Are small classes the answer? Try these numbers. NY Post
GOLD-PLATED CLASSROOMS
By MARCUS A. WINTERS
Marcus A. Winters is a research associate at the Manhattan Institute's Edu- cation Research Office
December 1, 2003 -- LAST June, a court ruled that New York state must spend more money on New York City's public schools. The case, brought by the Campaign for Fiscal Equality, was lauded by the teacher unions and their defenders, who have argued for years that the only thing necessary to improve education is more money and smaller classes. But a small New York school district shows that the teacher-union way is no panacea.
Nestled on the tip of Long Island is the small city of Bridgehampton. Its school district is made up of a single K-12 school with an enrollment of 153 students. The school serves a diverse student population - 54 percent of its students are African-American and 31 percent of its students are eligible for free or reduced-price lunches.
All in all, it looks like many other school districts across the nation. But it differs from other districts in one very important way: its budget. Bridgehampton spends a total of $45,090 per student.
In the 2000-01 school Year, Bridgehampton spent $24,593 per student just on instruction costs for non-disabled students. (Instruction costs include things like teacher salaries and books, but exclude things like construction and building overhead.) This is more than three times the average of $8,163 per pupil spent by districts that the New York Department of Education considers similar to Bridgehampton, and more than three and a half times the $6,675 spent by the average New York state public school.
According to the school's budget, which Bridgehampton was reluctant to provide to me and which I ultimately had to obtain from the state, teacher salaries in the district are reasonable and the school's other costs are high but not outrageous. So where is the extra money going? Are the books made of gold?
The main thing that Bridgehampton gets from its enormous financial investment in public education also happens to be one of the major priorities for the teacher unions: smaller classes. And when I say small, I mean small.
In 2001-02, Bridgehampton employed one teacher for every 3.7 students. That's a teacher-student ratio smaller than the parent-child ratio in thousands of American households. The school's class sizes ranged from 12 students in kindergarten to five in its 10th grade math class. Other New York districts with larger enrollments than Bridgehampton's don't employ this many teachers.
From the looks of it, Bridgehampton is a real-life example of the educational ideal the teacher unions are always upholding. But although $24,593 in operating costs per student buys smaller classes, it has not bought Bridgehampton better results.
Bridgehampton scored below the state average on both the elementary and middle-school English and math Regents Examinations in the 2001-02 school year. Its average scores on the math test were 623 at the elementary level and 709 at the middle school level, compared to the state average of 651 in elementary and 712 in middle-school math.
Though these scores are not appallingly below the state average, they are far worse than one would expect given how much money the district spends on education.
Some may argue that Bridgehampton's high spending is reasonable, because running such a small school district is inefficient. But other school districts in New York have fewer students and not only spend less per pupil but also produce higher test scores.
The lack of a relationship between spending and learning is not restricted to Bridgehampton. It can be seen in the national trend towards increased spending without increased learning.
Over the last 30 years, despite a doubling of inflation-adjusted per-pupil spending and dramatically reduced teacher-student ratios, the nation's test scores have remained flat and its graduation rates have dropped slightly. But teacher unions keep on demanding more money while opposing substantial reforms. Though we're nowhere near it now, we're progressing toward the teacher-union dream of making America's education system look just like Bridgehampton.
Since the vast majority of Bridgehampton's education budget comes from local taxes, we need not be too irate with its free-spending ways. If the good people of Bridgehampton want to build a ladder to the moon, that's fine as long as they do it with their own tax money. But their example should make us question whether we can solve education's problems by throwing money at them, as the teacher unions so often claim it can and as the court has now demanded New York do.
Money can certainly pay for more teachers in order to lower class sizes, but the goal of education isn't small classes, it's increased learning. Bridgehampton shows us there is more to education than just money.
nypost.com |
