Im-Politic: Better U.S. Schools Will Require More Than Just Money

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Department of Education, education, Im-Politic, math, NAEP, National Assessment of Educational Progress, reading, schools, students, teachers, The New York Times

Evidently The New York Times‘ opinion staff considered the following claim so obviously true that no one bothered to fact check it: “[T]he nation’s politicians [have] neglected and underfunded education for years….”

Made by a Times producer and a freelance collaborator who created a video op-ed purporting to explain “America’s Great Teacher Resignation,” the message intended for readers was obvious: If only those reckless, self-seeking American pols would start spending seriously on the primary and secondary schools, instead of focusing so tightly on scoring “cheap political points vilifying teachers,” American education wouldn’t be such a disaster area.

But actually, the under-funding claim deserved some major fact-checking, because compelling evidence has just emerged that the relationship between educational spending and student performance is difficult to see at best. And it came largely from the U.S. Department of Education in data contained in the latest edition of its National Assessement of Educational Progress (NAEP) – a large-scale Congressionally mandated evaluation that’s issued periodically and dubbed “The Nation’s Report Card.”

As in a previous post, I looked at the NAEP’s state-level reports showing whose fourth and eighth graders were testing above and below the national averages in math and reading. The year I examined was 2019 – the final school year before the CCP Virus struck – to make sure the findings weren’t affected by abnormalities like pandemic closings. And I then compared these results with figures on state-level spending on K-12 education from the USAFacts.org website and the Edunomics Lab, a Georgetown University-based research center. I concentrated on the ten states that spent the most per student on these schools, and those that spent the least.

For starters, here are the ten biggest education spending states plus the District of Columbia and their latest annual median expenditures per student:

New York: $25.4K

District of Columba: $22.2K

Connecticut: $20.7K

New Jersey: $20,2K

Alaska: $19.2K

New Hampshire: $18,6K

Rhode Island: $17,2K

Massachusetts: $17.1K

Wyoming: $17.0K)

Hawaii: $16.2K

Delaware: $15.4K

And here are the ten lowest spenders. (Actually, there are 13 of them because of some ties.)

Utah ($7.8K)

Idaho ($8.0K)

Arizona ($8.6K)

Mississippi; $9.3K

Oklahoma: $9.4K

Nevada: $9.5K

Florida: $9.7K

Texas: $9.8K

Tennessee: $9.8K

Arkansas: $10.1K

Indiana: $10.1K

Alabama: $10.1K

North Carolina: $10.2K

The spending disparities between the groups are pretty dramatic, with average annual median spending per student in those top states averaging $19, 100 and the counterpart for the group averaging just $9,400. So the latter’s outlays overall are less than half the former’s, a margin surely more than large enough to offset living costs differences. And the spread between the biggest and meagerest spending states (New York and Utah) are much greater: $25,400 versus $7,800, or more than 3.2 to one.

But the performance disparities are anything but dramatic. In fact, here are the widest:

>For eighth grade math, six of the eleven big-spending states recorded scores below the national average, versus nine of the 13 low-spending states.

>And in fourth grade reading, just four of the eleven big-spending states turned in below average scores, versus eight of the 13 low spenders.

But remember: These are groups of states that represent the extremes: States that best fit the description of “neglecting and under-funding education” and states that presumably are supporting students and teachers the most. Yet the performance metrics aren’t exactly like day and night.

And the differences in the two other grade and subject categories are positively infinitesimal where they even existed, and especially so given the spending gaps.

Specifically, in fourth grade math, six of the eleven big spenders generated scores below the national average, versus six of 13 of the meager spenders.

In eighth grade reading, five of the eleven big spending states scored below average versus seven of the 13 low spenders.

Also more than a little interesting: The biggest spending state, New York, registered below average scores in three of the four categories. The lowest spending state, Utah, turned in above average scores across the board.

The point here isn’t to oppose spending more money on the nation’s schools. Rather, it’s to emphasize – contrary to the narrative promoted by the Times video makers – that, as with happiness, money alone can’t buy educational effectiveness. In fact, maybe teachers themselves bear some responsibility for under-performing schools.

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Im-Politic: A Viable Alternative to Affirmative Action?

