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:

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.

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?

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.

Teaching Young Children About Race

I have a number of  friends who think that it is important to explicitly avoid topics of race. They believe that they treat people the same no matter their race, and they don’t think their children will perceive race as significant if no one “makes a big deal about it.” I’ve even been told that the common children’s song, “Jesus loves the little children,” is bad because it wrongly teaches kids to consider race with its verse about how Jesus loves all the children of the world, red and yellow, black and white.
I take a different approach. Based on what I’ve read and seen, color-blindness is never really color-blind (at least in our culture); and attempts to be color-blind in such a situation merely reinforce racial prejudice albeit unintentionally. There are two recent books that have affected my thinking on the subject: Linda Alcoff’s Visible Identities and Nurtue Shock.
Alcoff argues for the ways in which our bodies – particularly how they are visibly marked and determined play an important role in shaping our experience of ourselves, others, and the world. In particular, she argues that race and gender fundamentally shape our identities, and that any position that intends to be neutral or blind to race or gender can never accomplish what it purports to accomplish. Race and gender are not fixed identities but hermeneutical standpoints that change and develop with its culture. One particular story struck me about a mother of a child in a preschool environment whose teacher wanted a color blind classroom. The child was the only person of a different color in the classroom, and the children reacted and treated the child differently than the other children. They would even ask questions that denigrated the child’s race and identity. The color-blindness of the teacher actually helped produce this sort of environment, and it caused the teacher to ignore the specific racial dynamics within the classroom.
This basic problem in teaching about race has been reproduced in study after study. Nurture Shock does a nice job of describing how well-meaning parents who harbor no apparent racial prejudice and would be appalled by their children holding racial prejudices, and yet adopting a color-blind approach in such an environment often produces children who pay explicit attention to race and try to identify with their own races. One set of parents like these were appalled that their child rooted for white basketball players because they were like him. One study (using different colored T-shirts) shows that children identify groups and will often take seemingly innocuous items and portray their group as positive and good and the other group as negative and bad. Another study showed that these tendencies were able to be addressed and corrected for when parents played explicit attention to the perceived differences and explained how people who are different in such and such a respect are not bad, mean, etc. In short, it seems that educational approach that favor color-blindness in our environment contributes to racism, while paying explicit attention to racial differences and explaining why people are different races are just as good, nice, etc. as one’s own race can actually combat prejudice.
I’ve been trying to pay attention to these features of group identification when I am interacting with my own children. I’ll often talk about how differences between people are not bad things. This conversation with my boys has most often come up when I’m reading Thomas the Tank Engine stories (the originals and the new Thomas and Friends versions). Remarks are often made in the stories about how Diesel engines are bad because they aren’t Steam engines, and about how they want to take all the work from the “Steamies.” I realize that Reverend Awdry, given that he’s British, was probably dealing primarily with class rather than race; but I can’t help but see this as an example of unjustified prejudice based on irrelevant characteristics like race. I’ll always point out how this is a bad attitude and we’ll stop and talk about it explicitly. I initially thought it might be wise to choose different stories that didn’t portray these things, but I’ve embraced it now and use it as an opportunity to talk with my children about differences like race and gender. I tend to come across as preachy and my spouse often laughs at how awkward the “lesson” goes. But I do it anyway.
What about you? Am I wrong about color-blindness? How do you handle teaching your children about race and gender differences?