May 8-12: Tim Mooney vs. Chris Correa on the 65% Solution

Mooney, 8:31 a.m.:

While America’s taxpayers are spending more money for K-12 public education…a lot more money…the percentage reaching our classrooms, teachers and students has fallen for the last four years. Only 61.3% as a national average now reaches America’s classrooms. Twenty states are below 60% reaching their classrooms.

For too long the education funding debate has been “how much money for education.” We want the question to be reversed – “how much education for our money.” If we could make classrooms, teachers and students the first priority by setting a goal of 65% getting to the classroom, we could place $14 billion more into America’s classrooms without a tax increase — enough for a computer for every student or 300,000 additional teachers, or doubling classroom supplies.

With the future of our children at stake, the tales of waste in education spending are more than frustrating. In Florida alone the Miami-Dade district has 240 administrators making $100,000+ a year, (not one a teacher). Broward’s district has a fleet of over 100 cars. Lee district administrators spent $563,000 on out-of-town travel in the last 10 months. And the Collier district superintendent demanded a mid-contract renegotiation of his compensation to more than $400,000 a year while classroom budgets were being cut and taxes raised. And not one of these districts places 65% in its classrooms.

Will putting more education money in the classroom make a difference? The five states with the highest standardized test scores place the highest average in the classroom (64.12%) and the five states with the lowest test scores place the lowest percentage in the classroom (59.46%).

Better yet, ask any teacher you know these three questions:

Do you spend money out of your pocket for basic classroom supplies?

Can you cite areas of waste outside the classroom?

Would you, your classroom and your students be better off cutting the waste and placing the money into the classroom?

Making classrooms, teachers and students the first priority in education funding is no fad. Seeking value for taxpayer’s money is no distraction. Ensuring that 65% of education funding reaches our classrooms is just common sense.

Correa, 3:54 p.m.:

Tim Mooney asks if the sixty-five percent solution will make a difference in U.S. education. The answer is "no."

First, there is no good evidence that spending 65% of all expenditures in the classroom will have any effect on student achievement. Second, a clumsy definition of "in the classroom" expenditures ensures that the proposal will not address real "waste in education spending." Mooney’s organization, First Class Education, is promoting an arbitrary system of micromanagement that will not lead to any substantive improvements in U.S. education.

Tim Mooney states that "five states with the highest standardized test scores" average about 64% in the classroom, but the most recent NAEP reading scores suggest the highest-achieving states spend anywhere from 58% to 69% in the classroom. Additionally, some below-average states spend 64% or more in the classroom.

There isn’t one simple or correct way to spend money.

The diversity of effective school budgets becomes even more clear when you look at within-state differences in spending and student achievement. In Texas, Governor Perry signed an executive order requiring that all districts spend 65% or more on classroom spending. When I looked at district spending in Texas, however, I found that there was no relationship between in the classroom spending and student achievement as measured by the state’s student assessment. Instead, I found that some districts only spent 40%-50% on "in the classroom" expenditures and managed to get all of their students to meet or exceed state requirements in reading and mathematics. Other districts experienced more mediocre results among their students while committing up to 75% of their budget on "in the classroom" expenditur! es.

I’m not the only one looking into the relationship between spending practices and student achievement. Standard & Poor’s more comprehensive analysis leads to the same conclusion:

"Analysis of data in nine states that are currently considering instituting a 65 Percent Solution shows no significant positive correlation between the percentage of funds that districts spend on instruction and the percentage of students who score proficient or higher on state reading and math tests."

In sum, the empirical evidence finds no relationship between spending 65% in classroom spending and improved student achievement. One possible reason for this is that First Class Education’s definition of classroom spending is ill-defined and largely irrelevant to student learning.

This is the second major problem with First Class Education’s proposal; their definition of "in the classroom" spending is outdated and nonsensical. As you might expect, classroom spending does include teacher salaries and classroom supplies. Beyond that, it’s difficult to make sense of the definition. Sports teams’ uniforms are included as "in the classroom" spending but library books are excluded. Field trips are included as "in the classroom" spending but transporting students to school is excluded. Football coaches are included as "in the classroom" spending but support staff such as speech pathologists and guidance counselors are excluded.

