Analysis Shows Most Suburban School Districts Doing Well
Public Policy Forum annual report on education shows school spending and achievement not equal.
There’s good news and bad in a report on southeastern Wisconsin public school educational trends, spending, performance and demographics released by the Public Policy Forum on Friday.
The good news: Students in the suburban Milwaukee, Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington county districts are finishing school at a rate higher than the state average. For the most part, those students taking the ACT tests for college are also doing better than students in the rest of Wisconsin.
The bad news: The urban school districts continue to be plagued by low graduation rates and poor tests scores. And handful of the suburban districts — St. Francis, West Allis, Greenfield, Cudahy and Brown Deer — reported 10th grade reading or math scores below the state average.
The Public Policy Forum, a Milwaukee-based nonpartisan policy research organization, has been studying schools in southeastern Wisconsin and issuing annual reports for 25 years. Initially, the analysis was aimed primarily at school districts, but Anneliese Dickman, the group's research director, said the report is now designed to give parents school performance data.
Nicolet is No. 1 in spending
By far, the district in the region with the highest total operations spending per pupil is the Nicolet Union, the North Shore high school district and three lower feeder school districts for Glendale, River Hills, Fox Point and Bayside. The total cost per student was listed at $20,438 in the report.
But the amount spent on actual instruction by Nicolet and its feeder districts, while still among the highest in the region, averaged $9,143 — less than the $9,946 spent by the Northern Ozaukee School District. The state average is $7,309 and the southeast region average is $7,670.
Nicolet, according to the report, had higher general administration, transportation and other spending costs. Jeff Dellutri, Nicolet's director of business services, was not immediately available to explain those costs.
Dickman cautioned that per-student spending figures might be misleading because it does not include students who live outside the district.
“Each district gets to choose how many students it will accept,” Dickman said. “For some, it allows them to manage class size or even keep some schools open.”
For example, St. Francis, a city that was growing until the recent economic downturn, had been talking about closing an elementary school. With open enrollment, the district had enough students to keep the building open. Other districts, she said, accept students if there is room at a grade level and it does not add operational costs.
Higher spending may not mean better results
How much each district spends on public education varies widely. While the biggest spenders also have high tests scores, some spend less and do better, according to the data.
“There is not always a correlation between how much money a school district spends on education and student performance,” Dickman said. “The number of low-income or minority students is likely to lower overall student performance for a district.”
Nicolet students did better than either the region or the state on ACT test scores as well as reading and math tests, but not as well as neighboring Whitefish Bay, a district with significantly lower per-student costs. Whitefish Bay total operational costs per student were $12,612, about $1,100 above the state average, and per-student instructional costs were $7,713, about $400 more than the state average.
In a newsletter sent out last year, the district pointed out relatively low spending and high student performance, said Whitefish Bay District Administrator Mary Gavigan.
“Historically we are compared to the other high-performing school districts — Elmbrook, Nicolet, Shorewood and Mequon-Thiensville,” Gavigan said. “Our performance was near the top at the same time that we had the lowest property tax spending.”
Some success in closing racial gap
Whitefish Bay also has bragging rights in a related area: The district has narrowed the racial achievement gap more significantly than any other in the region and is doing far better than the state average.
The same group of African-American students did better in the fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh grades than the state average for white students before dropping somewhat in the eighth grade, according to the report.
Dickman said past forum reports have shown that narrowing the racial gap has been a persistent problem
“We have not seen any narrow the gap year after year,” said Dickman. “We have seen districts make improvements one year, but they don’t maintain it.”
African-American students in Whitefish Bay did better than white students in the fourth grade during the 2006-07 school year, with 83.6 percent scoring proficient or advanced in reading. But by eighth grade in the 2010-11 school year, only 87.5 percent were proficient or advance, compared to 94.2 percent of their white classmates.
Still, Whitefish Bay’s achievement is worth noting, Dickman said.
Eighth-grade African-American students fared worse in the Oak Creek-Franklin District with only half scoring proficient or advanced reading scores. The Milwaukee School District reported that almost 57 percent of the eighth-grade African-American students were proficient or advanced. Still, Dickman said Milwaukee showed 1.2 percent improvement in reading scores compared to last year.
Problems continue in Racine
The Racine Unified School District, the region’s third largest district, showed a 2.6 percent decline.
Brian Dey, who served on the Racine School Board from 2005 to 2008, said the district's poor performance is the reason he is leading a movement for Caledonia to secede from the Racine District.
“They are obviously a very underperforming district,” Dey said. “The other issue for us is local control.”
