Education Spending

Florida Legislature heads into historic session

Doug Tuthill March 2, 2021

Doug Tuthill

The 175-year-old Florida Legislature, which turns 176 on May 26, reconvenes today for its annual 60-day legislative session. The largest global pandemic since 1918 has played havoc with the state’s budget, so money, as usual, will be the dominant issue.

About 85,000 school district students were no-shows this year. The state held school districts harmless and paid them to educate these missing students, but whether taxpayers can afford continuing to do so will be a contentious issue. If the bulk of these students do not return this fall and state government stops funding nonattending students, school districts will be scrambling to reorganize their staffing models, building utilization plans, and budgets.

The federal government is sending billions in education funding to the states via a succession of Covid-19 stimulus bills, but these are one-time payments that should not be used for ongoing expenses, such as employee salaries and benefits. House Speaker Chris Sprowls recently sent a letter to district superintendents warning them against spending non-reoccurring funds on reoccurring expenses.

If the federal government passes another stimulus bill, state government and school districts may find themselves with millions of federal dollars that cannot be spent on pressing needs because the federal money is non-reoccurring. How best to manage this mix of one-time payments with ongoing financial needs will be another contentious issue for legislators to resolve.

The primary education choice bill this session is Senate Bill 48, sponsored by Sen. Manny Diaz Jr., and a priority of Senate President Wilton Simpson. This bill consolidates five education choice programs into two, provides families with greater spending flexibility by turning all the scholarships into Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), stabilizes the programs’ funding, creates growth caps to control expenses, and cleans up a plethora of technical issues that were making the programs overly cumbersome for families and schools.

You can read more about SB 48 here.

Senate staff spent six months working on various aspects of this bill, and it shows. Some of the more nuanced technical solutions are elegant despite the complex legislative language in which they are embedded.

That SB 48 is a Senate bill is unusual. Traditionally, innovative education choice legislation originates in the Florida House and then must navigate its way through the Senate. For the Senate to step up and propose a landmark education choice bill is a pleasant surprise. Once the House’s improvements are included, this will be a historic bill with significant implications for the education choice movement nationally.

The other important education choice bill this session makes dual enrollment programs more accessible to non-school district students. (See here and here.) Legislative changes a few years ago made dual enrollment far less accessible for private school students. Consequently, private school student participation in dual enrollment has been declining. This bill will hopefully fix that problem.

The House has made career planning and workforce development a top priority this session. The pandemic has driven unemployment rates to historic highs and forced millions of people to change jobs and careers. Aligning Florida’s education and training programs with current and future job openings is a critical need the Legislature will be addressing this session. Kudos to the House for taking the lead on this, and to the House staff for working endless hours crafting this legislation.

The House is also promoting legislation that will deliver developmentally appropriate books to the homes of young readers. This program, in concert with the existing Reading ESA for struggling elementary school readers, should help improve many students’ reading skills and, hopefully, inspire a love of life-long reading.

We have all been impacted by this devastating pandemic, but Floridians are resilient, optimistic, and forward looking. We are already on the road to recovery – a recovery I am confident will be accelerated by the decisions our Florida Legislature and governor make over the next 60 days.

March 2, 2021 0 comment

Commentary and Opinion Coronavirus / COVID-19 Customization Education and Public Policy Education Choice Education Equity Education Legislation Education Savings Accounts Education Spending Featured Parental Choice School Choice

Commentary: Why education savings accounts are the great equalizer for school children

Special to redefinED February 9, 2021

Special to redefinED

Editor’s note: In this opinion piece, Shaka Mitchell, Tennessee state director of American Federation for Children, and Justin Owen, president and CEO of the Beacon Center of Tennessee, explain how the Tennessee Supreme Court’s decision to take up an education savings account case would create a win for both parents and school systems. The piece appeared recently in The Tennessean.

On Thursday, the Tennessee Supreme Court accepted the widely publicized Education Savings Accounts—or ESA—case.

In 2019, the state Legislature offered a lifeline to families in our worst-performing school districts. They passed the ESA program, which would allow parents to take a portion of the dollars we already spend on their child’s education and use those dollars to send their child to a school of their choice.

Almost immediately, the city of Nashville and Shelby County sued the state to stop parents from utilizing this important program.

While lower courts sided with these local governments, we are optimistic that the Supreme Court will reverse those lower courts and allow the program to launch this fall.

Even before COVID-19, many families struggled to access a quality education in these two school districts. Fast forward to the current school year where nearly 200,000 students lack access to school buildings and tens of thousands haven’t been able to access the admittedly second-class online environment.

