Kyle Stokes at State Impact Indiana has a post entitled The Boring School Financing Bill That Could Change Everything. The bill is SB 305, introduced by Sen. Breaux which would increase from once to twice per year the dates on which school attendance is counted for purposes of funding.
Consider this: Two count dates would mean — for the first time ever — Indiana districts wouldn’t get a constant level of state funding through the school year. If the bill passes, funding levels would fluctuate with the natural ebb-and-flow of students entering and leaving schools through the year, making every district’s budget process much less predictable.
Apparently what they have now uses a five year rolling average. The new bill would be more of a “real-time” approach tied to the idea that the money should follow the kid. Such an approach does not, in my mind, reflect the realities on the ground where fixed costs are not easily adjusted and where some kids are simply more expensive to educate than others (not to mention my opinion that education is a public good and not a personal entitlement.)
The Stokes’ story has some good analysis from the lawmakers and those involved in making policy on why the legislation will likely pass if the right-to-work roadblock can be lifted.
Hi Doug,
Thanks for the linkout. Yeah, the rolling average thing is the most fascinating wrinkle of this story to me, because tracking its demise shows how Indiana’s student funding formula has really switched from polar opposites — in ’09, we were at a five-year rolling average. By ’10-11, we were at a three-year rolling average. (We didn’t specify that detail.) Now, that rolling average is going away… and is likely to move to another extreme, adding more than one count date. It’s not necessarily bad or good… it’s just big.
The bill’s up for a hearing Wednesday in a Senate committee. Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised to hear this measure also wrapped up in language of cost-savings, as the LSA report that came with this says state tuition support would increase $4.5 million this year… then decrease by $15 million next year.
Take care, Mr. Masson, sir.
Also, after we posted, SB 280 was added to the Senate committee schedule. It’s a similar bill to SB 305 — also adds a second count date — but is bundled with other changes to school finance statute too. Just FYI.
not to mention my opinion that education is a public good and not a personal entitlement
Education is neither non-rival nor non-excludable. It is not a public good, at least in terms of what economists talk about.
The benefits of education almost exclusively go to the person being educated. One of the main drivers of inequality in this country is increasing returns to education. Educated people have the costs of their education socialized, and take all the returns themselves.
Sorry, f-ed up the tag.
Fixed the tag.
And, as an economic term of art, I don’t seem to have used the term “public good” appropriately. What I mean is that, in terms of public policy, a society ought to fund education because that society functions better when most or all of its citizens are educated. That individuals benefit from this, even if they benefit quite a lot, is not (in my opinion) the primary reason a community ought to fund education.
There is absolutely no way that the benefit to society comes anywhere near the cost of even primary education. We’re spending $8k per year here in Indiana, that’s $100k over the 13 years the State is on the hook for a kid’s public education.
Being a civil war buff, you undoubtedly know that soldiers of that time were not publicly educated, but most were literate and certainly civicly engaged. I think that it is a myth that our civil society is based on public education.
Without good public education, I think you get more of a “Gangs of New York” type society.
So you’ve never heard of the Latin Kings?
All those articles are from Northwest Indiana and the south side of Chicago. We have a huge gang problem here.
Once again, your whitebread collegetowness is showing.
The real question that you should be asking is, why are poor people paying taxes to support the public education of folks who can afford to pay for it themselves? Why isn’t public education “means tested”?
After getting over the shock of realizing there are people actually advocating we go back to a time where education meant you might or might not learn literacy, depending if you had the back of a coal shovel to write on, Buzzcut’s argument that society doesn’t benefit from education might be true in one respect. I suspect a lot of the antipathy many have in funding public education comes from the idea it only pays for the brightest to leave for somewhere else. If there’s an argument for the bulk of school funding NOT being local, it’s that it won’t be subject to the whims of a populace cranked because little Jessup started questioning his parents and then moved to New York City on account of that book larnin’.
As for the twice-a-year count, the state will end creating budget chaos. I know every organization does tweaks and revisions ove the course of a year, but nobody sane draws up a budget, then tears it up and starts over a few months later, all the while having no stinking area exactly what numbers they’re working with. Republican education “reform” doesn’t even pretend to be about increasing qualityy of education anymore — they just napalm schools because they can. And because they and their monied interests can pay for private school, and because they don’t want the competition of a mass of actually educated people who might question their legislators. I’m sure there are some who just don’t trust that book larnin’ no how.
exhoosier, I don’t know what you think you read, but you certainly didn’t read what I wrote. Lot of projection there, dude.
I don’t think the government should be providing “services” that people can damn well afford to pay for themselves. Bottom line. And that ESPECIALLY applies when those “services” show all the quality that you would expect of a government monopoly.
Buzz, what about those can’t afford to pay for education? Which is most people, because even a tightly operated Catholic school with church support still charges you $5,000 a year or so, once you account for all the fees on top of tuition. An education doesn’t come cheap.
Also, do you believe people can pay for their own private police and fire protection because they can damn well afford it themselves? I tell you, those firefighters operating under a government monopoly — boy, they really suck, huh?
What don’t you understand about the term “means test”? By definition, you pay for those who cannot afford it.
You should check out my blog and see what I say about firefighters.