The superintendents of ConVal and other school districts made a remarkable admission in court recently. They claimed that the state adequacy aid of $3636 per student per year is too low, because they’ve calculated that the cost of providing an adequate education is actually $9929.
On the one hand, that figure is more than twice what the state provides. But on the other hand, it’s only about half of what the ConVal district is currently spending. In other words, these superintendents just admitted in court that they’re either wasting or misusing about half of the money that they take from taxpayers each year.
This raises a couple of important questions. First, where has the other half of the money been going? And second, how realistic is their calculation?
Note that their calculation ignores several crucial facts.
The first crucial fact is that there are some pretty good schools that provide a better education than ConVal for much less than $9929.
For example, Mount Royal Academy in Sunapee charges less than $7000 for an elementary student. (In 2018, ConVal was spending more than $21,000 per elementary student.) But if a single family sends five children to the school, the cost drops to less than $4500 per student.
So perhaps what these supervisors mean is that they can’t figure out a way to do the job for less than $9929. Others seem to be able to do it. Which suggests that ConVal’s problem isn’t really a budget problem at all, but rather a personnel problem.
A second crucial fact is that the cost per year shouldn’t increase, or even remain constant, for a given student over time. It should, in fact, drop rapidly once the student is able to read with reasonable speed and comprehension, allowing him to learn primarily by reading rather than by listening. (Unfortunately, only about 40% of students statewide are able to read at the most basic level of proficiency, as measured by the NAEP exam.)
So perhaps what these superintendents mean is that the cost of an oral education is $9929. This is what it costs if we have to hire people to read and explain the textbooks to the students, instead of teaching the students to read. A written education costs considerably less — for later grades, much closer to zero than to $3636.
But all this still ignores a third crucial fact: The state is not required to provide — which means that taxpayers are not obliged to pay for — an education. According to the courts, the state is required to provide the opportunity to get an education. In today’s world, that means lending the student some kind of computer and paying for an internet connection. If he gets a new computer every year (which would be extravagant), and uses Xfinity or a similar ISP, that comes to less than $1000 per year.
If you have a computer and an internet connection, and you want to learn something (including how to read with speed and comprehension), who can stop you? No one. Many — possibly most — students have those things already, and don’t require any tax money to provide them. This would put the maximum cost to taxpayers of providing an opportunity for an adequate education at $1000 per student per year, and the average cost at a much lower figure.
(Of course, parents would have to find somewhere to park their kids while going to work. But let’s be clear — that’s day care, not education. So far, the courts haven’t discovered a right to subsidized day care in the state constitution.)
A fourth crucial fact is that the courts have said that the state is required to provide
each educable child with an opportunity to acquire the knowledge and learning necessary to participate intelligently in the American political, economic, and social systems of a free government.
The word necessary tells us that if someone is able to participate intelligently in those systems without having been taught some academic subject or another, then the state isn’t required to pay for teaching it.
In practical terms, it provides a rule for deciding whether any part of a curriculum meets the court’s definition: If not everyone has to learn it, then it clearly isn’t necessary. Which is to say, any classes that are electives are, by definition, not part of what the court was talking about. Calculus? Nice, but not necessary. AP classes? Nice, but not necessary. Learning to play a musical instrument, or speak a foreign language, or play a sport, or converse about Renaissance literature? Nice, but not necessary. And therefore, not part of adequate.
(This also rules out vague requirements like ‘Engineering and technologies’. If there’s something in there that everyone needs to know, then let’s include that. But to say that such a requirement is met if some kids learn to use Excel spreadsheets, while others learn to design and assemble robots, is an abuse of language.)
When you take these facts into account, you see that the situation is actually much worse than it might seem. It’s not $9000 per student per year that ConVal and other districts have been wasting or misusing. It’s closer to $19,000. And for its part, the state has set the adequacy amount, not too low, but way too high.
