American Public School Finance

William A. Owings, Leslie S. Kaplan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9781138499942
• eBook ISBN: 9781351013772
• Edition: 3
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

Designed for aspiring school leaders, this text presents the realities of school finance policy and issues, as well as the tools for formulating and managing school budgets. In an era of dwindling fiscal support for public schools, increasing federal mandates, and additional local budget requirements, educational leaders must be able to articulate sound finance theory and application. The authors move beyond coverage found in other texts by providing critical analysis and unique chapters on misconceptions about school finance; fiscal capacity, fiscal effort, adequacy, and efficiency; demographic issues; and spending and student achievement. Examining local, state, and federal education spending, this text gives readers the foundation to understand school finance and knowledgeably educate colleagues, parents, and other stakeholders about its big-picture issues, facts, and trends. The new edition of American Public School Finance will help educational leaders at all stages of their careers become informed advocates for education finance practice and reform.

New in this edition:

• Expanded coverage on school choice
• Discussion of new standards and law
• Updated exploration of student demographics and its impact on learning
• Advanced pedagogical features such as connections to the latest Professional Standards for Educational Leaders (PSEL), Focus Questions, Case Studies, and Chapter Questions/Assignments
• Complementary electronic resources designed to deepen and extend the topics in each chapter and to provide instructors with lecture slides and other teaching strategies.

CHAPTER

1

Misconceptions about School Finance

PSEL STANDARDS: 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 9

FOCUS QUESTIONS

1 Explain public education’s importance to our national economic agenda.

2 Compare the United States’ spending on public education per student relative to the rest of the world’s education spending per student—and relative to our national wealth.

3 Summarize the reasons for the increased costs of public education since 1970.

4 Defend the assertion that despite increased diversity, American students’ achievement test scores are not declining, and the achievement gap is narrowing.

5 Compare educators’ salaries with those professionals with similar years of formal education.

6 Discuss how international assessments give the misleading impression that American public schools are “failing.”

Since virtually everyone has been a student, everyone feels comfortable talking about education. As a result, people often make forceful assertions that are widely believed but factually incorrect. In this chapter, we discuss four common misconceptions about education and its funding. More importantly, we provide you with the data to refute these misconceptions and respond knowledgably in support of public education.

For instance, educational leaders will face criticism about how much education costs. Responding factually, politely, and convincingly is essential if community members are to value maintaining (or increasing) the resources needed to prepare the next generation to compete in an increasingly information-dense global economy. At the same time, education leaders must thoughtfully consider public school critics’ arguments and carefully evaluate them based on real data, historical accuracy, and their own experiences.

Our founding mothers and fathers knew that an educated citizenry provided the essential underpinnings for their new experiment in our democratic republic governance. The 2017 Phi Delta Kappan “Poll of the Public’s Attitudes Toward the Public Schools” continues to indicate that Americans support public schools, and the lack of adequate funding is their number one concern.¹ To garner funding support for our schools, we as educators need to know the facts and debunk misconceptions. As Joshua Starr, CEO of PDK International concluded, “Education leaders play a crucial role by bringing a listening ear plus expertise to the table when policy makers are at work.”² Remember that as educators, we all are teachers to everyone in our communities—not just our students. Let’s get that dialogue going!

A BACKGROUND VIEW ON EDUCATION TODAY

Let’s face it. American public education has never been a prestigious or highly paid profession. Washington Irving’s The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, published in 1820 but set in 1790, portrays school teacher Ichabod Crane as a gangly, gullible fool. (Incidentally, in Hebrew Ichabod means “the glory is gone.”) Other media have been equally unkind to educators. Think of the movies Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, The Breakfast Club, Bad Teacher, and Fist Fight to name a few. However, our founders knew that an educated citizenry provided the essential underpinning for their new experiment in a democratic republic (see Chapter 2, History of School Finance in the United States). Today, an educated citizenry has never been more important.

Contemporary education critics are disappointed with public education. They say schools are not like they used to be. To that we say a hearty, “Amen!” In fact, today’s public schools are more successful than they have ever been, educating a more diverse student population to higher standards and keeping more students in formal learning programs through high school graduation than ever before. This is not opinion; data support this view.

