Education Week - January 22, 2014 - 18

WAR ON POVERTY: Progress & Persistent Inequity
WA
MT
OR
ID
WY
NV
Among States,
Spending Gaps
Have Widened
Per-pupil spending rises
By Andrew Ujifusa & Michele McNeil
In the 50 years since the War on Poverty
began, school spending has skyrocketed, but
so have disparities in how much states dedicate
to K-12 education.
Only $4,000 separated per-pupil spending
from the states at the top and bottom of
per-pupil rankings back in 1969, the earliest
comparable data available from the U.S. Department
of Education. But in 2009-10, that
inflation-adjusted difference stood at $14,673
per student. That year, the District of Columbia
spent an average of $20,000 on each student
in its schools. In Utah, the lowest perpupil
spending state, just barely more than
$6,000 was spent on average.
Even as questions persist about whether
money matters in education, it's unquestionable
that spending disparities are growing as
states' political and economic climates have
changed dramatically in the last half century.
Some advocates say the gaps show that
many state governments continue to neglect
their responsibility to provide low-income students
with a high-quality education, thus subverting
the War on Poverty's prime purpose.
Others, however, argue that the disparities
aren't crucial, since the rising spending hasn't
translated broadly to significantly higher
student achievement, and that it is more important
to ask how states are spending their
money on education. Cost-of-living differences
between regions and resulting salary variations
might also explain some of the disparities.
Budgets and Court Battles
All states have increased their per-pupil
spending on public schools significantly since
the early years of the War on Poverty. Despite
the large gap that separates it from the
District of Columbia, Utah's spending rose
87 percent from 1969 to 2010.
Among the nine states and the District of
Columbia where per-student spending has
grown the most, seven are in the Northeast,
with five of them in New England. All of the
top 10 states have increased their pupil funding
by at least $7,390 since 1969.
Meanwhile, among the bottom 10 states
in spending growth, seven are located in the
western United States, including Arizona,
California, and Washington state. Among
them, the largest increase was in Minnesota,
where per-pupil spending rose $5,860.
Concurrently, the average per-pupil gap between
states rose by 255 percent from $81 in
1969 to $288 in 2010, according to an Education
Week analysis.
HI
UT
CA
AZ
NM
TX
AK
PER-PUPIL SPENDING:
District of Columbia $20,910
New York $18,167
New Jersey $17,379
Vermont $15,837
Alaska $15,829
SIX HIGHEST
Some of the states with the most spending
growth have been spurred by prominent court
cases. In several legal battles, plaintiffs have
successfully argued that their states were not
meeting their constitutional requirements to
fund public schools in a fair manner.
In seven of the top nine states and D.C. in
terms of spending growth, the courts have ruled
at some point in favor of plaintiffs seeking more
equitable and adequate K-12 spending.
Overall, there have been court cases and
rulings related to school-funding adequacy in
all but five states, according to the National
Education Access Network, a project based at
Teachers College, Columbia University, that
tracks school-funding lawsuits. In 24 states,
there have been victories for plaintiffs seeking
new, more equitable funding levels.
Irrationality and Inequity
The fact that K-12 per-pupil expenditures
have increased across all states isn't surprising,
in part because of new mandates that
deal with policies like educating students
with special needs, said David Sciarra, the
executive director of the Education Law Center,
a Newark, N.J.-based group that promotes
equitable school funding and criticizes what it
deems inadequate funding efforts by states.
However, inequities between states persist
and have grown because some states have aggressively
targeted more resources to low-income
children, while others have not, he said.
"The amount of funding that schools have
within states to support their needs remains,
by and large across the country, irrational,"
Mr. Sciarra said. "Many states continue to resist
doing the work of connecting their school
finance formula, [and] their school funding,
to the actual cost of delivering rigorous standards
to give all kids the chance to achieve
those standards."
A counterpoint to this narrative is a state
like New Hampshire, where per-pupil spending
grew 249 percent between 1969 and 2010
(the third-highest growth rate after D.C. and
Vermont). In 1997, the state Supreme Court
ruled in the Claremont School District v. Governor
of New Hampshire case that the state's
K-12 funding system violated its constitution
because it was not "proportional and reason-
able" given disparities in local property taxes.
The state subsequently altered its school finance
formula.
"All the states that have improved equity
have added money, not just reallocated resources,"
Mr. Sciarra said.
Money Spent Poorly
But the misallocation of education funding
is precisely the problem state officials should
guard against, regardless of any spending
disparities across the country, argued Eric A.
Hanushek, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution
at Stanford University.
When you look at what really matters-student
achievement-then the country hasn't
made much progress since the War on Poverty
launched, Mr. Hanushek said.
He pointed to scores on the National Assessment
of Educational Progress and international
tests that, he said, show U.S. student performance
remaining "pretty flat" over recent decades
even as K-12 spending has risen dramatically.
What's more, he said, high-spending states
haven't shown dramatically better student
achievement progress than low-spending states.
"On average, we haven't spent the money
very well," he said. "We're still missing linking
spending to outcomes."
For example, he said, states are making
dramatic changes in education policy, from remaking
their accountability systems to tying
teacher evaluations to student achievement.
"But those decisions have been divorced
from any discussion about finance," he said.
"There's no funding behind them."
Still, amid the recent recession and resulting
state-level budget cuts, the federal government
has failed to push states to more
equitable and adequate spending levels,
through waivers from the No Child Left Behind
Act and Title I funding, said Wade Henderson,
the president and CEO of the Leadership
Conference on Civil and Human Rights,
a Washington education advocacy group.
"The failure to provide equal funding, the
failure to provide quality education, is a violation
of states' responsibility to their own
constitutions, but also a violation of the federal
mandate about how education has to be
implemented," Mr. Henderson said. n
"THE AMOUNT OF FUNDING THAT SCHOOLS have within states
to support their needs remains, by and large across the country, irrational."
DAVID SCIARRA, executive director, Education Law Center
SOURCES: National Center for Education
Statistics
18 | EDUCATION WEEK | January 22, 2014 | www.edweek.org
Connecticut $15,698
PER-PUPIL SPENDING:
Tennessee $8,117
Mississippi $8,104
Arizona $7,968
Oklahoma $7,929
Idaho $7,100
Utah $6,237
SIX LOWEST
NOTE: 1969-1970 per-pupil spending figures were
adjusted for inflation to 2009-10 dollars using U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
SOURCES: National Center for Education Statistics;
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics; Education Week
CO
NE
KS
OK
AR
MS AL
LA
FL
GA
IA
IL
MO
IN OH
KY
TN
WV
SD
ND
MN
WI
MI
PA
VA
NC
SC
NJ
MD
DE
DC
PER-PUPIL SPENDING
n $6,000-8,125
n $8,126-10,000
n $10,001-15,500
n $15,501-21,000
NY
VT
NH ME
MA
RI
CT
MAPPING INEQUALITY
Since the 1960s, school spending
across the country has skyrocketed.
During the 2009-10 school year,
some states, however, spent vastly
more money per student than
others.
NUMBERS AT A GLANCE
Per-pupil spending gaps have increased
between states since the War on Poverty
programs launched.
256 percent
The amount of growth in average
disparity between states
in per-pupil spending levels
from 1969-70 to 2009-10.
$10,531
The growth in the gap in per-pupil
spending between the highestspending
state and the lowestspending
state from 1969-70 to
2009-10.
206 points
The percentage-point difference in
per-pupil spending growth between
the District of Columbia, the state
with the most growth from 1969-70 to
2009-10, and Utah, the state with the
least growth.
http://www.edweek.org
Education Week - January 22, 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Education Week - January 22, 2014