If they weren’t fortunate enough to be zoned into a good school or one that was open for in-person instruction, they were out of luck. Unlike families with means, lower-income families can’t just pick up and move to a better school district, nor can they afford private school tuition to send their child to a school of their choice. They are completely stuck.

We must do better.

The ESA program would be the great equalizer for these families. Regardless of their ZIP code or how much money they make, parents in Memphis and Nashville would finally have options. They could get their children into the school that best serves their needs by simply allowing the money to follow them to the school of their choice.

Yet, local government leaders are more concerned about money than fixing their schools or even allowing those most in need to leave for better schools. They chose to stand at the schoolhouse door, this time to keep these families in the schools they have failed to improve decade after decade.

Despite their claims, research shows that these local governments would save money under the ESA program. When a child leaves with an ESA, the public school district no longer has the expense of educating that child, but the program would still let the district keep a portion of the funding.

A recent Beacon Center study — using data reported by the school districts themselves — found that Nashville would save $500 each time a student left with an ESA. Shelby County would save an even greater $2,000 per child.

When the program is fully up and running, that translates into an additional $21 million these two districts would save. Metro Nashville Public Schools could add 65 classroom teachers or pay its existing teachers $670 a year more as a result. Shelby County Schools, meanwhile, could hire an additional 310 teachers or give each of its current teachers a $2,900 raise.

Fortunately, courts in nearly a dozen other states and the United States Supreme Court have found programs like Tennessee’s to be constitutional.

The state Supreme Court can now affirm the legislature’s authority to extend this lifeline to families by ruling that the Tennessee ESA program is in fact constitutional. And if they do so, thousands of families in dire need of a better education will finally have the options they deserve.

February 9, 2021 0 comment

Commentary and Opinion Education and Public Policy Education Choice Education Savings Accounts Education Spending Featured Parent Empowerment Podcast School Choice

podcastED: Matt Ladner interviews Arizona Supreme Court Justice Clint Bolick

redefinED staff January 28, 2021

redefinED staff

On this episode, redefinED’s executive editor speaks with longtime education choice advocate Bolick, who is co-founder of the Institute for Justice. Now serving as an associate justice on the Arizona Supreme Court, Bolick recently co-authored Unshackled: Freeing America’s K-12 Education System.

Ladner and Bolick discuss the book and imagine what a K-12 education system would look like if it were being built from scratch today. Most traditional schools, Bolick says, are nowhere close to where they need to be if America is to continue its economic prosperity and remain competitive with other developed countries. Education savings accounts, Bolick believes, are the most powerful tool for bringing about improvement in public education.

“We have the ability to deliver a highly personalized, high quality education opportunity to every child in the country today at a fraction of the cost we spend on education. We are so far from that.”

EPISODE DETAILS:

· Bolick’s critique of the current education system and his commonsense principles for creating a 21^st century K-12 education system

· Why Bolick believes education savings accounts are the future of public education

· How the COVID-19 pandemic has magnified the achievement gap between students from different socioeconomic backgrounds

· Test score comparisons to countries spending less on education that belie the fallacy that increased funding can cure America’s educational woes

· How the best teachers can innovate and thrive in a new public education paradigm

LINKS MENTIONED:

RedefinED: Parents, teachers, indicate support for ESAs, national poll finds

January 28, 2021 0 comment

Commentary and Opinion Education and Public Policy Education Choice Education Spending Featured Opinion Parental Choice

More choice, better outcomes the reality for Florida’s public education system

Special to redefinED January 15, 2021

Special to redefinED

Editor’s note: This commentary from Step Up For Students’ director of policy and public affairs Ron Matus first published in the Citrus County Chronicle.

For two decades, opponents of education choice have screamed the sky is falling on Florida’s education system, even as clear evidence shows public schools getting better. The Chronicle is the latest to do so, concluding in its Jan. 13 editorial that policy makers have put our schools on a “ruinous path.”

It’s true Florida has expanded education choice as much as any state in America. But it’s also true that over that same span, Florida’s academic trend lines have risen as much as any in America, and, by some key measures, Florida schools are now among the best in America.

Ruinous path? Education Week ranked Florida No. 3 in K-12 achievement last year. Florida now ranks No. 3 in the percentage of graduating high school seniors who pass Advanced Placement exams. And once adjusted for demographics, Florida ranks No. 1, No. 1, No. 3 and No. 8 on the reading and math tests that are core to the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

This, even though Florida has some of the highest rates of low-income students in America, and among the lowest per-pupil spending. New York has fewer low-income students; it spends two and a half times more per student. Yet Florida outperforms New York on those national tests, and Education Week ranks New York a meh No. 20 in achievement.

