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Maine Voices: Schools need more money, not less

The one social statistic that tracks performance (in reverse) is the number of students eligible for subsidized lunches.

By BRIAN LIPSETT

NAPLES - Maine's entire public school system is in jeopardy because Wall Street values have trashed the economy. In the midst of all the wrenching debate and rancor, some numbers might help inform the discussion.

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Offering children food their families can afford implies feeding their intellects takes funding, too.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brian Lipsett, Ph.D., is a resident of Naples. He can be contacted at brianlip.privey@gmail.com.

Maine school districts employ approximately 34,500 persons, and 73 percent of all Maine school district employees are women.

While many are in the teaching corps, many others are bus drivers, administrative personnel, superintendents and principals. About 45 percent of all school district employees are teachers.

Maine school districts put $2.2 billion into the economy in 2006-2007, with 64.8 percent of that amount paid to teachers in the form of salaries and benefits.

The average teacher salary in Maine in 2007 was $38,600. The average teacher salary nationwide in that year was $51,010.

One of the vaunted cost savings offered to school districts in order to rein in their contribution to the state's economy has been consolidation.

Maine's school district consolidation program is intended to reduce the number of districts from 290 to 80. The number of districts as of June 17 stands at 179. While we're told that consolidation saves money, three years into the program no authoritative audit of those savings for these new districts has been forthcoming.

In all this, we cannot afford to lose sight of student achievement. Improving student outcomes is not simply a matter of keeping kids in school and holding teachers accountable for better test scores while spending less money per student.

"Positive results" must also mean narrowing achievement gaps between white and minority students, low-wealth and higher wealth students, and disabled and non-disabled students. School consolidation is held out as a way to improve student outcomes, yet a large body of research holds that low-wealth students do better in smaller districts than in larger districts.

Despite the hullabaloo about teachers and testing, only one consistent measurable factor -- the percent of students eligible for a free or reduced price lunch -- can be shown to affect testing scores.

About 34.6 percent of all Maine school students are eligible for a free or reduced price lunch. This statistic (ranging between 2.3 percent eligible in Falmouth to 93.9 percent for Somerville) is the only variable that has a statistically significant relationship with student testing scores for students tested in fourth grade, eighth grade and high school math and reading tests. As the percentage of students eligible for a free or reduced price lunch goes up, testing scores go down -- across the board.

The March budget cut of $70.7 million takes a paltry $371 per student away from the monies spent to educate Maine's 190,546 public school students but it will cost schools dearly.

To put this in perspective, recall that the three top executives at AIG received over $76 million in direct compensation, stock options, and other benefits in 2008. Consider the Goldman Sachs cohort of well-dressed gentlemen highly compensated for their roles in the economic meltdown. The head of Goldman Sachs pocketed $70.3 million in 2007. The amount of money these gentlemen's work product took out of the economy is counted in the trillions.

All of this is intended to argue that, culturally speaking, our priorities are out of whack. The values of commerce cannot be allowed to operate unfettered at the expense of the overall competitiveness of our country's work force. "Shadow Banking Systems" cannot be allowed to destroy our schools.

An educated child is a tangible good. A stock derivative is not a tangible good and it must be pushed to the gutter when it gets in the way of the business of educating our children.

Maybe when the Congress and the courts are through unwinding this mess, they could assign a few of Wall Street's finest to come work in our most remote, lowest-wealth school districts.

We could get them started before the school year begins with maintenance. Then they can work as bus drivers and custodians.

If they manage to get the children to and from school safely and keep the buildings from falling on everybody's head, maybe we can give them teaching assistant jobs for a while.

And if they show an aptitude there, maybe we'll let them teach.

I wouldn't let them be administrators, though -- that would seem to be out of their reach.