Who needs good teachers, anyway?
Let me pose a hypothetical: Two schools, one which serves mainly students from upper-middle-class families who live in safe, nuturing environments, the other which serves mainly students from lower-class families who live in dangerous, impoverished environments. With limited resources, do you devote more money to the first school or the second?
The advantaged school, of course.
Profs. Marguerite Roza and Paul Hill of the University of Washington and Center on Reinventing Public Education had an op-ed in Monday's Washington Post in which they explain their new report finding that schools serving disadvantaged populations are getting less funds than their upscale counterparts.
Roza and Hill write:
This insanity is hardly isolated to five large urban districts. Nationally in 2002, schools in districts with the least poverty recieved on average $1,348 more per student than districts iwth the most poverty. Per student! (Source: Education Trust, The Funding Gap 2004). That's about $40,000 in a classroom of 30 kids, and nearly $540,000 in a school of 400.
Money isn't everything, to be sure -- Washington, D.C., is proof enough of that -- but if not sufficient, it is certainly necessary. Money pays for facilities, books, field trips, technology, and, most importantly, teachers. Unsurprisingly, study after study tells us that disadvantaged schools aren't getting teachers that are qualified or effective.
How much difference does having a good teacher really make? More than you can imagine. To quote a policy brief from the Center for Comprehensive Schools Reform and Improvement:
The average teacher salary nationwide is about $46,700, with the average starting salary ranging in the low- to mid-30k range. That means that if the extra $540,000 going to the advantaged school anually was instead going to the disadvantaged school, the disadvantaged school could hire a dozen teachers or, if it wanted to pay above average, a smaller number of extremely effective teachers.
Schools and students that need effective teachers the most aren't getting the resources to acquire them. The funding gap is inexcusable, but the result of the funding gap is catastrophic.
The advantaged school, of course.
Profs. Marguerite Roza and Paul Hill of the University of Washington and Center on Reinventing Public Education had an op-ed in Monday's Washington Post in which they explain their new report finding that schools serving disadvantaged populations are getting less funds than their upscale counterparts.
Roza and Hill write:
Here is how it works. While the law is clear that districts should spread their state and local funds evenly among all schools before applying the federal dollars, the truth is that they don't. In four of the five large urban districts we studied, noncategorical funds -- those intended for all students -- disproportionately go to schools that have students from wealthier families. In Denver, the school district spends $365 more per student in the more upscale schools than on those who attend the schools serving families with the highest poverty levels. That adds up to a difference of nearly $200,000 for a school enrolling 500 students.This is primarily due, they continue, to district accounting practices that use average teacher salary in divvying up each school's budget. Because advantaged schools are hiring better teachers with higher salaries, the disadvantaged schools are having funds tied off for teachers they aren't paying.
This insanity is hardly isolated to five large urban districts. Nationally in 2002, schools in districts with the least poverty recieved on average $1,348 more per student than districts iwth the most poverty. Per student! (Source: Education Trust, The Funding Gap 2004). That's about $40,000 in a classroom of 30 kids, and nearly $540,000 in a school of 400.
Money isn't everything, to be sure -- Washington, D.C., is proof enough of that -- but if not sufficient, it is certainly necessary. Money pays for facilities, books, field trips, technology, and, most importantly, teachers. Unsurprisingly, study after study tells us that disadvantaged schools aren't getting teachers that are qualified or effective.
How much difference does having a good teacher really make? More than you can imagine. To quote a policy brief from the Center for Comprehensive Schools Reform and Improvement:
[W]e now know that good teaching matters tremendously. One influential study in Tennessee found that two groups of students who start out with the same level of achievement can end up 50 points apart on a 100-point scale if one group is assigned three ineffective teachers in a row and the other is assigned three effective teachers in a row. A more recent study in Texas found that the impact of classroom teaching is so great that “having five years of good teachers in a row could overcome the average seventh-grade mathematics achievement gap between lower-income kids and those from higher-income families.”Looking at it from another angle, multiple researchers have quantified student achievement in terms of future dollars earned. Any way you cut it, an increase of one standard deviation in math performance, for example, can be worth between $100,000 to $200,000 over the course of a student's career. For a person whose annual salary is a respectable $50,000, that's an enormous bonus; consider the impact on someone trying to break a cycle of generational poverty.
The average teacher salary nationwide is about $46,700, with the average starting salary ranging in the low- to mid-30k range. That means that if the extra $540,000 going to the advantaged school anually was instead going to the disadvantaged school, the disadvantaged school could hire a dozen teachers or, if it wanted to pay above average, a smaller number of extremely effective teachers.
Schools and students that need effective teachers the most aren't getting the resources to acquire them. The funding gap is inexcusable, but the result of the funding gap is catastrophic.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, August 23, 2005 at 12:58 AM.
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