Spend more money on traditional schools? We tried that
Opponents of the charter-school amendment on next month’s ballot offer a simple alternative idea: Spend more money.
That’s about all the educational establishment can conjure as a means of improving Georgia’s below-average results. State schools superintendent John Barge got to the point quickly when he came out against the amendment back in August.
Barge estimated the state would spend an extra $430 million on new charter schools over a five-year period. He said the state shouldn’t spend that money until existing schools are fully staffed with fully paid teachers for full school years – the lack of which he attributed to state budget cuts averaging almost $1.2 billion in recent years.
So, there you have it, fiscal conservatives wary of the amendment. Barge and his fellow travelers don’t want to spend another $430 million over the next five years. They want to spend an additional $6 billion during those years – about 14 times as much.
Whereas charter schools would at least offer a chance to give students and parents different and better options, that $6 billion would go into the same model we’ve had for years. As it happens, we already know what we get when we pour more and more money into that system: Student learning doesn’t grow nearly as quickly as the funding does.
That’s because, complaints about spending notwithstanding, educational spending in Georgia has gone up, up, up over the longer term. But test scores have barely budged by comparison.
Consider a common national benchmark for standardized testing: the National Assessment of Educational Progress, or NAEP. Because the annual data available for budget numbers and state NAEP scores don’t always overlap, I’m making the most long-term comparison I can: 2002 to 2011.
Between 2002 and 2011, state funding per pupil rose by 10 percent.
Reading scores for Georgia fourth-graders and eighth-graders during those years rose by just 2.8 percent and 1.6 percent, respectively.
Math scores for Georgia fourth-graders rose by 3.5 percent, eighth-graders by 3 percent. (The math scores actually come from 2003, but per-pupil funding then was within $2 of its level in 2002, so it’s a very similar comparison.)
As I reported in a recent column, state-chartered schools – the ones that stand to grow if the amendment passes — already outperform their local, traditional counterparts by about 12 percent.
Perhaps the extra money didn’t yield commensurate results because it didn’t always go into classrooms, according to the Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice.
In a report to be released this week, the foundation found the number of teachers in Georgia grew about twice as fast as the number of students over the past two decades. But so did the number of non-instructional staff (e.g., administrators and secretaries).
Had the growth in non-instructional staff merely kept pace with that of students, Georgia would have employed about 23,000 fewer people in 2008, the most recent year the foundation studied. Using a conservative estimate of $40,000 per year for each of them, these extra workers cost Georgia about $925 million that year.
And how much do Barge & Co. think Georgia schools need each year? Right: $1.2 billion. That $925 million alone would cover three-quarters of the tab.
But if our educational dollars aren’t well-spent now, why would we give them more? And why wouldn’t we embrace an amendment that offers a better way?
– By Kyle Wingfield
Tell us what you think about the site
Customer Care »
Vacation stops, manage subscriptions and more
AJC Services
Sections
Other Editions
Visitor Agreement | Privacy Statement
© 2013 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
243 comments Add your comment
mark.
October 21st, 2012
10:56 am
So, lets be capitalist, lets pay the “high need areas” more, due to less supply. Maybe we can convince a GT physics grad to teach physics or chemsitry, instead of getting that $80000 enginneering job. by the way- there are no unions in Georgia education, a teacher can be fired by doing all the paper work, it is not hard. I belong to PAGE for a 1million dollar liability insurance, plus a lawyer if I need one. cc, it was once called a “calling”, back when teacher’s childern were on free lunch programs.
Rafe Hollister, suffering through Oblamer's ineptocracy
October 21st, 2012
11:02 am
So Conservatives are inconsistent because they spout local control but are for this amendment. As LBB pointed out, the most local control rests with the parent.
Libs spout “choice”, when a woman is deciding whether to carry a child to term or abort it. But, they are for no choice, when a woman is unhappy with the school her child attends.
Mary Elizabeth
October 21st, 2012
11:07 am
“Teaching once was a ‘calling’, but it now is merely a job for many people. I shall always be grateful that my education came at the hands of very dedicated professionals.”
========================================
I am a retired teacher. No one could have considered teaching to be a “calling” more than I. After I retired in 2000, I worked as a substitute teacher until 2006. I continued to see dedicated teachers in each of the 10 schools in which I functioned as a substitute teacher through 2006.
Please vote NO on NOvember 6 to defeat the Constitutional Amendment, and then work in your local districts to make traditional public education better, with the support of public charter schools which have been authorized by local school districts or by the State Board of Education.
