Given the Iowa City Community School District (ICCSD) is concerned about budget shortfalls and saying that "Nothing is off the table" with regard to budget cuts, I've been discussing how the ICCSD calculates, analyzes, and evaluates operational costs. This post is the fifth in my series; links and short descriptions of prior posts are at the bottom.
Numerous school board members have previously expressed how costly it is to run Hills Elementary. It is the smallest elementary school in the ICCSD at an enrollment of 101 students for the 2013-2014 school year, and it had an enrollment of 108 students in the year I have been examining (2012-2013). Furthermore, as many may have surmised, no matter how the numbers are parsed, Hills currently has the worst operational efficiency in the district. It is also something of an outlier compared to every other school in the district.
Still, the way the district ordinarily presents the operational costs is misleading. Likely because of generational poverty within the boundaries of Hills, it has, proportionally, some of the highest special education and at-risk funding in the ICCSD. So, if you hear district administrators' say that it costs $10,000+ per student, they aren't controlling for these funds as I've suggested they should.
Nevertheless, that doesn't mean that Hills is operationally efficient by any measure. When I control for these costs and evaluate the amount of funds provided for ordinary school operations from the general education budget (see my prior post for a discussion of what I mean by this), Hills, at best, has a per student operational cost of $5,964. It is slightly more than $1,000 per student compared to the next most expensive elementary school in the ICCSD.
Based on this information, the operational efficiency argument for closing Hills seems well supported. And that is the conventional wisdom.
There are a few things that still concern me, however. First, the $5,964 figure is still slightly below the $6,018 allocated for each student in the 2012-2013 school year. In other words, it is Hills' need for special education and at-risk funds that results in it "losing" money.
Second, it could very well be the case that closing Hills Elementary would result in the district losing significantly more money than it loses by operating Hills Elementary. How so? In the 2013-2014 school year, the ICCSD is losing 91, 52, and 10 students to the Mid-Prairie, Highland, and Lone Tree school district's respectively. That's a total of 153 students, and losing those students costs the district over $900K a year. I'm worried that we could see a significant number of the Hills community follow this trend taking their kids to other school districts. The only way closing Hills really saves money is if a sufficient number of those families decide to send their kids to another school in the ICCSD rather than sending them to another school district. Otherwise, closing Hills could very well result in a net loss to the district.
Third, the ICCSD has not sufficiently attempted alternatives to closing Hills. My previous post comparing two of our other small schools, which are well over a 100 students larger than Hills, suggest that if Hills had another 100 students, it could probably be run, especially with combined-grade classes at least as efficiently as some of our other schools in the district. The district should consider ways to make that happen. I wonder what a public Montessori, or a progressive public charter, like this one might do to help Hills. I'm not sure if it would improve the situation, but it important to consider these possibilities and to try something before making a decision that could have significant unintended consequences. An attractive Hills Elementary could be an effective way to draw back a number of families who have left the ICCSD for those other school districts.
Fourth, this post has only been an evaluation of the operational efficiency argument for closing Hills. It is an important one, but there could be academic and social reasons for keeping it open that trump this argument.
Previous Posts:
Part 1: Introduction
Part 2: Comparing Seven Schools
Part 3: Comparing 2 of our smallest schools to our newest, larger school
Part 4: A deeper discussion of the rationale for controlling for special education and at-risk funding
Saturday, April 5, 2014
Friday, April 4, 2014
Operational Cost #4: How to control for special education and at-risk funding?
I've been doing a series on operational costs in the Iowa City Community School District (ICCSD). Part 1 gave an introduction to my methodology and general approach, Part 2 discussed 7 of the ICCSD elementary schools arguing that 4 smaller ones were significantly more efficient than the larger ones, and Part 3 compared the newest school with two of the smallest schools in the ICCSD -- and the newer school didn't fare so well.
