Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Ed Deegan, an accountant in Montpelier who lives in East Montpelier.
Several years ago the Legislature hired economist Tom Kavet to study the educational financial system, Act 60 and 68. Kavet’s report was accurate, well documented and the analysis was well done. It was worth every penny the state paid for it.
The problem is, no one read it. At the same time that Kavet was issuing his report, Education Commissioner Richard Cate was issuing his “Cate Study.” Although this study was well done, the reality is it was not based on quantifiable information; it was based on common sense. Everyone involved in education including principals, superintendents, school board members and legislators read the Cate report and took it as gospel. Very few read the Kavet report.
Now a few years later we are still analyzing what should be the obvious. However, our Legislature hired an out-of-state consultant at a cost of $300,000 to, in most cases, tell them what they already should know. The problem is that this study by Picus and Associates of Los Angeles was not only a waste of money but is pretty much invalid. We are now publishing the results in the paper and legislators on both sides are using misinformation to make invalid points. Did anyone do the math or check the numbers?
The first numbers issued, total spending ($1.353 billion) student population (85,000) and cost per pupil do not divide out to the $17,000 per-pupil cost given. I will give them some slack because they were rounded estimates but the numbers given do not even come close. The numbers divide out to less than $16,000 ($15,918) which is quite a difference.
There is where the slack ends. Where did the numbers come from in this study? Several references are made to the NEA. I wonder why we would be using numbers from the NEA, which is basically a lobbying group for teachers, instead of from the Department of Education. This would be like taking information from the Heritage Foundation, which skewers its information to match its opinions.
So now we have Sen. Randy Brock and Rep. Oliver Olsen making claims based on this report that are just plain wrong. Overall educational spending did not go up by 87 percent over the last decade. Not using a cumulative approach that would mean budgets went up 8.7 percent a year, not one year in the last decade did we come close to even hitting 8.7 percent. The largest increase of all 10 years was 7.3 percent and that was in the fiscal year 2000. Taking the same information you can come up with different answers to how much spending actually went up by the way you analyze it, but using a cumulative approach will give you the higher number. Even using the cumulative approach spending increased over the last decade by 62 percent, not 87 percent, but on average over the last decade the total would be 53 percent. This is based on the Department of Education numbers.
Brock goes on to state that per-pupil spending increased by 150 percent (from the report). Not even close. Again taking the cumulative effect and the Department of Education numbers it would be 81.4 percent increase over the decade. The non-cumulative effect would be 66.3 percent or about a 6.3 percent per year increase (on average). Considering the challenges we have faced with skyrocketing health care and energy cost coupled with declining enrollments and increasing mandates, we have not done that badly.
The problem is that the numbers are not close to being accurate. The starting point on per-pupil spending from the report is $1,333. Less than what we actually spent. I believe the report also claims we were 16th in spending per pupil in 2000. Not true. The ending numbers used in the report have us spending over $1,800 more per student then we actually do and if you utilize the reports numbers you do come up with a 150 percent increase. These are very large discrepancies considering they are based on a per-pupil basis.
The other side of the aisle in the Legislature is claiming that this report endorses the current system, which it does, however, based on what I have seen, much of the information is just plain wrong so the conclusions may be wrong. The methodology is certainly subject to debate on why the report would even be using economic models of “price demand elasticity,” which runs many pages in the report, based on the fact that I would wager not many people can understand what that even means.
Harry Truman said, “If you can’t convince them, confuse them.” I gather the report writers were Truman fans. I do understand what it means and its applications and the supply-demand models for education are somewhat unique. We are not analyzing pork belly futures here or how much we can charge for the oranges in the store or how many iPods will sell at various prices. We are talking about educating kids.
We have spent $300,000 of taxpayer money to create useless models. The overall conclusions in some areas of this report may be true but the report itself is useless and a waste of money.
