The scarcity mindset that plagues education news

It leads with a subhead declaring schools “aren’t getting the money they need, period.” It tells us that, “K-12 spending in the U.S. declined precipitously after the Great Recession, and only in the last few years has it begun to inch back up.”

But the piece includes no figures. That’s a problem because the numbers provide important context for the claim that much more money is needed. For instance, the “inch back up” in school spending since the Great Recession is more than twice as large as the “precipitous decline” that came before it.

By 2017-18 (the most recent year reported by NCES) school spending averaged over $13,000 per pupil—that’s higher than ever, even after taking inflation into account. In fact, school funding per pupil has grown faster than inflation in 26 out of the last 29 years, making for significant increases over time. Data points like these are necessary. They demonstrate due diligence and ensure readers aren’t getting opinion or advocacy masquerading as school finance journalism.

These lines are easily blurred. In an NPR interview from March with Education Secretary Miguel Cardona, the interviewer led off a question by declaring, “America’s public education system, I don’t have to tell you, was already suffering before the pandemic from chronic underfunding.”

What’s the basis for the “chronic underfunding” claim? With spending higher than at any time in history, the comparison can’t be prior years’ spending. And according to the OECD, the U.S. spends significantly more per student than peer countries like France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Only five countries spend more money on primary schooling per pupil than the U.S. does.

Data points like these are necessary. They demonstrate due diligence and ensure readers aren’t getting opinion or advocacy masquerading as school finance journalism.

Previously in this series: Smart ways to cover the coming ‘year of ed finance’ (Marguerite Roza)

Education finance is a messy topic for journalists, and the data are far from easily digestible. Reporters may default to the scarcity narrative because it seems like a safe and tidy way to reference the larger challenges associated with school finance (including inequities, debates on how to spend funds, frustration with low outcomes, labor demands, etc.). Plus, it fits with a near-constant stream of advocacy from the education establishment for more funding.

While these issues are always difficult to explain, this last year has made issues of education finance and economics especially hard to neatly summarize.

At the same time school leaders are dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, they’re also facing potentially destabilizing enrollment declines and a tumultuous labor market. And yet, with strong funding increases in recent years and the largest-ever federal investment in K-12 schools, districts also have more resources at their disposal than ever before. But too often that’s not being reported as it should be.

As such, reporting on school spending strictly through a lens of scarcity can lead the public astray and produce headlines that get repeated despite being downright wrong.

Reporting on school spending strictly through a lens of scarcity can lead the public astray and produce headlines that get repeated despite being downright wrong.

Exhibit A is a school staffing headline that appeared this fall in the online publication Quartz: “Schools are losing teachers at an unprecedented rate.” This headline relabeled a report showing that a rising share of teachers were considering leaving the profession, even though the report specifically warned against conclusions that such sentiments would translate to actual departures.Then The New York Times Education Briefing newsletter linked to the Quartz headline with, “Teachers are also leaving schools at a high rate,” thereby perpetuating a false headline. The stories have since been corrected, but the damage has been done. Two weeks later, The Guardian and The Hill published nearly identical stories peddling the same false narrative with a few carefully selected anecdotes. And on and on it goes.

Indeed, the prediction of higher-than-normal teacher attrition has been a regular media staple. It continues to be covered despite teachers having lower turnover than most other professionals, evidence showing teacher turnover fell last year, and Bureau of Labor Statistics data—directly contradicting the recent stories—which shows that turnover among public education employees is at or near historic lows.

It’s possible that new data could show otherwise, but for now, the predictions of a rapid rise in teacher turnover have not been born out.

The scarcity narrative also ignores the evidence that school staffing levels have risen substantially over time. On a per-student basis, schools employ more teachers, more instructional aides, more guidance counselors, more nurses, and more administrative staff for a given number of students than they used to. The data do suggest that districts now have more open positions than in previous years. But rather than the result of a mass exodus, these openings are likely related to—wait for it—a hiring frenzy prompted by the historic infusion of federal relief funds.

In contrast to typical reports, that distinction was captured nicely in NBC News’ recent piece, Behind the teacher shortage, an unexpected culprit, which paired a local story alongside national trends while walking through the many competing factors in the labor market.

For now, the predictions of a rapid rise in teacher turnover have not been born out.

The media plays an important role in condensing this fast-moving information for readers who don’t have the time or inclination to do their homework on each topic.

But that requires careful attention to the data so as not to perpetuate a false narrative, especially when conditions (particularly around labor) may soon change.

While these are just recent examples, it’s no wonder that Americans tend to underestimate how much we spend on American public schools and how much teachers earn. The chronic under-estimation lowers our collective expectations for what schools can achieve. And the misperception of teacher pay might be one reason young people say they are reluctant to go into teaching.

It’s not just the public that’s confused. Even for experts in the field of education, the facts can sometimes be obscured by deep misconceptions that get perpetuated over time. In 2019, the Washington Post had to issue an embarrassing correction after it published an op-ed from a college of education dean who based his argument for public education reform around an inaccurate claim that school spending had declined over the last few decades. Deep-seated narratives of a pending teacher exodus such as this USA Today op-ed could be prompting leaders to pursue policy solutions that may not fit actual conditions.

To be fair, even amid the recent infusion of federal funds, scarcity still deserves attention. Are we spending enough money to provide an excellent education for all children? Is that money being spent equitably? But as nice as it would be if these questions had a simple “yes” or “no” answer, the truth is far more complicated and thus deserving of real data.

At the same time, let’s make sure we don’t focus exclusively on questions of scarcity. In doing so, we might miss the biggest education finance story of the last decade: How are district leaders spending their new financial windfalls, and what effect is it having on students?

Chad Aldeman is policy director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University. Previously, he was a policy adviser at the U.S. Department of Education. You can follow him at @ChadAldeman.

Previously from The Grade

Smart ways to cover the coming ‘year of ed finance’ (Marguerite Roza)

5 tips on how to cover teacher layoffs (Chad Aldeman)