Rafe Hollister, suffering through Oblamer's ineptocracy
October 21st, 2012
11:09 am
td
I agree with you assessment that the children who have parents who care about education will gravitate toward the Charter schools, I just do not agree that that in itself is all bad. Yes, the public schools will be left with children, whose parents do not care.
This is much like the compulsory attendance laws. Do we raise the age, where students, can legally drop out of school? If so, we afflict the schools with unmotivated students, that cause discipline problems, or do we just let them go to save the education for the remaining students.
It is a difficult problem, but we need to work on solutions that will motivate parents and students, to stick it out and focus on education during their youth. Until we get there, we need to do what is best for each and every child, not try to treat them all the same, and wind up with teaching to the lowest common denominator.
Huh?
October 21st, 2012
11:16 am
“Maybe we can convince a GT physics grad to teach physics or chemsitry, instead of getting that $80000 enginneering (sic) job.”
You can’t become an engineer with a physics degree alone. You need a…wait for it…engineering degree to become an engineer.
cc
October 21st, 2012
11:16 am
zeke:
While I agree with your entire comment, I especially agree with, “Government schools are no more than indoctrination centers that mangle the minds of mush that are our children!”
Real Athens
October 21st, 2012
11:25 am
There are lots of solutions, Kyle. You’re just paid not to report on them lest they go against your slant or your masters.
Spend more money? Um, how about restore funding cut in the last 8 years. Georgia has been cutting roughly $1 Billion per year in education funding since Perdue was governor. Oh, I forgot that would cut into the cash that our governor uses to reward friends, family, campaign supporters and himself.
Why no mention that 96% of the funds spent backing this amendment come from out of state? If you want to send your kid to private school get the Koch Brothers to pay for it in return for your unquestioning servitude on the editorial page.
What a hack.
http://empoweredga.org/OurBeliefs/beliefs.html
Rightwing Troll
October 21st, 2012
11:33 am
Wingnuts are perfectly OK with trying failed economic and foreign policies over and over again until it works… why not education?
Rightwing Troll
October 21st, 2012
11:34 am
“Georgia schools are no more than indoctrination centers that mangle the minds of mush that are our children!”
This places proves that on a daily basis…
cc
October 21st, 2012
11:45 am
“OK with trying failed economic and foreign policies”
By “failed” policies, I assume you mean those that worked for 232 years and gave Americans the highest standard of living on Earth?
By “failed” policies, I would also assume that you mean those that made America a dominant power (some might say THE dominant power) in the world?
Only in the past nearly four years have we slipped, and that has been due to a president that seeks to abandon all that has made America great.
Fortunately, that is about to change . . .
adam smith's invisible hand
October 21st, 2012
11:53 am
Why give the money to schools when we can let Nathan Deal give it to his friends on shady land deals. By the way, the land may have some shade.
Real Athens
October 21st, 2012
11:55 am
Written by the former head of the Republican Party in Georgia (Lee Raudonis) — a holdover from a time when there was a modicum of common sense involved in politics in this state instead of blind partisanship and one party rule.
http://empoweredga.org/Articles/Raudonis/madness-of-ga-ed-policies.html
Real Athens
October 21st, 2012
12:12 pm
“Only in the past nearly four years have we slipped, and that has been due to a president that seeks to abandon all that has made America great.”
Ahhh, the dreaded four year memory syndrome, accompanied by amnesia of the previous 8.
Rightwing Troll
October 21st, 2012
12:49 pm
“By “failed” policies, I assume you mean those that worked for 232 years and gave Americans the highest standard of living on Earth?
By “failed” policies, I would also assume that you mean those that made America a dominant power (some might say THE dominant power) in the world?
Only in the past nearly four years have we slipped, and that has been due to a president that seeks to abandon all that has made America great.
Fortunately, that is about to change . . .”
No Mr. Silly Pants…
I was referring to the disastrous policies of 2000-2008 that you wingnuts seem dead set on reanimating… I realize those years don’t exist in the wingnut collective memory, but I assure they DID happen…
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
October 21st, 2012
12:50 pm
I look at it this way.
This amendment merely provides an appeals process for charter schools to employ if they are given short shrift by their local BOE’s, and let’s face it, with the number of government-school toadies on (and advising) local BOE’s, you get that quick dismissal a LOT at the local level.
I have no problem with an appeals process being available when local boards can’t or won’t do their job.
This is nothing more than that.
