‘The Phony Funding Crisis’

If you attend any discussion of education policy, you find that it won’t be long before money comes up. Point out how few students in this or that state or city fail to reach proficiency in math or reading, and among the first replies is a call to increase funding, to pay teachers a “living wage,” to equalize funding in nice suburban schools and collapsing inner-city schools.

Those statements also carry a fair degree of resentment and indignation. The speakers I’ve seen have a tinge to their voice that suggests a crime has been committed against schools, teachers, and students alike. If you stand up and say something like, “But the United States spends more per pupil than any nation in the world,” they look at you as if you have just spanked a sixth-grader.  The question isn’t up for discussion. Schools need more money, period.

Here’s an article in the recent issue of Education Next, though, that disputes the entire premise. It’s entitled “The Phony Funding Crisis.” Authors James W. Guthrie and Arthur Peng fill the piece with data and charts to argue the opposite.

“If one relies on newspaper headlines for education-funding information,” they open, “one might conclude that America’s schools suffer from a perpetual fiscal crisis, every year perched precariously on the brink of financial ruin, never knowing whether there will be sufficient funding to continue operating. Budgetary shortfalls, school district bankruptcies, teacher and administrator layoffs, hiring and salary freezes, pension system defaults, shorter school years, ever-larger classes, faculty furloughs, fewer course electives, reduced field trips, foregone or curtailed athletics, outdated textbooks, teachers having to make do with fewer supplies, cuts in school maintenance, and other tales of fiscal woe inevitably captivate the news media, particularly during the late-spring and summer budget and appropriations seasons.”

In truth, they counter, “from one year to the next, schools almost always have more real revenue for each of their enrolled students. For the past hundred years, with rare and short exceptions and after controlling for inflation, public schools have had both more money and more employees per student in each succeeding year. Teacher salaries have increased more than 42 percent in constant dollars over the past half century, while educators’ working conditions, health plans, and retirement arrangements have become ever more commodious. Moreover, school-related revenues and employment levels have increased even when the economy (as measured by Gross Domestic Product or GDP) turned down, unlike what typically happens in sectors such as manufacturing and retail sales, where recessions trigger cutbacks in personnel and profits.”