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Ed Beat Winds Down
Thanks for stopping by. As of September 2012, we’ll no
longer be adding new entries to this blog. The archives will be here for the
foreseeable future, so you can always scroll back through our previous entries.
We appreciate your support of this blog since its 2010 debut, and we hope you’ll continue to interact with EWA online.
Who's Funding Your District? Uncle Sam, More Than You Think
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| Chart created by EWA; Data from U.S. Census and Jennifer Cohen Kabaker/Federal Education Budget Project for 2009-2010 |
School districts might receive less federal funding next year, due to some cuts that already are scheduled and some others that are under consideration. How much is at stake is difficult to gauge, but new research shows that hundreds of districts -- including several major ones -- rely heavily on federal funds, contrary to conventional wisdom.
More than 1,500 school systems depend on federal funding for more than 20 percent of their annual revenue based on 2010 data, according to calculations from Jennifer Cohen Kabaker, a senior policy analyst at the centrist New America Foundation think tank. In fact, two of the four largest districts in terms of revenues rely heavily on the federal government: 23.9 percent of Chicago Public Schools’ and 18.2 percent of the Miami-Dade County Public School District’s annual revenues come from federal sources.
These figures push back against the perceived wisdom that federal support for school districts is relatively small. While the federal government’s average share of the costs that go toward educating children nationally was 12.3 percent for the 2011-2012 school year, the shares that it contributes to individual districts can vary considerably, especially during an economic downturn when state fiscal outlooks can differ widely.
“States have cut their education spending, and we only know what their share of school spending was up to 2010,” begins Cohen Kabaker, but it’s possible that with states like California, Illinois, and Florida “the impact might be greater, because as the share of state spending goes down, relative federal funding goes up.”
Many of the districts that rely on federal dollars for more than 50 percent of their revenues are small, with total budgets that only occasionally exceed $20 million a year. Still, some of the largest districts in the country rely on federal funds for a significant share of their spending. Detroit, whose school budget ranks among the top 25 nationally in annual revenue, gets one federal dollar for every four that come from state and local sources. Twenty-five percent of Milwaukee’s revenue is comprised of federal dollars. The Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Houston, and Dallas school systems—also among the 20 largest—each have revenues made up of at least 15 percent of federal funds.
[See EWA's Story Starter on K-12 Finance and Operations.]
Districts can receive federal dollars through several channels. Schools with a disproportionate number of low-income and disabled students receive various streams of revenue through portions of Title I and IDEA grants, the two largest chunks of the federal government’s support for schools. But nearly half of Title I dollars in the 2012 fiscal year are funneled through the Basic Grant Formula, which distributes dollars to any school with at least 10 poor children and a low-income population of at least 2 percent. Schools in even the most affluent neighborhoods can receive some portion of federal funding from the Basic Grant Formula.
In some ways, the math regarding districts’ dependence on federal funds can be unpredictable. While some districts rely on a relatively low amount of federal revenue but have higher than average per-student expenses, the opposite is true for other school systems. New York City has per-pupil expenditures of nearly $20,000 with annual revenue that’s less than 10 percent federal money. Miami, on the other hand, is slightly below the national per-pupil average with $9,017 and takes in much more federal revenue as a share of its budget than the Big Apple.
On the other end of the scale, major districts like Fairfax County in Virginia and Montgomery County in Maryland—that rank seven and ten, respectively, on systems with the largest annual revenues—use less than 6.5 percent of federal funds to support their schools. Overall, in 2010, about 60 percent of the school districts in the country—8,071 out of 13,516 —had a lower than average reliance on federal funding, based on 2011-12 Department of Education data. That 60 percent includes 2,200 districts in which federal dollars comprise just 5 percent of their annual budget.
Such figures help contextualize two financial scenarios that could spell trouble for schools. Unless Congress comes to a compromise before January 3, 2013, a 2011 agreement to reduce discretionary spending will cut 7.8 percent from the federal education budget. A recent projection suggests that this cut could mean districts could expect to lose than one percent of their total federal funding. More uncertain is the effect a Romney-Ryan budget plan might have on schools. Some education experts point out the 20 percent cuts to discretionary spending the Republican vice presidential nominee has proposed would add up to 2 percent of total school funding, because roughly a tenth of school funding is derived from federal dollars.
(The data Cohen Kabaker collected also include the amount of money school districts would have to do without if 20 percent of education spending were cut from the federal budget. Download the full chart here.)
