By BOB GRIFFIN
We’ve seen a huge battle erupt in Juneau over school funding this year — when our energy should be focused on how we re-allocate our education dollars into programs that produce the results our parents demand and our kids deserve.
A January 2024 joint Rutgers/University of Miami study ranked Alaska 2nd in the nation in overall best funding adequacy in 2021, with a score of 95 out of a possible 100. Florida was ranked last in the study with a funding adequacy score of score of 12 out of 100. Despite that enormous difference in fiscal effort, 28.8% of 2022 Florida high school graduates scored a 3 or higher on at least one AP exam (3rd highest in the US), compared to 11.9% in Alaska (45th in the US).
The Rutgers study accounts for cost of living differences between different locations and judges funding adequacy based primarily on the percentage of a states economy that is dedicated to funding K-12. Alaska was also ranked fourth in the nation in improving funding adequacy since 2009 and first in the nation in improving funding adequacy since 2018 by the study.
Alaska was also judged to have a very equitable K-12 funding system according to Rutgers. There was some mild equity criticism from the authors that Alaska slightly underfunds students who come from families in the top 20% of income levels compared to exceptionally high funding levels for students in lower income brackets.
One factor that makes our K-12 system even better funded that the Rutgers study reveals, is the effect of the additional dollars that go to neighborhood schools because of Alaska’s very high rate of very inexpensive correspondence programs. Over 16% of Alaska K-12 students participate in correspondence school programs at a cost of $5364/student compares to over $22,000/student for the state average.
Those correspondence students get very little (if any) local or federal funding, and only consume only about 4% of overall K-12 spending. This results in the remaining 96% of funding concentrated in the 86% of kids in non-correspondence programs. The additional funds per student is not insignificant—around an extra $3,000 dollars per student per year available in brick-and-mortar public schools than would otherwise be available if those funds had to be shared with the 21,000 kids in correspondence programs.
Some have argued that kids in correspondence programs actually make district poorer — taking state K-12 dollars away from school districts. This would be true, if all the costs of educating a child were “fixed costs.” In actuality, the vast majority of cost of educating a child are “variable costs”. For every group of approximately 25 students the district needs another teacher.
More kids eventually mean more payroll clerks, bus drivers with additional busses, more psychologist and other support staff, etc. A little thought experiment: If the fixed cost model had merit, we would be able to add 1,000 new students to a district with little or no additional funding.
While our funding is adequate – results are still disappointing. Alaska does have some isolated pockets of success — like our best-in-the-country public charter school results, as pointed out in a recent Harvard Study. However, our test results for more traditional programs, for kids rich and poor, lags far below the US average for comparable demographics, according to the US Department of Education National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP).
The conversation about the number of dollars we can or should dedicate to K-12 in Alaska has been taking up most of the oxygen in Juneau, yet I’m looking forward to moving past that debate and being able to collaborate with all K-12 stakeholders in analyzing how we refocus our significant fiscal effort into better outcomes.
Our kids are just as bright, our teachers are just as dedicated and our parents love their kids just as much as in Florida or anywhere else. The only thing holding us back from producing better outcomes is the courage to make the public policy changes that better focus our resources.
Bob Griffin is on the board of Alaska Policy Forum and serves on the Alaska Board of Education and Early Development, but writes this in his own capacity.