You get the idea. What counts as "in the classroom" spending is arbitrary and ill-defined. The sixty-five percent requirement would likely lead to bickering about definitions and creative shuffling of roles. None of that would really benefit students in meaningful ways.

With the future of our children at stake, faddish solutions to complex educational problems are more than frustrating. I’ll leave you with two important questions:

1. Why is 65% an appropriate level of spending when there is no evidence that it benefits students’ learning? If we are going to heavily regulate local school districts, why not require 50%, 60%, or 70% on classroom spending?
2. Why should football uniforms count as "in the classroom" spending if library materials such as books and computers do not?

 

Mooney, 4:45 p.m. Wednesday: 

Chris’s criticisms are similar to those from the National Education Association and other status quo education organizations that are resistant to chance, non-responsive to their own teacher members and uncaring to the

plight of the taxpayer.

First, "more money in the classroom won’t make a difference." Strangely we hear this most from those advocating for more money being spent on K-12 education overall. They continue to say schools are underfunded, but K-12 education funding for the last four years has increased at a rate of four times that of inflation. We’re throwing money at K-12 with the hope of it making a difference, but the percentage of money actually reaching the classrooms continues to fall each year to now just 61.3% as a national average. The number of states with less than even 60% reaching their classrooms has increased from 14 to 20 in the last four years.

So, if our opponents say money directed into the classroom won’t improve test scores — stop asking for the additional money! Ah, but there’s the rub. They want more, and more, and more money…they just don’t want any accountability on how that money is spent. The 65% goal sets a statewide standard of accountability the voters are beginning to demand. Sure, we’ll fund education spending growth, but let’s have some value for the money being spent.

The 65% Solution will mean thousands more per classroom by cutting overhead costs and forcing better management of funds. Ask any teacher, they’ll tell you more money in their classroom for updated textbooks, hiring an assistant to work with lagging students or bringing back arts and music programs will make a difference. We just want that money to come from better management and greater efficiencies first, rather than the taxpayer. That’s exactly what the private sector does — efficiencies first, price increases second.

Next, "there isn’t one correct way of spending money." We agree, which is why the 65% number is a goal, not an immovable wall. Districts currently below 65% are asked to improve at 2% a year till the 65% goal is met. Local school boards get to decide what to spend the additional classroom dollars on — pay their teachers more, ensure they have proper supplies, or bring in classroom computers — whatever the local school board decides. Additionally, if there’s a reason a district can’t or shouldn’t reach 65% in the classroom, it can ask for a waiver from the highest statewide elected education official, the state superintendent (if elected) or the governor. We expect every school district to place as high a percentage in the classroom as possible, with 65% being shown to be achievable by higher performing states, or at least tell the voters why that’s not possible.

Lastly is the "definition" concern. The National Center for Education Statistics has been collecting data based on the same classroom instruction definition for literally decades and not once has the education bureaucracy ever complained. But, now that they’re going to be held accountable for their wasteful spending habits, they’re screaming bloody murder.

Inside the classroom is pretty much everything that touches the kid in a learning environment. Here’s what the Oklahoma initiative says by example:

“Classroom Instructional Expenditures” means expenditures directly related to classroom instruction, including, but not limited to, instructional staff and instructional materials. “Instructional” shall include activities dealing directly with interaction between students and teachers or other classroom and instructional personnel, special education instruction, tutors, books, classroom computers, general instruction supplies, instructional aides, libraries and librarians, class activities such as field trips, athletics, arts, music and multidisciplinary learning, and extra curricular activities including, but not limited to, drama, sports and band

Outside includes administration, food services, maintenance, transportation and the like. This is not to say these things aren’t important. It is to say for the sake of teachers, students and taxpayers these things should be delivered as efficiently as possible. Opponents will scream, “Johnny won’t have a bus. Jane won’t have a nurse. Joe won’t have a counselor. And there will be no heat in the schools.” But ask yourself, do schools in Maine have heat? Do Minnesota schools have buses? Do Utah schools have nurses? And do New York schools have counselors? (NY overall puts 68 cents on the dollar in the classroom because efficient, upstate, high-performing schools do so well they bring the total statewide average up for their wasteful brethren from NYC).

These states all have these basic services and they all average at 65% or above using the described definition above.

