Education is always at the forefront of Mississippi politics. Youd be hard pressed to find anyone who is opposed to improving our education system, but what does that mean? If you have children in school, are an educator or just are politically aware, youve probably heard of the Mississippi Adequate Education Program (MAEP). Every year, certain special interest groups start campaigns to fully fund MAEP. This year, former Governor Ronnie Musgrove is suing the State on behalf of several school districts that claim theyve been deprived of MAEP funding. But what is MAEP? MAEP is a formula that was developed to determine how much funding the state must provide to individual school districts. It is extremely complicated, but Im going to try to explain it and why it is deeply flawed. The number is arrived at by taking the average daily attendance (ADA) x base student rate + at-risk component - local contribution + an 8% kicker. By law, a student is deemed in attendance if he is present for at least 2/3 of the school day. The calculation of the base student rate is more complicated than I can get on Facebook, but lets say it took me and a team of MIT physicists to figure it out. The at-risk component is based on free and reduced lunches and is a 5% kicker. The local contribution is 27% of whatever the base student rate is. There are two readily apparent flaws with MAEP and many more that would again require the help of my friends from MIT. First, most school districts have not implemented systems to accurately calculate average daily attendance. It could just be a lack of resources or know how, or it could be that they benefit from poor record keeping. The greater attendance reflected in their records, the more money pumped into the system. The second readily apparent flaw is that the method for determining at-risk kids is unverifiable. The free and reduced lunch program is run by the USDA, not the state of Mississippi. The USDA does not require, and in fact, disallows Mississippi from conducting income verification on parents who apply for free and reduced lunches. The end result is that we have substantially higher instances of kids on these programs than our income statistics suggests should be on these programs. In some school districts, the abuse is really egregious. For the district, its all gravy, pardon the pun. The feds are paying for the lunch and they get more money as a result of the fact. There are also additional add-ons under the MAEP formula for transportation, gifted and special education and vocational training. In saying all of this, Im not suggesting that we should not adequately fund our schools. I think, like most folks, that education is a priority. I also think our spending reflects that. We spend more than 60% of our state budget on it, with many billions more coming from Washington. Of course, spending isnt the silver bullet it is made out to be. In 2009-2010, the state of Mississippi spent $8,930 per student (not including school construction and debt costs). That number was 457% higher than the amount we spent per student in 1980. Teacher salaries have gone up 257% since 1980. We have 29% more teachers than we did in 1980. Our average ACT score in 1990 (scoring system was changed in 1990 and previous years are impossible to compare) was 18.5. In 2010, it was 18.8. Our math and reading scores on the National Assessment of Education Progress tests (NAEP) have remained static for a decade. In the end, regardless of whether you think our schools need more funding, the formula that is being sold is still flawed.
Posted on: Thu, 18 Sep 2014 14:29:10 +0000
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