Mary Elizabeth
October 21st, 2012
1:14 pm
The Constitutional Amendment is more political than educational, in my opinion. Children “trapped” in their present school system already have the option of attending a state charter school by having their parents apply to the State Board of Education to establish a state charter school for them, which will remove them from their local school districts.
The Constitutional Amendment is unnecessary. The fact that it is unnecessary to create state charter schools for parents and children should alert readers to just how political this amendment is. Vote NO in NOvember to this amendment
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
October 21st, 2012
1:19 pm
“Children “trapped” in their present school system already have the option of attending a state charter school by having their parents apply to the State Board of Education to establish a state charter school for them, which will remove them from their local school districts.
The Constitutional Amendment is unnecessary. The fact that it is unnecessary to create state charter schools for parents and children should alert readers to just how political this amendment is.
OK, first parents can apply to establish a state charter school, but then it is unnecessary for them to do so, all in the same post.
Is there any wonder why people don’t believe teachers (or retired ones) to be the best advocates for educational changes in this country?
bluecoat
October 21st, 2012
1:59 pm
Most I’ve talked to are ok with charter schools.It’s the new appointed state agency they are against.For profit,out of state corporations/entities/people getting our tax dollars.We say less gov.,less spending,and let the people at the local level make the decisions.I think our schools are called county,not state.
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
October 21st, 2012
2:10 pm
So, bluecoat, you’re against this because someone might make a profit and that profit might not be in Georgia, even if the kids have a better chance to be educated?
What’s the goal here? Better education or not?
I don’t care where the money goes if it improves the failing system we have now.
bluecoat
October 21st, 2012
2:28 pm
Yes we could outsource our education to China.I care where our money goes.You know where a great % of our money is,and you don’t care?
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
October 21st, 2012
2:31 pm
Got it bluecoat..
Don’t care about the kids and their education.
Clear as a bell.
crankee-yankee
October 21st, 2012
2:31 pm
The headline should read “Spend LESS money on traditional schools, we are doing that”
How you can equate $5 billion in cuts over 10 years with spending more on education is incomprehensible. You are drinking the kool-aid Kyle.
Mary Elizabeth
October 21st, 2012
2:59 pm
Tiberius, 1:19 pm
“OK, first parents can apply to establish a state charter school, but then it is unnecessary for them to do so, all in the same post.
Is there any wonder why people don’t believe teachers (or retired ones) to be the best advocates for educational changes in this country?”
==========================================
Tiberius, you are quick to judge but you are wrong in your analysis of what I wrote. You either did not read my post correctly, or you do not know the issue sufficiently.
The Constitutional Amendment is unnecessary because it is redundant of what the State Board of Education can already do, namely, to establish state charter schools outside of the jurisdiction of local school districts. When students feel “trapped” by a local district (and some might), then they have, presently, the option (or choice) to apply to the State Board of Education to establish a state charter school. (Most students do not feel “trapped” by their public schools.) The Constitutional Amendment would establish a State Commission for Charter Schools for the purpose of establishing state charter schools, but that role is already being served by the State Board of Education. Therefore, the Constitutional Amendment is a duplication of th option already given to parents to establish a public charter school outside of their school district’s authority, and therefore the constitutional amendment is unnecessary.
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
October 21st, 2012
3:04 pm
OK, so let me get this straight, crankee-yankee, Kyle’s statement based on the state’s own budget numbers show this:
“Between 2002 and 2011, state funding per pupil rose by 10 percent.”
Yet you continue the manta that that there has been $5 billion in cuts to funding. Don’t you mean cuts in the INCREASES to funding, and not actual cuts?
It seems to me that we’ve increased spending, just not to the levels you’d like. If that’s the case, did you go down to your local school board budget meetings in the last 10 years and speak out for a higher school millage rate?
You know, so you can pay for the better education more spending supposedly provides?
Darwin
October 21st, 2012
3:05 pm
So your answer is to privatize government services so that we can enjoy the fruits of more lobbyists taking tax payer money? Voters make their preference known in a non binding referendum about lobbyists influence on politics and now they’re going to vote for more? You can’t make this stuff up.
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
October 21st, 2012
3:06 pm
Mary Elizabeth, “parents” don’t apply for charter schools, charter schools do.
Nice deflection, though.
Mary Elizabeth
October 21st, 2012
3:12 pm
Parents organize to establish charter schools. You quibble.
Beverly Fraud
October 21st, 2012
3:13 pm
What if you can’t convince “the locals” to stop acting IGNORANT? What do you do when “the locals” vote for people like LaChandra Butler-Burks who according to this very paper (correct me if I’m wrong Kyle) ACTIVELY CONSPIRED with Beverly Hall to cover up cheating in Atlanta?
