The on-again, off-again push for a new federal recovery package appears to be back on pause until after next week’s election. This has the nation’s schools gnashing their teeth in frustration, with teachers’ unions, associations, and advocacy groups all urging Congress and the White House to provide tens (or hundreds) of billions in additional aid to K-12 education. It’s a plea with a lot of appeal. After all, schools are wrestling with unprecedented challenges this fall and grappling with demands for technology, personal protective equipment, COVID testing, and more.
Congress should carefully assess what schools need and then be sure to give them the dollars they … [+]
And yet, it’s also a familiar refrain. School advocates perpetually insist they’re getting shortchanged and are desperately in need of new funds, whatever the particulars on the ground. This is due, in part, to the rules and regulations attached to things like federal programs, state funding requirements, and contract provisions. Another big piece, though, is the manner in which K-12 rhythms, routines, and mindsets have fueled a culture in which a focus on cutting costs has come to be seen as suspect, if not downright objectionable.
That’s why even school districts that are currently operating wholly remotely—as is the case with most of the nation’s big districts—can insist that they need more money to keep schools closed than they would’ve needed in the course of a conventional school year. Such critiques can seem abstract, so let’s concretize three of the problematic ways this tends to play out:
Regarding talk of “efficiency” as a dirty word. The easiest way to mark oneself as an alien in K-12 schooling is to ask whether a school is operating efficiently. Such talk is roundly and routinely mocked as “business thinking” with no place in education. The problem is that nobody makes hard choices when they don’t have to. Not even tough-minded, for-profit CEOs are eager to squeeze salaries, shut down popular but ineffective programs, or trim staff. Nobody ever likes “efficiency.” But the alternative is “inefficiency,” where staff, dollars, and tools aren’t doing as much good for kids as they could be. Yet, too many school districts are careless about deploying talent, undisciplined at the negotiating table, lax about pursuing operational efficiencies, and generally in need of a severe belt-tightening.
Adopting the “Washington Monument strategy.” During any budgetary standoff with Congress, presidents are fond of shuttering attention-getting symbols to demonstrate that they’ve already pared government to the bone and can’t possibly make additional cuts. In education, this stuff runs rampant. In May, New York City schools chancellor Richard Carranza told the city council, “We are cutting the bone. There is no fat to cut, no meat to cut.” He failed to mention that his district spent an extraordinary $28,900 per student in 2019, according to the city’s Independent Budget Office, or that he had added 340 positions to the central bureaucracy in 2019. The problem is that no superintendent or school board member wants to be responsible for layoffs or shuttered programs, and it’s a lot easier to grandstand than to make hard choices.
Rejecting the notion of opportunity cost. In school systems and policy debates alike, there’s a disinclination to really engage with hard choices. For instance, between 1992 and 2014, real teacher salaries declined by two percent, even as inflation-adjusted spending grew by 27 percent. In West Virginia, for instance, site of the 2017 teacher strike that ignited a wave of imitators across the land, if teacher pay had simply increased at the same rate as per-pupil spending, median teacher pay would’ve been $63,000—rather than $46,000. So, why weren’t West Virginia’s teachers taking home $63,000? Well, one reason was that, while student enrollment declined 12 percent during that period, the number of non-teaching staff grew. A dollar spent on administrative costs, support staff, or health care plans can’t be spent on something else.
School systems have extraordinary costs right now. That’s especially true when it comes to schools that have opened their doors and thus incurred expenses related to social distancing, personal protective equipment, reconfigured operations, and more. But legitimate needs should not serve as an excuse for lax leadership. Congress should carefully assess what schools need and then be sure to give them the dollars they require. But it’s not too much to ask that educational leaders demonstrate that they’re spending funds wisely and well, even when that’s inconvenient or uncomfortable.
