Education + Money = Freedom

The impact of COVID-19 on school systems and communities seems like a story with no end in sight. As the fall semester has gotten underway in schools around the country, education leaders have had to juggle a constantly evolving set of circumstances. Every day, new challenges emerge and new conflicts arise, and the only certainty is that nobody is happy about anything.

The pandemic’s impact on education will be felt for years to come, and much of it will ultimately be about one thing: money. As with everything in America, money will determine which children and which communities come out of this crisis intact and ready for whatever the world looks like tomorrow. Everyone else better buckle up because it is going to be a bumpy ride.

Persistent and systemic inequities

The education funding inequities that persisted at the state and local level well before the current crisis are widely known and documented, but in the months ahead, those inequities will grow and become even more destructive. The nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities predicted in July that the state budget shortfalls as a result of COVID-19 will (cumulatively) reach $555 billion over fiscal years 2020-2022 (McNichol & Leachman, 2020). That figure does not even include what may happen to local budgets. The center also reported that state and local governments have already laid off or furloughed twice as many workers this year (nearly 1.5 million) than they did during the Great Recession of 2007-2009 — and about half of those workers (roughly 750,000) were employed by school districts.

These depressing data points reinforce what we as a society should already know: When the economy tanks, public education always takes a huge hit. Education leaders were reminded of this after the Great Recession. Despite efforts to help stave off budget cuts and limit shortfalls, federal aid could only do so much. Education jobs and programs had to be cut and priorities needed to change (not usually for the better). While some states and districts were eventually able to bounce back from budget cuts and job losses, others continue to try to do more with less. A final data point from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities drives this point home: From 2008 to 2019, student enrollment in the U.S. increased by 1.5 million students. During the same period, the number of educators and school staff fell by 77,000.

In the very earliest days of the pandemic, the Albert Shanker Institute and Rutgers University issued the second edition of The Adequacy and Fairness of State School Finance Systems (Baker, Di Carlo, & Weber, 2020), a report that looks at the key findings from the university’s School Finance Indicators Database (SFID). Since 1993, this database has been measuring a discrete set of school finance indicators on a state-by-state basis. The 2020 report contains far too much data to delve into for this column, but I was intrigued by the three core indicators — effort, adequacy, and progressivity — used to organize the report’s findings.

The report’s effort indicator refers to its fiscal effort, or how much a state spends directly on K-12 education. Adequacy measures whether a state’s effort is actually enough to permit its students to achieve the national average in test scores. And progressivity (aka fairness) reflects whether a state funding system provides higher-poverty school districts with more revenue than lower-poverty districts. While it would be easy to write off the use of these indicators as a partisan spin on state spending (it is after all the Al Shanker Institute), I think the approach has merit, especially when we consider what is happening across the country right now. The Black Lives Matter movement and the many conversations it has sparked about structural racism and economic inequality should force us to think about the adequacy and fairness of our efforts.

I will let the data experts determine how sound the report’s methodology is for each of these indicators, but the takeaways certainly reflect the realities on the ground. Aside from a handful of states, most never addressed the impact previous spending cuts had on education, nor have they attempted to dismantle the structural inequities that continue to plague high-poverty school districts. If this report portrays education funding as inadequate and unfair, that is because in most places, it is.

Pods of privilege

To truly understand the power money has over education, consider last year’s Varsity Blues scandal, which I discussed in my May 2019 column. I thought that story — which involved a group of super wealthy and famous parents bribing a constellation of characters to get their children into elite universities — was the best (and most craven) example of how money can be used to give some students an edge over the competition. But this year’s COVID-related story on “learning pods” may have that story beat.

If a small group of elite parents can always find a way to work around the more challenging aspects of public education, what happens to everybody else?

When it became clear to most families that school buildings may not reopen this fall, parents across the economic spectrum made a mad scramble to figure out a strategy for surviving the school year. For some families, having kids attend school remotely from home was a challenge, but not an existential threat. Some parents, however, work full-time and look to school as not only the place where their kids go to learn but also the place that keeps them safe, socially engaged, and maybe even fed. For them, keeping school buildings closed for the entire fall semester was an economic and logistical nightmare.

The learning pod strategy emerged when well-resourced parents who were both terrified of COVID-19 and deeply dissatisfied with their school’s version of online learning figured out a way to beat the system. The idea is simple: A small cadre of parents hires teachers for private, in-home instruction for their children. Since everyone in the pod knows one another, there is a sense of safety and accountability, and a private teacher ensures that the children will have all the attention and care they need. In the midst of all the COVID chaos and uncertainty, these parents would offer their children a quiet, safe oasis of learning that would keep them on track academically no matter what is happening in the world around them. Before long, stories about learning pods were popping up everywhere, as were individuals and companies trying to make money on the idea. (No matter what the state of the economy is, rest assured there will always be a market for goods and services that allow the wealthy to give their children the upper hand.)

To be fair to these parents, the current crisis has presented all of us with confusing, even terrifying decisions. As the mother of a high school senior, I fully understand the impulse to use whatever resources are available to help my child. But learning pods take that impulse to a troubling extreme. If a small group of elite parents can always find a way to work around the more challenging aspects of public education, what happens to everybody else?

The current administration would likely say this is just another example of a parent’s right to choose what is best for their children. Why should they be shamed for having agency over their child’s education and well-being? According to Secretary Betsy DeVos, agency and choice are what “education freedom” is all about. As appealing as that may sound, it is important to remember that, when it comes to education, freedom usually comes with a price tag. For example, in the world of COVID-19, it is hard to see how poor, underserved parents can exercise their education freedom. With unemployment rising and unemployment benefits tapering off, I would bet that for most families, learning pods are not an option, logistically or financially.

No doubt we will continue to hear stories about how families and communities are dealing with school and COVID-19. And as ever, there will be villains and heroes, winners and losers, and none of it will feel like freedom.

References

Baker, B., Di Carlo, M., Weber, M. (2020, February). The adequacy and fairness of state school finance systems (2nd ed.). Washington, DC: Albert Shanker Institute.

Ferguson, M. (2019, May). Money, power, and education. Phi Delta Kappan, 100 (8), 72-73.

McNichol, E. & Leachman, M. (2020, July 7). States continue to face large shortfalls due to COVID-19 effects. Washington, DC: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.