You don’t trust some of the motives of the “for profit” crowd? How could they POSSIBLY be worse than the likes of Butler-Burks and APS as a whole?
Mary Elizabeth
October 21st, 2012
3:26 pm
Beverly, when your intent is to supplant all of public education (not just one system) with quasi-private for-profit schools, you will have changed the very nature of public education in our nation. I will never support public schools which are based on a for-profit model. We have enough “for profit” institutions and industries in this nation today. Public schools must remain free, as much as possible, of profit motivations. Improve public schools, but do not turn them into money-making machines for the greed of profiteers. Children used for profit. Unconscionable.
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
October 21st, 2012
3:33 pm
“Beverly, when your intent is to supplant all of public education (not just one system) with quasi-private for-profit schools, you will have changed the very nature of public education in our nation.”
Yeah, ’cause we don’t want to replace something that has become an abject failure, now do we?
Hillbilly D
October 21st, 2012
3:38 pm
a holdover from a time when there was a modicum of common sense involved in politics in this state instead of blind partisanship and one party rule.
When in the last 150 years or so had Georgia not had one party rule?
Gramma240
October 21st, 2012
3:46 pm
Kyle, I would be in favor of a charter school constitutional amendment except that those waiting behind the scenes are mega-corporations that run for-profit charter schools. If my reading of the amendment is correct, these schools would qualify to receive tax-appropriated FTE funding. My tax dollars going to for-profit schools? I don’t think so.
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
October 21st, 2012
3:48 pm
Again, Gramma240, what is the goal? Better educated kids or potential profit in doing so?
You would deny kids a better education because someone might make a buck doing so?
Master (de)Bater
October 21st, 2012
3:55 pm
After reading a few responses saying that our schools are “underfunded,” I ask:
Underfunded as compared to WHAT?!
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
October 21st, 2012
3:58 pm
This “I don’t want my tax dollars going to for-profit institutions” is a bunch of malarkey.
Do you think that Kevlar vest your local cop wears is made by someone who doesn’t make a profit? That fire truck? The bullets and jets our military uses?
Tax dollars go to private for-profit firms each and every day, and for great purposes.
Why shouldn’t they go to better educate our future?
Mary Elizabeth
October 21st, 2012
4:16 pm
Most charter schools perform no better than traditional public schools, according to the Stanford Study. Approximately 37% of charter schools do worse than than traditional public schools while only 17% do better.
Some public charter schools can help to enhance traditional public education, but the charter school movement must move slowly enough to assess, with prudence, what this movement is creating, and how effective it is, in Georgia. Moreover, we must not try to dismantle traditional public education in Georgia, but instead seek to improve it. Legislators cannot continue to cut 4.4 billion dollars from public education in Georgia, as it has done in the last four years, and expect it to improve.
Mary Elizabeth
October 21st, 2012
4:18 pm
Correction: as “they” have done in the last four years, not as “it” has done. . .
Halftrack
October 21st, 2012
4:28 pm
The big issue here is money. Public schools don’t want to compete against charter. When schools begin to look to the children’s education welfare and not to unions, pay scales, and size of buildings and number of students, etc. then parents, teachers, and politicians may be better satisfied. Ask any teacher, would they want their children educated here and be prepared for college? and what needs to be changed here for the children?
Beverly Fraud
October 21st, 2012
4:30 pm
@Mary Elizabeth what do you say to those who say “Crawford Lewis? Edmund Heatley? $2100 chairs in the DCSS central office? The guy in Macon who got the taxpayers to pay for a $5000 desk at his previous spot?” What do you say to those who would say those aren’t the exceptions to the status quo, those ARE the status quo?
What would you say to those who would say if the amendment passes, the public schools brought it all upon themselves?
mike
October 21st, 2012
4:49 pm
As stated (much) earlier, this issue is about one thing and one thing only: the right wants to divert their property tax dollars to private Christian schools. Unfortunately, diverting their property tax dollars to private Christian schools will cause everyone else’s property taxes to go up to offset the difference.
Mary Elizabeth
October 21st, 2012
4:51 pm
Beverly Fraud, 4:30 pm
“What would you say to those who would say if the amendment passes, the public schools brought it all upon themselves?”