If these states and about a quarter of all school districts across America can get 65% into their classrooms, why shouldn’t every school district at least try…or at least tell their taxpayers why they can’t.

Correa, 9:19 a.m. Thursday:

I never said "more money in the classroom won’t make a difference." I said the sixty-five percent solution won’t make a difference. The definition of classroom spending is not well thought-out and there’s no evidence that spending 65% of all expenditures on what you call "in the classroom" spending will make a difference in student achievement. I’m all for efficient and intelligent management of resources in schools, but I need more than nice-sounding slogans to convince me that states should micromanage district budgets and create new bureaucracy to monitor school spending.

The concern about definitions is a rather important problem because what counts as "in the classroom" spending is at the heart of the proposal. Your claim that the 65% includes "everything that touches the kid in a learning environment" appears disingenuous to me. First, that’s a far cry from what the original NCES definition (simply labeled ‘Instruction’) claims to be. Your own website claims librarians and other instructional support do not count as "in the classroom" expenditures. This is the definition used by most state initiatives that your group has funded.

So why should soccer coaches be included as "in the classroom" spending while reading specialists are not?

I have nothing against coaches, of course. I’m just trying to figure out why they are more important to students’ lives than reading specialists, speech therapists, counselors, librarians, and other support staff that are dismissed as "out of classroom" expenditures.

The Oklahoma initiative is interesting because they are broadening the definition of what counts as "in the classroom" and basically including two other categories of expenditures in the NCES finances database. If Oklahoma really ends up including all instructional support services such as librarians, reading specialists, and so on, the state will be close to spending 67% of school expenditures "in the classroom". If that’s the case, I wonder why the 65% policy is needed at all. Does the average Oklahoma school need less money spent "in the classroom"?

Finally, I think it’s worth reflecting on the potential costs of this so-called solution. After all, the 65% mandate might be harmless at worst even if it’s true that the definition of "in the classroom" spending is profoundly flawed and there’s absolutely no evidence that student achievement improves when schools pass the 65% threshold.

I don’t think that’s the case, however. There could be significant negative consequences to a 65% mandate.

First, the one-size-fits-all approach could stifle real innovations in schooling and shift policy-makers’ focus away from important outcomes such as student
achievement. In many ways, the 65% solution is old-fashioned ineffective education reform because it simply focuses on what goes in to schooling (money) and ignores the outcomes of schooling (learning). Contemporary education policies such as No Child Left Behind allow schools a good deal of freedom as long as they continue to demonstrate that their students are learning. As I outlined in my previous contribution, there are a number of very effective schools that spend as little as 40%-50% on what First Class Education calls "in the classroom" spending. There’s no reason to re-structure these schools’ finances just because other districts have engaged in wasteful spending. The 65% goal also doesn’t necessarily work well for school districts experimenting with new structures and programs, including innovative distance-learning programs, that will help their students much more than shifting dollars around to meet some arbitrary 65% goal. In Checker Finn’s analysis the proposal, he noted that "to shackle a state’s or school system’s education budget to such a formula may serve to freeze the status quo."

The 65% solution also represents a real distraction for policy-makers. First Class Education produced a now-infamous memo (acquired by the Austin American-Statesman) that suggests the 65% goal gives Republicans" a viable answer to in the classroom improvement of education" for the upcoming election years. I don’t think anything could be further from the truth. While more and more voters are dismissing the idea as "nothing more than a political ploy," many legislators in support of this bill are fooling themselves into thinking they are improving education without addressing the challenging, complex, and important educational issues of our times.

The 65% solution is more than ineffective. It’s a step backwards.

Mooney, 1:39 p.m.

As Ronald Reagan famously once said in a debate, "There you go again!"

The education bureaucracy’s "This is impossible and we’re already doing it" argument. Let’s take ’em one at a time.

There’s no "micro-managing" of school budgets with the 65% Solution. Voters will say, preferably via the initiative process, that we want to ensure classrooms, teachers and kids are the first priority in education funding by setting a goal of 65%. What the additional classroom spending will be spent on and how the local money will be moved from the largess outside the classroom will be determined by the local school board. And as was stated before twice, if a district can’t get to 65%, there a waiver provision. Just tell the State Superintendent or Governor and the parents and taxpayers why 65% isn’t possible for your district when so many others can.