To continue reading, click here.

January 15, 2021 0 comment

Commentary and Opinion Education and Public Policy Education Spending Featured

The sun sets on the Empire State but shines bright in Florida

Matthew Ladner January 4, 2021

Matthew Ladner

New York has had the huge blessing of economic geography that people leveraged through tremendous effort to great advantage. Its location on the Atlantic and its proximity to the Hudson River gave it a reach deep into the country with the competition of the Erie Canal, and then out into the world. Meanwhile, the state’s highly favorable location for the transport of goods led to a clustering of firms specializing in finance.

Now locate this combination in a free-wheeling country with the world’s largest amount of arable land in the temperate zone, abundant natural resources and an unmatched zest for the industrial revolution. New York City became not only the nation’s cultural and financial capital, but the world’s financial and cultural capital, the center of enormous wealth. An Empire State in every sense.

Florida, however, has been gaining on New York – and leaving it behind – for decades. The Sunshine State seems very well positioned to accelerate this trend.

In December, reports began to circulate that New York-based finance titan Goldman Sachs is considering a move to Florida. Such a move would follow a long-established net migration pattern from New York to Florida.

Florida has displaced New York as the largest state on the Atlantic coast. Absent a large change in trends, it seems likely that either North Carolina or Georgia will be the second largest, with little likelihood that New York will move back into first place in our lifetimes.

Among other advantages, Florida has a very large edge over New York in providing better quality public services per public dollar invested, including in education. Florida policymakers can expand this advantage in 2021.

This graphic from the New York Post shows per-pupil spending in New York, California, Florida and Texas, along with NAEP math and reading scores. These comparisons look even more lopsided if broken down by subgroups and/or viewed over time.

Back in the 1990s, New Yorkers at least could point to superior results in return for their higher spending, but this is no longer the case. For instance, NAEP’s eighth grade reading exam found both low-income and middle/high-income students reading about a grade level above their Florida peers. Now, Florida has the advantage, despite spending less.

While New York’s situation – sky-high taxes and poorly performing schools – may seem terrible for families, it looks like a “mission accomplished” for the state’s public sector unions. Getting an ever-increasing amount of money to achieve about the same or less may be a bad look, but it helps the organizational bottom line. Increased spending leads to increased hiring which leads to more people paying dues.

Note, however, that New York’s poor children scored no better in 2019 than in 1998 despite a 62% increase in inflation-adjusted spending per pupil between 1998 and 2016. That, ladies and gentlemen, represents truly shameless rent seeking.

Margaret Thatcher noted that the problem with this sort of thing is that you eventually run out of other people’s money. In New York’s case, there is a growing shortage of people willing to pay for it. Florida, by my way of thinking, has been doing well by doing good – allowing people to live better and freer lives by efficiently producing public services of improving quality.

Keep it up. Where Florida leads, others will surely follow.

January 4, 2021 0 comment

Blog Guest Commentary and Opinion Dan Lips Education Equity Education Savings Accounts Education Spending Featured Parental Choice

New evidence that disadvantaged children need better preschool options signals need for parental control of child care funding

Dan Lips November 11, 2020

Dan Lips

A federal watchdog is warning that there may be lead in the drinking water in federally funded child care centers that serve low-income children across the country. It’s the latest evidence that Congress and the Department of Health and Human Services should be exploring ways to improve the safety and value of the federal Head Start program to give disadvantaged kids a better chance to succeed.

The program costs $10 billion annually and serves nearly 1 million children and their parents.

In September, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report examining the safety of the drinking water at federally-funded child care facilities. The auditors surveyed 762 Head Start centers and found that “an estimated 43% of Head Start centers had not tested their drinking water for lead in late 2018 or 2019, and 31% did not know whether they had tested, according to GAO’s nationwide survey.”

Among the 26% of Head Start centers that had tested in the past year, 10% reported finding the presence of lead in the drinking water. Based on this rate, it’s reasonable to assume that at least 50 of the 762 Head Start centers probably have lead in their water but haven’t tested for it.

That’s a serious problem for all children at risk. According to GAO, “Young children are particularly at risk of experiencing the adverse effects of lead exposure from a variety of sources, including drinking water.”