A concerned reader has argued that I am distorting the numbers. The problem, according to this reader, was that I was inappropriately controlling for special education and at-risk funding. As I argued previously, there are three separate funding categories for general education, special education, and at-risk funding. The state allocates a certain amount per student for general education purposes (that figure was $6,018 for the 2012-2013 school year), a different amount for special education depending on the needs of the students in the district, and another amount for at-risk funding (which is only funded at 75%, so 25% comes from the general education budget). The reason I wanted to control for special education and at-risk funding is that it is misleading to compare the $6,018 figure to how much a school costs to operate in general. It doesn't take into account the sources of those funds.
Why is it important to take into account the source of funds? The primary challenge our district has financially is not the ability to raise funds. Rather, it is a problem in being allowed by the State of Iowa to raise funds. In other words, the primary limitation is related to spending authority. The idea behind spending authority is that it ensures that all students in the State of Iowa basically get the same type of education -- and wealthier areas don't get more funds simply because they are from a wealthier area. And that's a good thing.
For the most part, ICCSD's special education funds and 75% of its at-risk funds come from sources that don't count against the spending authority related to the $6,018 figure. Furthermore, they are not a true measure of how costly it is to operate a school. Rather, they are a measure of how costly it is to operate that school given certain decisions about special education and at-risk funding that the district has made.
But why should we control for these funds? It turns out that special education and at-risk funds aren't equally distributed at all in our district. I know what you are thinking! Surprise, surprise! So, to really compare our schools apples to apples, we need to control in some way for this variance.
Now, my well-informed and well-meaning reader was concerned with my method of controlling for these other funding sources. In short, I had zeroed out special education funds and at-risk funds for all 19 of our elementary schools. This concerned reader argued that this isn't the best way to control for those sources and it advantages the smaller schools. I thought there was something to my interlocutor's point, so I crunched the numbers a bit more.
In my first attempt, I took the mean of all 19 elementary schools special education and at-risk funds, and I put that amount in for each school. Under this way of controlling for those external funding sources, larger schools tended to fare better. They had a larger base to distribute that average over and they did quite well because of that. Here is the graphical representation of the data:
A few notes: first, we need to be clear that the cost per student here is a way of representing the total cost to run a school and it should not be compared to the $6,018. So, it loses some of what warrants the zeroing out strategy I used previously. Second, this approach is arguably problematic because it acts as if special education and at-risk costs should be distributed evenly across the district. But doing that would result in smaller schools having a disproportionate number of students with special education or at-risk needs.
Thus, I came up with another way to control for the external funding sources. I took each of our 19 elementary schools enrollment as a percentage of total enrollment, and I allocated exactly that percentage of the total elementary special education and at-risk funds to each school respectively. Here is the graph for that data:
As one would expect, the result was representationally, virtually identical to my initial portrayal in Parts 1-3. So, you don't have to click back, here is that graph:
In other words, if you allocated special education funds and at-risk funds in our district according to enrollment, the comparative operational costs rankings for all of our schools would be all but identical. I think there are good reasons for (a) distributing those funds by school enrollment rather than acting as if the best way to control for those costs is by equally dividing it, and (b) there is a good reason for zeroing them out, particularly since it doesn't skew any comparative evaluation of our schools and the benefit is that it gives us a pretty good comparison of how much each elementary school costs our general education fund. The only caveats that I should make here are twofold: first, at-risk funding does affect the general education fund and it is a bit misleading to not include 25% of it here. Nevertheless, we still need to find some way to control for that with something like my second graph. Furthermore, our district has a so-called special education deficit. That means that we spend more in special education than we receive from the state. So, I could see how it would be helpful to distribute those excess funds across all schools as well. But once again, that graph would give the same comparative rank of our schools as the 2nd and 3rd graphs above.
In short, I thank the concerned reader for bringing a possible oversight to my attention; but my considered reflection is that it my initial portrayal along with my 2nd graph above (understanding the limitations of both) gives an accurate picture of the comparative operational costs of our 19 elementary schools in 2012-2013.
