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Report: Schools spending smaller percentages of funds on instruction Thursday, Apr 24, 2008 By John Lyon Arkansas News Bureau LITTLE ROCK - Arkansas' public school districts have decreased the percentages of their expenditures on classroom instruction even as the totals have increased in recent years, according to a report a legislative panel reviewed Wednesday. Districts' spending on kindergarten through 12th grade instruction increased from $3.4 billion in 2005 to $3.8 billion in 2007, but the percentages of total spending - excluding new facilities and debt service - devoted to instruction decreased from 60.45 percent to 58.51 percent over the same period, the Bureau of Legislative Research reported to the Joint Adequacy Evaluation Oversight Subcommittee. Researcher Paul Atkins also told the panel that districts with lower percentages of spending on instruction tended to have lower percentages of students scoring at proficient or above on standardized achievement tests, though he stressed the comparison between instruction spending and student achievement is "preliminary" and needs further study. In 2007, the 20 percent of districts with the lowest percentages of students scoring at proficient or above dedicated an average of 57 percent of spending to instruction, according to the report. The 20 percent of districts with the highest percentages of students scoring at proficient or above dedicated an average of 59.86 percent of spending to instruction. Sen. Jim Argue, D-Little Rock, chairman of Senate Education Committee, noted that lawmakers significantly increased per-student funding in recent years. "Not counting facilities, from '05 to '07 we spent an additional $400 million on K-12 education, and yet in the same time frame the percentage dedicated to instruction ... declined. And he's saying that the correlation is, the higher percent spent on instruction, the higher the student achievement," Argue said. Rep. Bill Abernathy, D-Mena, the subcommittee's House chairman, said the decline may be the result of necessary increases in other areas. "They've had to spend more on transportation, and that takes a percentage of that money. If you look at maintenance and operation, they've had to spend more," Abernathy said. He said that if districts shifted spending from instruction to other areas, "maybe they do not have the funding in those areas, and they had to use that." Between 2005 and 2007, districts increased their percentages of spending on transportation, plant operation and maintenance, pupil support, instructional support and central and other support, according to the report. In addition to classroom instruction, districts decreased their percentages of spending on general administration, school administration and community services. Food service accounted for 5.08 percent of spending in 2005 and 2007. State Department of Education spokeswoman Julie Thompson said in an interview Wednesday that the department had not yet had time to analyze the report, but she believed the data would be studied closely. "The interesting point in there was that the lower instruction expenditures were associated with the lower percentages of students on proficient. That's definitely some valuable information," she said. |
