In June, I enjoyed a front-row spot
among 11,000 people at a state Capitol rally sponsored by the K-16 Coalition for
Michigan’s Future. I saw and heard many people who were quite passionate about
children and Michigan’s future.
But for all the energy at the
gathering, no one produced an argument that made a connection between the crowd
and speakers’ goal — better education for students — and the stated purpose of
the rally, which was to support state Senate Bill 246 and state House Bill 4582.
These two bills would guarantee minimum annual state funding increases for
primary, secondary and higher education.
The participants included students,
educators, administrators, school board members, parents and policy-makers. All
were visibly committed to the education of Michigan’s K-12 and college students.
They carried placards urging support for the two legislative bills, announcing
the districts they represented or questioning whether students were worth "only
$6,700" (the current minimum state per-pupil grant). One sign pleaded to the
governor, "Help us, Jen!"
The speakers were equally earnest
about students’ education. Tom White, executive director of Michigan School
Business Officials and chair of the K-16 Coalition, insisted that supporters
were not "tying legislators’ hands," but were interested only in providing a
"world-class education." Another speaker stressed the fact that policy-makers’
abstract education figures in fact represent real students. She exhorted
participants to exercise their "democratic right" by making legislators "work
for" them, and trumpeted the importance of good public education in attracting
businesses to the state. A bright student from Northern Michigan University who
had graduated from a public school in Detroit asked legislators to help secure
Michigan’s future by "fully funding" education.
Neither she nor any other speaker
argued in any significant way that there is a connection between increased
funding for education and improving the quality of education (typically measured
by student performance). She, like most of the speakers, seemed to assume that
quality education would follow if only legislators would provide "full funding"
for it.
Supported by data?
While this assertion may have
seemed intuitive to participants, research does not support it. The Hoover
Institution at Stanford University recently published a review of education
research entitled "School Figures: The Data behind the Debate." In the fourth
chapter, the book’s authors, Hanna Skandera and Richard Sousa, note the
following: "There is a common perception that the way to improve our failing
public schools is simply to spend more money on them. According to many public
school administrators, the amount we spend per pupil is an excellent way to
predict student performance, yet a review of the data for the last 80 years
shows clearly that there is not a strong correlation between increased spending
and improvements in student performance. In fact, increases in per-pupil
expenditures in the past have often not been matched by better student
performance. In short, the evidence suggests that we cannot simply buy better
schools."
Gov. Jennifer Granholm has broached
this issue with K-16 Coalition leaders. Although she stayed clear of it at the
rally, deftly avoiding an endorsement of the bills and praising participants for
forcing the Legislature to deal with education, the governor told K-16 Coalition
leaders a day earlier in a news release that, "Investment (in education) … must
go hand-in-hand with getting the most out of every dollar we spend in education,
which means reducing costs and realizing greater student achievement."
That is precisely the rub: More
money doesn’t guarantee better learning, in part because the money isn’t always
spent well.
Despite the governor’s admonition
and a body of established education research, the point of the event seemed to
be calling for increased expenditures ("Support SB 246 and HB 4582!") and
expressing a general desire for better schools ("Improve education now!"). By
omitting a discussion of the connection between the two, the organizers and
speakers of the K-16 Coalition rally did participants a disservice: They
neglected a chance to provide substantive ideas for improving the quality of
Michigan public education to an eager crowd. They therefore missed the
opportunity to channel the collective voice of an impassioned throng toward more
effective solutions for Michigan’s schools.
The rally’s attendees can regret
that oversight.
Ryan S. Olson is director of
education policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a research and
educational institute headquartered in Midland, Mich.