A concerned reader has argued that I am distorting the numbers. The problem, according to this reader, was that I was inappropriately controlling for special education and at-risk funding. As I argued previously, there are three separate funding categories for general education, special education, and at-risk funding. The state allocates a certain amount per student for general education purposes (that figure was $6,018 for the 2012-2013 school year), a different amount for special education depending on the needs of the students in the district, and another amount for at-risk funding (which is only funded at 75%, so 25% comes from the general education budget). The reason I wanted to control for special education and at-risk funding is that it is misleading to compare the $6,018 figure to how much a school costs to operate in general. It doesn't take into account the sources of those funds.
Why is it important to take into account the source of funds? The primary challenge our district has financially is not the ability to raise funds. Rather, it is a problem in being allowed by the State of Iowa to raise funds. In other words, the primary limitation is related to spending authority. The idea behind spending authority is that it ensures that all students in the State of Iowa basically get the same type of education -- and wealthier areas don't get more funds simply because they are from a wealthier area. And that's a good thing.
For the most part, ICCSD's special education funds and 75% of its at-risk funds come from sources that don't count against the spending authority related to the $6,018 figure. Furthermore, they are not a true measure of how costly it is to operate a school. Rather, they are a measure of how costly it is to operate that school given certain decisions about special education and at-risk funding that the district has made.
But why should we control for these funds? It turns out that special education and at-risk funds aren't equally distributed at all in our district. I know what you are thinking! Surprise, surprise! So, to really compare our schools apples to apples, we need to control in some way for this variance.
Now, my well-informed and well-meaning reader was concerned with my method of controlling for these other funding sources. In short, I had zeroed out special education funds and at-risk funds for all 19 of our elementary schools. This concerned reader argued that this isn't the best way to control for those sources and it advantages the smaller schools. I thought there was something to my interlocutor's point, so I crunched the numbers a bit more.
In my first attempt, I took the mean of all 19 elementary schools special education and at-risk funds, and I put that amount in for each school. Under this way of controlling for those external funding sources, larger schools tended to fare better. They had a larger base to distribute that average over and they did quite well because of that. Here is the graphical representation of the data:
A few notes: first, we need to be clear that the cost per student here is a way of representing the total cost to run a school and it should not be compared to the $6,018. So, it loses some of what warrants the zeroing out strategy I used previously. Second, this approach is arguably problematic because it acts as if special education and at-risk costs should be distributed evenly across the district. But doing that would result in smaller schools having a disproportionate number of students with special education or at-risk needs.
Thus, I came up with another way to control for the external funding sources. I took each of our 19 elementary schools enrollment as a percentage of total enrollment, and I allocated exactly that percentage of the total elementary special education and at-risk funds to each school respectively. Here is the graph for that data:
As one would expect, the result was representationally, virtually identical to my initial portrayal in Parts 1-3. So, you don't have to click back, here is that graph:
In other words, if you allocated special education funds and at-risk funds in our district according to enrollment, the comparative operational costs rankings for all of our schools would be all but identical. I think there are good reasons for (a) distributing those funds by school enrollment rather than acting as if the best way to control for those costs is by equally dividing it, and (b) there is a good reason for zeroing them out, particularly since it doesn't skew any comparative evaluation of our schools and the benefit is that it gives us a pretty good comparison of how much each elementary school costs our general education fund. The only caveats that I should make here are twofold: first, at-risk funding does affect the general education fund and it is a bit misleading to not include 25% of it here. Nevertheless, we still need to find some way to control for that with something like my second graph. Furthermore, our district has a so-called special education deficit. That means that we spend more in special education than we receive from the state. So, I could see how it would be helpful to distribute those excess funds across all schools as well. But once again, that graph would give the same comparative rank of our schools as the 2nd and 3rd graphs above.
In short, I thank the concerned reader for bringing a possible oversight to my attention; but my considered reflection is that it my initial portrayal along with my 2nd graph above (understanding the limitations of both) gives an accurate picture of the comparative operational costs of our 19 elementary schools in 2012-2013.
Thursday, April 3, 2014
Operational Efficiency 3: Won't our new schools be significantly more efficient than our smallest schools?
Won't our new schools be significantly more efficient than our smallest schools? The short answer is not necessarily.
