Frivolous in Florida

Education-funding lawsuits don’t boost student achievement

From 1989 to 2005, advocates demanding state courts order an increase in per-pupil spending consistently won their cases. Since 2005, however, no adequacy lawsuit has won in court — perhaps because overwhelming evidence suggests that increasing per-pupil spending does not improve student achievement.

Despite this, the state of Florida — one of the most educationally improved states in the nation — now faces two frivolous adequacy lawsuits. One lawsuit has been brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the other by a self-proclaimed parent-teacher-administrator organization called "Fund Education Now."

The background here is that court-ordered spending has meant jobs for adults but has not improved student achievement. Eric Hanushek, Hoover Institution senior fellow, notes that "virtually no peer-reviewed or other credible articles or studies claim to have found significant, positive effects on student achievement in states that have implemented adequacy remedies." Several of these failed attempts to improve student achievement through court-ordered spending hikes are described in the NPRI commentary titled, "Inadequate? Or ineffective?".

Despite the recent failures to win in the courts and more than 20 years of failure in the classroom, adequacy advocates in Florida continue to push for a court-ordered remedy. Fund Education Now claims Florida has produced low-quality education for low-income and minority students. Their proof? Florida's per-pupil spending ranks 39^th in the nation and teacher pay ranks 29^th. Since 2007, education funding has been cut 7.3 percent — from $19.3 to $17.9 billion. Plaintiffs also claim that the state share of public education funding has fallen from 62 percent in 2001 to 45 by 2009.

Naturally, their complaints focus on funding, not results. Yes, Florida's per-pupil funding growth is below the national average. Table 1 compares Florida's per-pupil spending growth to that of big spenders like Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York. The table also includes the national average and the state of Maryland, a state that plaintiffs say Florida should imitate.

Table 1: Inflation-adjusted growth in per-pupil spending from 1997-2006

State	Spending Growth
Connecticut	$2,174
Florida	$789
New Jersey	$2,844
New York	$3,928
Maryland	$2,162
Massachusetts	$2,992
National Average	$1,589

Fund Education Now not only wants to increase per-pupil spending, it wants to dismantle the Jeb Bush reforms that have contributed to the state's outstanding educational success. An example is Florida's social-promotion ban in the third grade — which has worked, according to researchers Jay P. Greene and Marcus Winters. Students who were held back caught up with their peers.

Fund Education Now also wants to eliminate the requirement that seniors must pass the FCAT to graduate, and to kill the school accountability system that grades public schools A through F. It appears Fund Education Now wants an expensive system of public education in which students pretend to learn and teachers pretend to teach.

Fund Education Now is wrong on every level. Its rhetoric simply doesn't match the facts. Florida's system of K-12 education produced strong achievement growth over the last decade. Today the average Hispanic student in Florida outscores the statewide average of all students in 15 different states on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) fourth-grade reading exam.

Florida's students also demonstrate high achievement on other assessments. Recent results show that Hispanic students in Florida almost always out-perform their peers in big-spending states, though results are more mixed for black students. Yet, despite Florida's below-average per-pupil spending, achievement for black and Hispanic students almost always exceeds the national average.

Tables 2 and 3 compare Florida with the four biggest education spenders in the nation, plus Maryland. Note that Massachusetts, New Jersey and New York each faced court orders to increase per-pupil spending. The first adequacy lawsuit facing Florida was thrown out in 1996.

