Here is a question repeatedly asked under the Gold Dome and never answered: How much does it cost to educate a child in Georgia to excellence?
And here’s why the answer continues to evade us: No one really wants to know. Even when learning the answer will go a long way toward putting Georgia in a position to demand no-excuses accountability for results from its schools.
A true estimate of the cost of excellence would force Georgia to invest far more in education than it’s willing to do, especially in rural Georgia districts that lack the property tax base to compensate for ongoing state cuts.
Without an honest examination of the real costs of quality education and a recognition that we can’t starve schools yet demand robust achievement, the state’s students and economy will languish.
We also have to be frank about what constitutes excellence. As Harvard’s Tony Wagner says, “What the world cares about is not what you know, but what you can do with what you know.”
To replace rote learning, memorization and drills with innovation, critical thinking and problem-solving, Georgia’s classrooms require new models, which is why former Gov. Sonny Perdue created a task force in 2004 to define the best practices in education and put a price tag on them.
“Today, basic doesn’t cut it. Georgians expect more. They expect excellence for their children,” he said at the time.
After more than three years, 75 public meetings and discussions with 105 school systems, the task force came back empty-handed on the cost issue, likely because it discovered excellence doesn’t come cheap. Estimates were that if Georgia adopted the reviewed prototypes, the education budget would rise a billion and a half dollars a year.
Instead, the state Legislature has been cutting a billion dollars a year from schools, although lawmakers often counter that education still represents more than half of the state budget. They’re right.
About 51 percent of the state budget goes to k-12, the university system and the technical colleges. Thirty-nine percent of the budget goes to the state’s k-12 schools, which educate more than 9 out of 10 of Georgia’s children.
That seems like a great deal of money, yet Georgia is far from a big spender among states. It ranks between 36th and 40th in per student spending. At the same time, the state ranks sixth in the percentage of children living in poverty, according to the U.S. Census.
Poor children arrive at school less ready for learning than middle-class peers; they cost more to educate because they often need more time and resources to catch up. Yet, in response to budget cuts, roughly two-thirds of Georgia’s districts have slashed instructional days.
Educating poor children would not only improve their prospects, it would transform Georgia. According to an analysis by Alliance for Excellent Education, increasing Georgia’s high school graduation rate to 90 percent for just one high school class would create 3,850 new jobs and boost the state’s economy by as much as $606 million.
Trying to get a clear view of education spending is complicated; it’s akin to those fun house mirrors that can inflate or shrink you, depending on where you look.
The state allots more money each year to education because Georgia has seen steady enrollment growth. Georgia has more students, but spends less on each of them.
Since 2002, per student funding declined 15.3 percent on average, says Claire Suggs, senior education policy analyst for the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute.
If the state Quality Basic Education formula had been fully funded last year, school districts would have earned an additional $633 per student per year, she says. In a classroom of 25 students, that’s $15,825 more. At a school-wide level, Cobb’s Walton High, for example, would earn more than a million dollars in additional revenue.
Gov. Nathan Deal announced Wednesday that he wants to give schools $547 million more this year “to restore instructional days, eliminate teacher furloughs and increase teacher salaries.”
That’s a good start, but remember that funhouse mirror? Divide that half billion by Georgia’s 181 school systems and Deal’s new money doesn’t look so big; it breaks down to $3 million per district. Consider that Cobb alone is facing a projected $79 million deficit next year.
At a media forum this month, Marietta Republican Sen. Lindsey Tippins, chair of the Senate Education and Youth Committee, acknowledged the budget cuts have crippled schools.
To legislators who contend that schools ought to get used to the “new normal,” Tippins said, “If we get used to this, the schools will starve to death.”
Let’s hope his colleagues are listening.
