Which Comes First? The Money or the Education?

Years ago, my wife worked in a factory, where one of her jobs was to verify the hours on employee time cards in the part of the plant where she worked. She told me about a guy who consistently complained about his pay, claiming it wasn't enough to live on. He told her, "If they paid me more, I'd work harder." She tried, to no avail, to explain that his view was exactly opposite the way it actually works, that he would likely be paid more if he worked harder. Unfortunately, many like that guy exist pretty much anywhere you go. 

There's an attitude analogous to that fellow's view in education. "If we had more money, we could provide a better education." I've always had a problem with this approach. I've always been of the mind that if we provide a better education, we'll have more money. Why? Because schools and districts that provide a quality education to those they serve will draw parents and students like sugar draws ants.

Today, we have numerous school ranking systems available to help parents analyze the quality of education their kids will receive if they move to an area. Ask any real estate agent and they will tell you that parents of school-age children consider school rankings to help them choose where to buy or build. 

When parents move to make sure their kids go to a quality school, those students come with state and federal dollars deposited in the school's coffers. Property values in top-performing school districts and homes sell faster in such districts, according to FitzGerald Financial Group. In Arkansas, the major source of public school funding comes from neither the state nor federal government, but local property taxes. Increasing property values and new construction increase such tax receipts and increase funding for the school district.

In my time as a teacher, I have watched lower performing school districts become high-performing, growing districts, because they focused on improving the education they provided. At the same time, I have seen higher performing school districts fall from grace when the quality of education they offered their patrons declined.

Throughout my career, I have seen voters approve and deny property tax increases for their schools. Almost universally, well-justified requests from districts where patrons feel good about the education their schools provide are approved at the polls, while such requests are denied in districts whose patrons perceive their students do not receive high quality education.

The loudest argument we heard last year when the Arkansas Legislature passed, and Arkansas's Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed, the LEARNS Act into law, was the fear that schools would lose funding when their students transfer to other schools seeking a better education. Think about that. Schools feel so entitled to state funding, that by-and-large, they believe it is wrong for them to lose it, even when they fail to provide the service the funding is supposed to pay for. 

There is no doubt it takes money to operate schools. But it has become increasingly obvious that voters are tired of contributing to school district treasuries to get a substandard education for their children in exchange.

It is time for a paradigm shift, from the idea that it will take more money to provide a quality education, to the idea that providing a quality education will bring in more money for schools.