There is another new study out from the Forward Institute that focuses on school choice. There is a whole lot I could write about this thing but I am going to focus on the way in the authors’ describe voucher funding.
On page 40 they write:
“For analysis purposes, it was necessary to adopt a consistent measure of cost per student. We chose to use the state aid per student amount based on the following facts….For the 2009-13 school years, the maximum state aid per student to schools participating in the MPCP program was $6,442. By contrast, MPS per student state aid in 2010-11 was $8,322.”
First off there is no good rationale for solely comparing state aid in a study that purports to explore the connection between money and education. State aid is a property tax issue. If you want to make the connection between funding and performance you would look at total revenues, or, at the very least total state and local revenues determined by the state funding formula. This methodology is like comparing the wealth of two people by how much money each has in their checking accounts while ignoring their savings accounts. Sure it’s a comparison of something, but it misses the point.
Second the state support figure used for students in the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP) is $6,442. This is the same approach used by Rep. Sondy Pope-Roberts earlier this year. Mayor Barrett and Milwaukee taxpayers shouldn’t get too excited, the choice program is not 100% supported by the state. As I wrote back in January:
What is even stranger is that the authors actually explain that Milwaukee taxpayers cover a significant portion of the cost of the MPCP, but continue to make the faulty comparison. I lay out a much better (in my opinion) method for comparing funding here: http://www.wpri.org/blog/?p=2140.
The report goes on to make a whole bunch of claims about the lack of fiscal transparency in the MPCP, citing the 2000 LAB Audit of the MPCP as its source for those claims. But since 2000 the fiscal scrutiny placed on the MPCP has increased greatly; 2003 Act 155 completely transformed the program’s fiscal regulatory framework. Not mentioning Act 155 is a huge omission.
I have not had a chance to go through everything in this report, but at the very least the treatment of choice funding raises a huge red flag about any conclusions made regarding public support and performance in the MPCP.
The past few months have given us the GOP war on women, my personal war with backyard rabbits, the IRS’ war on conservative non-profits, and now the Wisconsin GOP’s war on Milwaukee. Can we cool it with the “war on” talk? It has become a bad cliché.
I wrote recently that I do not think Scott Walker hates Milwaukee. I still believe that. Before Walker was elected I thought it was great that two Milwaukee area executives were running for Governor. During the Act 10 drama I was convinced that Walker’s experience running a local government was a major factor in his desire to curtail collective bargaining. I am still convinced of that.
However, there is something rotten about the relationship between the Wisconsin GOP and Milwaukee. I won’t call it a war, but a disconnect. The most obvious disconnect is ideological. The party in control in Madison has no political base in Milwaukee; it is not surprising or disturbing that when the interests of urban areas clash with those of suburban and rural areas, the interests of the GOP’s core constituency wins out.
But try to imagine the from Milwaukee. Despite its popular support, the city of Milwaukee and the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS), both large middle-class employers, view school vouchers as a threat. The Governor is seeking to expand this threat, which is naturally perceived as an attack on Milwaukee.
Or consider the residency rule. Tom Barrett worries that it will cause middle-class residents to leave the city. MPS has already modified its residency rule, in an act of local control, to allow more time for new teachers to move to the city. It’s easy to see the residency rule as an attack on personal freedom, but the mayor and others have a legitimate interest in maintaining a middle-class tax base. Hence, we have another attack on Milwaukee’s self-determination.
And of course the streetcar. Suburban interests have a legitimate fear that they will end up paying for the thing in one way or another. But Milwaukee institutions (and many residents) view the streetcar as a next logical step forward for the City of Milwaukee. It is not surprising at all that efforts to kill the streetcar, whatever its merits, based on technicalities is seen by many as outside meddling for the sake of meddling.
I am an urbanist at heart and admit I have a strong bias towards the City of Milwaukee. It is where I live. But even an unbiased observer can see that the disconnect between Milwaukee and the GOP is more than just whining by the Mayor. It is the product (among other things) of an unhealthy political reality that makes our urban areas, at least in terms of elected representation, politically homogeneous places.
Whose fault is this political homogeneity? I don’t know and I don’t really care. Even without an urban constituency the state GOP still has an economic and cultural interest in creating pro-urban policies.
Milwaukee is not some black hole. It is as place where over 10% of the state’s population resides. It is true Milwaukee receives a good amount of state resources. However, the distribution of state dollars to Milwaukee is not absurdly out of whack given its size. For example, in 2012 MPS received 13% of all state equalization aid while enrolling 10% of all public school students.
