This is a well-written summary. Click here for the blog post and embedded photos: https://stephanametzger.wordpress.com/2015/09/15/kansas-school-finance-at-a-crossroads/
Kansas School Finance: At a Crossroads
by Stephan A. Metzger
I’m back to my roots. Education finance in Kansas has been getting a fair amount of news coverage in recent weeks, and for good reason. The first is that the Governor has created a new committee tasked with doing leg work in creating a new finance formula for the state’s 286 school districts. This is a big deal. It makes the prospect of going back to the old, not at all broken, formula virtually zero (not that the chances were incredibly high to begin with). The second is the the massively important supreme court case that hangs over the state. The importance of this case really cannot be easily overstated. The district court initially threw out a figure of over $500 million to make the old formula “adequate”. That is a lot of money.
Quick aside, the court in no way stated that the $500 million is the only way to fix the problem. That $500 million essentially takes the money a study done more than a decade ago said would create adequate schools and adjusted it for inflation.
There are so many different forces at play here. To adequately cover all of them would make this article about 25 pages long. Instead I want to focus on one interview Governor Brownback recently gave. In it he made several assertions that are dubious in their merits. School finance is likely to be a major sticking point in the elections next year, so both sides are out in force early to try and convince us, the voters, that their side is right. This article will try to simply refute what some of Gov. Brownback said with actual facts. I’ll try to keep the opinion to a minimum.
Now that the background is out of the way, we can delve into the nitty gritty. The big thing Gov. Brownback said in the interview was that he is for merit pay being added to the new formula. Merit pay is one of those things that bring most people together in agreement for obvious reasons. It makes sense that the best teachers should probably make the most money. Just like any business, if you do your job and do it well you should and probably will be rewarded. The problem is this: how does one determine who the best teachers are? Do the administration use test scores? Well that comes with a host of well documented problems. In fact, a merit pay system based on test scores might intensify an incentive that we all do not want, teaching to the test. If pay and good test scores become linked then there is a huge reason to teach students how to take tests, not to think.
What about creating a complicated formula that ties together a whole host of different aspects that make a well-rounded student? That is something that I think many people would welcome, but as of right now does not exist. The problem comes from how to quantify something like “civic mindedness” or even well-roundedness itself.
Even if such a formula is created, how does a district implement it? Is it the same formula at each school? Does that create problems depending on where you teach? Could such a system be open to corruption (i.e. the board really likes this local teacher whose family is a big business guru in the district)? The current system in place regarding teacher pay recognizes that merit is hard to quantify, so a system of proxies was developed to try and represent merit. Experience is the biggest proxy in the system (hence why a teacher with 20 years experience is paid more than a teacher with one), but there are others. A teacher with a master’s will be paid more, and a teacher with a doctorate will be paid more still. All of this is under the assumption that the more education and experience a teacher has the better they likely are at teaching.
This system, in other words, is based on merit as best as whoever created it could quantify. A system by proxy, is of course, not at all perfect. Experience is the biggest determining factor, because, as a society (and teachers as a union), we determined that raises should be somewhat regular, but it is arguably the worst at determining skill as a teacher. With a “new” merit pay system, critics, quite rightly, bring up the questions of whether teachers will continue to receive regular raises as the cost of living increases(as it almost has).
We all are aware of the stories of teachers who coast through 35 years of teaching in order to reach retirement. I’m sure that exists, but damn, that is a lot of work and a lot of time and most importantly very little pay in order to reach a secure government pension.
The second thing Gov. Brownback mentions in his article is something that I’m fairly sure I’ve addressed before. The governor has been touting for six months or more, now, the very true fact that the state is spending more money than it ever has on education. He is not lying. The state is spending more than $4 billion on education which has never happened before. However, that is a ridiculous way to justify adequate spending on education. Here is another very true statement. The state is educating more children than it ever has. Here is why that is important. The old formula was doled out on a per student basis. Therefore, the more students, the more money. So while the the governor is correct in asserting that more money than ever is being spent it is not because of any initiative on his part it is because the formula was designed to accommodate increases in students. Which makes sense.
If you take the per student spending, though, a different story emerges. Using the states own numbers, we can compare two different years of funding. In 2007-08, the state spent 4,746.08 per student (note: this is NOT the base state aid per pupil number, this is all general aid the state provided to schools divided by the total number of students). In 2013-14, the most recent available year, the state spent $4,439.53 per student. That is NOT an inflation adjusted figure. Those are real dollars. If you adjust for inflation, the state is actually spending only $3,950.91 per student. That is a very real reduction in the amount of money a school has to spend on students.
Additionally, because funding for last year is based on the amount a district received in 2013-14, we can see that last year, the state spent only $4,152.96 (not adjusted for inflation). This is, it should be noted, is only the general state aid. This figure does not include KPERS or supplemental general aid. However, general state aid makes up half of all state spending on education.
Again, these are the state’s own numbers, not mine. How much the state is spending relative to what it WAS spending is likely to be an important factor in the upcoming State Supreme Court case. If you feel inclined to contest my numbers, feel free. I’m not using any special data that I’ve collected. I’m using the information on the Kansas Department of Education’s website.
The final point Gov. Brownback made is that more money needs to go to the classroom, and less on “administrative overhead”. I can understand that sentiment. We all want more money to go directly to teachers and their classrooms (in other words, the students).This is something that is most consistently brought up by those who feel spending on education is adequate. This, to me, is a fancy way of encouraging consolidation. I am of that opinion because in consolidation pushes, a major reason proponents cite in favor of consolidation is savings at the administrative level of schools. However, in Kansas, like most places, calling for consolidation outright is a political death sentence. Especially for a governor who has emphasized his small town Kansas roots.
Administration, however, is not a place in the budget likely to accumulate huge savings for districts or for the state. There are most certainly districts in the state that could really benefit from consolidation, but those districts are few and far between. The districts with the highest administration costs relative to the rest of expenditures are those districts that have small student populations over a large area. A district needs a certain number of administrators (secretaries are included in this budget item). There are, of course, innovative ways to save money. Districts could share superintendents and principals, but the savings from such a program are so minimal that they’re hardly worth losing a dedicated administrator over.
What much of Governor Brownback is saying revolves around choosing. The state needs to choose between a well funded KPERS or a well funded classroom. The state needs to choose between well funded administration, transportation, and special education funds or stretching them all to their functional limit. The state needs to choose between a formula that is based on changing demographics and a recognition that schools are dynamic, or a formula that is easily predictable and not a threat to the state’s limited budget.
This is all self-inflicted. It is no surprise to anyone that the tax cuts in 2012 have forced the state to operate under a budget that has not kept up with the needs of the state. In 2014 we, as Kansans, had an opportunity to choose a different direction. We chose to stay the course. Now we must wrestle with the fact we have to choose between tax cuts for a minority of Kansans, or a well funded education system.