Top Ten List: Why “Choice” Demonstrates That Money Matters
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Apologize for the CI hiatus. I have six PhD students that want to graduate, which translates to about 1,000 pages dissertation reading these past few days.
I recently had a conversation with a conservative Harvard-trained attorney last Saturday in Houston. We were discussing Finland (I blogged about Finland a few weeks ago) and her point was that the United States and Finland are not comparable. I noted that Finland was discussed by school reformers because of their turnaround over the past few decades, but you know what, you don’t have to go to Finland to find model schools and for an example that money matters. There are those that are always arguing the meme that “money doesn’t matter” for US schools. What is interesting is that we have to look no further than the “choice” movement for evidence that money DOES matter. Without further ado, a top ten list of evidence from the “choice” movement that money does matter.
10. Eric Hanushek. Who is he? Here is his Wikipedia’s bio:
Eric Alan Hanushek (born, 1943) is a Paul and Jean Hanna Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. He is an expert on educational policy, and the economics of education. His research spans both the economics of school policy and the impact education on individuals and on economies… He is perhaps best known for the controversial assertion that“money doesn’t matter”—that is, he says that the amount of money spent in an American school district is not related to the amount of student learning in that district—and he is often called to testify in court about school funding schemes.Ever wonder what the public schools in Eric Hanushek’s neighborhood spend (Palo Alto) compared to the state of California? Well, it turns out that Palo Alto schools per pupil spending is about 35-40% more than the state average. There are perks to being able to choose to live in a home valued at more than a million and have excellent public schools to choose from…
9. Magnet Schools. The public school choice that almost everyone is okay with— yet they are not cheap. For example, in Connecticut, magnets received 25% more funding than traditional public schools.
8. Knowledge is Power Program Charters (KIPP). They know that money matters. In a recent post, I discussed that KIPP has raised approaching a half a billion dollars over the past decade.
In sum, across the nation, since 2003, KIPP has received $308,999,543 from foundations, corporations and individuals. You can see the national spreadsheet here. KIPP in Texas has acquired about 25% of those monies— $75,981,765 from foundations, corporations and individuals. You can see the Texas spreadsheet here.In my response to KIPP’s critique of our peer-review study of their African American attrition, I stated:
KIPP is incorrect. NEPC also thinks so here. Its hard to argue with publicly available data that they themselves are required to report by law. Per student revenue for KIPP Austin ($17,286) and KIPP Houston ($13,488) relative to Austin ISD ($10,667) and Houston
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