Efficiency

California Tries to Say No to TeleVampires

Lisa Margonelli — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 06:06:00 -0400

California has announced a plan to create standards for plasma TV's, which are part of a suite of household appliances the California Energy Commission refers to as "vampires." Vampires include just about anything with a charger--cellphones, computers, cordless phones, etc--and collectively they may devour as much as 10 percent of a household's electricity consumption without actually doing anything. (Actually, they are doing something. They produce heat. It's nuts, but the best way to figure out if your appliances are sucking you dry is to walk around the house and touch the transformers. If they're hot, they're Nosferatu.)

Two thoughts.

One: The manufacturers association is fighting the standards, perhaps because they're aware that California's efficiency standards usually change norms around the world. In the 1970's, California began regulating the electricity consumption of refrigerators, which lead to the imposition of national standards. It also lead to bigger, better, cheaper fridges that use a third of the energy they did before. More importantly, those fridges proliferated around the world. In China, for example, they're saving half the electricity produced by the Three Gorges Dam.

Two: Why only plasma TV's and not the more popular LCD's, as well as all of the phone chargers and the annoyingly hot transformer on my apple laptop right here?

Streamlining School Lunch?

Jennifer Cohen — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:00:00 -0500

The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is currently working on their 2009 "Budget Options" publication. This report, which is published in odd numbered years, contains cost or savings estimates for numerous possible changes to federal programs.

In the last three publications, CBO estimated the cost of a significant change to the Child Nutrition Program - eliminating federal reimbursement to school districts for full-price breakfasts and lunches for students whose family incomes are more than 350 percent of poverty. At the same time, it would increase the reduced-price breakfast and lunch subsidy by $0.20.

In 2007 CBO estimated that such a change would save more than $2.5 billion over five years and better "target" federal funding to poor children. While the report recognized this change could undermine the finances of school nutrition programs, it failed to discuss the cost of identifying students whose families make more than 350 percent of poverty.

The National Child Nutrition Program provides free and reduced priced meals to low-income children before, during, and after school, and over the summer. The federal government reimburses districts at a flat rate for each meal served based on the family income level of the student receiving the meal. Students from families with incomes below 130 percent of the poverty line receive free meals, students from families with incomes below 185 percent of poverty receive reduced-price meals, and all other students receive full-price meals.

Reimbursement rates, set each year by federal formula, for lunch are as follows: $2.57 for free lunches, $2.17 for reduced-price lunches, and $0.24 for full-price lunches, which are available to all students regardless of income.

CBO should recognize that identifying students whose family incomes are 350 percent or more of the poverty line will increase the cost and burden of providing school meals. Currently, schools and districts identify students eligible for free or reduced-price meals through an annual two step process. Initially, they "directly certify" students using participation in TANF or food stamps as an indicator of eligibility. This process identifies roughly 25 percent of the eligible population.

Districts identify the remainder of the eligible population through paper applications. Parents who wish to enroll their children in free or reduced-price meals must fill out the application and report their income to determine eligibility. This process is both time consuming and costly for schools and districts. So much so that the federal government offers two provisions that allow districts with particularly large percentages of qualifying students to stagger enrollment processes to reduce cost.

Identifying students that are 350 percent or more above poverty in addition to those students who qualify for free or reduced-price lunch would likely occur through an extended paper application process. But wealthy families have no incentive to self-report income and disqualify themselves from the full-price subsidy. Never mind that requiring such a process would present a great administrative and bureaucratic obstacle for schools and districts already bogged down with paper applications. This added step to the application process would surely increase administrative costs just as the subsidy to offset those costs is eliminated.

If the federal government wants to save money by limiting the full-price subsidy, it is more efficient to eliminate it for all full-price meals, not just those purchased by students above 350 percent of the poverty line. But they should know that this change would increase the price students pay for meals, lowering the number of full-price meals distributed and the revenues brought in as a result. The impact on the quality and quantity of free and reduced-price meals would likely be significant.

The Budget Option report is meant to inform the debate on various policy changes. In this vein, CBO should replace its current school nutrition piece with an estimate of the cost or savings associated with including Medicaid data as a potential source for direct certification. The inclusion of such data would increase the number of eligible students identified through direct certification, lessening the burden of the paper application process on schools and districts, and lowering administrative costs in the long run.

Making school nutrition programs more effective and efficient is a worthy goal. But the current CBO Budget Option plan really doesn't cut the mustard.

Taming Maine's School Governance Hydra

Lindsey Luebchow — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 14:00:00 -0400

The Maine legislature passed a school district consolidation plan last week—but in a form dramatically watered down from Governor John Baldacci's original proposals. Maine has one of the most complicated, decentralized school governance systems in the country, and as a result spends far more than the national average on school administration.

By reorganizing the system into larger districts (while also maintaining a degree of local control), the consolidation legislation could lead to a much more efficient system that sends more education funds directly to Maine's classrooms—but only if Maine's school districts agree to participate. Ed Money Watch hopes that local communities will recognize the benefits of consolidation as they decide whether or not to adopt the legislation's reforms.

Maine is an Administrative Mess

Take a look at Maine's school districts in New America's Federal Education Budget Project database, and you'll get an idea of how confusing and inefficient the current system is. Maine's public education system encompasses a variety of different administrative units: municipalities, school administrative districts (SAD), community school districts (CSD), regional school unions. The SADs are groups of municipalities that pool their resources into a school; the CSDs are another type of group of municipalities that pool a different set of resources; the unions are groupings of school administrative districts that share only the costs of a superintendent and the superintendent's office, but maintain their own separate budgets for everything else. And they are all called "districts."

