As Dean pointed out, Woodstock fares well compared to other Connecticut towns in one analysis by the arch conservative Yankee Institute. You may recall that Armand Fusco, who is associated with the Yankee Institute (or should I say Swamp Yankee Institute) and championed by Powers, Richardson, and Shultz, is the guru of anti-education spending.
D. Dowd Muska, who is the Yankee Institute’s Philip Gressel Fellow for Tax and Budget Policy … whow! (beware of people that use their first initial and full middle name like J. Wayne Gacy) wrote an article in 2007 that was published in newspapers that stated the following:
“How Cost-Effective Is Your School District?”…
“For each school district, the percentages of students meeting the state’s goal on the CMT’s three subjects (math, reading, and writing) were averaged, and the resulting figure was divided into districts’ per-pupil expenses. The amounts produced for each district (i.e., their cost-benefit values) ranged from $71.42 (the best score) to $402.47 (the worst)” according to Muska.
This seems very, very simple so I thought I would try it. I took the 2006-07 CMT scores for the three subjects and averaged both the 7th grade and 8th grade scores together, e.g. the culmination of the K-8 experience, and then divided this average into $9669 (per pupil spending for the Woodstock K-12). This produced a cost-benefit value of 130 (see Table below). You will notice in the Table below that many of the best cost benefit value towns are the towns that spend the least, regardless of the quality of education. For example, if we reduced spending to $5,000 per pupil our performance on CMT’s might diminish by 10% but the town’s education system would still have a superstellar 79 cost benefit value (according to Muska and the Yankee Institute). This is all nonsense of course, but this is the kind of propagada that is continuously put forth by the anti-education movement in Woodstock and Connecticut.
In fairness Muska also points out “The most decisive factor is something entirely beyond a school district’s control: students’ home environments.” This statement undermines the entire analysis but if Fusco buys into the cost benefit value, I’ll accept it as an indication the the Woodstock School District is a very efficient and cost-effective system.
I experimented with these numbers by putting the Darien students’ scores in the Woodstock per pupil spending. The Woodstock school system then increased its cost-benefit value to the stellar value of 105. Then I put the Darien students in the Hartford school system budget and found that the Hartford value gained ground to 174 (not so bad though because most of the towns in the state are worse). But if you put the Hartford students’ scores into the Darien school system budget the cost benefit value plumeted to 470. While this is an argument that seems to support the foolish notion that the amount of spending has no impact, ignorant people like Fusco, Powers, Richardson, and Shultz will stille take it and run with it to beat down the school system because of their own personal, irrational, and vindictive motives.
If you are not already dizzy with numbers, how about these numbers.
In another number prolific analysis by the Yankee Institute, Woodstock was among only 27 towns that gained from “Additional State Aid received in 2008 and 2009″ over “Additional Income Tax Paid by Residents for 2008 and 2009″. This seems contrary to the often repeated theme of Taxpayer. Since the Yankee Institute’s views are doctrine to the arch conservative Connecticut Yankees, they must be right (pardon the pun).
In the Table below Column 4 is the Gain (black numbers) or Loss (red numbers) to Residents “Resulting from Income Tax Increase and State Aid Increase in 2008 and 2009″. Since there is no text to go along with this Table on the Internet, we had to take column 5 literally by it’s heading. It seems that the number in column 5 is negative (below 1) if the number in column 4 is red, and the number in column 5 is positive (greater than 1) if the number in column 4 is black (Becki had to explain this to me, Dah!).
These are selected towns from a large pdf Table that can be found on Google with the following URL: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22yankee+institute%22+Woodstock&btnG=Search
So, why don’t we have Dr. Armand Fusco do one of his evaluations on Woodstock- per his own formula. Maybe that will stuff a sock in power’s mouth.
I’m sorry. I really want to keep an open mind about all of this, but there are so many variables that are missing from this information that it is near impossible to draw any valid conclusions of the such you are making. It just doesn’t make any sense to me. Where are the long term trends? Where is the inner city school data which clearly demonstrates that more money doesn’t mean better outcomes? What is the income tax paid by Bridgeport relative to the amount of State Funding they recieve?
On a personal note: Of course Woodstock gained from increased state funding! I never denied that it would. In fact I would like to have more state funding. I have expounded here time and time again that the state should be investing more proportionately into schools that succeed, not schools that fail. Good God, even George Bush figured that one out!