18:08:49 Thank you. 18:08:48 Great. Thank you. And obviously anyone requiring sign language. Our Asl interpreter should be visible on your screen. 18:09:01 And we are 2 interpreters are Glenn would the interpreters like to make a brief introduction? 18:09:07 Is that chromosome? We don't. 18:09:10 Not really sorry which is visible. I can introduce myself to the sign. 18:09:13 Sure. Thank you. Okay. 18:09:23 Okay, the format for tonight's meeting is just we're going to have Dr. 18:09:28 Marguerite Rosa, make a presentation, and then we'll follow that up with questions and answers asked from the different meeting co-hosts. 18:09:36 We will also take questions from any meeting participants who would like to submit questions using a Google form. 18:09:43 That form has been shared in the chat, and I believe it's also been posted on various Cec websites, and then, in addition, as Ben already mentioned, if anyone would like to stream that, watch the video, the meeting, it is being streamed on Cec choose Youtube channel right now okay, I just would 18:10:02 like to ask all my co-hosts to briefly introduce themselves in then we will introduce our special guest. 18:10:11 So, in no particular order. Feie, are you here? 18:10:21 Alissa Hoshi, can you just introduce yourself? 18:10:23 Hi! Good evening. My name is Lisa O'shea. 18:10:26 I'm the Queen's representative for the Citywide Council on high schools. 18:10:30 I also act as the treasurer. Unfortunately, Karen Wayne could not attend tonight, so I am here in her place. Thank you. 18:10:34 Thanks. Lisa, Lucas! 18:10:42 Lucas, could you introduce yourself? 18:10:47 Ben and Janey. Can you guys introduce yourselves? 18:10:53 Sure. Hi! I'm Benjamin Morden. 18:10:56 I'm the Ccd. 2 President and the co-chair of the zoning and Capital Planning Committee, and we're glad to be a co-sponsor of this meeting. 18:11:05 Thank you. 18:11:05 Thanks. Man, Joe Benedetto, I think you're here. 18:11:10 Can you introduce yourself? 18:11:16 Joe, are you able to? 18:11:23 I thought I saw Joe come in earlier. There is. 18:11:30 See, I'll just unmute. 18:11:33 Good evening. Yes, now it works so I was not able to unmute myself. 18:11:37 My name is Joe de Benedetto. I am the Cec. 18:11:40 President for District 25. 18:11:43 Thanks. Joe and Al. 18:11:45 Hi. My name is Al. I'm the president of CC. 18:11:49 26 in northeast queens, where the proportion of Asians is the highest of any school district in New York City. 18:11:55 Thanks, PAL and Effie, are are you here, and able to introduce yourself? 18:12:03 And if someone, if someone with can make fee a co-host, perhaps actually, I don't see him in the room. 18:12:09 So we will just we'll just continue. 18:12:11 And I'm here now. I wasn't able to unmute myself, Steve. 18:12:15 Okay. Good. To know. 18:12:18 So hi! Everybody! Hi! Everybody. Lucas! Lu president of Cec. 18:12:23 3, happy that we're all here tonight to learn a little bit more about how schools are funded. 18:12:29 Thank you so much. 18:12:30 Thanks. Lucas. Okay. And we've also been working. 18:12:34 And I'm not sure if he's gonna be able to join us. 18:12:36 But panel for educational policy. Member from Zachary is has been involved in planning a lot of this, too. 18:12:43 So I will just do a brief introduction of Dr. Rosa, and then turn the floor over to her. 18:12:49 For those who are not aware. Dr. Rosa is a a leading national expert on academic and policy research in the area of education, funding. 18:13:00 Dr. Rosa is currently a research professor and director at the Edenomics Lab at Georgetown for research focuses on financial policy and the implications for resource at the school and classroom levels. 18:13:10 She was recently a member of the New York City public schools, fair student funding working group. 18:13:16 She leads the certificate in education finance program at the Mccourt School of public policy, and I should mention that she has an upcoming 2 Day Residency in New York City to attain the certificate and education finance. 18:13:28 I know a number of us have discussed attending and I'm sure she can speak about that as well. 18:13:34 So Dr. Rosen, we're very glad to have you here. 18:13:37 We'd like to really look at this as a meeting to continue and broaden the conversation on school finance. 18:13:42 It really helps parents in our roles. These elected parent representative roles better understand the issues in become more informed in our conversations with our parents and with the Department of Education. 18:13:53 So, Dr. Rosa, if you're able to, you cannot take the floor. 18:14:00 It's all yours. 18:14:02 Yes, so I let me jump in and share my screen. If it's gonna let me do that. 18:14:08 So hopefully. It is coming up. And you can. Okay, great. 18:14:13 Perfect. 18:14:14 Yeah. 18:14:14 So I actually thought coming back up just a little bit, because if you're gonna think about school finance, you wanna put it in the broader context of what's going on in this this moment. 18:14:24 Right now. And so with that, I thought I would do a little bit of forecasting what's coming down the pike for schools. 