I blogged yesterday on the notable increase in total education revenue in Kentucky since KERA was enacted in 1990. Today, let’s apply some of that information to the National Assessment of Educational Progress eighth grade mathematics proficiency rates for Kentucky in 1990 and 2009. The proficiency rate is the percentage of students who scored at or above the NAEP “Proficient” level, as published in the 2009 NAEP Mathematics Report Card.
This graph shows what I found. Back in 1990, the state achieved 5.10 NAEP proficiency points for each $1 billion it collected from all sources, local, state and federal, for education. By 2009, that efficiency rating had slipped to only 4.57 proficiency points per each $1 billion collected.
In other words, over time our schools have become less efficient.
Let’s take the 2009 efficiency figure of 4.57 NAEP proficiency points per each $1 billion in education revenue a bit further.
Assuming we don’t lose any more efficiency (a very unlikely assumption), how much would we have to spend in current, 2009 dollars to get up to a mathematics proficiency rate of 90 percent?
To calculate that, divide 90 proficiency points by the 4.57 proficiency points per $1 billion of total revenue to learn we would need to collect $19.69 billion to fund such performance.
In other words, to get a 90 percent proficiency rate in math would cost well over three times the amount we currently spend - IF we stay with our current education model.
Clearly, we have to break our current education trend.
We must find much more efficient ways to educate students in Kentucky’s schools. Our current system cannot get us anywhere close to where we want to go at any sort of cost that we can afford.
Really innovative uses of technology could offer one way to improve efficiency, though so far the existing education establishment hasn’t seemed to be able to really harness technology very effectively.
Another part of the answer could be charter schools. Among other things, these new model public schools tend to be more efficient than regular public schools.
This table has the data used to create the graph above.
Data Sources:
Kentucky Department of Education, Office of District Support Services, Division of Financial Data Management, Calculations & Reporting Branch, Receipts and Expenditures Reports for listed years. On line here.
National Center for Education Statistics (2009), The Nation’s Report Card: Mathematics 2009, (NCES 2010–451), Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, Washington, D.C. On line here.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
KERA at 20: The drop in Kentucky’s education bang for the buck with NAEP
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2 comments:
Might it be possible that the rate of inflation was higher than the rate that achievement changed (resulting in a lower ratio)? It doesn't seem that you adjusted for inflation in the "billion dollars."
Have you changed your position? Do you now believe that a correlation exists between spending and achievement?
RE: Anonymous April 7 at 3:49PM
I am afraid you missed the main point of the post.
The issue is that what we do now isn't going to provide the bang for any affordable amount of bucks, inflation adjusted or not.
The data indicates that we need to radically change the current education model and find something that will work MUCH more efficiently.
As far as the spending/performance correlation goes - when you triple your education spending, you certainly should see some correlation between spending and performance.
The trouble is that we can't afford to keep on tripling spending until we get to decent proficiency rates. We have to find a new, and more affordable model that will work with the cash we have available.
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