I suppose this is a long-winded way of saying that pitting Milwaukee against the rest of the state is a losing proposition for both sides. Milwaukee is a real place with real people of real importance to all Wisconsinites. It shouldn’t be used as a political football.
You ever find a twenty-dollar bill in an old pair of jeans? What do you do with it? Do you run to the bank and deposit it for a rainy day? Do you buy something you need? Or do you throw caution to the wind and splurge on a 12-pack of Spotted Cow?
The legislature today finds itself in this particular situation. Ok. It did not find some hidden money, but the state is projected to collect $500 million more in revenues than previously expected. The immediate temptation for legislators and advocates is to dust off some favored programs or initiatives and go after that new money. And guess what? That is my temptation too.
The top priority should be an increase in per-pupil revenue limits. It is encouraging that the Governor, Republicans on Joint Finance, and Democrats on Joint Finance are all on the same page as I on this one. The state has empowered school boards with Act 10 to make decisions in areas where their hands were long-tied. Retying their hands with a revenue freeze was, in my opinion, illogical. A substantial increase in per-pupil revenue limits can both ease the pain experienced by school districts in the past couple years and build some goodwill between local and state government.
But what exactly do I mean by substantial increase? The public statements I have seen thus far propose increases between $100 and $275. I think a reasonable increase is an average one. Excluding the 5.5% cut in 2012 the average annual per-pupil revenue limit increase between 1994 and 2013 was $217. I think that number is substantial and achievable.
A $217 per-pupil increase that does not increase property taxes would cost the state $185.6 million (855,327 students X $217) next year. And while we are investing in education, we ought to include similar per-pupil increases for choice and charter. This would add about $7.5 million to the tab.
This is a substantial amount of new spending, but it is not a splurge, it is an investment in the state’s educational infrastructure.
Recently, someone responded to a WPRI blog post about the Milwaukee Public School (MPS) budget situation with the dreaded “so what?” question. The question was understandable, aren’t discussions of the details of education finance a distraction from the important work of educating kids? To answer my own question, no. Here is why.
First, though money may not be directly linked to improved academic outcomes, it certainty matters. Books, teachers, buildings, technology, and other materials necessary for a quality education system do not come free. The way scarce public education funds are distributed to Wisconsin districts and schools impacts the quality of these institutions.
Second, a key pillar of an egalitarian society is equal opportunity. The backbone of Wisconsin’s education finance system is an aid equalization formula designed to ensure districts can have an equitably funded school system no matter their tax base. It is important for Wisconsin’s future to understand if the equalization aid formula is operating as intended to ensure fair funding of education across districts.
Lastly, public budgets allocate public money. K-12 education is our state’s largest investment. I think it incredibly important to know how much of our money is being spent on education, where it is being spent, and how the distribution of public money is determined.
All of these reasons factor into why WPRI authored its latest report, Understanding School Finance in Wisconsin: A Primer. I warn you the report is a little different from our regular fare. I do not make policy recommendations or critiques. Instead I try to explain the ins and outs of education finance in a way that will be useful to policy-makers, education professionals, and Wisconsin citizens. Mostly I try to make the case that Wisconsin’s education finance system is understandable if a few key points are understood. Those points include:
Per-Pupil Revenue Limits: The amount of combined state aid and property tax that can be raised for each student in a school district.
Membership: The official count of the number of students in a district.
General School Aid: The state investment in education.
The Equalization Aid Formula: The formula that determines how school aids are distributed to districts.
Categorical Aid: Funding for specific programs that is not limited by revenue limits.
The understandable tendency to tune out discussions of the minutia of education finance too often allows important questions about our state’s largest investment to go unanswered. My hope is that this report will be used a resource that helps Wisconsinites answer some of these questions. Click here to download the full report.
If school choice is expanded to new municipalities in Wisconsin it will be no small miracle given the nature of the debate thus far. Below are impressions as the next crucial step in the state budget process, Join Finance, begins.
Ignoring of Best Evidence: The past couple week has brought a debate over how exactly Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Exam (WKCE) scores of students in the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) and the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program should be compared when judging program effectiveness. It’s a pointless debate because it is not how the effectiveness of the MPCP or any particular school can be judged. WKCE scores tell you nothing about the impact a school or program is actually having on student learning.