18:14:33 So most year school districts finances look a lot like the prior year. 18:14:39 The money that you have comes in is a little bit more than the prior year, and the we plan on spending it in very similar ways than they and then we did in the prior year. 18:14:50 So what I'm going to show you. Here are atypical financial shocks that are coming, and they're they're bigger and larger than anything we've seen before coming to public education. 18:15:02 And I just want to put this in the context because it is going to have a big effect on school district finances in the next few years. 18:15:10 So well, this is just kind of our national effect. But right now we are in a positive shock, a situation where we have more money than we would normally have, because the Federal Government gave us relief funds. 18:15:24 The pandemic Era relief funds, and those run out so yet next year will be also a positive shock situation. 18:15:32 Not as large. The year after that goes very much into a negative shock, and then the 2,526 is also a negative, not as deep. 18:15:42 So we're not coming out of it the next year. 18:15:44 So what we're calling 2425, the blood letting, which is a sort of gory sounding word. 18:15:51 But we're trying to sort of get people prepared for what's coming, and I'll give you a sense of what that is. 18:15:58 First, there is Federal funds, and these were the biggest ever. 18:16:03 One time edition of money into public education, and you can take a look at those funds, but they have an end. 18:16:11 Date, September 24, is as when they end, and we're worried about districts that are using the Aser funds for refering. 18:16:20 Wait recurring commitments like pay raises, or hiring new staff. 18:16:25 We also are seeing, and I know this is true in enrollment in New York City, but enrollment declines, and much of this has to do with lower birth rates honestly, that people we're we're seeing across the country young people are not having kids at the same rate that those in my 18:16:44 generation did. Anyway, the more concerned are we are are with urban districts, districts that were closed longer because they saw a kind of a larger drop one time drop in enrollment. 18:16:56 Some of the Northern States. Those are where we're worried. 18:16:59 And then we are looking at inflation, and that is driving and labor scarcity. 18:17:07 And that's driving districts to make larger commitments on the spending side, and those commitments carry over from year to year. 18:17:12 So any district that's done a pay raise of more than say, one to 2% on top of what is normally built in is about a 3% raise in the salary schedule. 18:17:26 So when you get a year old or you get a raise, and then when a district goes and does a cola on top of that, that's larger than one to 2%, that's a financial shock. 18:17:34 And it'll stick with the district for a while, and the last is what may end up being a bit of an economic slowdown at what might not be a recession. 18:17:44 But it could affect the growth in State revenues. State revenues have grown very, very generously in the last 5 or 8 years. 18:17:52 At some times 5 and 6% a year in it. Less than that would feel tight in the districts we're worried about are those that are either more dependent on state revenues or in states that are affected by economic slowdown. 18:18:06 So I just wanna summarize this again, Esther, is this Federal money that ends in September the 2024. 18:18:14 The enrollment is a pretty steady drag, for as far out as we can tell, looks like about a half a percent per year. 18:18:20 You know, lower enrollment means less money. There's inflationary commitments. 18:18:25 Many districts have made are going to stick with us for a few years, and the state we're in a surplus right now. 18:18:31 But the States look like they might tighten a bit in the next couple of years, and then maybe ease off. 18:18:36 But if you look, then this net is the red, and everything goes negative. 18:18:41 In 2425. So we're gonna wanna look ahead to see what that means and what kind of choices districts make, how those will play out for communities. 18:18:54 So, and just to, I pulled some data with my team, who generously scrambled in the last hour sort of gank these data out for me out of the New York City files. 18:19:07 But what we're seeing here is the trend in blue. 18:19:10 That's the enrollment trend. It's following right? 18:19:15 We see that enrollment is following, and in fact, we're down over, you know. 18:19:20 What is that? 1012, 13% decline over a decade and and then you'll look cause the revenue is really dictated a lot by your your enrollment and and the expenses are mostly staffing. 18:19:39 And it's really what expenditures are. And if we look at our staffing for the last decade, we see that it's it's still a net up. 18:19:47 So we're not right now, matching the revenues and expenditures, and so so there's there's no doubt there will be tightening ahead in place like New York City. 18:20:03 So just to dig into it for a second a district hat. 18:20:07 Let's say they have a 4% budget gap and when you have a gap that size you're gonna hit labor because most of our what we spend money on in school districts is labor. 18:20:19 It's 80 to 90% labor. And so you imagine a district made plan to eliminate 6 of every 100 positions and I, that's more than 4%. 