In previous posts, I have argued that (a) we need to be sure that we are compared apples to apples when we discuss operational costs between schools by controlling for differences in allocated special education and at-risk funds, and (b) smaller schools can be and, in our district, often are more operationally efficient than larger schools.
In this post, I will show that two of our three smallest elementary schools are actually cheaper, per student, than our newest elementary school. What is particularly interesting about this fact is that the newer school is often presented as being "right-sized" and as a model of operational efficiency in our district. Here is the graph that plots the cost per student at those three schools:
In previous posts, I have argued that (a) we need to be sure that we are compared apples to apples when we discuss operational costs between schools by controlling for differences in allocated special education and at-risk funds, and (b) smaller schools can be and, in our district, often are more operationally efficient than larger schools.
In this post, I will show that two of our three smallest elementary schools are actually cheaper, per student, than our newest elementary school. What is particularly interesting about this fact is that the newer school is often presented as being "right-sized" and as a model of operational efficiency in our district. Here is the graph that plots the cost per student at those three schools:
Some things to note:
- all three of these schools are above the mean of per student costs for all 19 elementary schools.
- all three of these schools are substantially below the per student state allocation
- one of the two small schools has been frequently discussed as a good option for closing for the sake of operational costs
- The new, larger school is the second worst elementary school out of all 19.
So, what conclusions can we draw from this?
(1) At the very least, it will likely take 3-5 years before a new elementary school will become more efficient than any school that it replaces. Borlaug still isn't there. It would behoove us to consider this as we move into an era where we may have school board members and administration officials suggesting that we close more of our elementary schools for the sake of operational efficiency.
(2) Smaller schools can be run in an operationally efficient manner. To do so, it is important to have relatively stable class sizes approaching the district's suggested sizes. The redistricting will help us achieve this goal in a way that could help keep our smaller schools running efficiently.
(3) The reason our newest school is sometimes presented as being operationally efficient even now is because the district is comparing apples to oranges. Borlaug has one of the lowest, per student, allocations of special education and at-risk funding. So, when someone compares Borlaug's overall operational efficiency and doesn't control for this, it makes it seem as if its is performing better than it really is. We need to critically evaluate the information that is presented and make sure that we are comparing apples to apples.
Saturday, February 15, 2014
Operational Efficiency 2: Are bigger schools always more efficient?
The Press-Citizen had an article about ways to cut operational costs over the coming years. There must be something in the air. This post is the second part of a multi-part series on operational costs.
In my first post, I presented overall data from 2012-2013 in graphical form that (a) illustrated some of the evidence supporting the claim that school enrollment is strongly negatively correlated with lower operational costs, and (b) highlighted the fact that this relationship is not always found.
In this post, I will examine 7 elementary schools in the Iowa City Community School District. I am cherry picking them to make it abundantly clear that (b) above applies to many of our district schools. Of these seven schools, 3 of them had more than 450 general education students enrolled in 2012-2013 and 4 of them hovered around 350 students. If it were the case that a larger school always has better operational efficiency than a significantly smaller school, then we would expect to find that that the three elementary schools with more than 450 students would have significantly better operational cost than each of the 4 schools that were around 350 students.
It turns out that it is the exact opposite. That is, all 4 smaller schools have better operational efficiency than each of the 3 larger schools. Here is a graphical representation:
The trend line shows that for these 7 schools there is a strong positive correlation between school enrollment and operational efficiency. In other words, the smaller schools were significantly better in terms of operational efficiency than the larger schools. Surprising, eh?
Let's add a little more surprise! The district average operational cost per general education elementary student in 2012-2013 (when controlling for special education and at-risk funds) was $4,305. It is a little hard to tell from the graph, but 4 of these 7 schools are above that average. The three that are below the average are from the group of smaller schools, and the fourth smaller school is just barely above the average. So, 3 of these 4 smaller schools actually lower the district average, but all 3 of the larger schools increase the district average.
How about some more? The four smaller schools have about the same total enrollment (give or take a few students), and if you replaced these four smaller schools with 3 larger schools with operational efficiency akin to the three represented, you'd end up with a net loss in operational efficiency.