This is not to suggest WKCE scores are meaningless. They tell you where students are at, which is important. But if you want to judge the worth of a program such as the MPCP using test scores you need a more sophisticated study that looks at how exactly the program affects test scores for similar students. If only someone had done that.
Oh wait, they have. It was kind of a big deal too. The School Choice Demonstration Project (SCDP) found (to quote an earlier post):
Statistically significant gains for voucher users in reading compared to matched Milwaukee Public School (MPS) pupils (with the important caveat that the introduction of program wide WKCE testing in the final year of the evaluation could be responsible for some of the gains);
Statistically similar impacts on math test scores for matched MPS and MPCP users;
A modest positive impact on public school tests scores as more private schools participated in the MPCP;
Statewide taxpayer savings, though not in Milwaukee;
Higher graduation rates for voucher users compared to MPS;
Higher rates of four-year college enrollment for voucher users;
Evidence that closed schools in both MPS and the MPCP were the lower performers;
High levels of parental satisfaction;
No impact on housing prices or racial integration;
High rates of school switching;
Wide variation in achievement levels between schools; and
Much much more.
Whether you favor choice expansion or not it makes no logical sense to ignore the SCDP.
The Fiscal Note:New government programs are not free. Even programs that fund students at a lower level than public schools have significant impacts on state education funding. An April 15 Legislative Fiscal Bureau note explained the potential taxpayer and state education aid impact of nine new choice programs in Wisconsin. The reaction was messy, and predictably, created a NIMBY reaction among some legislators.
Flawed Program Design: School choice programs targeted toward failing districts are easy to sell to legislators, but fundamentally flawed. From a logistics standpoint it means advocates begin the local school choice debate by having to convince residents their public schools are bad. That is a losing argument. It also cedes the point that no, school vouchers are not an education reform, but rather a life raft for certain students.
Terrible Back-Up Plans: Don’t want to fund a choice program expansion that costs $6.2 million and will help low- and middle-income students access private schools? Then why not support a $100+ million program to partially offset costs for students already in private schools. There is nothing wrong with a tax-credit program, but it does not belong in the same discussion as voucher expansion.
Over-Dramatization: The state budget allocates $30.6 billion in general purpose revenue. About 0.02% of that is for expansion of the voucher program. I get that it’s a philosophical debate on how best to structure public education, but the outsized attention given to vouchers is almost comical. Early in my career I was struck by how “normal” schools in the Milwaukee choice program were. The further the debate gets from the ground the more ridiculous the arguments seem to get.
I fully realize that these observations are from the peanut gallery and the folks actually working on the ground for and against expansion necessarily approach the issue in a different manner than I. Nonetheless I feel it important to point out that there are good arguments for and against voucher expansion that are being ignored. This is a disservice to the people that will be impacted by expansion.
Finally, if I was a betting man, I’d say some kind of choice expansion happens.
I had my first chance to read through the new Milwaukee Public School (MPS) budget proposal yesterday, and I must say, I was pleasantly surprised. Compared to trends of the last decade or so, things are definitely looking better for the district.
Most important, MPS is increasing their staffing in key areas next year. Despite all the talk about governance structure the most important place in education is the school itself. MPS is increasing its school level staffing by 120.8 full-time-equivalent employees in FY14. A good number of those positions, 51, are teachers and educational assistants (though on the negative side the federal sequestration is responsible for the loss of 24 title 1 teachers). The district is also adding assistant principals, safety assistants, social workers, and nurse associates in schools. All of this is particularly impressive when overall enrollment is projected to decline 1%.
So how did they do this? A big part is the aggressive action the district has taken to reduce its benefit costs. MPS notes in their budget that their average teacher salary is increasing but their “school operations and categorical benefit” rate will drop to 58.4% from almost 70% just two years ago. Part of this is due to Act 10, and part of this is due to the willingness of MPS to take needed action.
Also interesting is the district’s enrollment projections. As mentioned the overall enrollment is projected to decline by 1%. Enrollment in traditional MPS schools is projected to decline by 3.1%. In contrast, enrollment in MPS non-instrumentality charter schools is projected to increases by 16%, over 1,000 students. Students in MPS non-union charter schools generate about $9,800 per child for the district, yet the district sends the schools only $7,775 per-pupil enrolled (though likely more next year). In other words, it’s a smart financial move for the district to increase enrollment in these schools. The district has quietly made expansion of their non-union charters a priority; their efforts are clearly showing.