18:20:30 But districts usually lay off their junior teachers and staff members first and those don't cost as much. 18:20:37 You have to lay off a few more, so would you prefer, and this would be that central adminration decides which positions to cut in each school or each principal works to reduce staffing proportionately in their building so a lot of what will matter is 18:20:58 where these decisions are made and who makes these decisions in the next few years, you know, feel free to put your thought in the chat. 18:21:06 But this is kind of a setup for what we'll be talking about next. 18:21:13 And what we often find is that centralized districts, you know, make these decisions centralized centrally. 18:21:20 They'll say everybody is gonna lose some elective staff. 18:21:22 Maybe you know, we're gonna reduce librarians across the board, or whatever it is, whereas in Decemberized models each school makes those decisions, and they may make them in part based on attrition of the staff. 18:21:37 And also what the strengths of weaknesses are of the remaining staff, and what they believe. 18:21:41 There's students need most. So there's really an important distinction here when it comes to cutting, and that is, who does the cutting. 18:21:50 So that's a setup for what we're looking ahead at. 18:21:55 When money gets to the district, how does that money then flow to each school? 18:22:01 So if you think of this as New York City deployment of Ed, you have these Federal stat and local dollars all flow into the school district. 18:22:12 They go into a bank account here. The district generally does not control its revenues. 18:22:17 It's given it a chunk of money, and then the district decides how to send resources to each school in a centralized model. 18:22:26 The district makes all the decisions about which staff work at which school, and so it really purchases staff and sends those staff out to schools in a decentralized model. 18:22:38 What the district is sending out is money sort of effectively, and each school gets a certain amount of money. 18:22:47 A per student or per student type. And and then what the school is doing is deciding how to spend the money. 18:22:57 That's the model that New York City is in. 18:23:01 That's the fair student formula model. In both of these cases. 18:23:06 You know the district has its money. What's not different is how much money the district has. 18:23:10 But what's different is how the the money who makes the decisions on how much money and which staffing go to each school, that the third model is more for charter schools that's where the money is is generated, more on a school by school basis. 18:23:28 So they get their money right from the source, and then the school chips in some portion of its money to a centralized provider. 18:23:36 So with this in mind, I'll do a true, false. 18:23:40 We'll see how well you guys are doing on this one enrollment drives district revenues, and that one is true. 18:23:52 So if we watch enrollment, decline this, the federal, State and local sources are connected to enrollment. 18:24:00 Obviously a large district with many kids, has more money than a small district new York City is the biggest district in the country. 18:24:07 It has the most money of any district in the country, because it has the most enrollment, so that one is true, and then the next one per Federal law. 18:24:18 Districts are required to provide every school with a librarian, a nurse, and a principal to reverse on that one, and I will just guess that you got it right. 18:24:29 And the answer is false, so false on that one. 18:24:33 So the Federal Government is not dictating how the money gets spent. 18:24:39 In fact, generally States aren't either, except now, New York State has a class size dictate for New York City. 18:24:48 But mostly these are decisions that districts or schools make, and and that includes how many staffing they have. 18:24:55 There isn't anywhere established in the research a perfect recipe for schools that provides the best outcomes possible. 18:25:04 In fact, the mix of staff at each school is is only explains very little of the variation in outcomes for school, so there aren't any any Federal or generally much in the way of State rules on these kinds of things. 18:25:21 As well. Okay. So in a decentralized model, which is the model that New York City has with its fair student formula, model. 18:25:29 And this is just a an explanatory slide. 18:25:32 It's not New York City's, but a fixed dollar amount goes out per student plus additional dollar amounts for different types of students based on on various needs. 18:25:47 And those dollar amounts. Usually the base is called 1 point o, and then these other incremental additions get divided by the base, and sometimes get called a weight like point. 18:25:58 One says, or a 17% increase. And in the decentralized model the dollars are what get allocated, not staffing counts, and those get allocated on the basis of students, not not programs or things like that. 18:26:17 And that is in contrast to a traditional allocation practice or a centralized model that distributes, you know, staffing caps, purchased items, positions etc., to school. 18:26:30 Okay, so why are I saw some of the questions I got submitted before. 