Consider public schools over the past 70 years—as far back as any seasoned educators experienced firsthand. In 1950, 34.3% of the population graduated from high school; the graduation rate for black males was 12.6% and for black females 14.7%;³ Brown v. Board of Education (1954) had not been adjudicated, leaving many minority students to attend lower quality and deliberately segregated schools. Today, 92% of 25- to 29-year-olds have completed high school.⁴ Today, we educate all students with an ethnic, socioeconomic, and disability diversity unmatched in other countries—or at least we try our best. Admittedly, not all are educated to the highest standards, and the challenge remains to increase all students’ learning and achievement.

Even though the number of students graduating has increased since the 1950s, the general public continues to hear that public schools are failing. What keeps perpetuating this misconception? When we consider education funding and compare it with what other countries spend as a percentage of their wealth (see Table 1.1) and with what we used to spend in the “good old days,” it is amazing how well our teachers and students perform today.

Federal involvement with education finance had mostly been supportive until the 1980s. Jimmy Carter’s 1976 presidency reinstated education as a cabinet-level position in the federal government, boosting its status. By comparison, the Reagan White House asserted substantial and often false claims about public school students’ behavior and achievements and recommended reduced education funding. Taking it a step further, the No Child Left Behind Act (2001), Race to the Top (2010), and Every Student Succeeds Act (2015) placed federal mandates and high-stakes public accountability into every school house in exchange for federal dollars (we address these issues throughout the book).

Public education’s importance to our national economic agenda makes our profession a logical political focus. Controversy exists about the effectiveness of our education system. Some sincerely believe that our schools are not working and call for charter schools and vouchers as alternatives to give parents a choice of where to send their children using taxpayer dollars. Others have believed for a long time that “organized malevolence might actually be under way”⁵ to undermine this valuable democratic institution. Regardless of your viewpoint, data show that U.S. public schools have never been asked to do more with fewer resources under a higher level of scrutiny—with higher expectations for principal leadership, teacher effectiveness, and student achievement—at any other time in our history.⁶

Education places fiscal demands on the U.S. economy. Big budgets make for big targets, and public education is a bigger business with a larger budget than most graduate students think. For school year 2017–18, total expenditures for public elementary and secondary schools were projected at $634 billion ($12,559 per pupil) not including capital outlay expenditures⁷ for the 50.48 million public school students,⁸ the 3.141 million public school teachers,⁹ and the more than 3,074,136 other staff.¹⁰ It is interesting to note that in fall 2017 projections, public schools had almost 700,000 more students than in fall 2009; and yet they are working with 100,000 fewer teachers.¹¹ Using these staffing figures, more than 6.2 million individuals work with public school students. If public education were an international company, its workforce would be almost half a million more employees than the combined number of individuals who work for Berkshire Hathaway (331,000), FedEx (323,035), McDonalds (420,000), IBM (411,798), Target (341,000), Home Depot (385,000), UPS (341,240), Walmart (2,300,000), Toyota (348,877), General Electric (333,000).¹²

Clearly, public education is a bigger business than most realize and certainly larger than our own small local school systems. In 2014 (latest data available), PK–12 public school education comprised about 3.5% of our country’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP),¹³ down from 3.9% in 2010.¹⁴ In other words, we are educating more children today with fewer teachers and using a smaller percentage of our national wealth as measured by GDP.

Perhaps because of public education’s size and the large sums of money involved, misconceptions concerning school finance abound. Since the publication of A Nation at Risk¹⁵ in 1983, education bashing has become fashionable. In fact, since the mid-1980s, no national political candidate has been elected without an education platform that promises to fix a “broken” education system.

With this background, we begin this judicious study of American school finance by presenting—and challenging—four popular misconceptions about our public schools. First...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Misconceptions about School Finance
• 2 History of School Finance in the United States
• 3 Legal Framework for Financing Public Education
• 4 Education as an Investment in Human Capital
• 5 Taxation Issues
• 6 Fiscal Capacity and Fiscal Effort
• 7 Equity, Adequacy, and Efficiency
• 8 Structure of School Finance Systems
• 9 Demographics and School Finance
• 10 Budgeting: Applying Policy Values
• 11 Spending and Student Achievement
• 12 Critical and Emerging School Finance Issues
• Index