There is a heck of a lot more in MPS’ budget, including many questions that cannot be answered until the state budget process is finished. However, there are clear signs that the efforts of the MPS board and administration to financially right the ship are starting to pay off. That’s a huge accomplishment for MPS, and one for which they deserve credit.
As I’ve said over and over, you cannot look at these scores and conclude that the Milwaukee Public Schools have a more positive impact on student learning than schools in the MPCP or vice-versa. But you can look at these scores and conclude that on aggregate Milwaukee students are not being adequately prepared for life after graduation (if they make it to graduation). You can also look at these scores and safely conclude:
1) Solely advocating for vouchers in Milwaukee is not a promising education reform position.
2) The “MPS good – vouchers bad” dichotomy (or vice-versa) is a false one. If you are attending any school in Milwaukee, there is a frighteningly high chance you are not proficient in math and/or reading.
3) The school-level bright spots, though they should be celebrated, are few and far between.
4) On whole what we are doing as city is not working.
None of this changes my position on vouchers, nor will it halt my efforts at correcting and explaining the never-ending stream of misinformation or confusing information about school choice programs (for example, folks should be aware that the comparisons used in DPI’s press release differ from previous years due to the change in MPCP program eligibility, I will touch on this in the near future). Lest you call me obtuse, my support for school choice is grounded in two realities:
1) There are many high-performing schools today that would not exist if not for the creation of the MPCP; and
2) 25,000 students as of today are using the MPCP. Flaws and all, the MPCP is a crucial part of Milwaukee’s public education system.
A school voucher is a tool. There is little to suggest that creating a school voucher program will magically raise student achievement. There is also nothing to suggest that ending or defunding the MPCP will increase achievement. Like traditional public schools, the success or failure of a school in a voucher program depends on the situation on the ground. The key question is whether a school voucher program can help get the situation dependent factors right in Milwaukee. I believe, through experience, that it can. But today’s release of test scores show we are getting those factors wrong too often in Milwaukee.
So where does Milwaukee go next? I continue to think that an authorizer-based accountability system utilizing MPS, the MPCP and Milwaukee’s charter sector, is a realistic and logical way for Milwaukee to move forward. But moving forward is a difficult proposition in Milwaukee. The reaction to today’s test score release will be predictable. School choice opponents will claim the program is a failure, school choice supporters will get defensive, politicians will spar over these results making unsupported claims, and eventually, next year, I’ll get to write this piece again.
“I don’t think you can honestly say that 25,000 students are using the Milwaukee Parental Choice program because they’re somehow being duped by big money politics. They’re using the program because they find it successful.”
I’ll reiterate that I am not naïve about the very real role of money in politics, nor am I opposed to the transparency work of the Wisconsin Democracy Campaign (WDC). I think the work of the WDC is important; people have a right to know how much and where money is being spent in electoral politics.
But, a commentary from WDC executive director Mike McCabe in yesterday’s Sheboygan Press makes me more than disagree with some of the statements of the WDC, it makes me question their motives. It’s clear that McCabe is not just opposed to school choice in Wisconsin; he wants to end existing programs:
“After 23 years, you’d think that if a state program failed to deliver the promised results and had a checkered management history to boot, lawmakers would be talking about ending it. Instead, they are debating its expansion.”
There is so much to counter in the commentary it is hard to know where to start. McCabe writes that advocates said the program would “not only boost the achievement of students benefiting from the public vouchers paying for them to attend a private or religious school, but would also lift all boats by creating competition among schools,” but concludes it “hasn’t happened.”
“the voucher program has been plagued over the years by story after story after story of poor performance, safety code violations, mismanagement and fraud.”
This statement is just irresponsible. Is he referring to David Seppeh, the former principal who stole from the program in 2004, who was caught and sent to prison? Seppeh, according to former Journal Sentinel writer Gregory Stanford, was caught “thanks to new standards voucher proponents helped draft.” If a few isolated cases of criminal fraud warrant eliminating a public institution or program we’d have to get rid of the public school system too.
Many things should be part of the debate on voucher expansion. Part of the debate should be the extensive research on the results of the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program (MPCP). Part of the debate should be the evolution of the MPCP over its existence. School choice in 2013 looks nothing like school choice in 1990, especially in terms of the effectiveness of its accountability framework. And part of the debate should certainly be the motives of those advocating for school choice…and against it.