18:26:37 So I'm gonna cover some of those. But this does build on our conversation. 18:26:39 I had when I came and reported to this fair student funding task force, which, by the way, I don't live in New York, I'm not. 18:26:49 I don't have any steak, and what happens in New York? 18:26:51 But I am a researcher that focuses on education, finance. 18:26:54 And so we are looking at these models across the country, and I and I really just came to share what we had been like. 18:27:01 I do have $1 who lives in New York City. 18:27:04 So now I suddenly have reason to sort of pay attention more specifically that. 18:27:13 And you know, and anyway, wanna make sure that all New York's populations served well by this. 18:27:19 So the number one reason that districts take on these decentralized models. 18:27:23 They're mostly large, big districts like Houston and Denver, and San Francisco and Nashville. 18:27:33 Atlanta, Washington, DC. And Baltimore, Indianapolis. 18:27:40 Those are the districts around the country that use one of these large, you know these decentralized models, and one of the reasons they're doing it is is for equity, because these models get so big that if you have you know a person assigning staff to all these different buildings there are a 18:27:59 lot of accusations that the model is not transparent we don't know why we got the amount of money or the staffing that we got, and it's not equitable. 18:28:06 So that is the most common reason. Boston is another one that we've find. 18:28:12 Districts are using these models with some of these others you know, close behind whether it's transparency or flexibility. 18:28:22 In resource use. So we have 2 schools with different needs. 18:28:27 But so we some schools will want to use their money in different ways to reflect them. 18:28:32 The mix of their kids. And they want to be responsive to their families. 18:28:37 So the families, if they say we really want this that there's some wiggle room at the level of the school to be responsive to that, because in a district as large as New York City, you can't have you know, all of the every family coming in and putting pressure on the central deciders or 18:28:53 they or they can't be responsive. So the idea is to is to move some of these to decisions closer to where the kids are. 18:29:03 And then we have seen a few, mentions here and there about accountability structures or financial sustainability, or creating a pressure for service oriented central departments, and I can talk about that a little bit. 18:29:16 But you see that generally your New York City is in good company, in the sense that it's among larger districts that are using a weighted student formula on that equity agenda, and this is a graphic that our centers has built on an interactive display that I 18:29:36 put the link there, you could go look at it if you like. 18:29:40 These are all the schools in New York City and the red are high poverty schools, and the green are more affluent schools and one of the things we look for right away is whether the it looks like more dollars are flowing to higher poverty schools. 18:29:59 And they are, generally speaking, although there's quite a bigger range, especially among the hypoverty schools and the other thing we look to see is whether or not that money is delivering more value for students. 18:30:13 And so obviously, you see some. It is. You see, this higher Poverty school here, with with really great outcomes, and some it's not, you know. 18:30:22 You see some expensive lower performing schools, some of them up here at close to $30,000 or more, so we'll come back and talk about this a little bit more in a moment. 18:30:35 But you know, among other weighted student formula districts, what categories are weighted, and I will say there is no district, no 2 models that exactly match each other. 18:30:49 These the districts are kind of hammering it out with their communities, and they have different mixes of students with different needs. 18:30:55 They're looking at their student outcomes and adjusting their formulas. 18:30:58 Based on their mix of of kids. And what I saw one question is, you know, don't. 18:31:07 Don't these models sort of reflect what school districts were doing before? 18:31:11 And they they do. They are, you know. No district can sustain too much disruption in a single year, and so most of them, when they adopted one of these models, they tried to make it look close to the kinds of spending patterns. 18:31:29 They were seeing, and what they tend to do is nedge them over time by potentially adding a new category of students that doesn't look like it's being served well, potentially putting more money in the formula or modifying the special ed categories and and so on 18:31:48 so they're really different from place to place. They're language is different. 18:31:53 They're very many of them are predominantly sort of organically grown in their communities. 18:31:59 So one of the things we look at is whether or not they're they are actually is. 18:32:05 The picture show, delivering more dollars to higher needs students which in this country is not only, you know, a compelling argument that higher needs students who who've grown up in poverty, or our foster children are homeless, or our English language learners 10 to score lower and 18:32:27 many more resources to perform at comparable levels, but also this. A portion of the money in these districts comes from the Federal Government, and there was a line of Federal dollars. 