Click on the above headline to link to the article
The article I refer to is regarding schools in the city of Medford Oregon, one of our larger cities in the southern region of Oregon; however the 'problem' is statewide if not nationwide. Basically it's the neverending cry of "more money for schools".
In the article there are several places where there appears to be (to me) a bit of an oxymoron or at the least a discrepancy in what is being reported. For example, at one point in the article it tells us that "Jackson County school districts have some of the highest class sizes in the state with growth in every district but Rogue River since 2001 -02.
Medford has the largest class size in the county, set at 29.6 in 2003-04."
Yet a bit later in the article is states, "The Medford School District's student body has declined by 510 pupils since 2002 ..."
The article talks about how, in Oregon, schools are funded based on the number of students attending, so the bottom part was trying to show how much money the district 'lost' due to the loss of students; but didn't the first part tell us that the district was growing? Also there should be a 'question' about that 'lost' money. If you have fewer students, then shouldn't you be able to do the same job with less money? Simple math here - it costs you a dollar a day to teach a student, if you have 20 students it will cost you $20. However if your student population drops to 10 students then it will only cost you $10 - did you lose money? Yes, in terms of how much money comes through the door you have, but in terms of the number of dollars to do the job, there has been no loss.
It is the same cry throughout this state and in many other states (from what I've read) - cries of "more money for education, more money for education", as well as another favorite mantra of the left, "it's for the children". Yes, even we cold-hearted conservatives are willing to fish into our wallets 'for the children' but as a cold-hearted conservative we want to see what our money is buying and want to see results and accountability for the money spent. To me this article is typical of the problem; they have lost students, but instead of being able to keep the same (or similar) student/teacher ratio - evidently they've cut more teaching positions than they should have. The article does point out that student/teacher ratio includes music, speech and Title one teachers - but weren't they counted and considered prior to the cuts as well?
Also for the record, the article states that the state funds each child at a rate of $5200 per year, actually this is a misnomer. Schools have what they call an "all funds" budget which includes building maintenance, security, administration costs, etc. - that number is almost double the published rate; and it too is based on your student population.
Bottom line, if you have fewer students you should be able to do the job with less money. Personally, I'd slash the heck out of the overhead (administration, counselors, etc.). I'd totally break with the teacher union, giving the teachers excellent pay and benefit packages but tie it with results. I'd give the classrooms back to teachers rather than have the teachers union or the administration tell them what to teach and how to teach; but again hold the teachers accountable for results on standardized tests. I'd re-introduce respect and discipline in the class room, those who can't/won't conform would be sent to a school designed to hover over them to make sure they do all their work and behave.
Your turn, what say you? Do the schools need more funding? Is it right and/or reasonable to see your student population decline, yet demand more money? Should taxpayers pay more every time the schools cry out for more money? Are the schools doing a good job of teaching? What part do unions and/or the school administration play in the way school is taught?
Opinions and comments welcome.
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Tuesday, January 17, 2006
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12 comments:
Numbers, as you know, can be tricky. It is entirely possible that the school district has lost students, but still has the largest class size in the county. Class size is determined by the number of students divided by the number of teachers. All class size tells you is how many students are in the average class. When I was in school it was common to have more than 30 students in each class, and kids learned. In today’s world, that may not be realistic. Certainly teachers want a lower student/teacher ratio.
When determining how much money is needed to support a particular school or district, you must consider fixed costs. If you have 10,000 students in 10 schools, and you lose 500 students, you likely will still have 10 schools, but fewer students providing funding for them. Depending upon where the student loss occurred, the faculty size may not have been affected in any school, or perhaps it all occurred in one or two schools. Thus costs could remain constant while funding would drop.
I tend to agree with your basic premises. Public education costs too much and delivers too little. Compared to private schools, public schools are generally far more costly per student and produce an inferior product. I also agree with your prescription to reform public schools, however there are practical considerations that make implementing reforms very difficult. Not impossible, but difficult, and the solution depends upon the political process, which pretty much dooms reform.
Public school teachers have a very difficult job. The good ones deserve better pay and benefits. We pay an average pro athlete multiples of the annual salary of a good teacher. That is dumb, considering the importance to our society of what athletes do compared to what teachers do. The system, however, needs to be cleaned up: There are a lot of mediocre teachers, and more than a few incompetent ones. The NEA and the NFT do more harm than good. They protect mediocrity. And the system focuses not on a good basic education, but on a lot of peripheral stuff that really isn’t as important as the “3 Rs.” We need to get back to a good grounding in the fundamentals.