Michael Petrilli, executive vice president of the right-leaning Thomas B. Fordham Institute in Washington, D.C., says the cuts Ryan is supporting should be welcomed. “Most school districts have seen a meteoric rise in spending in the last 20 years,” he said. “We’re talking about returning to spending to the mid to late 90s ... this is an era that was pretty good in terms of education.” Since 1987, per-pupil spending has increased from around $7,000 in today’s dollars to roughly $10,500, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
For the 2013 fiscal year, the Obama administration is requesting $69.8 billion in discretionary funding. That would be an increase of $1.7 billion--or 2.5 percent--from 2012.Labels: education, elections, k12_finance, Ryan
Requesting and Analyzing Public Data
Before the headline and follow-up stories, what is the legwork necessary in creating a sound data-driven news report? As part of EWA’s series on Diving into Data, investigative reporter Jack Gillum shared his experiences as one of the lead reporters on the award-winning USA Today series that looked at suspicious student scores on standardized tests across six states and the District of Columbia.
The 2011 series of articles, which focused on the years Michelle Rhee was still chancellor of D.C. Public Schools, was one of several news accounts that documented wide-scale test results that in many cases were too good to be true. Gillum, who is now with the Associated Press, said that while he majored in computer science, old-school reporting is what drives an enterprise story. “For all the data analysis done on this project, the one thing that sort of remains clear is that all the data in the world can’t substitute old-fashioned, shoe-leather reporting,” Gillum said, “which is how we were tipped off to this story in the first place.”
[See EWA's Story Starter on Standards and Testing.]
Still, data help to “bullet-proof” stories and limit a public official’s ability to dismiss a reporter’s findings. Often, the information originated from figures culled from data the school district collected, such as erasure analysis that convincingly demonstrates which schools and classrooms had likely instances of test tampering.
But collecting erasure analysis reports—manna for school system watchdogs—is not enough to flag a district for suspicious test results. State and local school systems keep granular data that are composites of the whole picture. The idea was to develop evidence to spot aberrations in trends, which required background on how various demographic groups are likely to perform on various tests. State-level data is useful, too, because sudden jumps in school performance are visible when comparing current results to previous years.
For the USA Today series, the data were instructive. Erasure analysis reports indicated certain schools had numerous students erase their wrong answers for the right ones at unlikely levels of plausibility. The odds were one in 6.45 trillion that so many students changed their answers from a wrong answer to a correct one without assistance, Gillum noted. (Read a summary of the D.C. Inspector General report here.)
Receiving documents through Freedom of Information requests added to the series’ narrative. After a lot of haggling, the news team managed to win access to erasure analysis scores down to the student and teacher level. The students’ names were replaced with random serial codes to protect their identity, while their teachers’ names were revealed, allowing Gillum and his colleagues to “knock on doors.” That access was likely helpful, since the Rhee administration refused USA Today requests for interviews and restricted access district schools. (The New York Times wrote an article in 2011 that began with, "Why won’t Michelle Rhee talk to USA Today?")
Public records requests revealed a bevy of information, some confirming through-the-grapevine rumors of a principal using strong-arm tactics to compel the school’s teachers to increase test scores. In that case, the reporters requested public records of police reports related to that school, coming across a write-up that corroborated their source’s information. Other FOI records unveiled more sordid details, such as a senior communications official (Anita Dunn, who at one point worked for the White House of the Obama Administration) emailing her subordinate to avoid Gillum’s emails.
Gillum has an almost absolutist view of a government agency’s duty to provide access to information. “Public schools are public…they’re paid for by our tax dollars” and the information they keep should be open for scrutiny, he said.
He offered other tips:
- Make a habit of requesting FOI documents weekly or monthly.
- Know when the school system collects crucial data like teacher pay, enrollment, discipline reports, and other items that can be scrutinized through a FOI request.
- Have reliable data professionals from a local research group or university who can explain what the data you’ve collected means.
- Call other districts on background to learn what data they keep and how that information is organized—the equivalent of a cabinet inventory—so you can call out your beat’s school district for withholding information.
- Public relations officials have a job to do and you do, too. The job duties required of both will put you at odds, but that’s the nature of game.
- Taking teachers, principals, district officials, and other sources out for coffee or lunch on your own dime will help improve relations for when a news story requires their cooperation. The dollars might add up but the connections and information gathered will be invaluable.