So far, Dey’s group has not been able to get enough signatures to put the issue on the ballot. While his group intends to continue its attempt to get the matter on the ballot, he said he has been lobbying his legislators for a law change that would make forming a new school district easier.
Caledonia residents are already using private schools and open enrollment to find alternatives to the Racine District.
“The census data shows there are 6,000 school-age children in Caledonia,” Dey said. “Only 2,900 go to the Racine schools.”
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Visit the Public Policy Forum's website for a copy of the report, "Public Schooling in Southeast Wisconsin."
Tom
9:57 am on Friday, September 9, 2011
Would very much like to see Brian Dey's Caledonia movement succeed in leaving RUSD.
RUSD is a black hole that can and does suck an ever increasing amount dollars into it, with very little possibility for educational results to come out of the other end. It's a monopoly that needs to be broken apart and/or substantially restructured.
nicholle rogers
4:43 pm on Monday, September 12, 2011
I completely agree. I would like to see the Caledonia School District pushed again because I myself am a parent of three RUSD students and I don't think I can take much more of this. It seems to be a fight to get a straight answer on anything from the RUSD school board. @ Brian Dey-Are you still getting signatures on petitions? If you are, where can I sign?
Brian Dey
4:56 pm on Monday, September 12, 2011
Nicholle- There will be a petition drive in the not-so-distant future. Right now, the focus is on lobbying our legislators to move forward on legislation that puts the process more in the hands of the new school district, not the existing district. That is the main road block to getting this done.
Lyle Ruble
11:03 am on Friday, September 9, 2011
This study is a confirmation that mega sized school districts are too large to manage effectively. Normally Brian Dey and I are on opposite sides of most issues, but breaking RUSD into smaller districts make sense. I have proposed on several occasions that MPS should broken up into six smaller districts. If one looks at the highest performing school districts on the North Shore, they are smaller, more flexible, closer to the parents, and the communities have a higher vested interest in seeing that they work. In this case smaller is better.
CowDung
11:29 am on Friday, September 9, 2011
I'm not sure that size is really the issue, Lyle. I think that it's more along the lines of the level of parental involvement in their child's education. Is breaking up MPS into six smaller districts really going to get parents more involved with their child's education? The unfortunate reality is that many MPS parents are single parent households where putting food on the table is often a struggle--making time to help kids with their homework often doesn't happen. The higher performance observed in the suburban districts is likely due to increased parental involvement rather than by size of the district.
Lyle Ruble
1:40 pm on Friday, September 9, 2011
@CowDung...The reason I advocate smaller districts is the accountability of the administration to the students and parents. The smaller district will allow for higher involvement of the parents. It will return ownership of the education system to the residents of the smaller district due to closer proximity.
The smaller districts could be funded in a much more responsible manner. Districts with lower tax bases could receive more state funds rather than give hundreds of millions to be disbursed by a monster bureaucratic machine that the big districts currently are.
CowDung
4:27 pm on Friday, September 9, 2011
Lyle:
I do agree that having smaller districts will increase the accountability and the transparency of the funding/expenditures.
While it may allow for higher involvement of the parents, I'm not sure that it will actually result in the higher parental involvement that we desire. I think that the societal factors causing most of the problem will still remain.
That said, I would agree with you that it is a good idea to break MPS up into smaller districts--perhaps the parental response to such a move will surprise me...
Tom
12:09 pm on Friday, September 9, 2011
Parental involvement is a very important factor in the education process, as is the establishment of meaningful goals and holding those responsible and accountable to achieve the goals. Without that level of accountability, any organization small or large will inevitably move to a lower performing level, and fail to meet the life expectations of the children that the organization exists to support. Worse yet, organizations [like RUSD] may attempt to fool itself [and the public] into accepting performance reports [with exceptions] that demonstrate some level of progress, when the aggregate scores point to a different reality. RUSD utilizes this style of exceptions reporting and it is just plain wrong. We can never forget, that the education process must always be focused "on the kids" and not on perpetuating a low-performing organization, like RUSD, that year-on-year is not getting much better and in the aggregate, it scores significantly below the State average and below the average of all other districts in its athletic conference. This is the state of RUSD, IMHO.
ike
1:23 pm on Friday, September 9, 2011
Lyle Ruble - I agree with you about breaking MPS down into smaller, more manageable units as a start. Not sure why you came up with 6? I think you can then have 6 reps responsible for those 6 areas who meet with their principals regularly. They can discuss their area's problems/needs collaboratively, brainstorm solutions, and carry the ideas back to the principals for implementation. I think in business leaders and psychologists should also be included in those collaborative meetings. It will hold the principals and teachers more accountable making it more difficult to hide amongst the failure. I taught in MPS, I know how easy it is to hide.