Interesting James, however, the article stated that all the school districts within that county (save one, and that one wasn't the Medford school district) were growing; that that particular county had the largest growth of any of the counties in this state. Then later, they tell us that the Medford district has actually lost students - you can't be growing and losing students at the same time.
Yes, I understand your argument that the costs could be the same since maybe 10 students are gone from this school and 5 here, etc - but still.
Michael, I read and reread the article trying ot find where it says the school districts were growing, the only thing I can find is statements regarding class sizes, except for the one statement that the district lost 510 students. As James stated, class sizes can increase while the overall population is declining. It's about ratios, not just gross population.
Madmom -
13th paragraph down, I hereby copy and paste -
"Jackson County school districts have some of the highest class sizes in the state with growth in every district but Rogue River since 2001-02."
Thanks!
Michael,
I hadn't read the article as I usually do before commenting on a topic. I have now read it.
The way I read the paragraph you quoted in your comment to madmom, it isn't total student population that is rising, but class size. And that goes back to what I said before: fewer total students means less funding. Less funding means tightening the belt, which may mean teacher layoffs, leading to increasing class sizes.
Personally, I feel the lower class-size argument is somewhat of a red herring. While it's true that each student can get more attention in a smaller class, I think that trying to reduce class sizes is more a response to certain social conditions than to educational improvement. In the old days (my days in school) students were expected to reinforce classroom learning through homework. Parents often helped. I wonder how much homework is being assigned, how much resistance students and their parents put up to keep homework assignments low, an how often parents help their kids with it? Kids are so much more active today with sports and other after-school activities that priorities have changed for how they spend their after-school time. The less time spent on reinforcing learning outside of class, the more time required in class to do that. Parents of low-income families often have both less time for their kids and less interest in their kid’s schoolwork. These days, parents expect the schools to do all the work, and that’s a tremendous load.
As for funding levels, working to reduce class size increases per-pupil costs. Since the unions want the best possible situation for their members, often with little regard for what’s best for the education process, unions want smaller classes, which leads to more jobs for teachers. The education organizations lobby for the most effective classroom situations, which obviously tends toward fewer students per teacher. The ideal situation is one-on-one, which just as obviously is unreasonable. But the closer you can get to that, the more likely schools are able to impart learning. But what makes it easier to impart learning is what pushes costs through the roof.
I think it is a slow downward spiral for public schools, as parents with the means to give their kids a private school education will opt to do so, exacerbating the problem.
James, in response to your last post, as a parent of school aged kids, I can tell you that extracurricular opportunities are at an all time low, at least those sponsered by the schools, most programs have been completely eliminated. If kids are involved extracurricularly it is on their own dime, which makes me think that said activities are probably decreasing not increasing.
As to homework, personally I can't say that my kids have more homework than I did at that age, I don't remember totally, but they seem to have more busy work than I remember, I remember big projects I worked on at home and some math assignments, maybe book reading, otherwise we did stuff in class. My kids, even in grade school come home with anywhere from 1-4 hours worth of homework daily, it seems excessive. Alot of it is repetitious, kind of mindless drivel that I question is more for the teacher's sake, so they can show how much volume is getting done, but doesn't seem to really help the kids learn. Part of what makes it hard for me to be totally objective is having a kid with special needs, everything takes longer and is more arduous, so that may affect my perception of how much they are being asked to do. Still, it really comes across to me as busywork with little value or engagement for the kids. I do put up resistance to that, it infringes on the family quality of life and adds to their already considerable stress around school. Never the less, I help them with the homework, as I only work half time. I can't imagine parents who work full time can manage to do much help at all. There just aren't enough hours in the day.
I think where smaller class sizes help is with allowing the teacher more time for review and practice in class, giving attention to the kids who need it. Larger classes mean they just have time to shovel the material at the kids, quick check to make sure most got it and off they go to another subject. My kids picks things up at a slower rate and the teacher has no time to go back over individually as she needs. With a smaller class a teacher might be able to present the info in different mediums to help kids with different learning styles. Big class sized mean mostly lectures with some overhead visuals. Not all kids learn well that way.
It's not all about discipline, there is just such a great volume of info they have to learn, bigger than what we did at that age.
Not much of a business and economics wizard are you Mike?
When you run any sort of thing that takes in money and spends money, you have to types of cost: Fixed (those you have to have and won't ever go away, i.e. cost of owning a building, cost of heating and watering said building, etc.) and period costs (i.e. employee salaries, supplies, raw material, etc.) Now just because you lose business, have less students in this case, your fixed costs aren't going to go down. Your period costs may, stress may, go down, but they may not either because you may still need all of your staff to keep up with the demand you have.
