Public education spending: An endless, futile black hole or not?

Context

One of the issues that concerns people is public education. A good education is generally seen as necessary to attain a middle class standard of living. As with most everything else in politics, there is a vast gulf of opinion and perceptions of reality about public education and spending. As usual, getting at the truth is very hard to do for average people who are open minded and not driven by ideology.

 The creepy-looking, but fast & agile USS Independence littoral combat ship

Messing around off the San Diego coast with another boat, May 2, 2012

In the November 2012 general election, Californians will get to vote on whether to increase taxes to pay for yet another massive budget shortfall. As usual, democrats are asking for more money and republicans are doing everything they can to fight it. The shortfall is about $16 to $17 billion this year. If the tax increase does not pass, cuts to public education will be even more painful that the spending cuts of recent years. The situation in San Diego is so ugly that one of the school board members is advocating bankruptcy for the public school system. Layoffs for 2,400 teachers and others are planned. Some other school systems nationwide are facing similar financial distress.

Many people believe that spending more money on public education is generally ineffective and should not be the way to fix whatever it is that's "wrong". Critics of more spending often point to bloated bureaucracies and pensions, intransigent teacher's unions and/or poor student performance in view of already high spending. Advocates for more spending often argue that students often do not speak English very well, sometimes they live in poverty and go to school hungry, sometimes have to deal with drug addicted parents or dysfunctional families, have to learn in run down schools with limited resources, e.g., internet access or new text books, do not have access to adequate health care and/or have one or more of a myriad of learning and/or physical disabilities.

 Air Force F-16 en route to inflicting some robust discipline on the always playful but
often unruly Taliban, Haqqani and other boys clubs whose members
are miscreants involved in local malarkey, mischief & mayhem

Kandahar Airfield, Afghanistan, April 30, 2012

Some people complain that we teach to the test too much. Others complain that there is not enough teaching to the test. Some like No Child Left Behind and others don't. Some people argue that bigger class size won't make much of a difference, while others disagree. Public schools in wealthy neighborhoods tend to get more financial and other support from parents and local organizations than schools in other areas. Some argue that makes a difference in outcomes, while others deny that. Opinions on teacher salaries and benefits are all over the place. Many people inject their political ideology and that arguably makes a complicated situation intractably complex. Republicans generally want to eliminate the federal department of education and more spending, while democrats tend to see all of that as important to maintain or expand.

There appears to be no strong consensus on any of these disputed matters. In all that noise, its hard to spot a signal.

The spending issue

Given the complexity and lack of consensus, addressing issues one at a time may make some sense with the caveat that the various factors and issues probably affect one another. Depending on how one looks at it, the U.S. arguably spends a lot on public education. In one study comparing 11 countries, total U.S. spending was high ($7,743/pupil) and spent significantly more per student compared to the other countries but had mixed outcomes in student performance. Although which years are being compared is hard to figure out, other analysis put per U.S. student spending as being even higher ($10,441 in adjusted dollars for 2007).

 Navy SEAL candidate training @ Naval Amphibious Base Coronado

Coronado, California, April 26, 2012

A different study indicated that as a percentage of GDP, the U.S. spends 5.8% of its GDP on education. According to that study, that put the U.S. at 37th in the world in a tie with Austria and Estonia. The CIA estimates the U.S. spent 5.5% of GDP in 2007, which arguably puts the U.S. a bit lower in the ranking, depending on which year(s) the first study refers to. A study of performance for reading, math and science suggests that the U.S. ranks from 22nd to 33rd in these areas.

In terms of pay, U.S. teachers receive higher salaries, but generally spend significantly more time teaching in the classroom (about 300-400 hours/year), which brings their salaries in line with other countries on a pay per hour basis. U.S. teacher pay is generally lower on a gross GDP per capita basis (96%) than the OECD average (117%). Many teachers argue that they are being asked to provide more services and their time spent with parents and doing other things (grading papers, etc.) is uncompensated and therefore their hourly wages are low.

Of course, all of that is generalization based on the U.S. as a whole. Different states will have different cost-benefit situations. Also, none of that addresses the issue of vouchers for private schools. Private schools tend to provide education at a rate of about 50% of the cost in public schools due to lower teacher pay, among other things.

Our tax dollars hard at work:

Congressional staff person Michael Weinstein messing around with

an M203 Grenade launcher while marines stand around 

Marine Day, Camp Barrett, Quantico, Virginia, April 27, 2012

Mr. Weinstein and 440 other staffers were flown in on V22 Osprey 

What does all of that mean?