CowDung - I agree with you as well, that parental involvement is a HUGE piece missing in the MPS puzzle. Instead of test scores and grades, the focus needs to be on attendance and parental involvement. If you come from a family that sees little use for an education, what chances do you have for academic success? But how do you motivate those parents? Is it time for bribery just to get the ball rolling?
ike
1:31 pm on Friday, September 9, 2011
For example, the school where I taught had an excellent attendance record. It was part Choice, part MPS. Kids earned monthly raffle tickets for an end of the year raffle. Prizes included TVs, toys, etc. The better your attendance, the better your chances. No, this doesn't initially instill self-motivation to attend school. However, attendance continued to be very high even during the years the raffle was not offered. The parents learned that school isn't scary and felt proud that their kids attend school regularly. They began to show self-motivation without the bribery. We learned that many of those parents hated schools because of their own experiences. Once we got them over that feeling, they showed more motivation to help their kids succeed. Of course this wasn't 100%, but many is better than some.
Jay Sykes
4:30 pm on Friday, September 9, 2011
@Lyle Ruble.... I think Brown Deer has around 2k students and they do not have the same achievement levels as the other North Shore schools. Maybe, a bit of evidence that smaller isn't always the answer? :)
235301
8:06 pm on Friday, September 9, 2011
Brown Deer's district size has absolutely zero effect on achievement. The 800 lb. gorilla sitting in the corner that everyone is ignoring is demographics. Brown Deer is not like it's North Shore brethren. It has a high percentage of minorities, much higher than the surrounding North Shore communities. There are parts of Brown Deer that have much more in common with Milwaukee than WFB or Fox Point.
Tom
8:57 pm on Friday, September 9, 2011
You have identified what you believe is a barrier to educational achievement [demographics], that is independent of district size. Recommendations?
Lyle Ruble
8:59 am on Sunday, September 11, 2011
@Tom Kenny....The deciding independent variable is not size, although an important variable, but social economic status (SES). The lowest performing districts appear to contain the highest numbers of the lower SES population. It is not just a question of income or lack of income, but the issue of chronic low opportunity. This condition can be labeled the Culture of Poverty.
Members of the population sub set must survive in a larger society which has a different order of beliefs and values. Community and culture are the primary survival strategies that the species has developed to adapt to changes in the physical, technological and social environments. The physical environment of poverty has created a set of values and expectations for its members that is out of sync with the larger society. To adequately provide education to this population sub set, it will first require the dismantling of the Culture of Poverty.
Dave Koven
1:08 pm on Saturday, September 10, 2011
Maybe we need 13 years of public education? The extra year could be used to give kids and parents a "reality rub" regarding what will happen if education is not taken seriously. This extra year would be required for graduation, and could be implemented six weeks at a time from middle school through 12th grade. The time would be spent touring agencies that deal with the homeless, drug addicted, or jailed. Let the parents and kids see first hand the difference a good education could make, if taken seriously. On the positive side, let parents and students tour local universities and high tech work places to see what could await a hard working scholar. These "field trips" could take place on Saturdays, and parents would be required to attend with their children. The parent's attendance will have a direct effect on whether their child graduates, or not. We need new and more immediate approaches to solving these problems. Perhaps these suggestions might help, or at least get people talking? Yes, these things cost, but kids (and some parents) don't deal with abstract concepts very well. They need concrete, hard-hitting examples before they can/will learn. The cost has got to be less than what we currently spend to try to remedy society's problems after it is too late.
Brian Dey
1:13 pm on Monday, September 12, 2011
I've been following this article and would concur with those that are against racial bias. Every child has the potential to succeed and that has been the problem with large districts; they have used such things as socio-economics, race and parental involvement as excuses for their lack of closing the gap and poor test scores. The truth of the matter is that most large districts either lack a school board that is willing to hold staff responsible, which includes holding students responsible to achieve grade level math and reading before grade promotion, or ind it acceptable that a certain portion of their student body is unteachable. Both are false and evidence is that similar school districts across the country are succeeding. MPS and RUSD have poor decision makers. Smaller districts let the parents and taxpayers better suited to hold their decision makers accountable.
CowDung
2:23 pm on Monday, September 12, 2011
While I think that social promotion is a problem, it's all too easy though to put the blame on 'staff' for children underperforming children, but the reality of the situation is that the factors contributing to the poor performance of the children are often outside the control of the school district.
Certainly, every child has the potential to succeed, but they need support from outside of the classroom to live up to their potential. I think it would be unfair to be constantly firing teachers for turning out uneducated kids when those kids are doomed to fail because they are in a crappy home environment.