The latest in a series of alarming reports about Head Start safety and mismanagement

The new report is just the latest in a series of federal oversight reports that found problems involving fraud or safety in the Head Start program. In 2019, GAO attempted to enroll fictitious, ineligible children in 15 Head Start centers, and found that five centers either doctored or ignored disqualifying information to allow the imaginary children to fraudulently enroll.

Jonathan Butcher and Jude Schwalbach reviewed the research in a February 2020 report for the Heritage Foundation. “Reports of child abuse and fiscal fraud demonstrate that many Head Start centers have systemic administrative failings and do not follow basic steps to protect children,” they wrote.

These aren’t new problems. In 2005, House Republicans, led by then Education and Workforce Committee chair John Boehner, issued an oversight report documenting widespread fraud and mismanagement in the program.

Head Start provides poor value for parents and children served

Beyond these problems of fraud, mismanagement and safety, the Head Start program provides poor value for children and parents.

For starters, the Head Start program does not provide lasting academic benefits for children enrolled. A long-anticipated, Congressionally-mandated evaluation found no lasting academic benefits from attending Head Start. (The HHS Department resisted releasing the final results and only relented after facing pressure from several senators, including my former boss, Tom Coburn, former U.S. Representative and senator from Oklahoma. The department finally released the report on the Friday before Christmas.)

Beyond the discouraging academic effects, Head Start offers parents poor values as a source of child care compared to state programs and private providers. That’s because Head Start only requires that providers offer 448 hours of care per year.

I summarized this argument in a recent article for The Dispatch:

“The federal government’s largest preschool program offers a poor deal for parents. The United States spends $9 billion annually on Head Start, or more than $10,000 per student enrolled. But Head Start centers are required to provide only 448 hours of care per year, less than half of the 1,000 hours that most public schools are open. Past evaluations have found that Head Start doesn’t provide lasting educational benefits for participating kids.

Giving parents control of their child’s share of Head Start funding to arrange for private child care could dramatically increase the number of hours of care provided and improve the program’s educational value. For example, in 37 states, the per-child cost of the Head Start program is more than the average cost of full-time child care for a 4-year-old. Increasing the hours of child care provided would allow working parents to boost annual earnings by 20% or more.”

Consider, for example, how Florida’s voluntary pre-K scholarship program compares with Head Start. Florida offers a voluntary preschool voucher worth approximately $2,200 per child. To collect vouchers and enroll children, Florida preschool providers must offer 540 hours of service annually. In comparison, Florida’s per-child Head Start spending is $8,900 (or four times greater), even though Head Start providers may offer 92 hours less care per year.

Parents and children deserve better preschool options than Head Start

Reforming the Head Start program to create better options for parents and children is long overdue. Congress hasn’t reauthorized Head Start since 2007.

It shouldn’t require reports of lead in the drinking water to spur congressional action to reform Head Start. But the latest alarming warnings about the federal government’s oldest preschool program should be a wake-up call. It’s time for Congress to take a new, close look at the Head Start program and provide parents and children with better options.

November 11, 2020 1 comment

Commentary and Opinion Demographic Research Education and Public Policy Education Choice Education Spending Featured Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Private School Scholarships School Choice

Florida’s tax credit scholarship saves taxpayer dollars and helps students succeed

Special to redefinED November 6, 2020

Special to redefinED

Editor’s note: This guest editorial written by Florida Sen. Joe Gruters, who represents District 32 and serves as chairman of the Republican Party of Florida, first appeared in the Sarasota Herald Tribune.

In her Nov. 1 column, (Herald Tribune opinions editor) Barbara Peters Smith wrote that she welcomes a debate on school vouchers – as do I. But she describes a very different education landscape than the hard facts reveal. Two decades of data demonstrate that Florida’s Tax Credit Scholarship program has benefited the low-income students it is aimed at.

First, we need to put to rest the idea that private schools improve outcomes because they “weed out” students less likely to succeed. The truth is students who choose the FTC – 68% of whom are Black or Hispanic, with an average annual family income of about $25,755 – are among the lowest-performing students in the public schools they leave behind.

According to research by the Learning Systems Institute at Florida State University, new scholarship students scored roughly 5 percentile points lower in math and reading than scholarship-eligible public students in the year before they started on the scholarship. A 2013 report described the difference this way: “Scholarship participants have significantly poorer test performance in the year prior to starting the scholarship program than do non-participants … These differences are large in magnitude and are statistically significant.”

If that is “weeding out,” then private schools are doing a poor job of it – they’re taking the kids who have the biggest mountains to climb academically.

