It’s often said that Rhode Island doesn’t get good value for its education dollar. The Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council says so every year, and the claim is dutifully repeated on the radio and I’ve heard it at the State House, too.
But is it true?
A while back I was looking at education funding and comparisons between states, and I noticed how thoroughly Rhode Island is outperformed by Massachusetts. Massachusetts, of course, is less urban than our little state, but even when you leave out Cape Cod and the Berkshires, or only look at urban areas, or high-poverty schools, students in Massachusetts schools tend to score higher on the national NAEP tests of academic prowess. (Check it out.)
As far as costs, Massachusetts is slightly below Rhode Island, though not by far. Both states are pretty much in the middle of the pack. Rhode Island has the 24th highest education expenditures per capita (counting public schools, colleges, and libraries) and Massachusetts is 27th, according to RIPEC’s annual compendium of census data. But it is lower and, according to their respective education departments, Massachusetts spent $13,047 per pupil in 2010, and RI spent $15,024. (These are elementary and secondary education costs, leaving us 8th in the nation and MA 13th.)
So what’s with that? Our higher costs can’t be attributed to unions, since Massachusetts is as unionized as we are, and besides they pay their teachers more, according to the NEA salary survey. So I looked in the results and found… well I found that it’s pretty hard to compare the numbers, since they’re all reported in different categories. I couldn’t help notice that the Massachusetts numbers do not include things like debt service, construction costs, and transportation for non-public students, maybe a quarter or a fifth of the differences in costs.
Fidgeting around with the numbers for a while, you quickly come to a couple of conclusions. First, the differences are more or less along the lines that Massachusetts has fewer teachers per student, but they get more in the way of support services than here, and they appear to spend quite a bit less on administration. Benefit costs might also have something to do with it, but it’s hard to say. Second, it will take an army of accountants to sort the differences out more precisely than that because the categories just do not line up in a way that makes it easy to compare our state with theirs.
The real reason I was even bothering with this is something else entirely. The Kids Count data book came out in April, and I’ve been meaning to write about it since. Let me say before I go on that I will likely be the last writer in America frantically waving the flag of liberal education as the grim waves of business needs wash over my vessel and draw me down to the darkling deep. To me, there is an inestimable value to teaching our children to appreciate the glories of human civilization. After all, that’s how we pass it on, isn’t it?
But stick with me for a moment, and let’s pretend to look at our schools as little factories to manufacture workers while we consider the, ah, raw materials — and how we care for them. And here’s the funny thing. On pretty much every variable of childhood health and well-being, Massachusetts children have a better time of it than ours do.
Lack of health insurance coverage? 3% vs. 6%. Children in poverty? 14% vs. 19%. Infant mortality? 5.1% vs. 5.9%. Immunized two-year-olds? 80.4% vs. 76.7% This is not just a story about our poverty rate or unemployment rate being higher than theirs. Eligible kids who get food stamps? 68% vs. 75%. Children under the poverty line without health insurance? 6% vs. 11%.
Overall, Kids Count calls Massachusetts the third healthiest state to be a kid in, and Rhode Island lags at 17th. Is it conceivable that this has no bearing on the collective school performance of our children?
Of course, what has our actual record been? Over the last few years, we’ve tightened eligibility rules and raised co-pays for Medicaid, reduced rental subsidies, ended or severely curtailed child care for poor families, and more. We prioritize the health of rich taxpayers over the health of poor children, and then complain when the poor children don’t do well on standardized tests. Go figure.
I’m not counseling only doom and gloom here. In fact, our standing in the Kids Count comparisons has made some desultory progress in the last couple of years. Despite the funding setbacks, some measures are still improving over where we were a couple of decades ago, just much more slowly and unevenly than we could. When we’re talking about relative performance of one educational system to another, it’s worth considering the factors outside of the classroom. Spending a bit more time worrying about the health of our children might be as productive as complaining about the cost of our schools.
Update: I edited to make the distinction between education costs clear.
Commenting on this post a little late, but I wanted to point out something a little misleading here. Tom describes RI as middle of the pack in education spending, and it is when you combine K-12, libraries and univerisity spending as the RIPEC report does. When you limit it to per capita elementary and secondary education, RI is ranked 8th and Mass is 13th. Not exactly middle of the pack. Since the rest of the post is focused on K-12, I think this is a significant inconsistency.