Tom
2:44 pm on Monday, September 12, 2011
@ Brian Dey ... While there are numerous studies that relate academic achievemnent to socio-economic status, many use socio-economic reform "as a first step" that MUST precede public education reform. This is a red herring argument because the elected/public/private resources necessary to work on any significant form of socio-economic reform have a different charter, timeline and resources needs than those teamed to work education reform/restructuring. It is my belief, therefore, that education reform/restructuring can and should precede socio-economic change. As you already know, there are many high-performing education system success models out there to benchmark from, but we cannot overlook the impoirtance of assembling a board, admin and education leadership team that is capable, passionate and strategically focused/balanced. Othrwise, a district [large or small] will not move beyond its set of deeply-rooted paradigms.
Lyle Ruble
4:20 pm on Monday, September 12, 2011
@tom Kenny...It is not an either or situation, both education reform and social reform must occur at the same time. The current systems are disconnected from one another and they must be brought together to progress toward their stated mission and goals. For example: Education systems founder when only a black hole awaits the student at the end of their education experience. Something else that I have noticed is that public schools have given up on preparing students to be job ready, relying on post secondary education to prepare students to enter into the workforce. The idea that we have to add 1 to 2 years to prepare students for jobs seems we have misplaced our priorities. The Europeans have determined that by age 14 students can be separated into either a college preparation program or a skilled trades program. We already know that only 20% to 30% of the population are successful in college and achieve bachelor degrees. Also, even though a student falls into a skills track, college is not out of the question for them with many returning to college to obtain technical degrees. All in all, maybe some of the things we did in the past, make sense for the present and future
Lyle Ruble
4:02 pm on Monday, September 12, 2011
@Brian Dey...We must take into account social issues in designing education programs. To ignore such variables is as big a mistake as to not hold students and families unaccountable. Smaller districts will have the flexibility to design programs that will be much more tailored to the student population needs.
CowDung
4:11 pm on Monday, September 12, 2011
That double negative thing is confusing me, Lyle. I assume you believe it to be a mistake to hold students and families unaccountable?
Lyle Ruble
4:23 pm on Monday, September 12, 2011
@CowDung...Thanks, as my kids say "ole timers disease" is setting in. To clarify, we must make students and families accountable. The "big question" is, how?
Brian Dey
4:41 pm on Monday, September 12, 2011
Lyle and CowDung - Let me try to clarify. Yes, social issues do carry into the classroom. Yes, most of these issues occur because of family involvement (or lack thereof). But districts like RUSD have used those issues as an excuse, rather than a means to find a solution. 3 weeks before our Supt. retired, he writes a letter to the citizens of the district that "at least a majority of our students get a good education." Mind you, only 71% graduate and barely 50% are proficient or advanced in math and 68% in reading. As a board member I offered numerous solutions that worked in minority-majority school districts like our own district. Two that come to mind our Charlotte-Mecklenberg and East Baton Rouge Parrish. Both districts have returned to neighborhood schools, 7-9 Junior High Schools/10-12 High Schools, and neither will advance a child's grade level purely based on the child's age. Both our considered "the best" in their states. Simply giving up on a certain segment of society is not an option. The building blocks of education are simply the three "r's." If you can't teach to proficient in those three areas, you will continue to have underperforming districts. And let's remember, standardized tests are not a test of the student's ability alone; it is what our districts are teaching our children.
Lyle Ruble
4:52 pm on Monday, September 12, 2011
@Brian Dey...
Brian,
You make my point about designing the program around the educational needs of the population served. the experience of the two districts cited are prime examples. There is absolutely nothing wrong with holding children back to achieve proficiency. Our son did two years of kindergarten and so did my sister's son. Neither were socially mature enough to move on. My son is in graduate school in San Fransisco and my nephew is in the physics program at Notre Dame. both have good self esteem and are thankful for being held back.
Bob McBride
4:27 pm on Monday, September 12, 2011
Large or small, it comes down to motivated students. If you had a system the size of MPS with the same percentage of motivated students as there are in Shorewood, for instance, you'd probably find that the success rates would be similar.
Lyle Ruble
4:42 pm on Monday, September 12, 2011
@Bob McBride...
Bob,
The question is how to motivate the students.
Jay Sykes
5:23 pm on Monday, September 12, 2011
I think the root question is: How to motivate those parents.
Bob McBride
5:34 pm on Monday, September 12, 2011
I agree with Jay. It starts with the parents.
Obviously what we're doing now and have been doing for years isn't working, as this isn't a new problem. If education isn't seen as producing a payoff of some sort, whether it be mere survival or a better life, then I doubt there's much you can do or say that's going to change it.