California's "lavish" school spending: millions squandered on light in classrooms

Mon dieu! Les wasteful Americains.

Critics of public education often claim that schools overseas deliver a superior education at lower cost than U.S. schools. San Francisco parent  Matt Brauer got curious recently and  decided to do his own research. Here's his commentary:

I just did some back-of-the-envelope calculations to see if there was support for the claim that the U.S. -- California in particular -- spends "lavish" amounts of money on our public schools as compared to other countries. I went into the exercise open to the possibility that, indeed, we may be getting poor value for our money. However, I did not incorporate any measures of academic achievement or performance into the analysis. Instead, I wanted to get a picture of where the money goes, and where there might be waste.

Here's what I found:

The U.S. as a whole ranks #36 in per-pupil government spending, as normalized by Gross Domestic Product (GDP). This places us below the usual suspects (Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Japan, etc.), comparable with Germany and Finland, and above the U.K. and Australia. It's not clear to me that per-pupil spending as a fraction of GDP is the way to go: the normalization leads to some oddities, such as placing Sudan at #3 in the rankings. In addition, the measure puts all students, even those in private schools, in the denominator, thereby penalizing countries with large private-school populations (hence the low position for the U.K., perhaps). Still, it's a reasonable first approximation to say that U.S. governmental spending on primary education ranks roughly in the lower middle of the pack among industrialized countries.

The average per-pupil expenditure on primary education in California is about $8,200. As of 2004-2005, we were spending at about 86% of the average national rate.

Is this money well-spent? Last year my daughter's school had a site budget of about $5,500 per pupil (this is in line with most of the elementary schools in the district). These funds went to teacher salaries (about $61k/teacher average), staff salaries (3 FTEs -- "full-time equivalents" -- at an average of about $36k) and teacher and staff benefits (about $20k per FTE). Salaries and benefits account for about $4,700 (57%) of the total per pupil expenditure.

We spend about $200 per student on books and supplies, $300 per student on an after-school program funded by Healthy Start, and a miscellany of funds totaling less than $300 per student on consultants for art, PE, music, special needs students, etc.

Assuming that the district spends the statewide average*, this leaves about $2700 per student (about $900,000 total) spent outside the school budget, or about 33% allocated as district overhead. This money goes to district personnel, facility maintenance, insurance, transportation, custodial services, utilities, professional development, etc.

Let's think about where we can cut expenditures. Is an average of $60k too much to pay our teachers? One can argue the point, but I think the contrary is true: I'd like to see our teachers able to afford to live in the city as my neighbors, and $60k is just not going to provide that. The teachers I've interacted with are dedicated professionals, and I'd like to see them get the salary they deserve. But let's make the teachers commute from Vallejo: $60k is the highest we'll go for average salary. No raises for the teachers, but no net savings.

The next biggest line item is the Healthy Start after school program. This benefits a fraction of the total number of kids at the school. Let's pretend that our entire community is not well-served by our making free after-school care available, and cut this program. This saves $300 per student.

Employee benefits? Let's chop them in half, saving $600 per student. (Maybe health insurance is cheaper in Vallejo, anyway.)

This $900 in per-student savings brings us down to 75% of the national average in spending. If implemented nationally, the US ranking would drop below Germany, Finland and Greece, and put us on par with Australia (#48).

But let's continue: the big opportunity for savings comes from that $2,700 per-pupil overhead. If we could cut it all, adding to the cuts above, we'd be down to about 50% of the national average, and our ranking would go to #95 (putting us in the company of Chad, Guinea and Bahrain, but still well ahead of China). Of course, that's a ridiculous expectation: the money includes everything that keeps the district and the facilities running. We'll need to prune selectively. Which of the following centrally-budgeted functions qualifies as "lavish" **?

1. Custodial services ($417/student)
2. Summer school ($45/student)
3. JROTC ($28/student)
4. Athletics ($11/student)
5. GATE ($8/student)
etc.

What you choose to cut depends on where your priorities are, although I think that we'd all agree that while certain expenditures - -utilities ($118/student), for example--can be made more efficient, there are some things that we cannot do without. (Utilities spending may be considered lavish in Rwanda -- 108 -- but I think that even the most hard-hearted deficit hawk would concede that educational expectations in the U.S. include a facility that's lighted and heated.) Similarly, we can cut the administrators' salaries and benefits to yield some marginal savings ($1.78 per pupil per $100,000 cut), but we can't expect the number to approach zero.

There are, no doubt, creative ways to cut spending ***. But it's apparent from this brief exercise that we don't have the vast amount of wiggle-room that William F. Buckley might have wanted us to believe. Because education depends on the personal interaction between a student and a good teacher, there will never be economies of scale. None of the usual corporate cost-cutting strategies (which often claim gains from poorly defined concepts such as "synergy" and "leverage") apply to the
classroom. Teaching at all levels is a retail activity - -you never get the wholesale volume discount.

We've been asking "how can we cut the money we spend to educate the children of San Francisco?" We should instead be asking if it's truly "lavish" to provide a basic education to all of our children. Is public education a luxury, or is it the foundation of our Republic? Do we consider it money poorly spent that goes to teach other people's children to become better citizens?

Personally, I think it's fine that someone wants to argue against public education on principle. But if the argument is that we're spending too much on public education, I'd like to see where the numbers come from. If there is waste to be cut, I need to be shown where that is the case.

And I don't think we should hold up Chad as an example of where we ought to be in public school spending.

 * It actually spends a little more per pupil overall, but I haven't been able to find the specific number for primary education.

** Numbers come from Exhibit 6 of the 2nd reading of the FY 08-09 recommended SFUSD budget (p. 45), with the assumption that there are 56,000 students in the district.

*** For instance, we could move to an all-neighborhood enrollment system so that students could walk to school. That would allow us to lay off all the bus-drivers, leading to huge cost savings. Bad example, perhaps, but the point remains.