School districts are often terribly inefficient and their budgets mind-numbingly complicated. That’s why so few parents and taxpayers seek out further information on how the money is actually being spend. The 65% sets a "strike zone" for spending and begins a conversation between the taxpayers and those spending the taxpayers money, making the latter justify their actions to the former.

Back once again to the definition. The definition is the NCES definition plus libraries and librarians. Oklahoma’s numbers are about 59 cents according to the State Superintendent of Public Instruction, not 67%.

And far from freezing the status quo, this reform is being fought by the NEA and their state minions in a defense of the status quo. They know if the voters start demanding value for their money, their monopolistic system will be in danger of even further calls for change.

As far as a distraction…seeking value for every taxpayer dollar is no distraction. Hey, it’s our money, it’s our students, it’s our schools. It’s about time we demanded some explanation on how this money is being spent.

Horror stories abound of waste. And examples of saving being realized also exist. Here’s a few.

Spending:

• Miami-Dade SD, FL – 240 Administrators making in excess of $100,000 a year!
• Deer Valley SD, AZ – 101 school buses…and 167 cars!
• Minneapolis, MN – Three Superintendents take $450,000+ severance package in addition to state retirement…for quitting mid-contract!
• Burlington, Vermont – Superintendent telecommutes January – March from Florida!
• GM Auto Fleet Sales #1 customer in America – School Districts!

Savings:

• Hillsboro SD, OR – Saves $2 million by competitive bid for maintenance service!
• Clark County, NV – Saves $9 million on electric bills thru incentive of 10% of savings going to principles for whatever their school needs.
• Reason/Deloitte report shows $9 billion in savings possible for small districts through cooperative purchasing with neighboring school districts.

Ask any teacher,

• Do you spend money out of your own pocket for basic classroom supplies?
• Can you name three areas of waste outside the classroom…can you name three more?
• Would your classroom work better if the waste you’ve identified was cut and the money saved moved to your classroom?”

As Ben Franklin said, “A Penny saved is a penny earned.”

In America’s K-12 public education, five pennies saved equals $14 billion earned!

That’s enough for a new computer for every student in America, or 300,000 additional teachers at a starting salary of $40,000 a year, or doubling of classroom supplies. Not with more taxes, but with some common-sense savings the private sector would demand of any company.

No wonder Governors from Bill Richardson of New Mexico to Sonny Perdue of Georgia support getting 65% into their classrooms. They’re joined by Governors Perry, Blunt, Bush, Owens and Pawlenty. They’re joined by nearly 80% of the voters.

Seeking value for the taxpayer dollar may be passe’ in Washington and in many school districts, but the voters, parents and taxpayers are beginning to demand more for their dollar and more for their vote.

Will this solve every problem in education, certainly not. Just as medical savings accounts won’t solve the health care crisis or capital gains tax cuts solve systemic inner city poverty. But each is a step in the right direction.

Or we can sit still, either waiting for the perfect politically unobtainable reform, or simply saying the educrats blocking reform win.

I would rather win one for the taxpayers and teachers, parents and students by making the classroom, teachers and students the first priority in education funding, rather than the bureaucracy.

In politics…and yes every piece of legislation and every ballot proposition is political in nature, always has been always will be…winning begets winning. And those in favor of education reforms need to continue to have progress in reforms of all kinds, lest the bureaucratic status quo beast grow ever stronger and ever more resistant to change.

Correa, 5:14 p.m.:

There I went again, and yet I still haven’t heard why soccer coaches should count as "in the classroom" expenditures when reading specialists do not.

I’ll assume there’s no good answer to that question, so let’s move on.

Contrary to your clai

ms, I do think it’s possible to get most districts to commit 65% of their budgets to "in the classroom" spending. Small districts with fixed costs may need a tax increase to reach that goal and other districts will undoubtedly take advantage of definitional loopholes and creative accounting practices, but I do think it’s possible.

If it’s possible to get all districts to spend 65% "in the classroom", is it a worthy goal for U.S. school systems?

I think the answer to that question depends on how you view schools. I see schools as places of learning and I don’t see how this proposal will help students learn.