- Private companies are not under any obligation to reveal information, even if their work is school-related. The only reason test company reports like erasure analysis are available through FOI is because they were paid for with public funds
- Know the FOI restrictions in your beat. Gillum notes the U.S. Congress exempted itself from FOI requests, so one would have to request information from the executive branch to access correspondence with federal legislators.
- With standardized testing taking on a digital format, it’s important to consider how the state will replace the practice of erasure analysis. The move from paper tests with graphite pencils to online tests and what will still require monitoring schools for suspicious test scores. Gillum suggested that reporters may be able to request the digital meta-data underneath the “official” test score responses. Meta-data are the notes in a digital file that can show a history of edits, logins, file size, and other relevant information.
Labels: data, standards_tests, teachers
From California, a New Thought on College Funding
California, which often has been a leader in the realm of college tuition funding, could be on the verge of another innovation. Its lower house in the state legislature this week passed part of a package that would close some business tax loopholes and then use that additional money to save students of the state’s two public university systems between $4,000 and $8,000.
The bundle of laws, titled the Middle Class Scholarship Act , would use the projected annual revenues of $1 billion to help students cover the costs of attending the California State University and University of California schools. Since 2006, the state has cut its share of per student public funding for higher education, dropping from $7,559 to $6,631 in 2011, according to the State Higher Education Executive Officers (SHEEO). In the past five years, in-state tuition to California’s public universities has increased by 98 percent.
Various policy experts have called California’s proposed act unusual: It relies on manipulating the tax code to blunt the effect rising college costs have had on students, rather than earmarking additional spending from the state budget.
California’s role in higher education is influential. The state enrolls roughly 10 percent of the nation’s full-time public four-year college students and has been considered a trendsetter in how states develop their postsecondary education systems. But in recent years, higher education in California has been more enervating than exemplary, with very public tuition hike battles and protests. While California state revenues are beginning to crawl out of the multi-year dips caused by the economic downturn, public university leaders who rely on those funds shouldn’t hold their breath waiting for education budget cuts to be restored.
“Overall, state budgets and revenues are returning to pre-recession levels, but the trickle down to higher education spending may well be years away,” said Daniel Hurley, director of State Relations and Policy Analysis at the American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU). However, his group did count 30 states that plan to increase per-pupil public support for public four-year universities in the coming fiscal year. That’s a notable change from last year, when 36 states cut their relevant funding.
Not all states are playing catch up to 2007, the year the recession began. According to the SHEEO 2012 report on higher education, seven states—Alaska, Illinois, Louisiana, North Carolina, North Dakota, West Virginia and Wyoming— increased postsecondary appropriations between 2006 and 2011.
The combined bills proposed in California—AB1500 and AB1501, the latter of which passed the Assembly by just barely meeting the required two-thirds majority—could significantly alter the financial commitments California students consider when choosing a UC or CSU. Current tuition and fees at CSU schools hover around $7,000; if the Middle Class Scholarship Act were signed into law, college-goers could look forward to having just over $4,000 annually deducted from that bill. University of California students, who paid $13,200 in tuition and fees in the 2011-2012 school year, could look forward to $8,200 in relief money. The money would go to students who don't qualify for low-income grants but whose family incomes are under $150,000. Some 192,000 students would be affected.
California’s business community in part supports the act. Currently, out-of-state businesses can opt to pay their Golden State taxes through a formula that deducts expenses like payroll—even though those jobs aren’t created in California. Corporate in-state behemoths Genentech, Qualcomm, Cisco and others support the bill because it would force out-of –state companies to pay the same taxes they do.
Labels: higher ed_finance, news
EWA Contest Winner Tips: Advice on Beat Reporting
EWA has asked the first-place winners of the 2011 National Awards for Education Reporting to share tips and advice with their colleagues based on their experience. Several have graciously responded and over the next week or so, we will publish their observations.
Phyllis Fletcher, KUOW Public Radio, Broadcast Beat Reporting
My EWA contest entry was comprised of stories and serial reports from my culminating years as education reporter for KUOW Public Radio Seattle. I am now an editor there. In my final year of reporting, I was working on a four-part series when fine reporters at the Seattle Times scooped me—and everyone—on a major story at Seattle Public Schools. I had to drop my series, report the story I had been behind on from day zero, and then get back to my series to finish it on time. As you can imagine, when I was in the thick of that, I did NOT feel like an award-winner on our beat. I felt like the opposite of a winner. (Commonly called “a loser.”) But by the end of the year, I looked back on everything, and my editors and I realized I had managed to do a lot. So I am very humbled and pleased to be asked by EWA to give you my advice.
