'Return On Educational Investment': Research Says More Efficient Spending Needed

U.S. based think tank Center for American Progress recently released a report evaluating the correlation between education spending and student performance in U.S. schools.

The report, "Return on Educational Investment," used data from over 9,000 school districts across the country to assess productivity and efficiency. Data comparing student math and reading test results were compared to district spending.

According to the center's CEO and president John Podesta, the results are "striking." Education Week reports that the study concluded that there are gaping productivity gaps between districts and there is little proof that higher spending will equal greater student performance.

More than a million students across the country attend schools in districts labeled "highly inefficient."

The goals of the report were focused on evaluation and policy recommendations for lawmakers and school administrators.

Researchers wrote,

"Our aims for this project, then, are threefold. First, we hope to kick-start a national conversation about educational productivity. Second, we want to identify districts that generate higher-than-average achievement per dollar spent, demonstrate how productivity varies widely within states, and encourage efforts to study highly productive districts. Third -- and most important -- we want to encourage states and districts to embrace approaches that make it easier to create and sustain educational efficiencies.

According to the study, U.S. expenditure per student, adjusted for inflation, has nearly tripled over the past four decades. Despite increased funding, overall student performance and achievement has remained the same. As the U.S. struggles to compete with increasing global education performance competition, efficiency in spending is a rising concern.

Cost-effective education policies, which take into consideration student performance while striving for more efficient spending, are a growing trend in education reform. Adjusting for increasing budget cuts in all levels, school administrators are considering new options to boost student performance.

In the face of budget pressures, more schools are increasing class size, making parents and administrators nervous about how larger class sizes will effect student performance.

Former D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee believes increasing class sizes is not the issue. Determining teacher quality is the key, she says. Quality teachers can successfully handle bigger classes.

NPR reports,

"The way that I think would make sense is to identify the most highly effective teachers in a particular district, and think about assigning a few more students to each of their classrooms," Rhee says.

Not everyone agrees that effective teaching is enough to counter the effects of bigger class sizes.

According to NPR,

Randi Weingarten, head of the American Federation of Teachers, says that "if somebody says they want to raise class size, they're doing it because they want to cut the budget, not because it's actually going to help children." Many teachers say its common sense: larger classes mean students get less one-one-one attention, and the teacher has more work. And Weingarten says, plenty of parents agree.

While the report finds little connection between spending and performance in most districts, it acknowledges socioeconomic disparities. Poor students are 12 percent more likely to be in school in the least-productive and lowest-spending districts and minorities students are twice as likely to attend inefficient schools.

The report says,

To be sure, our nation's system of financing schools is unfair. Low-income and minority students are far more likely to attend schools that don't receive their fair share of federal, state, and local dollars.

To apply the lessons from the report, Podesta believes efficiency must be combined with fairness. Proper evaluation of spending and alternative solutions, such as increasing class sizes and teacher quality, should be considered.

To increase U.S. schools return on educational investments, the report states "transforming our schools will demand both real resources and real reform."

See how your district ranks in education productive on the report's interactive map.

Read the full report on AmericanProgress.org.

Comments

[spellett]

03:54 PM on 02/14/2011

Becoming more efficient doesn't always mean spending more money, especially in today's age of technology. We need to start utilizing the internet much more. I have built a website for students to manage their group work online and it's free (http://Enterthegroup.com). Schools however are reluctant to try anything new and it's so mind boggling and frustrating.

[DeweyJ]

02:02 PM on 01/23/2011

This is not new information. For decades, throughout the history of public education, socio-economic status (SES) has been the best predictor of school achievement. Districts located in wealthier communities have always outperformed districts serving low SES communities.

Right, it has little to do with class size or even spending, per se. The many subtle differences between the typical mid-high SES home and the typical low SES home stack the odds squarely against students from low SES backgrounds.

If you happen to work in a school, as I did, that has a mix, you will see the differences between incoming 5 year olds is glaring and spans easily 3 years developmentally. The community where I taught included stable lower middle class families who owned and lived in modest 3 bedroom homes of about 1200-1400 square feet. In most cases there were two parents living in these homes.

The low SES students lived in apartment houses on some of the most violent blocks in our small city, usually with a single parents and often with multiple siblings, sometimes spawned by several different fathers. Language was another factor, as well. These families were much less stable, and moving/changing schools every 2-3 years, or more frequently, was common.

The single time I visited a low SES home what I found was alarming. 5 children, a mother and aunt (nonEnglish speaking) packed into a 2 bedroom apartment with almost no furniture or food. Low achievement is not surprising.

[changing]

12:01 AM on 01/22/2011

If all the think tanks and the millionaires would use all this wasted money to fund something real like school buildings, salaries for extra teachers, computers, social services for neighborhoods,etc.,
we could have more effective schools. Appalling all this money going down a rat hole when kids needs school supplies, decent school buildings, a safe place to stay.

[merlinspinoza]

11:39 PM on 01/21/2011

http://www.globalgoodnews.com/education-news-a.html?art=129565216730725479

[umbrarchist]

11:07 PM on 01/21/2011

Why don't we try something simple, like a National Recommended Reading List classified by age and subject? How much would that cost? Kids that actually wanted to learn could then easily find the best books on whatever subject they were curious about at the time.

Something like this:

Teach Yourself Electricity and Electronics by Stan Gibilisco
http://www.powells.com/biblio?inkey=1-9780071459334-3

I wish someone had told me about something like that when I was in 7th grade..

[raechel]

08:51 PM on 01/21/2011

Here is a link to the full report (a pdf).

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2011/01/pdf/dwwroi.pdf

Starting on page 36 is a section that describes what the high-performing (in the good-bang-for-the-buck sense) districts have in common. It is really interesting reading.

[raechel]

08:28 PM on 01/21/2011

Wow. This is interesting. I know things like the number of special ed students, cost of living, and poverty rates were controlled for. I wonder whether the size of the district itself was considered, since managing a large district would be exponentially more complex than managing a small one, requiring a greater per-pupil expenditure. In fact, that makes me wonder whether the size of the district might make more difference than the size of the classroom.