I have never understood the disagreement over whether money matters in education.
Top private schools – the ones that cater to the children of highly educated parents – charge tuition two to three times higher than the average per pupil spending at the local public schools. And these private schools serve students with every possible learning advantage, kids nurtured to excel from the first sonogram. The elite schools charge $17,000 to $25,000 a year in tuition and hit parents up for donations on a regular basis.
Credit: Maureen Downey
Credit: Maureen Downey
Money pays for more teachers, better programs and extra enrichment. Readers routinely cite exceptions, the inner city charter school that is thriving on standard public school spending. But often times, extra dollars are flowing into these exceptions through corporate and community donations.
There are some schools that become missions for those who work there, so a lot of unpaid labor doesn't get reflected in the spending ledgers. I am not sure schools -- or any entity --can rely on a model of funding that counts on noblesse oblige.
Despite some restored state funding, Georgia schools remain at a deficit overall. As the Georgia Budget & Policy institute documents, the latest state budget still calls $166 million in austerity cuts to public schools, forcing at least 40 districts to continue to furlough teachers. "Our schools are still trying to escape the recession shadow," says GBPI Deputy Director of Policy Tim Sweeney.
And school districts are still shouldering $400 million in health insurance costs for non-certified employees after the state stopped paying the bill in 2012. That is not likely to change as the AJC's James Salzer reported:
That comes on top of a $100 million increase for districts this year to pay for coverage for more than 20,000 part-time school workers and their dependents. Deal had proposed to cut insurance for those part-time school employees, even though part-time state legislators are covered by the State Health Benefit Plan.
With that background, I am sharing the executive summary of the Albert Shanker Institute's updated "Does Money Matter in Education?" report by Rutgers professor Bruce Baker. In the report, Baker reviews the relationship between K-12 education spending and academic outcomes.
To summarize, despite all the uproar about paying teachers based on experience and education, and its misinterpretations in the context of the "Does money matter?" debate, this line of argument misses the point. To whatever degree teacher pay matters in attracting high-quality educators into the profession and retaining them, it's less about how they are paid than how much. Furthermore, the average salaries of the teaching profession, with respect to other labor market opportunities, can substantively affect the quality of entrants to the teaching profession, applicants to preparation programs and student outcomes. Diminishing resources for schools can constrain salaries and reduce the quality of the labor supply. Further, salary differentials between schools and districts might help to recruit or retain teachers in high-need settings. In other words, resources used for teacher quality matter.
Now, here is the executive summary:
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