Letter to the Editor: Student spending report doesn’t paint a complete picture – Baltimore Business Journal

Published in the Baltimore Business Journal

Many Maryland public schools routinely rank among the best in the nation thanks in large part to our state’s longstanding commitment to investing in education. Looking only at per-pupil
spending, like in the recent Baltimore Business Journal article “Five Maryland school districts rank among top 10 in U.S. for per student spending,” provides an incomplete picture of
the ways our shared commitment to our public schools benefits students, communities, and our economy.

Per-pupil spending at Maryland schools, including Baltimore City, is well within the typical range among comparable systems nationwide and in fact falls significantly short of the investment that is needed to guarantee all children a world-class education.

There are three major problems with the comparison presented in the recent article:

First, the analysis included only the 100 largest school districts nationwide, which leaves out 77 percent of public school students, including those in major school systems like District of Columbia Public Schools. A more accurate analysis would include all but the smallest districts, where low enrollment artificially inflates per-pupil spending numbers. In this comparison, Baltimore City’s rank falls from No. 5 to No. 951.

Second, the ranking does not account for variation in labor costs between school districts. Maryland is the highest-income state in the union, and our already severe teacher shortage would be far worse if school systems here offered the same salaries as schools in, say, Iowa. After adjusting for labor costs (as measured by the comparable wage index developed by the National Center for Education Statistics), Baltimore City’s rank falls to No. 1,433. Put another way, 27 percent of school districts nationwide spend more on a wage-adjusted per pupil basis than Baltimore
City.

Finally, any comparison of spending patterns across school districts should account for school systems’ social and economic context. Volumes of research have documented that children who grow up in areas of concentrated poverty face greater barriers – such as less access to healthy food, more exposure to environmental hazards, and greater physiologically taxing stress – than their peers. This research is especially relevant in Baltimore City, which has a higher child poverty rate than 90 percent of school districts across the country.

Additional services can help students overcome these obstacles, but only if they are adequately funded. The reality is, state analysts estimate that city schools were
underfunded to the tune of $290 million as of 2015.

There is no question that Maryland has done a better job funding education than states like West Virginia and North Carolina, where years of irresponsible tax breaks
for powerful special interests have brought public schools to their knees. But our work to guarantee every child in Maryland a world-class education is not done. Smart strategies like universal prekindergarten, community schools, and prompt help for struggling learners will take us a long way in the right direction. This approach will require an investment of our shared resources — an investment that will pay off in the long run as first-class schools secure Maryland’s position as a great place to live and do business.

Benjamin Orr
Executive Director
Maryland Center on Economic Policy