I came across an article on the Internet recently that originally appeared in USA Today on September 16, 2003. The title of the article was “U.S. tops the world in school spending but not test scores”. The article pointed out that the U.S spends more public and private money on education than other major countries. The article went on to discuss the appropriate level of funding to achieve reform, in this case dealing with the federal No Child Left Behind legislation. But is the U.S. really the leading spender on primary and secondary education as the article states?
According to data released by the United Nations, between 2000 and 2002 the U.S. spent 5.7% of its Gross Domestic Product (GDP) on education, which ranked 37th in the world and tied us with Estonia and Austria. Not first as the USA Today article would like everyone to believe. What country was number one in terms of percentage of GDP spent on education? - Cuba, at 19.7%. Some of the countries surpassing the U.S. were Yemen at 9.5%, Malaysia at 8.1% and Bolivia at 6.3. The average was 4.9%, so I am glad to say that at least we are spending above the average. So, it depends how one decides to look at data and what point you are trying to make. It sort of reminds me of writing a college term paper – you can find information and statistics to support just about any argument you care to make.
I decided to do some more research to see how Michigan fares against the other 49 states and the District of Columbia. According to the webpage statemaster.com, which gets its statistics from the National Center for Education Statistics, between 1969 and 1989 Michigan’s per pupil expenditure on K-12 education increased by 80%. Pretty impressive, I thought, until I discovered that for the same time period, Massachusetts increased its funding by 116.9% and Alaska by 112.8%. OK, but Michigan experienced some good economic times during part of that period (not the early 1980’s), and we have been struggling through a recession for a good seven or eight years now, so how did education funding fare over a more recent period? Between 1994 and 2004, Michigan increased its K-12 per pupil expenditure by 13.4%. Only five states increased its spending by a lower percentage; Nevada at 12.9%, Oregon at 12.1%, Washington at 10.6%, Florida at 8.5%, and Alaska at 5.9%. Even with a meager 5.9% increase, Alaska spent $11,551 per pupil in 2004 compared to $9,947 for Michigan. What state was the leader? Vermont increased spending by 47.5% over this same time period and spent $12,749 per pupil in 2004. Massachusetts increased spending by 34.7% and spent $12,398 per pupil.
I then looked at teacher to student ratios, and Michigan ranked 45th at 18.1. Number one was Vermont once again at 11.3 and Massachusetts fared well again also, coming in number 12 at 13.6%. Near the bottom and ranking 46th was Nevada at 19.0 and number 47 Washington at 19.3 students per teacher. Could there be a correlation between spending increases on education and class size? Alaska by the way ranked number 22 at 14.7 students per teacher.
Next I looked at how our students did on 4th grade math and reading tests and 8th grade math and reading tests. Michigan students ranked 31st, 31st, 33rd, and 27th respectively in these four categories. Vermont students meanwhile ranked 5th, 2nd, 5th, and 3rd while Massachusetts’s student ranked an impressive 1st, 1st, 1st, and 2nd. Vermont and Massachusetts had some of the highest per pupil expenditures amongst the states. The last statistic I looked at was Best Educated. According to the definition, it de-emphasizes spending for public education and instead measures states based on student achievement, positive outcomes, and personal attention from teachers. I would like to know how they measured personal attention from teachers. Vermont and Massachusetts scored high once again at 17.58 and 14.48, respectively while Michigan’s was a negative 1.41. Washington was a negative 2.17, Florida a negative 4.41, and Nevada a negative 13.11. Is there a correlation between spending and student achievement? My very brief non comprehensive analysis would certainly seem to point that way, and is counter to what a lot of others say.
As I stated previously, one can find and summarize statistics to support any argument they desire. I believe that this will be an important year for school funding, and we may see some major changes before the calendar year is done. Already proposals have been introduced in the legislature to limit administrative costs to no more than 28%, 5% pay reductions for all public employees, 20% employee premium co pays on health insurance, and probably a host of other ideas that will be coming out to help the state save money and deal with its non-ending budget deficits. Each one will have an affect on our budget. Our job as school business officials is to know our statistics. Know how the statistics are calculated. If our district rankings appear to be out of the norm, we need to figure out why. Is there a rational reason why? Are there efficiencies that maybe we are not taking advantage of? Our Superintendent, school board and community will want to know. The times ahead may be turbulent. We need to be the voice of calm, and know our statistics.