Confused? So are we. We ran into numerous difficulties attempting to figure out how federal funding is distributed to these various units for the EdBudgetProject.Org database (not to mention their demographics, student achievement, etc). One district (Monhegan Plt School Department) enrolls only seven students, and many others enroll between 10 and 20 students. To be sure, some Maine school districts are small because they are located in rural, geographically isolated areas where few people live. But other districts are simply smaller than is necessary or efficient. Because these districts spread fixed educational costs, such as administration and facilities, over so few students, they take money away from the classroom.

According to Education Week, there is one school district administrator for every 750 students on average nationally. In Maine, there is one district administrator for every 350 students. Maine spends $346 per student for administration—compared to the national average of $195 per student.

Cost-Saving Proposals

Numerous reports demonstrate that Maine's sprawling school administrative system needs reform, and that reorganization could produce substantial cost savings. When Governor Baldacci entered his second term, he made this reform a priority. His original consolidation proposal would have reduced Maine's school system from 290 administrative units to 26 regional districts, and put the savings back into schools.

This mandatory consolidation plan encountered great resistance across the state, because many residents feared losing local control of their schools. Over the past year Baldacci worked with legislature to alter the plan to make it politically viable. Many, many iterations later, the legislature finally passed a version last week. The legislation will eliminate financial barriers and disincentives that prevent small school districts from reorganizing and will create incentives for districts with fewer than 2,500 students to do so. In contrast to Baldacci's original plan, the legislation would make consolidation voluntary, rather than mandatory, and would not go as far in eliminating inefficient administration. Baldacci is not happy with the result, but he will likely sign it into law after the long battle.

Under the pending bill, local voters must approve any school district reorganization. Reorganization plans are developed locally by the participating districts, which can maintain some degree of local control over school governance. The participating districts negotiate the size and composition of the school board, and in addition to the board they can create "local school committees and specify their powers and duties." Districts that do not pursue consolidation must submit a plan to the state for reducing administrative costs. In addition, districts that don't reorganize will face financial penalties, specifically reductions in state funding and an increased chance of rejection for school construction projects.

Reorganization as a Positive Reform

Parents may be concerned about how reorganization into bigger schools may affect student achievement. One recent study found that there is no relationship between school district size and student outcomes in Maine. Moreover, parents should consider how the substantial cost savings will improve the academic opportunities at many schools, for example by freeing up funds to hire specialized teachers, buy advanced technology, etc.

Communities will have to approve reorganization plans by referendum by January 30, 2009. Ed Money Watch hopes that all local districts will develop plans for administrative reform, whether it be through reorganization or other economies of scale. Maine voters should set aside any knee-jerk responses to consolidation and seriously consider the benefits of reorganization.

More Money, Lower Achievement in Durham, North Carolina

Lindsey Luebchow — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 14:00:00 -0500

Durham, North Carolina. It's a medium-sized, old tobacco and textile city best known for housing Duke University. Most national media coverage of Durham focuses on the ivory tower that is Duke, its highly-ranked undergraduate and graduate programs, and of course Duke's basketball team. Rarely does anyone outside North Carolina get an accurate (or any) picture of the city itself and its own educational issues.

In the shadow of an elite institution of higher education, Durham’s K-12 public education system is struggling and often failing to educate its students. Only six schools out of 45 made Adequate Yearly Progress (met No Child Left Behind achievement goals) last year. Some 19 of Durham’s 26 Title I elementary schools are in school improvement status, meaning they have failed to make Adequate Yearly Progress for at least two consecutive years. Only 56 percent of Durham students graduate from high school.

There are obviously a lot of factors contributing to Durham’s poor achievement levels and high drop-out rate. But let’s take a closer look at the money going into Durham’s schools and see how its funding compares to similar districts in North Carolina.

Durham is spending $8,269 per pupil, which ranks 29th out of 115 school districts in North Carolina. About $519 of that spending comes from the federal government in the form of a NCLB Title I grant and IDEA special education grant.

What’s happening in districts with a similar size and poverty rate? Using the Federal Education Budget Project’s Comparison Tool, available at Ed Budget Project.Org, you can compare Durham to other districts in North Carolina and other districts nationwide.

The most similar district to Durham in North Carolina—in terms of size and poverty rate—is Gaston County Schools, a district in the South-Central Piedmont region of North Carolina next door to Charlotte. Both have around 32,000 students, and 17-18 percent of those students live in poverty.

But Durham is spending $1,782 more per-pupil than Gaston County. And the money isn’t translating into higher achievement—Gaston County is doing better on North Carolina’s No Child Left Behind achievement test, the ABCs Test, with 82 percent of 4th graders deemed proficient in reading and 93 percent proficient in math, compared to 75 percent and 88 percent in Durham.

So what’s the story here? Well, it could be that Durham is experiencing a different type of poverty than Gaston County that makes teaching low-income students more difficult. Maybe Durham can’t attract high-quality teachers because of its location, run-down school facilities, or unattractive working conditions.

Or maybe this is an example of what President Bush likes to call the "soft bigotry of low expectations" for minority students: Durham’s schools are 72 percent black and Hispanic, while Gaston County’s schools are 28 percent.

Whatever the combination of factors causing Durham to perform more poorly than its peer school districts while also spending more money, it’s a question that should be raised and discussed by schools, parents, policymakers at the local and state levels.

There are conversations going on in Durham about teacher recruitment and retention, school choice, pre-kindergarten, and the achievement gap, among other issues. But action and results are another story.

Durham isn't the only community of concern. There are many places in the country where not enough of these conversations are taking place. Check out the funding going to your local school district, or any school district in the country, and take a look at their comparative performance by going to New America’s Federal Education Budget Project at Ed Budget Project.org.