=============================================
I don’t think in those terms, Beverly. Blame casting has never been my “modus operandi.” I prefer simply to see clearly and solve problems. If corruption exists in certain school systems, or within certain personnel within school systems, then those people must be held accountable. However, I try to keep one eye focused on the present and one eye focused on the future, as to what Georgia will be creating with an inordinate number of public charter schools operated by profit-based private sector management compaies. Just because some corruption exists presently in certain public schools, does not mean that citizens need to “throw out the baby with the bathwater” of all public school systems. An educational delivery model in Georgia in which quasi-private public charter schools would hire management corporations for profit has the potential for much greater corruption than is present currently because that delivery model is primarily based on profit, not public service. Look at what has happened to many of these charter schools in Florida, which started out to be innovating models of instruction, but several years later ended up being agencies for profit with often poor results.
the red herring
October 21st, 2012
5:10 pm
tom @1:32pm — dead on—perhaps as more people take notice of these salaries and positions (not jobs but positions)—it doesn’t take that many administrators to run a school. the taxpayer is being hosed all under the guise of educating our children…. repair and maintain schools and buildings rather than rebuild them all the time. set standards for teachers pay them well and cut them loose if the standards aren’t met. above all else stop paying administrators/asst.administrators principals/etc more than governors and presidents. how foolish.
Beverly Fraud
October 21st, 2012
5:33 pm
“If corruption exists in certain school systems, or within certain personnel within school systems, then those people must be held accountable.”
@Mary Elizabeth, I get the Koch brother, ALEC and all of that. But at what point does the number of “certain systems” or “certain personnel” which the point of critical mass that it becomes SYSTEMIC?
I would say we’ve reached that point…and beyond. I’m not looking forward to a foreign entity bring in foreign teachers at pennies on the dollar, or using taxpayer funds to teach that the Earth is 6000 years old either, but how else to break up a monolith that has proven over and over again, it exists only to feed itself?
yuzeyurbrane
October 21st, 2012
5:56 pm
Kyle, I think you are smart. In fact, smart enough to know you are spouting a lot of bs to promote this state charter school amendment. Your headlinej “We tried that” simply fails to mention that we quit trying about 5 years ago and in fact have gutted state spending on public education to the tune of about $4 billion. Proposed increases now are largely an attempt to repair the damage done by Jan Jones, Fran Millar and the other rightwingnuts who make education policy in the legislature. Yeh, gut public education finances and then claim that govt. can’t do anything right. Why not put on your big boy pants and just admit you want to destroy traditional public schools and replace them with some sort of 2 tiered for-profit semi-segregated educ. system?
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
October 21st, 2012
5:56 pm
“Approximately 37% of charter schools do worse than than traditional public schools while only 17% do better.”
So that means that 63% of charter schools do at least as good, if not better than public schools.
Not a bad record at all.
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
October 21st, 2012
5:59 pm
mike doesn’t understand that when you take students away from public schools, the cost to educate those who are left goes down as well; therefore, taxes need not go up.
No wonder he doesn’t understand economics.
Tiberius - pulling the tail of the left AND right when needed
October 21st, 2012
6:01 pm
“Legislators cannot continue to cut 4.4 billion dollars from public education in Georgia, as it has done in the last four years, and expect it to improve.”
And yet, they haven’t, Mary Elizabeth.
They’ve cut the GROWTH in spending.
TruthBe
October 21st, 2012
6:24 pm
Public Schools have been a complete failure since the racist liberal democrats have taken them over. Less learning about Math, Science, History, English, and more learning about condoms and homosexuals. Just look at the corrupt black liberal democrat leadership in the APS with Beverly Hall for a great example of this. Affirmative action at it’s best, isn’t that so Atlanta Public Schools.
Mary Elizabeth
October 21st, 2012
7:14 pm
As I posted yesterday evening at 8:47 pm -
“FACT: The state (of Georgia) has already cut $4.4 billion from schools since 2008.”
Source: Excerpted from GAE Magazine, Volume 11, Issue 1
Hillbilly D
October 21st, 2012
8:12 pm
Whether the state has cut money or not, my school taxes just keep going up and up every year, despite declining enrollment in our county. I think they should start cutting the bloated administrative staffs and go from there.
A writer above mentioned $5 K desks. That doesn’t just go on in the education department, it goes on throughout local and state governments. Look at all the Taj Mahal courthouses that have been built in the last few years (why does a county administrator need his/her own bathroom for Heaven’s sake?). Let the school system administrators use the same desks as a teacher uses. It’s just a desk and serves the same purpose. They might not feel quite so special sitting behind it but who cares?