federal government’s appropriation and oversight than is education. Or should we just do away with those messy decisions involving local school boards or — yeck — parental choice and centralize greater authority with the Secretary of Education? Perhaps create a National Commissar or Czar?)
The mysterious jj writes: “the authors note that the US has the most decentralized system in the world (but not for long)–I wonder if it has occurred to them that maybe that might be one of the issues with student performance, too many cooks and all that.” I wonder if it occurred to you to back up either of those assertions with any meaningful evidence. Maybe states with more centralized systems like Texas outperform states with more decentralized systems like Colorado?
Yes, I understand (and I’m sure the authors do, too) the need for state equalization funding. But that debate is long over and we’ve moved several decades beyond that. I don’t see anyone suggesting its repeal. Yet for all the massive spending inputs, the corresponding results are nowhere to be found. Should one infer from your argument that to suggest schools may lose their long-held privileged funding status is equivalent to support for segregation or disdain for poor people?
We can have a more intelligent argument than that.
Intelligent argument? Hey, I was just kicking around my own reactions. Your link shows a graph which appears to be for overall government spending across all governmental levels, not just federal outlays which is what the topic was, I believe.
I think we need to remind ourselves that we ask a lot of our schools. There are many mandates to level playing fields, shift some funds to inner cities and rural areas and engage in a plethora of reporting data that have also driven the spending up. Doesn’t that count for something? A comparable rise in spending took place during the 1960s, then leveled off for a bit, just like a lot of government spending. As GDP grows, everything grows. I think we got our money’s worth with 1960s funding but it probably took 10-20 years for those kids to finally grow up and be productive. When W took office, we had quite the surplus and no Cold War and no rivals in the world–I’d say we were well-educated. It all takes time. Here is a link about spending that is different from yours though it only goes to 2005, still interesting differences in our graphs http://www.edpolicythoughts.com/2008/04/has-education-spending-really.html
Yes, I considered the whole constitutional issue but you know what? I decided I don’t care. The reason is I don’t worship the constitution, I don’t make it a political fetish I keep in my rear pocket and brandish about as if I am holding the original ten commandments from god. I happen to like the idea of making changes to it as everything evolves. I don’t see America going away any time soon because of civil rights or suffrage or any of the other things people used to think would trample our rights or ruin our nation.
I’m not doubting we spend a lot but the odd thing is not many Americans think we get a lot back. No, losing funding status is not support for segregation. Anyway, like I was commenting, I wonder where our students would be if were not for the funding increases over the years. Too bad we don’t have several Americas in experimental boxes we can check to see if this or that had or had not happened in the past. I still find the Guthrie and Peng piece to be propaganda fit for a rather different kind of Czar. We have a difference in fundamental philosophies and certain epistemological viewpoints not to mention what we hold to be empirical realities. Clearly, many Americans share your view that education is failing. I do not.