So what accounts for the "aberration" from the standard correlation that we find for all 19 schools? I don't know exactly. It should be noted, however, that even strong negative correlations aren't perfect. But I do have some hypotheses.
One hypothesis: it could be that some teachers and staff at some of the larger schools have significantly more seniority, which would have a significant effect on pay. I have no evidence to support or contradict that hypothesis at this point. Even if the hypothesis is correct, it seems that should be taken into account when we evaluate how operationally efficient a school is. That is, if some schools, for whatever reason, tend to have more experienced teachers for longer periods of time than some other schools, then it is simply going to cost more to operate that school.
Another hypothesis: the distribution of students may be heavily concentrated in lower grades, which tend to have smaller class sizes. Upper grades must be too small to offset the increase in operational costs. I would have to check the distribution of students at the particular schools to evaluate this hypothesis.
Some hypotheses I think we can rule out:
(1) free and reduced lunch (FRL) rates have NOT really affected the numbers. One of the smaller schools and one of the larger schools significantly exceed the district's Diversity Policy figures, but each of the other 5 schools are right about where they are supposed to be.
(2) being around 350 students doesn't seem to hit a sweet spot that's just really good for operational efficiency reasons. There are some schools around that number that do really poorly. One of which I'll discuss in a subsequent post. Still, 350 divided by 14 (2 classes per grade) is an average of 25... which gives decent class sizes if its distributed appropriately (a big if!). Furthermore, there are some schools between 450 and 500 students that do particularly well in operational efficiency, so that isn't necessarily a particularly bad number of students in terms of operational efficiency.
So, what now? First, we need to be careful with how we employ the bigger school = better operational efficiency rhetoric. That isn't always the case, and we have a number of cases in point here. Second, we need to examine whether our schools consistently have the same relative amount of operational costs compared to other schools. In other words, how did these four smaller schools compare to the 3 larger ones over a five-year period? Third, if there is a consistent trend here, we need ask a few questions: what accounts for the lower operational costs? Are there limitations to trying to replicate the results in other similarly-sized schools? Could this method be a way to (a) cut costs while (b) keeping many of our (relatively) smaller elementary schools open as our community seems to prefer?
In my first post, I presented overall data from 2012-2013 in graphical form that (a) illustrated some of the evidence supporting the claim that school enrollment is strongly negatively correlated with lower operational costs, and (b) highlighted the fact that this relationship is not always found.
In this post, I will examine 7 elementary schools in the Iowa City Community School District. I am cherry picking them to make it abundantly clear that (b) above applies to many of our district schools. Of these seven schools, 3 of them had more than 450 general education students enrolled in 2012-2013 and 4 of them hovered around 350 students. If it were the case that a larger school always has better operational efficiency than a significantly smaller school, then we would expect to find that that the three elementary schools with more than 450 students would have significantly better operational cost than each of the 4 schools that were around 350 students.
It turns out that it is the exact opposite. That is, all 4 smaller schools have better operational efficiency than each of the 3 larger schools. Here is a graphical representation:
The trend line shows that for these 7 schools there is a strong positive correlation between school enrollment and operational efficiency. In other words, the smaller schools were significantly better in terms of operational efficiency than the larger schools. Surprising, eh?
Let's add a little more surprise! The district average operational cost per general education elementary student in 2012-2013 (when controlling for special education and at-risk funds) was $4,305. It is a little hard to tell from the graph, but 4 of these 7 schools are above that average. The three that are below the average are from the group of smaller schools, and the fourth smaller school is just barely above the average. So, 3 of these 4 smaller schools actually lower the district average, but all 3 of the larger schools increase the district average.
How about some more? The four smaller schools have about the same total enrollment (give or take a few students), and if you replaced these four smaller schools with 3 larger schools with operational efficiency akin to the three represented, you'd end up with a net loss in operational efficiency.
So what accounts for the "aberration" from the standard correlation that we find for all 19 schools? I don't know exactly. It should be noted, however, that even strong negative correlations aren't perfect. But I do have some hypotheses.
