New Data on Education Spending: We’re # 42!

Reader Feedback and Our Commentary

We have wanted to make our webpage more dynamic, giving readers the opportunity to weigh in and post comments on the issues highlighted in our work. We will make that a priority once the Legislative Session is adjourned in April.

In the meantime, this will have to suffice as the feedback loop on our recent Maryland Policy Fact Sheet “New Data on Education Spending: We’re #42!"

In that Fact Sheet, we highlighted two pieces of information from a report published by the Census Bureau:

• Maryland ranked 42nd among states in education funding effort, measured as total education spending per every $1,000 in personal income. The national average education funding effort was ten percent higher than Maryland’s education spending level.

• Overall, Maryland state government contributed a smaller share of elementary and secondary education revenue than every state but six, ranking 44th among states. Maryland, like these few other states, relies more heavily on local governments to pay for the cost of elementary and secondary education.

A few readers responded with critiques on this Fact Sheet. Those comments, and our responses, are below.

What about per pupil spending–isn’t that the more relevant measure?

Maryland ranks 14th among states in per pupil spending (U.S. Census Bureau). We did not include this statistic for two reasons.

First, we weren’t addressing the question of what Maryland ought to spend on education. We’re not education experts. However, education experts in Maryland did recently invest a great deal of time and effort to answer that question. The finding from the Thornton Commission was that Maryland needed to spend substantially more money to ensure that all children in Maryland receive a “thorough and efficient” education.

Before the Thornton law, state support for education was not based on a meaningful measure of how much money was needed to provide students with an adequate education. Rather, the formula simply allocated limited state funds to local governments to partially support their education costs.

The Thornton law moved Maryland to a “standards based” approach to financing education and ensuring student achievement. Instead of starting with available resources and then “doing the best job possible with the money available,” the standards based approach focuses on student achievement and includes the following elements:

• clearly establish goals for student performance, then
• determine what level of resources are needed to achieve those goals.

While it is appropriate to continue to question the appropriate funding level for education, our Fact Sheet addressed a different issue. That is, now that a funding level has been established in law, much of the policy debate focuses on whether or not that funding level is “affordable.” The first chart in the Fact Sheet that showed Maryland’s funding effort ranking 42nd among states. That is, relative to our ability to pay Maryland spends less on education than most other states. This suggests that we could afford the funding mandates in the Thornton law, assuming that student achievement remains a Maryland priority.

Second, per pupil spending may not be a good indicator of relative spending on education across states. The most significant cost in providing education services is for personnel–mostly, teachers. In 2003-2004, the average teacher salary in Maryland was 11th highest in the U.S., and was 7.5% higher than the national average. Nonetheless, given regional differences in costs of living and labor markets, it is reasonable to expect that teachers in Maryland are paid more than teachers in some other areas. If Maryland school districts could fill their classrooms with qualified teachers willing to work at the same pay as teachers in Mississippi, North Dakota, Alabama, Oklahoma and South Dakota–the five states with the lowest paid teachers–they probably would and Maryland’s per pupil costs would be lower.

Focusing on spending is the wrong approach. Student achievement is the best measure. Don’t Maryland students rank in the top 3 or 4 in the nation?

Poor student achievement is the primary factor that drove the Thornton Commission to recommend higher levels of state spending on education (See the section about the Standards-Based approach in the previous answer).

There is a chart in our Maryland Policy Report “Back to the Basics on Thornton” that shows that prior to enactment of the Thornton law, more than half of eighth graders in every Maryland jurisdiction failed to achieve a “satisfactory” reading score on the state’s standardized test.

Also, our students aren't ranked in the top three or four in the nation. According to the National Center for Education Statistics:

• Maryland ranked 29th among states in average math proficiency for eighth graders in 2003;
• Maryland ranked 25th among states in average reading proficiency for eighth graders in 2003.

According to the Department of Defense, Maryland ranked 34th among states in student performance on the Armed Forces Qualification Test in 2002. This is a test commonly given to high school students to approximate their aptitude for work.

As we noted in our Fact Sheet, Maryland has some excellent schools as well as many remarkable students. However, overall, compared to other states student achieve here is mediocre at best.

Half of my county’s budget is for education; don’t tell me that we don’t spend enough money on education.

This drives home the point made in our second chart. The share of education revenue that is contributed by Maryland state government ranks 44th among states. Maryland, like these few other states, relies much more heavily on local governments to pay for the cost of education.

The Thornton law will eventually provide some relief to local jurisdictions. Prior to the Thornton law, the state paid approximately 39 percent of the cost of education; it is expected that when the Thornton law is fully phased-in that the state share will increase to 50 percent.

While the Thornton law continues to require local governments to invest in education, local governments will experience less pressure to foot a disproportionate share of the costs of education.

We’ll fire up a blog when the session is over. In the meantime, we continue to welcome your feedback and comments. MBTPI