Getting Schooled: MN K-12 Education 101

When it comes to K-12 education, there seems to be no shortage of problems. Everything from truancy levels, low test scores, school closings, expanding class sizes, and a myriad of others are often front and center in the heated discussion. Of course the solution to solving each such crises isn’t difficult in the minds of school board members and local government. They’ve got an easy fix and they state it time and time again. Money (or rather a lack thereof) is the primary response. There apparently is just not enough revenue to fund many school district’s ballooning budgets. And, for many, it is Tim Pawlenty who bears the brunt of criticism for sticking to his first term pledge of not raising taxes (save a tobacco “fee”) thereby undercutting local governments; many of whom then claimed no other option than to put forth to the voters a referendum to raise property taxes in an effort to boost revenues for local education expenses. Not surprisingly, a number of them passed. And that my friends is what we call getting schooled by Minnesota education.

It’s easy to continually play with the hearts of people. It’s an all too effective tactic that is used globally. Hezbollah does it when they launch rockets from within the civilian population, the Democrats do it when they wheel out people like the late Christopher Reeves or Michael J. Fox while promoting federal funding for embryonic stem cell research. And, by so proclaiming that children are our future, K-12 education in Minnesota is no different when they mail out their little flyers with photos of crumbling school buildings and smiling kids studying hard all the while printing the aforementioned list of problems in their request for you to vote yes on a referendum come election time. Naturally it’s human to feel compassion for such a cause. Even amongst those of us whom are childless we can still sense the need to provide the best we can for the children of tomorrow. And, while the list of problems plaguing Minnesota’s public schools is long and the solution apparently a simple matter of dollar signs, there seems to be one educational question that no-one dares to ask or answer. Just how much K-12 educational funding is enough?

In Minnesota, K-12 education is financed through a combination of state aid, local property taxes, federal aid, and local non-tax receipts. As with most states, federal funding accounts for roughly 6% of the money funding Minnesota schools. On the state level for the FY 2008-2009 biennium, K-12 education accounts for 40% of the state’s general fund and nearly 28% of the state’s all fund spending according to the Minnesota Department of Finance. And, as if that weren’t already a significant amount, consider that our left leaning Governor has bowed to Democratic pressure and has earmarked additional funding which will grow state spending, on pre K-12 education, 7.7% above the current biennium for a grandiose total of $13.7 billion. I’d say that’s pretty significant growth. And, to put it in greater perspective, consider that in Minnesota, despite the nefarious notion of “spending cuts” and a total disregard for education, state funding has increased an average of 18% every biennial budget (faster than any other area of the state budget). At present, the total per pupil expenditure is approaching a statewide average of $11,000 a year. Take the total K-12 budget and divide it by stagnant 850,000 enrollees and the per pupil cost exceeds $16,000. And yet Minnesota families are being led to believe that we simply can’t educate each one of Minnesota’s children on a paltry $11,000 a year. While, comparatively, according to the National Association of Independent Schools, the median tuition for private day schools in the United States is close to $12,000 for grades 1 to 3, $13,000 for grades 6 to 8 and $15,000 for grades 9 to 12.

And while, quite ironically, ignorance continues to remain bliss for those in pursuit of yet more K-12 educational funding (especially in light of a $2 billion surplus now spent), it never ceases to amaze me that such idiosyncratic behavior fails to address the correlation between spending and value (by way of value in the educational sense we of course refer to test scores and overall graduation rates as they are the gauge by which we measure such educational success). Does a greater level of spending equate to better test scores and higher graduation rates? Well, according to the “Report Card on American Education: A State by State Analysis” done by the American Legislative Exchange Council the answer would be a resounding no. The study found that despite nearly an 80% increase in educational funding over the past 20 years, student achievement remains stagnant. Furthermore, over 78% of eighth graders in the twenty lowest spending school districts passed their basic skills math test compared to just 54% of the highest spending school district’s eighth graders. As for 2001 graduation rates, the twenty lowest spending school districts held an 89.5% graduation rate (within four years) compared to the 65.5% graduation rate of their twenty highest spending counterparts. Case in point, more money doesn’t bequeath better results. The problem is not how much we’re spending but simply how. With only 47% of education financing allocated towards regular classroom spending, with the remainder going primarily towards salaries and ballooning benefits packages, why then is there a constant insistence to provide more K-12 funding rather than simply change the allocation of such educational funds? The answer is rather simple and presents a very interesting correlation when we look at who the greatest proponents of additional K-12 funding are.
Bare in mind that those that eat at the trough of big government are not likely to bite the very hand that feeds them now are they? So then with that said, do you suppose it is any great mystery that there exists this chummy relationship between Minnesota’s DFL candidates and the teachers union? It certainly isn’t when you consider the $10 billion shortfall to Minnesota’s public pension funds, with of course the Minneapolis teachers fund at the head of the class.