There’s a reason that no researcher can find a correlation between student achievement and spending 65% on "in the classroom" expenses. What you call "common-sense savings" doesn’t seem to make any sense at all considering what we know about effective learning environments. There are a lot of components to schools besides football uniforms, teacher salaries, and field trips that distinguish effective schools from the rest. Consider that more and more research is documenting the effect of teachers’ knowledge on student learning. It seems that rigorous professional development of teachers could be critical to providing high quality instruction to all students, but the sixty-five percent solution dismisses professional development as a wasteful "support service."

Tim, you also keep mentioning how the savings could lead to more computers in the classroom. I wonder how useful those new computers will be if districts are pressured to skimp on wasteful "out of classroom" costs such as networking infrastructure, technical support staff, and media specialists?

Schools should never feel pressure to cut corners in any of these areas just so that they can move towards some admittedly arbitrary goal.

What we both probably agree on is that taxpayers have the right and responsibility to hold schools accountable. But what should schools be held accountable for? I don’t think all schools need to be held accountable for spending money in some particular way. Taxpayers’ investment in schools should produce capable students, not cookie-cutter budgets. Let local school boards and voters decide if a superintendent in Vermont can be effective when he travels. There’s no reason to create a new layer of bureaucracy to process waivers, dilute local control, and make sure a school budget in Oklahoma looks like one in Minnesota.

Instead, I believe schools need the freedom to innovate more and be held accountable for the outcomes that matter. Are students learning to read in elementary schools? Do all students, regardless of race or their family wealth, enter high school with the skills they need to succeed? Are high school students graduating with what they they need to k! now for their next role in the workplace or college?

These are the outcomes schools need to be held accountable for. The sixty-five percent solution is a step away from this very important goal.

Mooney, 2:41 p.m.

Chris, classroom instruction according to the NCES includes coaches because they’re involved in teaching kids a skill. Student athletes are almost always better students because of their involvement in sports. With more youth in America having weight problems and the health related conditions, we need to get physical education back into our curriculum, as well as arts and music.

Maybe if a school district had fewer cars for their administrators to drive around, not to mention just fewer administrators, we could put these items back into a student’s daily routine.

As far as reading coaches are concerned, if they’re coaching the students, they’re included in the classroom.

And once again Chris, there is ZERO new bureaucracy added with the 65% Solution. School districts are already doing this accounting and reporting these numbers to each state superintendent. All we’re doing is making these numbers meaningful by allowing the voters to say that our education priorities are the classroom, teachers and students.

You say the teacher makes the biggest difference in outcomes. We agree. That’s why we want teachers paid more and not to have to take money out of their limited pockets for basic classroom supplies. We want those additional classroom dollars to come not from higher taxes, but through greater efficiencies. (Please don’t tell me you think we’ve reached maximum efficiency in America’s school systems.)

That’s why the National Taxpayer Union and Americans for Tax Reform both strongly endorse the 65% Solution.

And yes, I want every school administrator to feel tremendous pressure to justify how they spend money. (Starting with their car allowances — the average car allowance for a Superintendent in America is $750 a month, enough to have the local BMW dealership to keep a Superintendent’s phone number on speed dial!)

Would you ever contribute to a charity that spent less than 65% of its budget on its core activity? Would you own the stock of a business that spent more than 35% of its budget on its general overhead? Without market pressures, bureaucracies always grown fat and resistant to change. Best way to deal with this is to bring market competition to education, but until that happens, we need to simply shame the bureaucracy into thinking of its students first and itself second.

Bottom line is we want one question asked and answered in as public way as possible:

"Before we spend this dollar outside the classroom, could it be better spent inside the classroom?"

With America’s classrooms receiving only 61.3% of education operational budgets as a national average, with that percentage having declined four years in a row while education budgets have increased at record pace, with 20 states not even getting 60% in their classrooms, this question is either not being asked often enough or answered correctly enough.

Change in education is coming. The 65% Solution is but one part of the change we need. The biggest part of educational change is to remember why schools exist in the first place — to teach students in a classroom environment.

That’s why we need to return the focus to classroom instruction, and ensure at least 65% of our budgets get to the classroom, the teachers and the students. That’s exactly what the teachers and taxpayers, parents and students want.

