November 20, 1986
"Debunking Myths of Class Size, Teacher Pay - Education is not Defined by Budget Size"
San Jose Mercury News
By Timothy Taylor
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PUBLIC schools are the social problem conservatives and liberals both seem willing to throw money at. More training for teachers. More pay for teachers. Smaller class sizes, necessitating more teachers. More dollars spent per student.

Whenever such a consensus has formed and most people seem happy with it, look out. Someone is probably about to go out and collect the facts and ruin everything. Sure enough, in a recent issue of the Journal of Economic Literature, economist Eric A. Hanushek of the University of Rochester reviews the studies that have been done to measure how much increased spending has helped educational performance. His findings should unsettle the conventional wisdom.

Almost everyone has heard how scores on the Scholastic Aptitude Test declined between the early 1960s and the late 1970s, before rebounding somewhat the past few years. Obviously, no single test is a fair measure of an educated person, and Hanushek admits the flaws in the SAT. But he also points out that many other educational tests given to students at different grade levels confirm the general result.

From the suggestion about how to increase the quality of education, you might make some guesses about the causes of the two-decade decline. Spending per student was probably falling a little, you might think. Teacher salaries were not keeping up with alternate job opportunities, so the experience and education levels of teachers were falling. Class sizes were increasing, you might think. You might think all those things, but you would be absolutely wrong. Here are the facts Hanushek found when he looked them up in the U.S. Statistical Abstract.

Expenditures per student in the public schools actually increased 135 percent from 1960 to 1983, after adjusting for inflation. Student-teacher ratios in public elementary schools fell from 28.4 students per teacher in 1960 to 20.5 students per teacher in 1980. In secondary schools, the ratio fell from 21.7 students per teacher in 1960 to 17.1 students per teacher in 1980.

Teacher salaries have done better than keep up. In 1960 teachers were paid 23 percent more than the average American worker. By 1983 they were paid 49 percent more. More teachers got more education; while only about a quarter of public school teachers had a master's degree or more in 1966, over half of all teachers had such a degree by 1983.

Finally, the median experience level of a public school teacher increased from nine years in 1966 to 13 years in 1983. That's not the sign of a profession that's having trouble retaining its workers.

Sometimes, statistical analysis will turn such numbers upside down, but not in this case. Hanushek tabulates the results of 147 statistical studies that have examined how teacher-pupil ratio, teacher education, experience, salary and spending per pupil affect student performance. About 90 percent of the studies didn't find any statistical connection between changes in those factors and student performance. And of the few studies that did find a connection, some found that smaller classes and more experienced teachers lead to a worse educational performance!

The first lesson to learn from all this is cynicism. When the education establishment starts asking for higher salaries, smaller classes, and bigger budgets, it is completely fair to remind them that they have already been getting those things, and what they are asking for is more of the same.

The second lesson is discernment. As Hanushek points out, those broad trends can conceal particular exceptions. For example, smaller class size may help in particular areas -- like teaching writing, maybe? -- without being a suitable goal for every class.

The most powerful lesson may be the one most of us already know. Education is not defined by a mechanical process of hiring a teacher, buying some books, and herding the children into classrooms. It is not defined by how much money is spent. Most of us can remember teachers who could have taught underwater and still communicated their subjects, as well as teachers who had to move their lips to think, and who tried to read one chapter ahead of the class, sometimes. More money will always buy you more jellybeans, but it won't necessarily buy a better education.

If the nation wants educational achievement, it will have to reward those who provide it and replace those who do not. Maybe teachers should get tiny raises for having an advanced degree or being more experienced, but they should get big raises for consistently turning out many students who can achieve. Right along with bonuses for teachers who do teach, there should be a rapid transition to another line of work for those who do not do it as well as others willing to teach. Steps leading in that direction are very difficult to carry out, because they must be adapted to different schools and subjects, and because of the reactionary power of tradition and big unions.

But taxpayers foot the bill for public education. If they make enough noise, they can also call the tune.

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