The not-so-school-board-friendly education research publication, Education Next, recently featured this article where the authors claim that educating the public on how much money is actually spent on education decreases their support for increasing school funding. But is this really the case?
Taken on face value, this appears to be the case. But if you look closer at the numbers, you can see how the public really feels. The study found that 61 percent of the public who were not told how much their local districts spent per student were in favor of increasing funding for their local schools, but that support fell to 51 percent when respondents were told how much their local district spent. The authors take this as evidence that if the public was educated about how much is spent on education, support for increasing education funding would decrease. Keep in mind, however, that there was only a relatively small decline in support for increasing spending and there was no increase in support for decreasing education spending. Furthermore, even when told how much schools spend, the majority of the public still believes schools should receive more funding.
Even so, telling people how much their district spends per student is not exactly educating the public about school funding. BoardBuzz would like to see another study done where the public is actually educated on where additional education funds would go and how that would help increase achievement of students in their districts. Such programs as universal pre-school and researched-based dropout prevention and recovery programs could save the taxpayers more money in the long run than it would cost to implement. BoardBuzz is quite certain results from that poll would be quite different.
School board members are well aware that more funding alone will not help students, but they know all too well that they need more funds to implement programs and provide resources their educators need to meet the needs of all students in their district.
For more information on research based effective programs and how money is really spent ,visit the Center for Public Education. BoardBuzz also recommends you check out NSBA’s Economic Stimulus Resource Center to find out more about the additional funding schools are receiving from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.
I think the study was flawed in that participants still were not truly informed about education funding. For example, it was not explained about how many federal and/or state mandates are tied to per pupil expenditures. An illustration of this is the fact that the cost to educate a child with special needs is tremendously higher than the cost to educate a regular education child. If the authors of this study had instead informed participants about what makes up per pupil expenditures and about the many unfunded mandates placed on school districts, they might have come to a different conclusion. In my experience, the more people truly understand about the funding predicament of public education, the more supportive they are.