California schools won’t get the funding they expected this year due to a budget crunch. But California isn’t “near the bottom in per-pupil school spending,” as often claimed, writes Dan Walters, a veteran Sacramento Bee columnist. Census Bureau statistics, which include all sources of education spending, show the national average was $9,138 in 2005-06.
California was at $8,486, with New York the highest at $14,884 and Utah the lowest at $5,437 – one of 22 states, in fact, that fell below California’s level.
In terms of school revenues, California was 25th among the states at $10,264 per pupil, just under the national average. It was above average in per-pupil income from federal and state sources and about $1,700 per pupil below average in local revenues, thanks to Proposition 13, the 1978 property tax limit measure.
The report shows no correlation between spending and student achievement.
California is second from the bottom, for example, in fourth-grade reading scores on national achievement tests, ahead only of Washington, D.C. But Washington is very near the top in per-pupil income and spending at $18,332 in revenue and $13,446 in spending. Conversely, many states nearer the bottom in per-pupil spending, including Utah, outrank California in test scores and other measures.
With so many poorly educated immigrants, California has a lot of high-need students. It’s also a high-cost state: You can’t hire enough teachers without paying more than Utah or South Dakota.
Update: Spending more on regular classroom instruction correlates with higher achievement in high schools, North Carolina researchers report.
All other things being equal, an increase of $500 per pupil spent on regular classroom instruction in a school is associated with an increase of nearly half a point on students’ average scores on End of Course examinations.
. . . even though the high schools with the largest percentage of low-income students spent on average about $1,500 more total per student than high schools serving the lowest percentage, they allocated only $300 more pupil to regular instruction.
Higher teacher pay had the greatest benefit. Spending more on “supplementary instruction (outside the normal school day and week) and student services (guidance, psychological, health, speech, and related services)” was associated with lower test scores.
I understand the cost of living is extremely high in California. Did the authors of the orginal report take this into account? From what I see they didn’t.
I’m guessing 10K in California won’t buy you nearly would it would buy you in Texas.
with New York the highest at $14,884
I guess that explains why NY schools are so good.
They have to pay higher for labor and building upkeep, but parts, supplies, and curriculum shouldn’t vary much across nationwide.
Would an extra $2000-$3000 be enough in CA?
Wouldn’t it make more sense to express spending as a percentage of state GDP? CA is perhaps the wealthiest state in the country; ranking just below mean really doesn’t bolster the case that the schools are well-funded.
“Wouldn’t it make more sense to express spending as a percentage of state GDP? CA is perhaps the wealthiest state in the country; ranking just below mean really doesn’t bolster the case that the schools are well-funded.”
There are a lot of ways to express the spending, and we should probably use several. One that I favor is dollars-per-classroom. If we go with an average classroom of 25 students (which I think it about right for K-8 in California), then the state is spending approximately $250,000 per year per classroom.
NOTE: Most of this money does not seem to *get* to the classroom.
I rather like thinking of the money this way because I think that most people have a reasonable idea of what they expect to see in a classroom (desks, books, glue, teacher, …) and can thus form an opinion on whether $250K per year per classroom is enough or not.
The $-per-room is *not* the only way to think about the money. Focusing on the classroom misses things like school librarians and janitors (neither of which I want to do without). You need school-wide views, too, although I tend to look at those in percentage terms, not in absolute $ terms (e.g. The library takes 2% of the school budget). This is because the numbers tend to be large enough that I lose a feel for what is reasonable.
So … yes, it probably does make sense to think about spending as a percentage of state GDP (and also take into account the percentage of the population in school). It also makes sense to think about this in absolute dollars. And in terms of percentage of state budget. And in terms of $/classroom and in other ways.
-Mark Roulo
“Would an extra $2000-$3000 be enough in CA?”
No. I do not believe that any dollar amount would be enough. Isn’t/wasn’t there a lawsuit in NY last year claiming that 50% more money needed to be spent on education? With NY near the top of the country in ED spending, this suggests that there is no dollar amount at which point we have hit “enough.”
-Mark Roulo