“Money, money, money, money, money.” So goes the refrain of the song by the O’Jays, forever immortalized in the pantheon of primetime television by real estate mogul Donald Trump. Trump’s skillful apprentices notwithstanding, most of us still relegate an all-encompassing preoccupation with money to the world of high finance. But like it or not, the insatiable quest for more dollars is dramatically reshaping public education in our country.
Simmering debates over education funding have left many asking, “Just how much is enough?” The answer, as always, is that it depends on how (and whom) you ask. The two “buzz” words, currently bandied about in legal and policy forums around the country are “adequacy” and “equity.” What, exactly, do they mean?
“Adequacy” is a relative term, generated by the question, “How much money do schools need to provide a sound basic education?” In other words, how much money is adequate? A look at state spending on education nationally provides little clarity, as dollar amounts vary greatly. In 2001-02, the average expenditure per pupil in our country was $8,996. But schools in the District of Columbia − our biggest spenders overall − spent $15,489. At the other end of the spectrum were Utah and Mississippi, both of which spent less than $6,000 per student. Even within a state itself, spending may vary from system to system. Such disparities, whether perceived or actual, have spawned massive amounts of litigation, resulting in school funding lawsuits in 45 states.
The term “equity” addresses whether education spending is equal from system to system. Equity is somewhat easier to study since it involves studying numbers rather than opinions. However, inconsistent formulas and methodology can obscure and muddle the facts, meaning there is often quite a bit of “spin” when it comes to explaining the data.
Two recent reports pointing to funding inequities in North Carolina will certainly provide grist for the debate mill. In December, the North Carolina Public School Forum released its annual Local School Finance Study, revealing large funding disparities between counties. This is really no surprise, as their comparisons rely only on North Carolina’s local supplement. Since county governments provide only about one-fourth of North Carolina public school budgets (state and federal sources provide the rest), the Forum’s conclusions are meaningless. In the end, reporting differences in county funding alone is like measuring the length of elephant tails while ignoring the rest − it tells us little of practical significance.
A second report, Quality Counts 2006, published by Education Week, will also fuel funding disagreements for some time. According to this report, North Carolina received a low “equity” score. In order to understand our rating, however, it’s helpful to break down the formula used to calculate our score. According to Terry Stoops, Education Analyst for the John Locke Foundation, our state fares well on two out of the three measures used − the McLoone Index and the coefficient of variation. Based on the McLoone Index, North Carolina is spending 94.7 percent of what is needed to raise all students to the state’s median per pupil expenditure − the ninth best percentage in the nation. The coefficient of variation also reveals good news, showing little disparity in the per pupil expenditure across school districts in North Carolina, leaving us with the seventh-lowest variation percentage (9.1 percent) in the nation.
The only area of resource equity where North Carolina does poorly is with regard to our wealth neutrality score, a statistic measuring the extent to which total revenue (state and local) can be explained by property wealth. According to this measure, North Carolina’s wealthy districts have more funding per pupil than poor districts, giving us the second worst wealth neutrality score in the nation. But again, it’s important to keep in mind that most of North Carolina’s education revenue does not come from local property taxes anyway. Therefore, it’s counterintuitive to say that local property tax wealth is strongly related to state and local revenues.
Where can you go for the real facts on education funding? The Alliance’s new brochure “Paying the Price: Real Facts about Education Funding in North Carolina,” sets the record straight on school funding for North Carolinians, and provides a common-sense look at the data. Distilled from a more comprehensive Locke Foundation study, this publication demonstrates that when federal and state sources of funding are considered, school funding is equitable.
In the end, focusing exclusively on financial equity is bad policy. Instead of looking at how much money we spend, we ought to focus on how we spend it, demanding more value and greater accountability for our education dollars. If our public schools aren’t working, the children of North Carolina − not state bureaucrats − pay the price.