You put forth a typical Conservative logic that on the top seems Ok, but if you actually understand the situation it's flat wrong. I believe it's called a specious argument.
Something along these lines would be quite specious:
Gosh darn it, why don’t people just work and get off welfare, makes sense to me.
First think a bit before you post, or I might have to stop reading :)
You know Michael, I agree with James, the paragraph seems to be referring to class size growing, not total populations, but if you really wanted to check you can get that info off the state statistics website.
Someone help me out here...
"Funding ultimately determines class size, and for districts in Jackson County, funding has been falling."
...but if class size is falling then isn't that a good thing?
"The state funds public schools according to enrollment."
Wait a minute, I thought it was the other way around, the funding is what determines the size of the class?
"Dwindling enrollment exacerbates large class sizes. For each student a district loses, its funding declines by nearly $5,200."
O.K., now, a little more help here, how does "dwindling enrollment" cause or contribute to larger classes? Wouldn't the effect ultimately be the opposite?
"The Medford School District’s student body has declined by 510 pupils since 2002, the equivalent of $2.6 million in funding."
Yet, if those 510 pupils are in another school discrict then Medford's "loss" of the $2.6 mil. is a wash. Just like Mike's analogy, if it costs $1/student for me to teach them and I lose 10 students then I lose $10 right? Yet, I still have ten dollars coming in to teach my ten students so it is more of a wash, I haven't really "lost" anything especially if I am not operating as a for profit business as is the case with public schools. Districts aren't operating with the goal of maintaining funding while decreasing overhead, they are there to do one thing, teach students. The money comes from government and is allotted to them based on need. It would be equivelant to me giving my son a $5 allowance each week which allows him to purchase 5 specific comic books,lets say spiderman(my favorite). Then it comes to pass that the store doesn't sell one of the spiderman comics any longer reducing the amount of comics he buys to only 4 now, therefore, I decide to reduce his allowance by $1 wich will still allow him to purchase the 4 remaining comic books. He didn't lose the other comic, nor did he lose any money since he hadn't earned it to begin with and still has enough to purchase the other 4 comics. I simply determined that he didn't need $5 any longer to purchase 5 comics since the amount of comics available for purchase went down. The same should be true of public schools, less students does mean less funding but only to accommodate a loss of a student, you cannot fund what isn't there.
Lawride you stated "Now just because you lose business, have less students in this case, your fixed costs aren't going to go down."
Yet, that isn't necessarily true either. When I managed a graphic design company a few years back, we had a ton of business from several large companies. After 9/11 that advertising biz began to dwindle to a point where over half of our business was gone. We employed 200 production artists who used 200 computers, scanners, and about a dozen printers. When we had to lay off half of those artists that meant we had to also eliminate half of our overhead (computers, scanners, printers) or else they would just sit there taking up space. This allowed us to stay in business and maintain our existing customers. In addition, we eventually downsized to a smaller office space as well to save on other "fixed" costs (utilities, rents, etc.).
This is business 101. In the same manner these school discricts ought to be doing the same thing, when a child or children move to another discrict, there should be a plan to adjust certain fixed and fluxuating costs to accommodate the change. I doubt if most business men would consider such a scenario as a loss of business in the same way that this article seems to consider losing a student.
This whole article is specious.
Your anaglogy isn't really comparable. A school is not like a business. They don't rent classroom space, the physical plant is what it is, and you can't just build a samller school or move to another building. You have to maintain the structure you have. I don't know about Medford, but the schools my kids have gone to don't buy new computers every year or two, they live with what they have for a long time so, that expense wouldn't really change, the kids would just have better access to the existing computers. I suppose consumables would go donw, but we as parents provide all that anyway,we buy the paper, the pens and pencils, the peechee's, the kleenex, the binders, the crayons, the paints, etc etc. Most of the support staff would still be needed, IE- still need to cook for the kids, still need to clean up, still need to maintain the grounds, none of that changes much, proably not enough to change the need for staff in those areas. In some small ways but in others it isn't. Depending on where the loss of enrollment happened, it might be hard to predict how many teachers would be lost. If it was concentrated in a certain grade or school then the school could just adjust class sizes and move people around to adjust. If is was very spread out a wide range of grades and schools (like 3 or 4 students per class overall), then it might not change the staffing at all.
I would be interested to know how much money actually goes to teachers, books and student supplies etc. I know there is quite a bit of overhead involved in running a school, but where is the money actually going?
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