ED, should state spend more on education?

Capitol Fax Blog (Rich Miller) pointed me to a Chicago Tribune (Monique Garcia and Ray Long) article explaining that Sen. Kimberly Lightford (D-Maywood) has drawn a line in the sand on school funding.

Gov. Rod Blagojevich and fellow Democrats must forge a budget solution that addresses the disparities in school funding that have allowed rich districts to spend thousands of dollars more on each student than poor areas of the state can afford, Lightford said.

Let's compare what local high school districts spend per student. On the school report cards the expenditures are divided into "Instructional Expenditure Per Pupil" and "Operational Expenditure Per Pupil". I've combined them into a single figure.

* Elmwood Park--$14,217
* Leyden--$14,465
* Morton--$16,532
* York--$17,144
* Lyons--$21,456
* Proviso--$21,665
* Riverside-Brookfield--$21,745
* Oak Park & River Forest--$22,967

We know Proviso is 90th of 90 high schools in the Chicago area when ranked by test scores. But spending is almost as high as the highest cost districts in the area. (New Trier spends $25,186 per student.)

The numbers simply do not support the traditional liberal position--the position Lightford is arguing--that schools that don't perform are constrained by money.

ED, school report cards late but should be arriving soon

Riverside/Brookfield Landmark (Bob Uphues):

Anyone wondering just how their local school fared on the 2006 school report card will have to wait at least a few more weeks. While school officials have been provided with test results for individual students in the form of large, unwieldy spreadsheets, report cards, featuring demographic data and information on whether schools met adequate yearly progress (AYP) according to standards set by the federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, won't be available to the general public until March 6 at the earliest.

However, a spokesperson at the Illinois State Board of Education said last week that schools and parents should be receiving copies of the school report cards prior to that March 6 date, and final results should be in that hands of ISBE officials within the next two weeks.

The ISBE claimed the delay was caused by needing to re-score the Prairie State Achievement Exam (PSAE). But the article doesn't really explain why it needed to be rescored.

A few years ago I covered an education meeting and one of the gripes of local superintendents was the error rate in the ISBE processing teacher credentials. Maybe Sen. Kimberly Lightford will be able to improve the accuracy of the ISBE if she's appointed the state superintendent of education.