At the start my public policy career I had the good fortune to work with someone who fully understood the power of the Legislative Fiscal Bureau (LFB) in influencing Wisconsin policy debates. To paraphrase my colleague, legislators want answers, and LFB is the respected authority that provides them. It follows that the content of LFB fiscal notes are often the catalyst, or death knell, for major potential policy changes.
First the note points out the obvious. When a student switches from a public school to private school via the theoretical choice program the district loses revenue. Why? Each student attending a public school district generates somewhere around $10,000 in state aid and local revenue (this is an estimate for ease of understanding, the actual amount varies by district). When a student leaves for any reason, the district will eventually lose the $10,000 per-kid. If you look at Table 4 on page 5 the first column shows the eventual estimated impact on participating district revenue limits.
School districts will naturally get worked up about this; they want the market-share and the revenue that comes with it. However, it is hard to justify that districts should be receiving funds for students they are no longer educating.
The more problematic part of the note for school choice advocates is the next three columns. The first column shows the aid reduction to public school districts to pay for 38.4% of the new choice program. Districts don’t lose this money, they offset it with the property tax levy. In most cases, the local per-pupil cost for a choice program is less than the local per-pupil cost for a public school student, so on the surface it appears taxpayers are getting a bargain. However, the next column is where things get more complicated.
That column, labeled “Aid Formula Reduction,” reflects two things. First, the loss of state aid that would have been generated by each pupil that leaves the district. Second, the change in distribution of state and local aid caused by having fewer students in the per-member property value calculation. In English (or something closer to it), when a student leaves a district the district’s per-member property value increases, which lowers the portion of their revenue that comes from state aid and increases the portion that comes from the local property tax.
That is why, against all logic, that last column shows a levy increase despite the lower cost of the choice program. To put in even simpler, when a student leaves for any reason it does impact the state aid/property tax split for students the district is still educating.
Whether you follow me or not, it is important to note that the district does not lose any total revenue for students it continues to educate, it only makes them raise more of that revenue through the property tax. In other words, this is mainly a taxpayer issue.
All of this leads to the important question for legislators, do you support school choice on the merits, or will you pull support over these estimated levy changes? I have argued on this blog many times that there are good reasons to support school choice. It would be a shame if these good reasons are ignored because of the technical issue of a funding formula that was created prior to the creation of school choice programs.
The mission of PolitiFact is noble and needed in many cases. It makes sense for a newspaper to try to sort out the sometimes misleading and outright false statements of Wisconsin politicians. However, there are some issues, like school funding, that are not black and white and hence confound PolitFact’s simple rating system.
This is why their attempt to sort out Governor Walker’s claim on school voucher funding is particularly head-scratching. Specifically, PolitiFact evaluates the statement from Governor Walker that under his budget “choice schools will get about half” of public school funding per-pupil.
PolitiFact rates the statement half-true, stating:
“He’s pretty close for some schools but not others based on his method of comparison, but off considerably based on a method preferred by researchers as a more accurate comparison. On the Truth-O-Meter, there’s a spot for claims that are partially accurate but leave out important details or takes things out of context.”
Overall their conclusion is ok, technically the Governor was incorrect to say half of the public funding as public schools. A comparison of the average per-pupil public support of students in the Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) with students using the Milwaukee Parental Choice Program shows private high school students, under Walker’s budget, will get about 60% of their MPS peers. However, to borrow the language of PolitFact, the rationale for their conclusion is half-true.
First, they suggest that any comparison of voucher and public school funding is not technically true because no comparison is perfect. While this is correct because Wisconsin funds the two systems in different ways, the lack of a perfect comparison does not mean any attempted comparison is by definition an obfuscation.
Second, they mention that some MPS revenue goes to private schools, but that no one knows how much “because we don’t have budget details for private schools.” First, there is pretty detailed fiscal data on schools accepting vouchers on DPI’s website. Second, in MPS’ budget you can see that about $18 million in federal funds flow through the district to private schools in Milwaukee. That averages out to about $600 per-pupil for private school students in Milwaukee.
Third, it is possible to subtract funds for private schools and non-education expenses such as recreation from MPS’ budget when making a per-pupil support comparisons. I did that back in July (if anyone is interested) and came up with a per-pupil support number of $13,269 for MPS.
Perhaps I am getting away from the point here. Half-true or not, by any objective measure students in the choice program are supported by significantly fewer public funds than students in traditional public schools. The key policy question is not who is describing the inequity best, but whether policymakers feel the inequity is worth addressing.