The Money Myth: School Resources, Outcomes, and Equity

Chapter 1: Moving Beyond Money:The Variety of Educational Resources

Chapter 1 Moving Beyond Money:TheVariety of Educational Resources DESPITE THE demands of generations of reformers for more funding, there are too many puzzles in the myth of money to ignore.The substantial increases in spending throughout the last century have neither reduced the need for reforms nor eliminated many inequalities in resources and outcomes . States and districts have poured substantial sums into reforms, but some of these funds have accomplished little; some expensive initiatives have been ineffective, and sustaining real reform has been difficult. A long series of efforts to demonstrate the effects of conventional resources— smaller class size, greater teacher experience, more overall spending per pupil—have generated ambiguous results, sometimes leading to the facile conclusion that money and school resources do not make a difference.Arguing again for more money might lead simply to more spending increases without the resolution of underlying problems. So it is inadequate merely to debate the level and distribution of funding, as the“old”school finance has usually done.Instead it is necessary to develop an improved approach to school resources—including not just money but all of the conditions, practices, and personnel within schools that might enhance outcomes—as well as an improved approach to judging the effectiveness of school resources.1 To do this, I first review in this chapter the dominant literatures examining resources and their effectiveness. Next I turn to more practice-based and anecdotal evidence about waste in schools to develop a conception of why waste seems so pervasive, particularly (it seems) in urban schools. I then examine how we might conceptualize the effective use of re- sources, introducing a set of precepts or conditions quite different from the assumptions of the“old school finance.With these precepts in mind,I distinguish between funding—expenditures per pupil, for example—and resources , or those inputs to schooling that dollars can only potentially buy. Furthermore, I distinguish among simple resources (like class size), compound resources (like class size reduction plus staff development), complex resources (like pedagogical approaches),and abstract resources (like school climate and stability).A final precept is that students are themselves resources and that several of their characteristics contribute to their own and their peers’ learning. The idea of expanding the conception of educational resources well beyond funding is based partly on the conceptions about the causality of resource effects that are discussed in the third section of this chapter. The purpose is to reframe old questions in new ways and to establish a revised perspective that leads to different kinds of research, practice, and policy. While some of them are not particularly novel, the extent of these perspectives has been limited.2 Most analyses of school resources still concentrate on dollars spent rather than on how resources are used, even when they attempt to determine how money matters (see, for example, Ladd, Chalk, and Hansen 1999). Principals and other school leaders seem to pay little attention to the educational efficacy of their spending decisions (Boyd and Hartman 1988), and leadership preparation programs include very little about how to spend money effectively. Some popular reforms like class size reduction cost huge sums but pay little attention to how changes might affect student learning; as a result, they often fail to accomplish anything. So it is worth continuing to define effective resources and clarifying the links (often tenuous to nonexistent) between spending and effective resources, since improved approaches to school resources will dominate only when most educators, policymakers, and researchers embrace them. Few educators like to think much about money. It is dross, or straw, or filthy lucre that impedes thinking about loftier goals like educating all children to the limits of their potential. But money is also necessary if we are to produce the educational results that educators and parents and policymakers want; no one can build a schoolhouse or hire a teacher or buy a textbook without money. The provision of the bare minimum resources to create schools is no longer the issue, as it was in the nineteenth century; greater effectiveness and equity are now more important.The conversion of revenues into educational outcomes should not be magical, like Rumpelstiltskin helping the miller’s daughter spin straw into gold. Rethinking school resources requires moving away from alchemy toward a clearer understanding of the requirements for effective school spending. 26 The Money Myth CONVERTING RESOURCESTO RESULTS:OPENINGTHE BLACK BOX Several areas of research have...