Of course one should not look at spending and salaries out of context. The situation is complicated. Other factors such as the state of school repair or disrepair or poverty rates presumably affects what impact the spending has. If one injects liberal ideology into the mix and relies on it, then it is fairly easy to argue that we do not spend enough per pupil. The factors that carry weight with people who want more spending will carry weight while other factors that argue for less spending will get less weight. That's no surprise. That's just how most people "analyze" things like this.

Also no surprise is people who believe that we already spend enough and should just fix the teacher union problem (assuming there is one) and so on, will give less weight to the arguments that support more spending. The question remains, do we spend too much, too little or just about right? Other questions are relevant too. For example, should we even want to boost pupil performance from 22nd or lower and if so, to what level? First? Eighth? Should we eliminate after school programs to save money? How does one weigh the impact of pupils going to school hungry or living in dysfunctional families? Is any of that relevant or not and if so, how relevant? Would money be spent more efficiently in terms of improved outcomes to feed hungry kids in public schools?

 Marine V22 Osprey with a howitzer

The baffled pragmatist

How on Earth can the average person reasonably answer the "simple" question of whether spending is too high, low or somewhere in between? It may even be the case that more spending in one geographical area would clearly pay back very solid gains, while in another area, the effect would be nil. If one can just step back and take one's ideology and preconceived biases out of it, it is easy to argue that this question is complex and the answer is unclear. One can easily argue that ideology alone will probably lead to the wrong conclusion. Instead of reliance on ideologies or special interest argument to answer the question, one should rely on unspun (unbiased, thorough and fair) analyses of all the main relevant factors and how or if spending on each affects overall outcomes.

From the non-ideological, pragmatic California Moderates (CM) point of view, no political party, partisan or special interest has clearly and convincingly made their case. As has been discussed here before, political 'debate' is raw advocacy. The point of raw advocacy isn't honestly informing the public. Its spin to win arguments and defend ideologies and special interests while maintaining the political status quo. The big question is where does one go for an unspun analysis of education spending and other important issues? CM has no answer to that critical question.

Marine V22 Osprey refueling

If CM had to guess based on what CM knows and without ideological bias or any skin in the game (no kids in any public school), the guess would be that we spend about enough overall, but maybe the distribution of spending is sub-optimal. Maybe increased spending is needed in California and some other states, but that assumes that it can be focused in a way that provides tangible benefit. Unfortunately, that's a big assumption. That requires trust in politics and politicians and its not clear there's much public trust in government in California or elsewhere.

Trust: The biggest factor?

When people do not trust either party or the special interests involved, additional spending for anything can be very hard to support even if the facts do solidly support more spending. That's a side-effect of what a loss of trust in government can do. That is also a point that has been raised here before. People's ideologies and biases (which are basically the same thing - belief grounded mostly in emotion instead of fact and logic) often trump reality, which is another point argued here repeatedly.

 V22 Osprey on a boat

Some people believe that more money for schools will be diverted to other things. They would not support a tax increase, even if the need for more money under current conditions was obvious. Diversion of money form the intended target to something else is a legitimate concern. The California legislature, in its dysfunction, diverts money all the time.* That costs the California government at least some of the trust it needs to convince the public that something like a tax hike is absolutely necessary.

* In their defense, governance of California is so profoundly messed up due to various conflicting and constraining ballot measures. Sometimes the legislature has no choice but to divert money from one thing to another just to keep the cart on the road. However, one can reasonably lay that source of dysfunction at the legislature's feet as well. If they just did their damn job like they were supposed to, maybe we would not be in such a stinking mess. Unfortunately, the legislature can't do its job. It is dominated by hard core liberals and utterly intractable hyper-hard core political and religious far right conservatives. The public has to vote on ballot spending measures or even less would get done. California is a hopeless mess.

 Marine V22 Osprey flying somewhere

For the public education spending issue, and probably most other spending issues, people who have lost trust will tend to let that concern trump or color another conclusion that they might have drawn if trust was there. Even if more spending makes sense and people agree with it, a lack of trust can nonetheless make just about anything a hard sell to a skeptical public. One probably has to look at this issue on a state by state basis to get a better view of reality and assess options. For California, it isn't clear what makes sense because it isn't clear that advocates for either side can be trusted.