18:32:40 Sorry. Got a frog on that one. 18:32:46 Anyway, there's a the sliver of the money that is required to go to higher poverty. 18:32:52 Students. And so we are seeing that New York City is one of these more progressive models. 18:33:00 This is data from a few years ago. So it is older. 18:33:04 And that was last time we did this study of all these different districts. 18:33:11 So jumping forward as I'm sure those of you watch the fair student funding task force closely would now be experts on. 18:33:19 Is that and the key implementation issues are ensuring. Schools have the flexibility that they need to really get the value out of this model. 18:33:29 Some will have so few dollars. There's not much wiggle room, or there's so many state rules layered on about staffing or class sizes that schools don't end up having much in the way of flexibility to respond to their communities and that's something we worry 18:33:46 about, and how much of the district's money goes into the formula, and in New York City that number is, I think, one of the I'll show you the chart in a second. 18:34:00 It's about it's on the lower side. But, interestingly, what determines a lot of that is whether or not staff benefits are in the formula, because that is a large chunk of money in in New York City. 18:34:15 And I'm gonna show you how that compares to other States or other districts in in a moment. 18:34:22 And then, whether or not the schools are held to paying the real salaries of their employees. 18:34:27 So, if your school has experienced teachers, do you need to make trade-offs to cover those higher salaried teachers? 18:34:36 And then how how to make sure this is transparent to people, and that we're communicating in a way that people understand how and why schools get the money they get so in large centralized models. 18:34:51 There isn't much of that transparency, and if a decentralized model doesn't come with that transparency, then it's not getting kind of the value out of that model, what to do about low enrollment schools and we'll talk about that and and another one 18:35:07 is whether or not the principals have been appropriately trained to make some of the resource trade-off decisions that will help them do the most for their students. 18:35:18 So here you can see New York City is has a smaller, at least it's a few years ago. 18:35:24 This is not recent data portion of its money that is, in the formula, and that, I think, is partly attributed to the fact that the entire Benefits Bill is outside of the formula, as is transportation and food and and a few other things okay, so I I wanted to look a 18:35:43 little bit at these smaller schools. So this is New York City's middle school. 18:35:48 Sorry. That's not only 75% poverty. 18:35:51 This is wrong, it's the whole, all the middle schools in the district, not just middle schools. 18:35:57 And the size of the circle is how big the school is. 18:36:04 So what you see over here on the right, or a lot of it's easy. 18:36:09 Tiny little schools right? And they're expensive. Look at some of these are up here again. These are old data. 18:36:15 2,01819. But this difference between the smaller and larger schools is only gotten greater. 18:36:22 We are waiting for New York to release some updated achievement data. 18:36:28 So we can update these graphics just waiting patiently for New York State to release that achieve a data still waiting, anyway. 18:36:37 So if anybody has any strings to pull there that we can get the kind of composite index we had before we would love to kind of upload that. 18:36:45 But what you can see is a pattern that's that. 18:36:50 Our sense is that it's gotten more extreme, which is that these small schools are getting subsidized for being a little bit small, and they're costing a lot. 18:36:58 And they're not delivering much for their kids, meaning that we spend a lot of money per student. 18:37:06 Look at these numbers are really $40,000 a kid, and what we don't have is much to show for it. 18:37:15 And so I'm gonna do another true false for you, because, you know, I teach. 18:37:20 So that's what I have to do. It's required. 18:37:23 You're required to ask the audience questions. So we're gonna do this one, true or false. 18:37:29 Generally speaking, when a district gives more money per student to one school, there's less money left for students at the rest of the schools. 18:37:40 So this is, this, is this is a question for you all, and and and actually that is true. 18:37:50 A lot of people don't really appreciate that. They think. 18:37:52 Why doesn't this give me my my school more money and it won't harm anybody else but that money has to come out of another way in order to give that to your school, so there's this kind of trade-off there so if the district continues to subsidize these really small expensive schools that means 18:38:12 it's that money's gotta come from somewhere, and that's how the trade-off works. 