Lawmakers don't understand how public education works

As news came out recently that the state leadership has hired a third-party firm to examine the Mississippi Adequate Education Program funding formula, and in the wake of last year’s heated ballot measure conversations regarding Proposition 42, I have been thinking a great deal about Mississippi’s poor health status and its lack of commitment to public education. 

And whenever I do such thinking, I am right to credit my alma mater, Millsaps College. Within the halls of the Sullivan Harrell Science Building where so many young aspiring scientists have passed  reads an inscription from John 8:32: “Ye shall know the truth and the truth shall set you free.”

A clear-eyed pursuit of truth is a foundation of science, and the advancing field of population medicine is gathering more and more data from the social and computer sciences to further clarify Mississippi’s plight. The confluence of that information points to education as the chief determinant of health in a population. Health literacy is in fact literacy. To a family doctor from a small town whose kids benefited from good public schools, this means that Mississippi is not likely to move from the muddy bottom of health rankings without first lifting the public education system that educates nine out of 10 of its children. As former Gov. William Winter has long stated, the per capita income rises and falls with our commitment to public education.

At the State Capitol we hear about spending more “efficiently,” and that too much money goes to administration and not enough goes to the classroom.  We also hear that the formula, which has actually not been implemented in 18 of 20 years, is “broken.” What if doctors had decided that penicillin might not be the perfect drug to treat strep throat because of the false assertion that a more effective drug was on the way? Science instructs us that such an irresponsible approach would risk inciting serious complications. I think it is fair to draw such an analogy between this common childhood illness and our suffering education system that educates 90 percent of Mississippi’s school children. 

The MAEP State Allocation Statement for 2017 gives full disclosure of how the Legislature’s shortfalls will hit home. In my hometown of Kosciusko, a community of 8,500 people, we will reach a record shortfall of $879,000 compared to what is deemed “adequate” by our state. The statewide reduction in per pupil spending per year is $830 since 2008 with no visible plan to restore that money. With all the talk of charter schools answering the call for failing districts, most Mississippi’s better districts remain on a starvation diet.

So, we hear that the formula is broken and we need to put more money in classrooms. More spending at the instructional level is needed to be sure. But I would humbly offer that students also benefit from qualified administrators. Must we be reminded that most educators are underpaid? The fact is, we know a lot more about the salaries of our administrators than we do the money that will flow retrograde to the State Legislative leadership as a result of generous corporate tax cuts. 

Let’s take one school administrator as an example. The Madison County Schools, for instance, educates over 12,000 students at 12 schools. The district has well over 600 teachers and many more support staff. It has an annual budget of more than $100 million. The superintendent of that system makes somewhere near $150,000. That is a healthy salary, but I would challenge Speaker Philip Gunn and Lt. Gov. Tate Reeves to find a handful of businesses with 600 employees whose CEO’s make less than $150,000. The fact is, several CEOs whose home offices are located outside the state of Mississippi, will make more in a single day than the average school administrator does in a year. These are our children. Many of these tax immune CEOs live out of state. Let’s fix that formula! 

But I believe we might also start the conversation with the fact that our per-pupil student expenditures are $600 less than Alabama, $1,100 less than Arkansas, and $2,000 less than Louisiana. Much of what Reeves and Gunn are doing is a distraction from the fact that we aren’t spending enough on public education, period. We should not forget during this “formula renovation” that our per pupil and teacher spend is the lowest in the United States. 

Four hundred years ago Galileo shocked the world and turned the church on its ear by asserting that earth was not at the center of the universe and was in fact in orbit round the sun. For centuries “the truth” was ignored, suppressed, and even abused.

Galileo’s discovered truths in fact came slowly, over time and with a price. Likewise, because of the laws of science, the stakes for educational attainment have been raised, as it is not only a predictor of per capita income, but also the overall health of a community and the inherent costs therein. Yet we still do not talk of spending more in the single best place to invest as a society.

Mississippi teachers have done so much with so little, producing world-renowned musicians, writers, teachers, physicians, athletes, engineers and theologians. Imagine what could happen if our teachers had the support of legislative leadership. Unfortunately, perspective, reason and logic are sorely lacking in our State Capitol. It is as if the leadership believes it, too, is the center of the universe and somehow not subject to the truths of science and the economy that govern the rest of the United States. 

What if we value our teachers and paid them at the national average? What if we really behaved as if our children were our most precious resource and increased per pupil spending to at least regional average? What if we funded pre-K statewide since that alone would get more children through the reading gate? These should be key ingredients for any education formula fix. Perhaps the formula doesn’t need fixing, rather the politics needs fixing. 

We are reassured that the truth will ultimately prevail but Mississippi has been in the desert a long time, held down by politics. Now more than ever the hard science suggests that Mississippi’s health and economy will forever languish until it commits to taking care of its children rather than its corporations. 

That, my friends, is the truth.

Dr. Timothy J. Alford lives in Kosciusko