Correa, 5:15 p.m.:

Reading specialists also teach students a skill – a rather important one – but NCES categorizes all instructional specialists as “instrucional staff support services” rather than “instruction”. In other words, reading specialists and a number of other important people working with students are not included in the 61.3% national average that you repeatedly cite. You either have to significantly broaden the definition of what counts as “in the classroom spending” (in which case the arbitrary 65% goal may already met in most U.S. school districts) or you have to justify to voters why soccer coaches and field trips are more important than reading specialists, librarians, and speech pathologists.

This is just one of many problems of a “solution” that looks well-meaning but is flawed and far too simplistic to improve schooling in any meaningful way. In closing, I would like to review the significant shortcomings associated with the three main goals of the intiative.

1. Operational Efficiency

Does the sixty-five percent solution really “return the focus to classroom instruction”?

If it did, it would reward districts for allocating funds for instructional specialists, support for technology in the classroom, and professional development. The reality is that the initiative discourages districts from “wasting” money in these areas because First Class Education’s definition of “in the classroom” is out of touch with reality and excludes many resources that really matter to teachers, parents, and students.

Tim Mooney has cited some compelling anecdotes of administrative waste, but administrators account for only about 7% of all school expenditures across the nation. That’s even true in the Miami-Dade district he likes to talk about, where “in the classroom” funding is already above 60%. It’s unlikely that the 65% solution will significantly cut down on administrative waste in Miami-Dade or anywhere else because most “out of classroom” costs have nothing to do with administration. The majority of the “out of classroom” funding goes to practical needs such as maintenance of buildings and transporting students to school. It also goes to professionals who work closely with students, including librarians, speech therapists, media specialists, counselors, nurses, and instructional specialists.

The absurd definitions and arbitrary targets in this intiative all but ensure that real wasteful spending won’t be curbed while thousands of well-run school districts are pressured to fit into some one-size-fits-all pattern of spending. This simply doesn’t make sense given the diversity of school districts in this country; local school boards and voters are the ones who need to monitor school spending.

2. Student Achievement

In the beginning of this debate, Tim Mooney claimed that “putting more education money in the classroom can make a difference” and he supported this idea by citing the average achievement scores of top five and bottom five states.

There is no good evidence that correlates a school districts’ “in the classroom” spending with student achievement.
This seems counter-intuitive, but it’s important to remember that “in the classroom” spending doesn’t really mean “in the classroom” spending. It’s possible for schools to produce high-achieving students when they heavily invest in important educational resources that happen to fall outside of First Class Education’s unusual definition. Some very successful school districts in Texas only spend about 50% on what First Class Education calls “in the classroom” expenditures. These districts should not be forced to overhaul their system just because some schools in Utah happen to find success by spending 65% or so on “in the classroom” expenditures.

3. Political Gains

The First Class Education memo cites a number of political benefits for Republicans who endorse this idea. Most important is the possibility that Republicans will gain voter support for vouchers after they endorse this initiative and gain “greater credibility on public education issues.” It probably doesn’t surprise you that I believe politicians will lose credibility on educational issues when they endorse this initiative and fail to address more significant problems in the schools. Education policy analysts – both right- and left-leaning, all agree that the sixty five percent solution is simplistic and unlikely to lead to real improvement i!
n U.S. schools. As more people recognize the initiative for what it is, legislators will learn to keep a safe distance from it. Republican senators in Florida failed to pass the sixty-five percent solution a few weeks ago, and I doubt they will be the last group of legislators to have second thoughts about endorsing this initiative.

If you’ve read this far into the debate, you have also probably noticed a few gratuitous snipes directed towards teacher unions. It shouldn’t surprise you that one of the perceived benefits of the initiative is that it will cause tension within teacher unions when it “naturally pits administrators and teachers at odds with one another.” That’s an interesting idea, but it isn’t going to happen. Teacher unions are strongly against this so-called solution and it’s unlikely that there will be any internal dissent over this.

In sum, the sixty-five percent solution falls short of the major goals Tim Mooney has outlined. It is unlikely to improve operational efficiency or student achievement, and even the political benefits seem doubtful at this point.

Finally, I would like to thank Tim Mooney for participating in this exchange and I would like to thank the good folks at Edspresso for inviting me to this debate. I know I learned a good deal during this experience and I hope the readers have as well. As this well-funded movement reaches more states over the next year or two, I hope legislators, taxpayers, and educators will take a closer look at what this initiative is really all about.