- Do not be discouraged or give up early when you are scooped on a big and developing story. Do as much original reporting as you can, and attribute the big scoop to the outlet that beat you. They deserve it. Your listeners/viewers/readers just want the information. If you missed part of it a long time ago, you can report that too. As the story develops, stay on it. It may get strange; it may veer from your beat. But your colleagues and readers will appreciate that you’re still bringing information even after it’s off others’ radar.
- Don’t avoid talking about race and class. On this beat, you have to do it. Do it frankly and simply. Do not crowbar it in when it’s irrelevant. Do acknowledge it when it appears to be a factor. If you’re not sure, check it out—with your sources and your editor.
- When an audit is released, file a public records request for the “working papers” right away. That’s where names, invoices, receipts, and interview logs are.
- Think about different ways to deliver the news. Depending on what I was reporting, I would produce a long piece, a short one, tape and copy for our newscaster, I would go live on the air with tape and analysis, or I would tweet. Things that didn’t sound quite right in a pre-produced piece sounded very natural when we were talking live on the air. Details that didn’t quite fit into a story were fun “cutting room floor” bits on Twitter.
- Understand that your obligation is not to know everything. But try to know—or have the desire to know—at least as much as the people you cover. Want to learn from them. (H/t Bill Marimow, and his Seven Components of Mastering a Beat.)
- Consider the “customers” on your beat (parents and students) just as valid sources as teachers, administrators, academics, and watchdogs. That doesn’t mean you will apply different editorial standards to their story ideas. It means you will apply the same ones, and that you are equitable about whom you will listen to. This is the right thing to do, and it will help you break stories.
- Have fun with stories that are fun! As Dr. Seuss wrote, “these things are fun, and fun is good.”
- If you’re covering something tooootally boring (school board meetings, hello), tweet it.Some people who can’t go to the meeting want to know what happens, and they will tell each other you’re live-tweeting it.
- Collaborate with colleagues at other outlets, especially in other media! You can each help different parts of the story sing.
- Get kids, parents, and teachers into your stories! And other staff members at a school. They all see different aspects of the education system every day.
- Treat administrators and spokespersons like people. They are people.
- If your outlet does not employ a photographer, improve your photography. Conceive of a photo for each story, and try to take one. Your outlet will not post them all, but taking them will help you learn. Build your own library of stock photos of the people and places you cover.
- Try to further your own education. We’re education reporters, right? We’re into learning! Afraid of numbers? Take a math class, or a class that applies math in a way that would help your coverage—like demography, finance, or accounting. Have problems communicating with people you cover? Take a class in how to have difficult conversations.
I have more to say about beat reporting, at Poynter, and about news reporting for radio, on Transom.Labels: #ewa12, ewa contest
Using Online Gaming to Make Students ‘Curiouser’ About Reading
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An arithmetic game based on the book Alice in Wonderland
Source: Screenshot of SecretBuilders |
Getting kids to read books ranks high on the list of challenges parents and teachers face. On the other hand, students embrace new technology—social networks, smartphones, gaming systems—at a pace adults can hardly keep up with. So why not try to use digital devices to incite a love of literacy in kids?
The idea has been tried before, but a new partnership between an online gaming company and Oxford University Press aims to boost student interest in reading through an online gaming community dedicated to classic works of literature.
The collaborative effort, called "50 Great Reads Before 15," is part of a growing trend of injecting a gaming component into regular academics, turning a standard learning experience into a new interactive world that’s supposed to make learning fun.
“The whole notion of gamification,” begins Laura Pearson, general manager of Oxford's American English Language Teaching Group, “is a way to get students engaged with the content.”
 SecretBuilders, the partnering website, already has seven million online gamers that could benefit from the literacy games, according to Pearson. Through a system of collecting points, badges, and awards, players are motivated to learn a book’s content and demonstrate their knowledge via periodic quizzes. Kids build their avatars, enter online dimensions like “The Bookworms Club” and find games to play. After selecting Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, for example, the student can view the novel one page at a time onscreen. Newer readers who may find the text too difficult can still participate by listening to a narrator (with a British accent) tell Alice’s tale. Though limited game play is available free, full access to the digital realm requires some payment.
