School funding’s surprising U-shape, the future of work, and more: A Chalkbeat Ideas roundup

America’s strange U-shaped school funding system

Conventional wisdom holds that property taxes create deep inequities in school funding between rich and poor school systems. Across the country as a whole, this is not true and hasn’t been for some time, concludes a recent Brookings Institution analysis. 

In reality, American school funding is U-shaped, with high- and low-poverty school systems tending to spend more money than those in the middle. In the below graphic from the report, funding per student is broken down by poverty rates from low to high. (The white bar in the highest poverty bucket shows the results without New York City, which has unusually high spending.)

The pattern looks similar when adjusting for differences in personnel costs in different regions. 

While these results defy conventional wisdom, they’ve been shown in research for years now. Another study that I recently summarized found that children in poverty tended to have slightly more money spent on their formal education — but far less spent on their well-being outside of school. The Brookings researchers agree with the commonly held view that high-poverty schools need more money to effectively serve their students.

Interested in unpacking these results? I’ll be discussing them on a webinar later this month.

How the feds pushed for digital testing

I recently reported that online testing is keeping Chromebooks in some classrooms because school leaders want to ensure students are prepared for state tests. Digital assessment did not happen by accident. It was promoted by the federal government under the Obama administration.

The goal was to both encourage technology use in the classroom and to improve testing quality, says Joanne Weiss, who ran Race to the Top, the Obama administration’s competitive grant program. The hope was quicker turnaround of results and questions beyond traditional multiple-choice items. “Today’s (good) assessments have all kinds of item types students can use to better show what they know and can do,” says Weiss.

An open question to me is whether teachers and schools have reaped the intended benefits of these online tests. 

How prevalent was the “college-for-all” mindset?

These days, commentators and educators are widely questioning the prevailing idea of the recent past that everyone should go to college. It’s an interesting experience, then, to look back at that era, as epitomized by Barack Obama’s 2009 address to Congress. “I ask every American to commit to at least one year or more of higher education or career training. This can be community college or a four-year school; vocational training or an apprenticeship,” Obama said. He offered a similar message in 2015. At least in Obama’s comments, the message was much more nuanced than the “college for all” message that many seem to recall.

Why teacher turnover might be a real problem

Responding to my recent piece on teacher turnover, analyst Chad Aldeman emphasizes that turnover rates are now declining in most states, as you can see from one of the graphics in my story. True enough. My case that turnover is still a problem hinges on the cumulative outflow of teachers and other school staff over the last four to five years. This may have destabilized schools in a way that has not been fully appreciated or addressed.

I elaborate a bit in this LinkedIn post. You can also read the original story or examine the underlying data yourself.

The trouble with preparing students for the future economy…

… is that no one knows what that economy will look like. Consider for instance a Wall Street Journal survey of several leading economists: They were split on the very basic question of whether artificial intelligence will create more or fewer white-collar jobs. An essay in the Atlantic reached a similar conclusion about future jobs. “If there’s one lesson from the history of technology, it is that these changes are hard to predict,” wrote Rogé Karma. This is worth keeping in mind next time you hear someone say that schools need to prepare students for the future economy.

It’s not easy to evaluate teachers fairly

I recently wrote about research finding benefits of teacher merit pay in South Carolina and Texas. Yet bias in teacher evaluations is a real problem, complicating performance pay systems. “Teachers with higher-achieving and less disruptive students, holding constant the teacher and school, receive systematically higher performance ratings,” concluded a pair of researchers in a recent study. Relatedly, a new study finds that Texas’ merit pay system has encouraged some teachers to move to more-advantaged schools. 

The consequences of in-state college tuition for undocumented students 

A recent study found that when states offer in-state tuition to undocumented students, their rates of college attendance and completion rise. This is relevant now because the Trump administration and some states, including Florida and Texas, have worked to rescind in-state tuition benefits for those students.

How much did COVID relief dollars matter?

Another new study examined school districts that qualified for extra emergency COVID money due to a quirk in the funding formula. The districts did not end up spending those dollars on students, though. Instead they appeared to reduce property tax rates. Not surprisingly, there were no meaningful changes in student achievement.

This study looked only at a sliver of the COVID funding in a small subset of relatively affluent school systems, but its findings are worth keeping in mind when considering future efforts to increase federal funding — such money doesn’t always reach its intended target. 

Across Chalkbeat

ICYMI from Ideas

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