Report shows money does matter in education

Rockford homeowners would see a 20 percent cut in the portion of their property tax bill that goes for schools, and in four years some school districts in the Rock River Valley would get almost double what they get today under legislation that aims to make Illinois’ system of financing education more fair.

But to achieve that property tax break, bring more money to our local schools and bring equity to financing education, you’ll pay more in income taxes — skewed toward the wealthy — and pay sales taxes for such services as haircuts, lawn care and bowling.

House Bill 750 and Senate Bill 2288 — the legislation that would create this tax swap — have been around for a while and have yet to gain traction. What’s new in the effort to move these forward is data collected by the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability that shows that how much spent per student does make a difference.

Ralph Martire, executive director of the nonprofit think tank, came to the News Tower on Monday armed with the report “Money Matters: How the Illinois School Funding System Creates Significant Educational Inequities that Impact Most Students in the State.”

The report, compiled from Illinois State Board of Education statistics, shows that even among students who come from households with similar incomes, there is a threshold for how much money is needed to properly educate children in Illinois.

That threshold appears to be about $7,000 a student. The General Assembly set the foundation level for school financing in 2008 at $5,734.

A chart in the report plots 77 low poverty school districts.

“We wanted to control for home environment because I don’t know if you’ve heard this, but I’ve heard it’s all about parents and parental involvement — money doesn’t matter at all. If they’ve got good parents they will do well. If they don’t, they won’t — you’re throwing money down a black hole. If I’ve heard that once I’ve heard it a thousand times,” Martire said.

The chart shows that students in about half of the districts that spend about $5,000 in instructional expenses per student meet or exceed expenses while about half don’t. But when districts spend $7,000 a student, students meet or exceed expectations.

“If money didn’t really matter, you’d see the spray continue equal or above because there’d be no correlation between your investment and outcomes,” Martire said. “But what this powerfully demonstrates is that there is a certain critical mass you need to get to in instructional expense to ensure good outcomes. That correlation is very strong and no one can claim ‘It’s all about the home environment.’ Even with the good home environment, there still needs to be a certain minimal expense.”

The state has done a terrible job financing education, but is this the right plan to fix it? More next week.

Wally Haas is editorial page editor of the Rockford Register Star. His e-mail address is whaas@rrstar.com.