Table 2: NAEP achievement rank for Hispanic Students, 2007

	2005-06	Fourth Grade		Eighth Grade
	Per Pupil	Reading*	Math**	Reading+	Math++
Florida	$7,812	2nd	2nd	7th	11th
Maryland	$10,909	8th	11th	3rd	7th
Mass.	$12,564	15th	15th	12th	12th
Conn.	$13,072	33rd	34th	35th	40th
New York	$14,615	23rd	17th	28th	21st
New Jersey	$14,954	5th	6th	6th	9th
		* out of 45	** out of 46	+ out of 42	++ out of 43

 

Table 3: NAEP achievement rank for black students, 2007

	2005-06	Fourth Grade		Eighth Grade
	Per Pupil	Reading*	Math**	Reading+	Math++
Florida	$7,812	11th	10th	24th	18th
Maryland	$10,909	9th	18th	9th	11th
Mass.	$12,564	6th	2nd	1st	11th
Conn.	$13,072	21st	28th	19th	28th
New York	$14,615	8th	11th	22nd	22nd
New Jersey	$14,954	4th	1st	8th	14th
		* out of 43	** out of 45	+ out of 46	++ out of 41

More impressive is Florida's rapid achievement growth across all tests. Tables 4-7 identify the percentage of achievement growth on the NAEP math and reading exams in the fourth and eighth grade. The tables examine the state-wide average of all students, low-income students, black students and Hispanic students.

Florida's achievement growth beats that of Maryland, Massachusetts, Connecticut and New York on reading across all grades. The results for math are mixed but still impressive. Additionally, Florida beats the national average growth rates on all tests among all categories presented below.

These "adequacy" lawsuits are completely without merit. No evidence suggests that court-ordered funding mandates improve student achievement, yet Florida has already achieved strong and above-average growth despite the below-average per-pupil spending.

Table 4: NAEP fourth-grade reading achievement gains, 1998-2007

	All	Low-income	Black	Hispanic
Conn.	-1.30%	-0.99%	0.00%	3.57%
Florida	8.74%	12.11%	11.83%	10.10%
Maryland	6.13%	7.81%	9.47%	2.90%
Mass.	5.83%	5.42%	4.46%	7.73%
New York	4.19%	6.63%	8.90%	9.57%
Average	3.29%	5.13%	5.73%	6.25%

 

Table 5: NAEP eighth-grade reading achievement gains, 1998-2007

	All	Low-income	Black	Hispanic
Conn.	-1.84%	-2.41%	1.23%	-1.62%
Florida	2.77%	3.75%	5.17%	3.64%
Maryland	1.15%	3.72%	3.32%	-1.53%
Mass.	1.49%	3.23%	2.02%	2.87%
New York	-0.75%	-0.79%	-0.81%	-0.81%
Average	0.00%	0.82%	0.83%	2.07%

 

Table 6: NAEP fourth-grade math achievement gains, 1996-2009

	All	Low-income	Black	Hispanic
Conn.	5.60%	8.70%	8.29%	12.94%
Florida	12.04%	15.20%	18.13%	14.42%
Maryland	10.41%	15.08%	15.15%	10.19%
Mass.	10.04%	11.27%	14.56%	12.62%
New York	8.07%	13.11%	11.39%	14.93%
Average	7.66%	10.14%	11.56%	11.27%

 

Table 7: NAEP eighth-grade math achievement gains, 1996-2009

	All	Low-income	Black	Hispanic
Conn.	3.21%	3.54%	6.97%	4.78%
Florida	5.68%	8.47%	12.34%	7.87%
Maryland	6.67%	9.88%	10.37%	N/A
Mass.	7.55%	9.45%	8.80%	13.39%
New York	4.81%	6.72%	7.82%	7.38%
Average	4.06%	5.56%	7.88%	6.40%

NOTES: NPRI selected 1998 as a start date for the reading exam because then-Florida Governor Jeb Bush's education reforms began in 1999. The latest available data on the reading exam is from 2007. However, no math test was given in 1998, so NPRI selected data from 1996. The latest testing data available for the math exam was from 2009.  Spending data comes from the National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics. Data from the 1997-98 school year through 2006 were chosen because they best approximate the dates from the NAEP test.  Finally, there is no testing data for the state of New Jersey for the dates selected, so a comparison over time could not be made.

Patrick R. Gibbons is an education policy analyst at the Nevada Policy Research Institute.

Tags: Education, School choice, Teacher unions