18:38:17 So that is, I believe, one of the large issues that New York City is going to face going forward, especially as money gets more and more tight, and I know that from just reading the larger news that there were calls to make sure that New York City, continue to give money to the some of the itty Bitty 18:38:36 tiny schools over here, with some of this lower performance. Now I I do want to point out that these are also some very schools filled with kids with very high needs. 18:38:48 So some of that lower performances, because of the high needs. 18:38:51 But you can also come over and see that not every school with high needs students is lower performing. 18:38:58 Some of them are indeed beating the odds for their kids and and delivering higher value. 18:39:04 And that's the way we in the research space really like to look at our our dollars to say what value are they delivering for their students? 18:39:16 It's not just how much did everybody get. But did that investment? 18:39:21 Then yield the kinds of outcomes for our students that we hope they would, and and if where they did, let's celebrate that, we have schools like this one that have pretty high outcomes at this one as well, without bleeding funds off of their peer schools then we would say 18:39:39 that that is spectacular. And how do we learn what they're doing and encourage some of these other schools to adopt that mindset, to to deliver those higher outcomes as well? 18:39:52 So Maria's asking is, is that the case? 18:39:56 That we can find out which schools are which, and you can. 18:40:00 You can go on to either of the scatter plot sites I've given you. 18:40:03 You can mouse over the schools, and you'll probably have a lot more context to about those. 18:40:09 What comment about small schools? Intentionally. So, a lot of these in New York City aren't small schools by design. 18:40:18 There's schools that used to be large that no one goes to anymore, or very few people go to. 18:40:23 And I think those are are different things. You know. There's the small schools by design where it was. 18:40:30 It was intended. These are not high schools, by the way, they're middle schools, but there were small schools that were intentionally supposed to build on their smallness. 18:40:41 These look like they used to be large schools, and they're kind of we call them zombie schools, where they're half filled now, and and and that's a that's a different and very challenging environment for for for schools to be able to deliver high value then. 18:40:59 Okay, so would teachers prefer smaller classes or higher salaries. 18:41:04 And then what about parents? So that that's a question that you know has plagued researchers for forever. 18:41:13 But they used to ask this question in the abstract. 18:41:17 Would you rather have a smaller class, or more pay? And you can't ask it in the abstract and I'm trying to get at some of these trade-offs for you all you have to ask it in terms of cost equivalent options. 18:41:30 And so Dan Goldberg did that, and he ran and did a survey, and he asked, teachers, would you rather have a $5,000 bonus, or 2 fewer students in each class? 18:41:42 You teach, and it turns out when people said $5,000, I'll take the cash, but that's that's what it costs. 18:41:53 To have 2 fewer kids. It costs money to make classes smaller, and when given the option overwhelmingly. 18:42:02 Teachers didn't worry so much about small class sizes anymore. 18:42:06 They really they kind of wanted the bonus, and so overwhelmingly. 18:42:12 That's what we saw, and I'll say that when you ask parents it's a little trickier, because they actually wanna know which teacher they're getting. 18:42:20 So if you ask a parent, would you rather have a teacher from the top quartile and a much larger class size will say 29 or a smaller class size, say 24, and a teacher of unknown quality? 18:42:35 What we're finding is parents say, oh, I wanted the better teacher and the smaller class size. 18:42:42 But if that's not the option, I'll take the better teacher, even with the larger class size. 18:42:48 So the point here is when you go to navigate some of these. 18:42:55 These tense financial trade offs in the next couple of years the best way to deal with them is with cost equivalent they're cost equivalent options on this. 18:43:07 So I is there a link to the survey? 18:43:11 It's actually a pretty well known study. You can probably Google, it it's Dan Goldhaber and my Dearman, but we include the link. 18:43:17 I pulled out a couple of items from from our upcoming training, and I didn't fully document them, because I was pulling in slides together without enough time. 18:43:25 But if you're having trouble, find it just reaching out to me, and I'll make sure you get the you get the study for it. 18:43:31 So it's really, it's really fascinating that we often think of these things in isolation. 18:43:37 But there is nothing in isolation, because if you go to lower class sizes, you're gonna have to go out higherire. A bunch of new people. 18:43:45 Some of the new people you hire will be kind of deeper into the Labor Pool, and may not be as effective as some of the ones you have. 18:43:54 Some kids will be moved into classrooms with potentially less effective teachers and what you have is a trade-off of teacher quality versus class size. 18:44:04 So so it gets tricky fast. I wanted to point out one of the questions that was on the list was around benefits. So I'm not. 18:44:17 I have some questions about these data. They're federal data that the districts report what we've seen is that benefits. 