My column for the Washington County Daily News is online and in print. I’m not crazy about the title they gave it. My working title was, “Politicians Agree that Wasting Taxpayer Money Helps their Electoral Prospects.” I admit… that’s a bit verbose. Anyway, here’s a piece to encourage you to go pick up a copy:
Speaker Robin Vos agreed with Gov. Tony Evers that Wisconsin’s government schools need an increase in spending in the next state budget. Now they are just arguing over the amount. The push for more and more spending on government schools is being fueled by two myths. The first myth is that more spending will result in better education. The second myth is that we are not spending enough already. Let us debunk those myths.
Wisconsin taxpayers have been increasing spending on public education for decades with little to show for it. According to data from the Wisconsin Department of Public Education, Wisconsin’s government schools spent an average of $3,224 per student in the 1982-1983 school year. By last year, that number had grown to $13,505 per student, or, accounting for inflation, $5,190 in 1982 dollars. That is a 61 percent increase in per-pupil spending in normalized dollars.
With that generous increase in spending, the people should expect a solid increase in educational outcomes, right? Wrong. There isn’t any longitudinal performance data for Wisconsin that stretches back that far. More recent data shows that ACT and standardized test scores have remained stubbornly static in Wisconsin.But countless studies have shown that America’s educational performance has remained static or declined over that time period. Subjectively, few people would attempt to argue that a 2018 graduate received an education that is 61% better than a 1983 graduate. Spending more money has not resulted in a better education.
Yet despite all of the additional spending, our government schools have perpetuated a myth that they are underfunded. That is difficult to believe when they continue to waste so much money. For example, Wisconsin’s government schools allow exceedingly high teacher absenteeism.
The Wisconsin DPI tracks student absenteeism and classifies students who miss ten or more days of school as “high risk.” The federal Department of Education tracks how many teachers are absent for 10 or more days per school year. The most recent data show a lot of high-risk teachers in Washington County. The percentage of teachers who were absent for more than 10 days during the school year was 21.7% in West Bend, 18.5% in Slinger, 28.1% in Germantown, and a whopping 30.8% in Kewaskum. These percentages of chronic absenteeism are stunning given that there are only about 187 annual work days for teachers compared to 260 for most other professions.
According to a study by the Thomas Fordham Institute, teachers in traditional public schools in America are almost three times more likely to be chronically absent as teachers in charter schools, and teachers in unionized charter schools are twice as likely to be chronically absent as their non-unionized charters. Act 10 allowed for school boards to address chronic absenteeism by taking everything off of the union bargaining table except pay, but almost no school districts have taken any action to tackle teacher absenteeism.
Absenteeism is a problem everywhere.
I had a rather impressive guided tour of a Ford assembly plant back in 2012(ish). I found the mix of manual human labor, automation-assisted human labor, and outright robotic assembly fascinating. No two vehicles in a row were identical. The planning necessary to have such a variety of components arrive at their assembly points just in time for use was incredible. This was human productivity at its finest.
Yet one of the points I passed on the tour was the ”pool room”. It looked a lot like a really huge cafeteria and was roughly three quarters full. These folks were fully trained for their positions, but existed solely to fill slots due to absenteeism, whether it be at the beginning, middle, or end of a shift. They drew full wages when called to the line, but were otherwise paid sub-pay to sit in the pool room for the duration of their shift. Ford trained and paid people just to sit around and wait for instances of absenteeism to occur as a means of preventing a lack of labor from ever slowing or stopping the assembly process.
I have no idea how much a pool employee’s sub-pay was worth and the tour guide declined to answer what that plant’s absenteeism rate was, but it sure appeared as though Ford’s cost to combat absenteeism was far from insignificant.