Money spent on students parsed
Posted on Thursday, April 24, 2008
School districts with lower-scoring students are more likely to spend more dollars per student than districts with higher-scoring students, according to an analysis presented to legislators Wednesday.
Legislators said after a meeting of the Joint Adequacy Evaluation Oversight Subcommittee that the numbers don’t mean the state is wasting its money on poor results. The lawmakers emphasized the need to spend extra money to help low-scoring students overcome disadvantages of long-standing poverty.
Paul Atkins, a researcher at the Bureau of Legislative Research, said the 20 percent of Arkansas’ 245 school districts with the highest scores on the Arkansas Comprehensive Testing, Assessment and Accountability Program tests spent an average of $ 7, 714 per student. Of those students, 71 percent scored proficient or greater.
The 20 percent of school districts with the lowest scores spent an average of $ 9, 150 per student. Of those students, 39 percent scored proficient or greater.
“I think it runs pretty consistent throughout the entire report,” Atkins told legislators. “The highest level of achievement is associated with white students, lower levels of poverty, and generally you’ll find that lower expenditure levels go with higher levels of achievement. Higher expenditure levels to a greater degree are associated with lower levels of achievement.” Atkins emphasized that higher expenditures for lowscoring districts are mostly due to the extra state money they get for having higher levels of low-income students and large numbers of students who don’t speak English well.
The highest-scoring 20 per- cent of districts are 93 percent white on average and have 44 percent of students who receive free or reduced-price lunches from the federal government, the standard that triggers extra state poverty funding.
The lowest-scoring 20 percent of districts are 42 percent white on average and have 73 percent of students on free or reduced-price lunches.
Rep. Nancy Duffy Blount, D-Marianna, a retired teacher with 33 years in the Lee County District, which was among the lowest-scoring districts, said Atkins’ numbers show the need for even more state funding to help impoverished districts.
“It’s going to take more money in these small districts that don’t have much of a tax base to do what the state wants to get done,” Blount said. “Those districts have been neglected for so long it’s going to take a while to catch up.” She said a big problem districts in the Delta have is not being able to pay teachers as much as districts in central Arkansas and Northwest Arkansas. She said that leads many teachers to go elsewhere.
Rep. Bill Abernathy, D-Mena, subcommittee co-chairman, pointed out that gains on the state tests have occurred in most school districts, including the lowest-scoring 20 percent.
Among the highest-scoring 20 percent of districts, the percentage of students scoring proficient or above increased from 62 percent in 2005 to 71 percent in 2007.
Over that same period for the lowest-scoring 20 percent of districts, the proficiency percentage increased from 29 percent to 39 percent. “The lower scores, they are coming up, so to some degree we are closing the gap,” Abernathy said. The other subcommittee cochairman, Sen. Jimmy Jeffress, D-Crossett, said it would take a few more years of data to determine if the extra money going to low-scoring districts, which was added in 2004, has been worth it.
“We hope it’s having an impact,” Jeffress said. “The collective wisdom is that it is. And we don’t know how bad it would be if we weren’t doing it. I still want to stay the course.” The report also showed a decline in the overall percentage of school funds going to instruction from 60. 5 percent in 2005 to 58. 5 percent in 2007.
Atkins said that was “the item that seemed to catch our attention the most.” Sen. Jim Argue, D-Little Rock, said it bothered him that the lowest-scoring 20 percent of districts spent less on instruction than the higher-performing districts.
They spent 57 percent of their funds on instruction compared with 60 percent for the highest-scoring 20 percent of districts.
Other spending categories are administration, food service, transportation, maintenance, pupil support, instructional support, support services, and community services.
“The correlation is that the higher percentage that goes to instruction, the better the students do, so shouldn’t we be focusing on trying to increase the percentage spent on instruction ?” Argue said.
But Rep. Eddie Cheatham, D-Crossett, said the percentage dip spent on instruction didn’t worry him because an increase occurred in another category with a direct relationship to improving instruction.
Instructional support services, which include professional development for teachers, increased from 5. 4 percent of expenditures in 2005 to 6. 6 percent in 2007.
Overall public school expenditures from state, local and federal funds increased from $ 3. 4 billion in 2005 to $ 3. 8 billion in 2007.
Enrollment increased from 450, 128 to 458, 654 during that time with a per-student average increasing from $ 7, 607 to $ 8, 348.
These figures don’t include capital outlay expenses of facility acquisition and construction and debt services.
That amounted to $ 625 million in 2007.
Comparable figures for 2005 weren’t available Wednesday.
FEEDBACK:
Something to say about this topic? Submit a Letter to the Editor online