One hypothesis: it could be that some teachers and staff at some of the larger schools have significantly more seniority, which would have a significant effect on pay. I have no evidence to support or contradict that hypothesis at this point. Even if the hypothesis is correct, it seems that should be taken into account when we evaluate how operationally efficient a school is. That is, if some schools, for whatever reason, tend to have more experienced teachers for longer periods of time than some other schools, then it is simply going to cost more to operate that school.
Another hypothesis: the distribution of students may be heavily concentrated in lower grades, which tend to have smaller class sizes. Upper grades must be too small to offset the increase in operational costs. I would have to check the distribution of students at the particular schools to evaluate this hypothesis.
Some hypotheses I think we can rule out:
(1) free and reduced lunch (FRL) rates have NOT really affected the numbers. One of the smaller schools and one of the larger schools significantly exceed the district's Diversity Policy figures, but each of the other 5 schools are right about where they are supposed to be.
(2) being around 350 students doesn't seem to hit a sweet spot that's just really good for operational efficiency reasons. There are some schools around that number that do really poorly. One of which I'll discuss in a subsequent post. Still, 350 divided by 14 (2 classes per grade) is an average of 25... which gives decent class sizes if its distributed appropriately (a big if!). Furthermore, there are some schools between 450 and 500 students that do particularly well in operational efficiency, so that isn't necessarily a particularly bad number of students in terms of operational efficiency.
So, what now? First, we need to be careful with how we employ the bigger school = better operational efficiency rhetoric. That isn't always the case, and we have a number of cases in point here. Second, we need to examine whether our schools consistently have the same relative amount of operational costs compared to other schools. In other words, how did these four smaller schools compare to the 3 larger ones over a five-year period? Third, if there is a consistent trend here, we need ask a few questions: what accounts for the lower operational costs? Are there limitations to trying to replicate the results in other similarly-sized schools? Could this method be a way to (a) cut costs while (b) keeping many of our (relatively) smaller elementary schools open as our community seems to prefer?
Thursday, February 13, 2014
Operational Cost I: Introduction
The Iowa City Community School District is really worried about operational costs right now. Operational cost is a key metric that school districts use to evaluate the success of a school. I think it is a mistake to put too much weight on this metric, but even if it is a higher priority for a district than I think it ought to be, its actual use needs to be critically evaluated.
Here is a graph I've constructed based on the 2012-2013 data about elementary school operational efficiency:
On the one hand, it provides evidence that there is a strong negative correlation between cost per student and elementary school size. This is consistent with the message from relevant studies and our local administration. On the other hand, it reveals a much more complex relationship than bigger schools have lower operational costs than smaller schools. I will be asking a number of questions about these matters over the coming weeks in order to better facilitate discussion about operational cost in general and in our district more particularly.
A couple of caveats are in order: first, the information is a one-year snapshot. There could be peculiarities to this particular year that explain the results.
Second, the graph is based on controlling for special education and at-risk funding so that we get a much better idea of the funds that we are allowed to generate as spending authority for general education students. Special education funds have their own funding category, as do At-risk funds. Thus, I thought it important to control for those factors in my analysis. Likewise, special education classrooms also mean that a school with a larger proportion of special education funds probably also have fewer general education students than a comparably sized school with a smaller proportion of special education funds.
On the one hand, it provides evidence that there is a strong negative correlation between cost per student and elementary school size. This is consistent with the message from relevant studies and our local administration. On the other hand, it reveals a much more complex relationship than bigger schools have lower operational costs than smaller schools. I will be asking a number of questions about these matters over the coming weeks in order to better facilitate discussion about operational cost in general and in our district more particularly.
A couple of caveats are in order: first, the information is a one-year snapshot. There could be peculiarities to this particular year that explain the results.
Second, the graph is based on controlling for special education and at-risk funding so that we get a much better idea of the funds that we are allowed to generate as spending authority for general education students. Special education funds have their own funding category, as do At-risk funds. Thus, I thought it important to control for those factors in my analysis. Likewise, special education classrooms also mean that a school with a larger proportion of special education funds probably also have fewer general education students than a comparably sized school with a smaller proportion of special education funds.
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