Coping with Maryland?s continuing “structural deficit” is made harder by Maryland?s budget process, especially because emphasis on measuring the results of how the money is spent is considered inadequate.
That is particularly true with the massive $1.3 billion increase in school aid during the past four years, which accounts for much of next year?s shortfall.
“Were the large increases in education funding sufficiently targeted to produce intended results?” asked Roy Meyers, who teaches public budgeting at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. “And what other critical goals have not been addressed because of that investment?”
“Neither the state?s leaders nor its citizens can now answer those questions because the budget process is not designed to help them do so,” Meyers wrote in a June policy brief.
Consultants Karin Flynn and Tori Gorman for the Maryland Public Policy Institute, a Gaithersburg think tank with a more conservative bent, said in a December 2006 study: “Lawmakers should address the inconsistencies in school performance testing, so they can properly and accurately assess whether increased spending has resulted in [improved] scholastic achievement.”
Whatever test scores might show, the legislature mandated that the so-called Thornton aid go up every year to adjust for inflation.
Meyers said the same problem is true of other mandated programs such as funding for medical care, mental health and people with disabilities.
“In one sense, that?s OK to me,” he told The Examiner, “since they serve highly vulnerable populations.”
Legislative mandates are driving spending faster than revenues are coming in, legislative analysts told lawmakers last week.
“Mandates in and of themselves are not bad,” Meyers said, but the question is “whether the program is delivering the desirable outcome. That only happens if you have good management.”
Meyers said he is hopeful Gov. Martin O?Malley?s creation of the StateStat performance-tracking program will provide better management, but so far results have not been apparent.
The state has a performance measurement program instituted under former Gov. Parris Glendening called Managing for Results.
One problem with those measures is “they just have so many of them,” Meyers said, without identifying the most important, so they are difficult to apply in setting priorities.
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About this series: This is the first in a series of editorials and articles that look at the effects of Maryland’s Bridge to Excellence in Public Schools Act of 2002, which is pumping an extra $1.3 billion into state schools this year. It examines whether students achieved academic excellence as a result of the increase in aid, and how the money impacted Maryland students’ performance on state and national tests. Background: The legislation is commonly referred to as Thornton, after Alvin Thornton, who led the Maryland General Assembly’s Commission on Education Finance, Equity and Excellence leading to the law. According to the Department of Legislative Services, “The task of the Thornton Commission, as expressed in its charge, was to redesign a cumbersome school finance system in order to achieve excellence in public schools through adequate and equitable funding.” Methodology: The Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis is home to one of the largest collections of privately held public policy databases in the United States. The Center employs the databases to estimate the likely effects of policy changes on key dimensions of everyday life including marriage rates, income growth, educational attainment, and retirement decisions. Shanea Watkins, who analyzed the data for The Examiner, is a policy analyst at the Center for Data Analysis, where she performs social science research in the areas of education, poverty, and family structure. She completed her doctorate in public policy at George Mason University in 2007, where she was involved in research that examined the effects of both school choice and desegregation on academic achievement. Click here for a history of the Thornton Commisson and the reports it created. |
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Reading the charts: These charts follow the same set of students through grades, and overlay the amount of money spent per student with test results. They are different than the grade-by-grade charts, which show how unique classes of students perform in different years. Each spreadsheet contains a wide range of demographic information for students in the county. Click on the tabs at the bottom of each spreadsheet to view charts for each group. Grade and Cohort MSA Proficiency: The county-by-county spreadsheets analyze the performance of the same set of students over time next to the performance of students on a grade-by-grade basis. Each spreadsheet contains a wide range of demographic information for students in the county. Click on the tabs at the bottom of the spreadsheet to view charts for different demographic groups. Click your school district to view the spreadsheet. Allegany County Anne Arundel County Baltimore City Baltimore County Calvert County Caroline County Carroll County Cecil County Charles County Dorchester County Frederick County Garrett County Harford County Howard County Kent County Montgomery County Prince Georges County Queen Anne County St. Mary County Somerset County Talbot County Washington County Wicomico County Worchester County State of Maryland |