In recent years, gaming communities such as SecretBuilders have taken off. According to Scott Traylor, CEO and founder of 360KID, a kid-focused content and technology company, there are nearly 400 gaming worlds available online. Just over 100 of those are directed at children.
There is some research that suggests the right kind of game can capture student interest and help develop confidence. A 2011 paper from the Teachers College at Columbia University observes that, “games guide players through the mastery process and keep them engaged with potentially difficult tasks.” The paper also states that an important feature of an educational game should be to “deliver concrete challenges that are perfectly tailored to the player's skill level, increasing the difficulty as the player's skill expands.”
There’s also the benefit of learning through failure. A 2008 study published by the MIT Press suggests there are emotional benefits to learning games. Because mastery requires repeated experimentation and failure, players develop a positive association with making mistakes. The obverse is true in formal school settings, researchers note, because students have fewer chances to prove themselves and thus develop anxiety around failure.
At a recent event at the New America Foundation, a respected policy think tank in Washington, D.C., computer teacher for elementary school students Joel Levin said he relies on games to encourage students to apply their interest in the technology to develop core learning skills. His game of choice is Minecraft, a blank slate interactive realm that allows users to build whole structures with great detail. When students are stumped over a particular detail in the game’s functions, he tells them to find a way to troubleshoot the problem by reading about the game on various Wiki sites.
But the education gaming field has its problems. Educators worry too much time with interactive games distracts students from mastering core skills. Those same teachers also wonder whether policymakers will put too much stock in games as a way of cutting labor costs, i.e. teacher positions. And researchers fear the intrinsic will within students to learn might be corrupted by external incentives like points, virtual coins, and badges that these learning games revolve around.
Karen Horton, director of marketing at OUP, says her company’s partnership with Secretbuilders is “an initial foray.” The next goal is to partner with schools, expand the learning content, and see how far online gaming can go.
“It’s fun [for students]”, says Pearson, “There are challenges built in so they have a sense of mastery.... and they’re learning at the same time.”
Labels: curriculum, news, technology
Tips from EWA Contest: Investigating Charter Schools
EWA has asked the first-place winners of the 2011 National Awards for
Education Reporting to share tips and advice with their colleagues
based on their experience. Several have graciously responded and over
the next week or so, we will publish their observations.
John Hechinger, Bloomberg News, Beat Reporting, Large Market Print:
Last year, my editors Jonathan
Kaufman, Lisa Wolfson and I decided that charter schools -- lauded by Democrats
and Republicans alike as a way to reform public education -- were ripe for a
more skeptical examination. Much reporting had focused on heroic principals who
had managed to turn around individual schools. Our goal was a deeper look at
what I had heard were the downsides of the movement: online schools with poor
academic results; discrimination against students with disabilities; charter
schools catering to wealthy parents and racially segregated programs.
The main pieces in our beat-reporting
submission include the following stories:
Here are some beat-reporting tips that helped
produce our submission:
1. Back
up your reporting with data, so you aren't relying on anecdote. In the case of
charter schools, federal and state education departments keep voluminous
records on enrollment, spending, test scores and demographics that can help you
evaluate charter schools' academic and financial results.
2. Look
for the intersection between business and education. School districts have many
dealings with private companies that can be fodder for stories. My piece on
online charter schools relied on filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange
Commission because K12 is a publicly traded corporation. Pennsylvania's
education department also had valuable records about charter-school
spending and test results.
3. Use court and administrative filings to find
examples of conflict. Special education, in particular, often leads to
administrative proceedings and litigation that can be valuable for documenting
articles. Those records formed the heart of the piece on New Orleans. Court
records are public; administrative proceedings require the cooperation of
families.
4. Spend
time with families and in classrooms. The online schools piece benefited from
time spent in a family's basement. The article on segregated schools resulted
from days on the ground in schools, yielding detail that gave readers a feeling
for entirely single-race schools. That kind of reporting requires a substantial
investment of time -- days or even weeks of phone calls and visits -- to find
the right children, families and classrooms to tell these stories.
5. Try to pick a
theme early in the year to focus your reporting. That decision forces you to
concentrate your efforts and delve deeply into a single subject,
so you don't get caught up entirely in day-to-day coverage. This can be a
challenge on a busy news beat. It can help to choose a subject that is already
generating news, and you are covering anyway.
Labels: #ewa12, charter schools, choice, demographics, special_ed
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