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affirmative action, African Americans, college, college admissions, Defense Department, education, higher education, Im-Politic, integration, Latinos, math, minorities, NAEP, National Assessment of Educational Progress, reading, schools, segregation, Supreme Court

One of the most compelling arguments for ending racial preferences in college admissions – a demand that the Supreme Court will address in two high-profile cases – also seems to be one of the most depressing. As some opponents of such affirmative action programs contend (according to what I’ve heard on some cable talk shows), anyone truly interested in helping students from disadvantaged communities climb the education and therefore career success ladders would focus on improving the grade and high schools that are supposed to be preparing them for college, rather than on awarding higher education opportunities to those who don’t qualify according to race-blind criteria.

It’s depressing because for so long Americans have seemed unable to “fix the schools.” So ending or at least thoroughly weakening affirmative action in higher education, even if Constitutionally prohibited, looks like a recipe for perpetuating racial and ethnic achievement gaps.

Except that some impressive evidence has just emerged showing that primary and secondary schools have succeeded in bringing African American and Latino student test scores closer to white test scores. It comes from the latest edition of the U.S. Department of Education’s National Assessment of Educational Performance (NAEP – “the nation’s report card”).

The NAEP is incredibly data-rich, but one set of findings I regard as especially revealing were those presenting the shares of different racial and ethnic groups performing at or above the level viewed as “proficient” by NAEP. (Here’s a starting point for this section of the report card.) The results go back to 1990 for math and 1992 for reading, and through 2019 for both. Therefore, they show both trends over time and changes achieved in the roughly three decades before the pandemic and related school closings struck – and set back everyone. I chose proficiency as a standard versus “NAEP Basic” because it figures that the proficient students are those likeliest to attend or want to attend college.

It would have been great to describe not only the scores for fourth and eighth graders in reading and math, but for high school seniors. Unfortunately, those data only cover the short 2015-2019 period.

Here’s how the shares of white, African American, and Latino fourth graders who have been math-proficient has changed from 1990-2019:

White: 16 percent-52 percent

African American: 1 percent-20 percent

Latino: 5 percent-28 percent

 

Here are the same type of math figures for eighth graders:

White: 18 percent-44 percent

African American: 5 percent-14 percent

Latino: 7 percent-20 percent

 

And now the results for reading proficiency among fourth graders from 1992-2019:

White: 35 percent-45 percent

African American: 8 percent-18 percent

Latino: 12 percent-23 percent

 

And for eighth graders:

White: 35 percent-42 percent

African American: 9 percent-15 percent

Latino: 13 percent-22 percent

It’s clear that in every single case above, African American and Latino scores significantly lag white scores both at the beginning of the time periods examined and at the end. But it’s also clear that in evey single case above, the scores for both minority groups improved at a faster rate than those for white students.

Yes, there’s a baseline effect at work everywhere – that is, when the figure for a comparison year is very low, it’s going to be much easier to generate bigger percentage changes than for a comparison year that’s much higher. But in this instance, what seems most important to me is that bigger is indeed bigger, and undeniably encouraging.

The remaining racial and ethnic gaps remain disturbing, but two other recent findings indicate that faster progress is anything but a pipe dream. First, the U.S. Defense Department runs its own very big school system. In fact, the NAEP compares it to a U.S. state. And even though many of its students come from disadvantaged backgrounds, they’ve been outperforming their “civilian” counterparts for many years in reading and math at both the fourth grade and eighth grade levels. (Twelfth grade data aren’t available for this group.) So maybe the military has long known something about education that it could teach the rest of us?

Or maybe these schools function well because they place disadvantaged kids out of neighborhoods whose many and varied troubles create terrible learning environments? As it happens, there’s some strong evidence for that proposition, too. In other words, as a Washington Post education columnist has put it, the best way to help low-income (including of course minority) students isn’t to try making their local schools better, but to move them into better schools.

Of course, that kind of policy shift would open up a whole can of related “white flight”and “school busing” and housing-segregation worms that have sparked numerous racial conflicts in recent decades – even in liberal cities like New York and Boston. But that only reenforces a conclusion about American attitudes toward making sure that none of our country-men and women are left behind: Too often, failure or inadequate progress stems not from lack of resources or of knowledge, but of will.