Beyond that, the health information is interesting, but my guess is that it correlates pretty well with Massachusetts’ generally higher incomes and higher educational attainment for its adult population. And while I admit this is my guess, Tom offers no real proof other than pointing out the discrepancy and hoping our colelctive guilt draws the desired conclusion. I’d only offer that while child health is an issue, the driver behind the different educational achievement might be another factor that correlate with better child health, as listed above.
It’s also even conceivable that almost-universal health care in Massachusetts has something to do with child health outcomes. But that would be outlandish, wouldn’t it?
Those who feel they need academic rigor to show that poor health and poverty are linked with poor educational outcomes can find references in a report I wrote here: www.rifthp.org/files/TheShapeOfTheStartingLine.pdf . Others, of course, can rely on common sense. Still others can offer serious sounding counsel that we look for the ultimate causes behind it all in order to avoid doing anything about it. We all get to choose, don’t we?
“Our higher costs can’t be attributed to unions, since Massachusetts is as unionized as we are”
For a supposed statistician, you draw some pretty reckless conclusions, Tom. Are you really telling us that you can make an absolutist statement like that based on a unionized workforce percentage alone? Unions could be having a different impact on public education costs in Rhode Island for any of dozens of reasons.
“It’s also even conceivable that almost-universal health care in Massachusetts has something to do with child health outcomes.”
Anything’s conceivable, but that would be a grossly irresponsible assumption. If you want to see what really outstanding health statistics look like, take a gander at libertarian New Hampshire next door.
“libertarian New Hampshire”
You mean ‘parasitic New Hampshire’, of course.
Although, in the end, I suppose you did say just that.
Oh, right, I forgot – any state that accepts a percentage of its tax dollars back in the form of stimulus (all 50) is a “parasite” and can’t even be measured comparatively in terms of libertarian principles. And any libertarian individual who uses the roads is a hypocrite and not a real libertarian. Thanks for reminding us. Excellent philosophical points. Ironclad logic there.
Don’t bother responding. I know you’re just trolling up the thread again and trying to start another endless argument.
“Oh, right, I forgot – any state…any libertarian…Ironclad logic”
Hmmm. You seem to be responding to yourself.
“Don’t bother responding”
Or what?
Anyway, since you brought up health care as an example of New Hampshire’s libertarianism, it seems relevant to point out that New Hampshire has all manner of state-and federally-funded insurance programs to cover its residents: http://www.healthcare.com/health-insurance/state/new-hampshire/new-hampshire-health-insurance/
“There are several state sponsored health insurance programs in the State of New Hampshire to assist those without insurance in obtaining adequate coverage.”
“The high-risk pool in the State of New Hampshire is summarized in the chart below”
“Through shared funding from the federal government, the State of New Hampshire provides health insurance for uninsured children that meet certain eligibility guidelines.”
The chart below provides a summary of the Medicaid programs in the State of New Hampshire:”
Why, that does sound libertarian!
All states have Federal and state health programs. Obviously I was speaking comparatively to the so-called universal health care system in Massachusetts in response to Tom’s point.
Go troll somewhere else. This is so old already.
“Obviously I was speaking comparatively to the so-called universal health care system”
No. You declared New Hampshire libertarian, referring specifically to its health care system, which is in no way libertarian.
To put it another way, just because a health care system is different from Massachusett’s doesn’t mean that it is libertarian.
In order to justify your statement, you must show that New Hampshire’s health care system is libertarian, which you know full well that you cannot do.
Which explains why you are so eager to run away from this thread.
Tom, if the title of your post had been “child health may be a contributor to RI education gap” I’d have no objection at all. But you didn’t, you said it explains the gap, and you didn’t show how it does. But you did make fun of me because I pointed it out.
And there are several other things that may also be (bigger?) contributors to the RI education gap relative to Massachusetts. One may be the better economic circumstances and the generally higher family incomes found there. Another may be the MCAS test providing lots of motivation to schools and families alike. Another may be the difficult teacher certification test.
The question you post purported to address is not whether we would like to have improved child health numbers, but child health effect on education outcomes.
An article from Forbes.com last week pointed out that RI, with its lower income levels, is unable to reach the level of government services of neighboring states like MASS and CT, even with relatively higher taxes, which indicates to me we can’t mirror those states’ approaches for affordability reasons.