And yet, standardized test score analyses of FTC students consistently show that even though scholarship students were, on average, the lowest-performing students in their prior public schools, they’re now making the same annual learning gains as students of all income levels nationally. In other words, the average scholarship student has moved from falling further behind grade level each year to gaining a year’s worth of knowledge in a year’s worth of time.

That has led to long-term success. In its 2019 report, the Urban Institute found that FTC students were up to 43% more likely to enroll in four-year colleges than their public school peers, and up to 20% more likely to earn bachelor’s degrees. For those who used the scholarship four or more years, the outcomes were even stronger – up to 99% more likely to attend four-year colleges, and up to 45% more likely to earn bachelor’s degrees.

All these improved outcomes are coming at far less cost than the alternative. According to a 2019 analysis by Florida TaxWatch, the average amount for a Florida Tax Credit Scholarship was $6,447 in 2017-18, while the average per-pupil funding for Florida district schools was $10,856. That puts the value of the scholarship at 59% of the average, per-pupil cost in district schools.

It’s not just private school students who are benefiting from scholarships. A report this year from the National Bureau of Economic Research found as the FTC program expanded, students attending public schools most affected by the increased competition from private schools experienced higher test scores, reduced absenteeism and lower suspension rates.

Meanwhile, during this two-decades growth in tax credit scholarship enrollment – and education choice in general – Florida overall has made impressive strides in academic achievement. Florida ranks No. 3 in the nation in K-12 achievement, its highest position ever. The state also ranks No. 1, No. 1, No. 3, and No. 8 on the four core tests of the National Assessment of Educational Progress.

So much for choice dragging down Florida public schools.

The results are indisputable positives for Florida students, particularly low-income students. That’s why education choice supporters like me welcome a debate on scholarship programs: We have the facts on our side.

November 6, 2020 0 comment

2020 Presidential Election Analysis Commentary and Opinion Coronavirus / COVID-19 Demographic Research Education Spending Featured Testing and Accountability

NAEP scores: American public schools spend more but deliver less for students, families, taxpayers

Matthew Ladner October 29, 2020

Matthew Ladner

The performance of American public schools was in decline before the pandemic struck; based on the latest results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress released Wednesday by the National Center for Education Statistics, things are likely to only get worse from here.

The data show the average reading score for the nation’s 12^th-graders declined between 2015 and 2019. Meanwhile, there was no statistically significant change in 12^th-graders’ average mathematics score for the same time period.

Bottom line: considerably more money per pupil was spent to get the same not-so-great results.

The tests upon which the data is based were given in spring 2019, before the COVID-19 pandemic. The indications are now worse: Inflation-adjusted spending per pupil is up, childhood poverty is down, and scores are down rather than flat.

The earliest 12^th-grade reading score in this series comes from 1992. The Class of 1992 benefited from a nationwide average of $105,560 in 2018 constant dollars spent on their K-12 education. The Class of 2017, the cohort from which we have the most recently available data, had a nationwide average of $158,431 in constant dollars spent on their education – approximately 50% more. The figure for the Class of 2019 will be even higher.

Which class, 1992 or 2017, demonstrated better reading ability? Let’s break down the results by parental education.

Regardless of the level of a parent’s education, reading scores were lower for the Class of 2019 than the Class of 1992. All of the above differences are statistically significant.

Now take a look at the chart below, provided by Michael J. Petrilli from the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, showing the decline in childhood poverty rates from the 1980s and 1990s.

What the chart shows: higher spending, less poverty and lower national achievement.

Mind you, this was the trend before the current massive decline in instruction time due to the pandemic. I’ll dare to predict that if the NCES manages to conduct the scheduled 2021 NAEP, exams scores will decline across the board and achievement gaps will grow. K-3 kids who are in their literacy acquisition windows, for instance, in districts like Los Angeles Unified, Clark County Nevada and New York have been receiving less than half the amount of instruction time delivered during a normal school year.

And finally, special education trends were a disaster in many states before the pandemic, as detailed in this chart.

It’s difficult to imagine that this already dismal chart won’t look even worse with 2021 data, coming in the aftermath of generally reduced instruction time and special education being attempted using the Zoom platform. We are not out of the pandemic yet, but the academic damage seems likely to greatly outlive the virus.

These most recent data came among favorable conditions of declining poverty and increased spending. Very soon, we’ll be forced to face what happens when you reverse these favorable trends and we end up with a large percentage of students with huge academic deficits.

Buckle up.

October 29, 2020 0 comment