Im-Politic: Evidence That the Longest U.S. School Closings Really Did the Most Damage to Students

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CCP Virus, coronavirus, COVID 19, education, Im-Politic, math, NAEP, National Assessment of Educational Progress, National Education Association, reading, remote learning, school closings, school reopenings, schools, teachers unions, Wuhan virus

Although a strong nation-wide consensus has now emerged that CCP Virus-related school closings exerted a devastating and perhaps irreversible effect on the education of America’s children, and even that most of the country’s schools stayed partly or fully shut way too long, one group apparently begs to differ: America’s teachers, or at least one of their major unions.

And their views of course matter greatly because of the major influence they wield over Democratic Party politicians.

But data contained in the just-released latest edition of the U.S. Department of Education’s “nation’s report card” on pupils’ proficiency in key subjects clash loudly with the claim by the National Education Association that “no clear conclusions can be drawn between states and cities that reopened schools sooner than others.”

I haven’t checked all the scores for the thousands of U.S. school districts. What I have done is look into the state-by-state statistics. And they contain strong evidence that overall, those states that reopened schools earlier and more completely saw considerably better learning results than those taking a more cautious approach.

Specifically, I took a list of the ten earliest reopeners and ten latest reopeners as compiled by this “Business Intelligence Platform for School and Community Life,” and then examined the scores they received from that national report card – officially known as the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP). I focused on the four measures that received the most attention in the press release announcing the NAEP results – fourth grade reading and math scores in 2019 (just before the pandemic’s arrival) and 2022, and their counterparts for eighth grade reading and math.

And for the best gauges of the impact of school closings, I used the NAEP’s numbers on how each state’s scores in those four subjects compared with the national averages for those two years. That is, I examined whether between 2019 and 2022, the math and reading scores registered by the state’s fourth and eighth graders improved or worsened versus the national averages (which themselves fell).

This method says nothing about which states’ scores were best or worst in absolute terms for either year – because that metric can’t reveal anything about the impact of school closing and reopening policies. In fact, several states that remained leaders in all four student categories, with results above the national averages for both years, moved closer to those (lower) national averages between 2019 and 2022. To me, that’s a clear sign that during a period of severe CCP Virus-related challenges, their performance deteriorated. And several states that remained serious laggards also closed the gaps with the national averages, which justifies in my view concluding that their educational performance improved during this period.

And here’s what I found.

Of the ten states that reopened earliest and most completely, three saw improved student scores compared with the national average on all four fronts: Florida, Texas, and Louisiana. Interestingly, in the ten-state group whose approach was extremely cautious, three states achieved such success as well: California, Hawaii, and Illinois.

But five of the earliest reopening states recorded relative improvement in three of the four categories: Wyoming, Arkansas, South Dakota. Utah, and Montana. Only one of the latest reopening states could make this claim: Washington.

Similarly, among the earliest reopening states, two achieved improvement versus the national average in two student categories: Nebraska and North Dakota. Among the latest reopening states, only one compiled this record: Nevada.

But here’s where the results get especially revealing. Nebraska and North Dakota were the worst performing of the earliest reopening states. But five (fully half) of the latest reopening states performed worse than them. They were Maryland and New Jersey, where three of the four student groups’ performances slumped compared with the national averages; and Oregon, New Mexico, and Massachusetts, in which relative decline took place in all four student groups.

As I’ve noted previously, many states are big, diverse places, and especially for those whose student populations are heavily dominated by one or two big cities, district-by-district analyses will be needed.

One such academic effort reported such results recently, and seems to have reached mixed conclusions. On the one hand, the researchers at a Harvard University-Stanford University collaboration called the “Education Recovery Scorecard” observe that “Within states, achievement losses were larger in districts that spent more time in remote instruction during 2020-21.” On the other, they state that “school closures do not appear to be the primary factor driving achievement losses.”

But more such work clearly needs to be done, since the Harvard-Stanford team had only collected results from 29 states.

In the meantime, though, the National Education Association looks off-base in its attempt to absolve lengthy school closings of any blame for the academic losses suffered by the nation’s school children. So just as war-fighting strategy may be too important to be left to the generals, school closing strategy during pandemics may be too important to be left to the teachers’ unions.