School funding hustle
The Rev. James Meeks wants more money for Chicago public schools. To make his point, he has announced a boycott, where students will stay home on the first few days of school. The stunt further involves busing children from the inner city to the New Trier school district in the northern suburbs.
New Trier stands out because it spends more money per pupil than does the Chicago school system. According to “Report Card 2007,” a summary of spending and academic achievement in Illinois, New Trier ranks 7th in spending in the 6-county area which includes Chicago. New Trier spends $16, 856 per pupil. The Daily Herald published its report Oct. 31, 2007 (Section 1B).
By comparison, the City of Chicago School District 299 spends $10,409 per pupil. Rev. Meeks relies on the Democrat theory that spending always promotes academic achievement. Rev. Meeks thinks that underachieving minorities attending Chicago schools will match their counterparts in the suburbs when the spending levels themselves match up.
Since New Trier spends $6000 per pupil more than Chicago does, its high school students supposedly score higher than Chicago students on the ACT. New Trier ranked 2nd in the state of Illinois, with an average score of 27.1. Unfortunately, the Chicago school system did not report numbers that can be easily compared with other school districts. It reported the results of individual high schools. So, from what I could find, only 2 Chicago high schools achieved ACT scores above the state average of 20.3, Lane Tech and Von Steuben. All the other apparently fell below, for example, Taft, 18.1; Curie, 17.6; Wells, 15.8; Clemente, 15.7; and Marshall, 14.1.
In my neck of the woods, the two Naperville high schools scored nearly the same on the ACT, 25.1 and 25.0. Wheaton-Warrenville South scored 23.3. The southwestern part of DuPage County, where these schools reside, compare favorably with the demographics of the northeastern Cook County area of New Trier. The students tend to be white and from middle-class homes, many from the upper-middle class.
Naperville school district 203 spends an average of $9,881 per pupil. That is, it spends $528 less than Chicago does. Yet, Naperville students tend to score higher. If my calculation is correct, the Chicago ACT average is 17. That means Naperville students earned 8 points more than Chicago students, for less money!
Wheaton-Warrenville South High School reported an ACT score of 23.3. This is 6.3 points ahead of Chicago. Yet, WWS spent $9,996 per pupil, $413 less than Chicago. And then, a look at the West Chicago School District 94, shows spending of $12,421 per pupil. If we are to believe Democrats like Rev. Meeks, West Chicago students should be doing even better than those from Wheaton, Warrenville, and Naperville. But, they are not. West Chicago students’ ACT scores fall below the state average of 20.3, at 20.2, although they enjoy a spending amount that well exceeds the average of $9,488.
Teacher unions, like the National Education Association, like to complain that teachers’ salaries are never enough, thereby suggesting that increasing salaries would increase student achievement. Obviously, this relates directly to the issue of per pupil spending.
Some years ago, I took such a “Report Card” and typed in the numbers from all the schools in Illinois. I compared teacher salaries to achievement in math and reading. I put the information on a spread sheet and ran a statistical analysis. I found the correlation between teachers’ salaries and achieve to be almost zero—meaning no correlation, where a perfect correlation is represented by the number ‘1.’ I did not feel the necessity of going through that laborious process again. The political environment and the educational dynamics have not changed.
I have no objection to the boycott. Rev. Meeks should call the boycott for the whole year—for the rest of time, for all I care. There is much to criticize about modern schooling, especially from a Christian man of the cloth. Unfortunately, he has focused his attention on race and victimhood. He and the rest of the Democrat Party, along with the education industry, need a better gimmick for their hustle.
