The More We Spend, the Less We Get in K12 Schools

by David Boyle

We are being inundated with messages and misinformation stating we need to just spend even more on our K12 education system to get better student outcomes.

This misinformation comes from various parts of the Education Cartel: local school boards, local school administrators, the NEA-AK, the American Federation of Teachers, the Alaska Association of School Boards, the Alaska Council of School Administrators, the Coalition for Education Equity, and others.

Note that all these vocal supporters of increasing K12 funding benefit from this additional funding.  In effect, the State and local governments are funding these voices of “raise the BSA”.

Let’s look at three state senators who have voted for increasing the Base Student Allocation and voted for overriding the governor’s veto of raising the BSA.  To them, more funding is the answer to improve Alaska’s K12 system.  And it seems to them that more funding is never enough.  They just need more, and they don’t want any accountability to measure success.  They don’t want to measure the Return On Investment.

How are the students in Senators Tobin, Dunbar, and Wielechowski districts doing on the standardized state tests, the AKSTAR?

How much are we spending on the schools in these three senators’ districts?

Here is a chart showing the schools in Senator Loki-Tobin’s district (District I), the per student costs, and the average student AKSTAR results:

• These data are from DEED and are average for all grades

The above data show that the lowest performing elementary schools in Senator Tobin’s district (Mt View, William Tyson, Fairview, and North Star) have the highest per student funding.  There is a direct relationship between more funding and lower student achievement in these specific schools.  Then why would Senator Tobin want more funding?  Would she want the AKSTAR schools to go down?

On the other hand, two of the highest performing elementary schools,

 (Aurora and Orion) have the lowest per student cost- nearly $10,000 less per student than Mt View Elementary School.

Another strong supporter of more K12 funding with no accountability for results is Senator Wielechowski (district K).  Let’s see how the schools in his district fare for spending and student outcomes:

• * These data are from DEED and are average for all grades

The above data show that Senator Wielechowski has some of the lowest performing schools in the Anchorage School District.  This is nothing new.  For many years these schools have been the lowest performing schools.  What has Senator Wielechowski done to improve his district schools?

His current solution is to throw more money at the problem without demanding accountability for results.  He also voted to raise the BSA and voted to override the governor’s veto that would decrease funding in the Anchorage School District a mere $4.3 million (https://mustreadalaska.com/david-boyle-anchorage-school-superintendent-melts-down-over-0-7-budget-gap/) .

Does Senator Wielechowski really believe that increasing the per student funding of $32,180 for Nunaka Valley Elementary School would ensure that more than 30% of its students could read at grade level?

He hasn’t insisted on any accountability for the extra spending so we shall never know if there is a correlation between student achievement and that spending increase.

Now let’s look at the schools in Senator Dunbar’s district (district J).  Senator Dunbar also voted to increase the BSA with no accountability.  Here are the per student costs and student test scores for those schools:

• * These data are from DEED and are average for all grades

A very bright shiny school in Senator Dunbar’s district is Northern Lights ABC school.  This is one of ASD’s lottery schools.  One must win the lottery to get their child into this great school.  Trouble is, not every parent wins the lottery, and their children are relegated to the lower performing neighborhood schools.

Northern Lights’ students perform well above average in the AKSTAR tests.  Maybe that’s because it uses Saxon Math and phonics in its curriculum.  One wonders why other ASD schools don’t replicate these programs to teach their students.  Teachers love to teach at Northern Lights because the students are behaved, motivated, and want to learn.  The curriculum also works for the teachers and the students.  Finally, parents are involved in this great school.

Less than 17% of the students in Airport Heights, Lake Otis, Williwaw, and Wonder Park elementary schools are proficient in reading. 

Even worse, less than 14% of the students in Clark Middle School are proficient in reading.  What will they do when they enter high school?  Or are the other 86% of students destined to fail?

Senator Dunbar believes that more funding is needed to help these students read at grade level.

What if parents in all these schools received at least one-third of the per student funding in the schools and chose the best education fit for their children?  Maybe they could choose Correspondence school.  Maybe they could choose a private school.  Maybe they could independently home school.  Just maybe these students could really succeed in life.

The bottom line: More funding is not the answer to improve Alaska’s K12 system.  Two years ago, the Alaska Reads Act passed into law.  That’s when we learned that our university system was not teaching reading skills as a basic tenet of elementary school teacher’s curriculum.  

Since then, the University of Alaska has added the science of reading to its elementary teacher program.  And as bad as our reading scores are, they are improving.  

The State cannot continue to throw more money at a broken system and expect different results.  We must make targeted reforms that will improve our student outcomes. 

The governor has called a special session in August to inform legislators what other states did to fix their underperforming schools.   We need to open our minds and learn from others what works well to increase student achievement.

If we continue to focus on input (money) and not on output (student outcomes), then Alaska will continue to be mired in the morass of mediocrity while other States succeed in educating their children.