School distrcits spend thousands of dollars per student per year, and public education is a huge expense in state budgets.  For example, in Washington State, public schools currently spending $12,233 per child per year in K-12.  It is important to know how much of that money actually reaches the classroom and what the taxpayers are getting for that investment.  Here are questions to ask of legislators, school board members and school officials.

Follow the Money

In Washington State public states are currently spending $12,233 per child per year in K-12.  According to the Gates Foundation, 1/3 of our students drop out between 9th and 12th grade and 1/3 of those who graduate are not prepared for college or the workforce.  Of those who do attend college, 56% need to take a remedial course in math or science.

Specific Questions to Ask

• How much is spent; what programs are funded; and what are the program outcomes through each K-12 revenue source?
• How much money (all funds) is allocated for K-12?
• What is the definition of student and has it changed? It appears that some districts count home-schoolers who take one course (i.e. a science course) as a full time student.
• How much of the per pupil allocated actually gets to the building where each child attends school?
• Does the state use the best practice for determining education funding (i.e. some states use average daily attendance as opposed to Washington's state once a year count)? The average daily attendance also creates an incentive for districts to go after truant (or absent) students.
• What percentage of the school budget is federal funding? How much of the school district's paperwork is caused by federal funding? i.e. does it cost the district more to pursue some federal programs than the funds it receives?
• For individual school districts- how many certified employees are in the school district? and of these certified employees how many are actually classroom teachers (in the classroom teaching
• What percentage of your state's high school students graduate by race.

Time, Responsibility and Incentive (TRI)

http://www.effwa.org/main/article.php?article_id=295.  In Washington state the legislature has the sole power to increase teachers' salaries via cost of living adjustments (COLAs) or base salary increases. School boards cannot provide these types of across-the-board salary increases to teachers, but the WEA as found another way to increase pay; Time Responsibility and Incentive (TRI). TRI was set up to improve academic achievement, but the WEA has managed to use it for cost-of-living increases above the level funded by the legislature.  Since these funds must come out of local levies, TRI contracts are negotiated above what local districts can fund and they then reduce basic education funding or use local levy funds  and claim that the legislature is not fully funding basic education.

• Has my district used TRI to increase teacher pay?
• How many TRI days does my district have? Large discrepancies exist between districts because they have differing numbers of TRI days.
• What is the TRI per diem in my district? Some districts use TRI to pay teachers twice what they would normally make in a given day.
• What educational programs have been cut in order to fund TRI?
• Which teachers are getting raises via TRI?

Bilingual Education

The purpose of bilingual education is to ensure that students receive grade-level instruction while they develop the English language skills to study at grade level in a regular classroom.  This program has a very high failure rate in Washington State, which has three transitional bilingual courses.  Fewer than ten percent of the students enrolled successfully complete the transition to English language. California (Proposition 227 passed in June 1998); Arizona (proposition 203- November 2000) and Massachusetts (2002) have eliminated bilingual.  Test scores in Arizona and California have gone up rather than down.

• How is success measured?
• Why does the program have such a low rate of completion?

The Learning Assistance Program (LAP)

LAP grants funds to school districts to provide instructional help to children whose academic performance is below average. 

• What is the return on the LAP investment?
• Do students in the LAP program achieve better results?
• How much money does the state spend on the LAP program?

Class Size Reduction

The state has allocated hundreds of millions of dollars to class size reduction, yet many teachers have overcrowded classrooms.  When we checked with OSPI several years ago they had no accurate data on class size!

• What is the average class size in Washington State?
• Where did the class size reduction money go?
• Why are so many teachers still facing overcrowded classrooms?

Special Education

In 2001 in Washington State, the Joint Legislative Audit & Review Committee. (JLARC) audit revealed that OSPI had no means to evaluate the effectiveness of the K-12 special education program.  A 2000 audit by the California State Auditor revealed that performance measures were virtually nonexistent.

• Has Washington taken any steps to develop performance measures?
• What kinds of performance measures do other states have in place?
• How much funding is given to special education?
• How is funding for special education determined if there are no performance measures?

Administrative Costs

Though "per-pupil" spending steadily increased in Washington State, the amount of money actually being spent on students is declining. Administrative costs and overhead are becoming a larger and larger portion of school budgets. One reason these costs are hard to track is that there is no consistent definition of  "administrative costs," which makes statewide comparison impossible.

• What kinds of things are included in "administrative costs?"
• How much is spent of administrative costs on a per-pupil basis?
• How much have administrative costs increased overall in the last ten years?
• How much have administrative costs increased as a share of total education funding over the last ten years?
• How much funding for administration comes pre-assigned to certain expenses?

 

Transportation Costs

In Washington state JLARC found there is no systematic method to account separately for to/from transportation and the tools that exist for doing so are incomplete and unaudited  Additionally, JLARC found that accounting and reporting of certain transportation costs, such as bus aides, utilities, and insurance, is not consistent across districts."

• How does my district keep track of transportation costs?
• How is transportation funding allocated?
• How much money does the district/state spend on transportation?

School Districts  

EFF recommends that SAO audit the degree to which elected school board members carry out their fiduciary responsibilities.  EFF feels that certain matters, like labor contracts, are not executed with proper involvement by K-12 elected officials. 

• How does my district negotiate labor contracts?
• Who are the key elected officials for education, and what role do they play in contract negotiation?
• Who has the final say for the state in labor negotiations?

 10.  Audit of WASL (Note: The WASL has now been replaced by the Measurements of Student Progress for Grades 3-8 and the High School Proficiency Exam)

        a.is it a scientific reliable indicator of student success

        b, State has spent over $1 billion on WASL. What are the benefits?

 

Filed Under : K-12 Education, Solutions