How much education funding should go directly to classrooms?
A '65 percent solution' is picking up steam in some states.
Patrick Byrne, of Overstock.com, is one of America's young philosopher CEOs and a man with eccentric ideas: The Stanford-educated executive has biked cross country four times, turned a flea-market supply company into a major Internet player, and founded Worldstock.com, aimed at eradicating global poverty.
One of Mr. Byrne's latest groundbreaking ideas is how to tackle school funding reform. "The public debate over school spending is typically over more or less," he says. "The real debate should be: What are we spending it on?"
His organization, First Class Education, aims for all 50 states and the District of Columbia to reallocate school spending so that at least 65 cents on every dollar goes directly into the classroom - on books and teacher pay - by the end of 2008.
The concept is taking hold: The "65 percent solution" has already swept through state capitol domes in Texas, Kansas, and Louisiana. Earlier this month, Georgia Gov. Sonny Perdue (R) introduced legislation, joining 17 other states that have proposed bills to meet that 65 percent threshold. Currently, the national average classroom spending is about 61.5 cents on the dollar, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics (NCES).
Despite the idea's liberal fount, other Republican governors such as Minnesota's Tim Pawlenty, and Florida's Jeb Bush are also throwing their weight behind the plan. Meanwhile, education researchers question whether it will make a difference in raising student test scores. Some critics, including many school superintendents, say it violates the local control model of funding schools by adding new state standards that do not allow for flexibility.
"The 65 percent solution is the equivalent of a chicken in every pot," says a disapproving Jeanne Allen, president of the Center for Education Reform (CER).
Byrne doesn't agree. In his view, school districts have become the new Tammany Hall, fortresses of cronyism that waste taxpayer dollars while bemoaning the plight of children and teachers. The 65 percent solution addresses discontent taxpayers and teachers have about how money gets spent inside the classroom.
It originated, Byrne says, after he crunched data from the NCES, and found that the five states with the highest student standardized test scores (Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Minnesota, and Connecticut) on average spent 64.1 percent in the classroom. The five worst- scoring states (Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, New Mexico, and the District of Columbia) on average spent 59.5 percent in the classroom. Georgia ranked 13th, spending about 63 cents on every dollar.
The Georgia proposal uses the federal definition for classroom funding, which includes textbooks, teacher salaries, field trips, and special education as classroom expenses, but excludes "support" funding of speech therapists, librarians, and administrators.
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