18:44:25 Rates are growing fast, benefits are growing really, really fast, and they are consuming larger and larger shares of school. 18:44:33 District budgets, and they're eating into what the district would spend that money on. 18:44:40 For other things, and New York City is got one of the not the highest, but one of the higher benefits loads for sure, which means that for every dollar you're spending on salary you're spending another 60 cents on benefits and it turns out again, that's not 18:44:59 what that's not what teachers want, that teachers rather have a cash. Frankly. 18:45:08 And I want these really, really expensive benefits. And some districts are looking to kind of go back and rethink those benefits. 18:45:16 And some districts are looking to kind of go back and rethink those benefits, go with leaner benefits, and then turn some of that money back over to their some of it, anyway, back over to their some of it. 18:45:22 Anyway, back over to their pay and build a bit more of a a stable budget for that. 18:45:27 So so for here again, that's a another piece to really think about. 18:45:32 I wanted to leave some a good amount of time for for questions and comments, but I did the. I got permission to to make a plug for our upcoming certificate in education, finance. 18:45:45 Anyone can register. It is $3,500 tuition. 18:45:49 If that's an issue for you, then you should fill out and apply for one of the scholarships that are going quickly. 18:45:55 But we are actually running this certificate in New York City one time, one time we'll probably never come back, because that is in March 20, ninth and thirtieth. 18:46:06 It's 2 days in person, and then we will have 6 virtual sessions to get the sortertificate from Georgetown, and it'll it is. 18:46:17 It's lively. It's fine. I'm not just saying that because I really like education, finance, people who've done it before have have said on the survey they had fun I don't see anybody falling asleep. 18:46:28 So and we we make it very interactive. You'll balance budgets. You'll look up some of your own data. 18:46:33 You'll work on communications and interact with other people to get a lot of different dilemmas on things like, would you rather have this? 18:46:42 Or would you rather have that? So? If it's something that you want to dig into for the next couple of years, we would recommend coming this time cohort will probably have about a 100 or so people in it, and otherwise, if you'd just want to be on our newsletter list that's you can sign up there and 18:47:01 or you know, if you're a Twitter person, that Twitter handle that is there as well. 18:47:05 So I will stop there, and you can fire away with questions. 18:47:18 Yeah. Yup. 18:47:10 Great, that's wonderful and Marguerite, do you mind just unsharing your screen so we can go back to see all of our beautiful faces, and I I do want to take 1 s and just acknowledge a guest that did join Dr. 18:47:25 Angela Green. She's the chair of the panel on Educational Policy. 18:47:29 She has joined us as well. So we're glad that she could make it, and I've seen some other panel for educational policy members here as well, that have joined so question one. 18:47:41 There's there's obviously so much we'd love to talk about. 18:47:43 I would like to know? Sort of a theme throughout your presentation and sort of harking back to the first slide you showed with the change in enrollment versus staffing. 18:47:55 There's obviously something is out of out of balance. 18:47:58 There? Are there districts across the country that you've that you're aware of, that you study, that have whatever governance structures they need, whatever budgetary policies that they need to put in place. 18:48:12 Enable them to achieve a better balance when things are good. The, you know, enrollment and students go up together, and when things are tight, those go down together, and it's sort of works in in in tandem. 18:48:26 Well, I would say, that's the ideal. 18:48:30 Obviously the last couple of years. You you can't really fault districts for these things going out of whack a bit for one. 18:48:37 The enrollment. Enrollment never changes as quickly as it did, and that was because we had a pandemic. 18:48:44 We closed schools at the same time we had the steady enrollment loss, the 2 of them compounded each other. 18:48:49 We didn't really take stock of it until everybody came back and went. 18:48:52 Oh, my gosh! And so that that was really unusual. 18:48:56 So, in, in, most, in, in districts that are decentralized, the idea is to keep the 2 in tandem by instead of saying having a an allocation model that allocates money according to students. 18:49:10 So when you have more students in schools, you get more money when you have fewer students in school, it proportionately contracts every year automatically. 18:49:18 Now the other thing that happened in the last couple of years is we got this big, huge, blank check from the Federal Government with the the Esser funds and so when we when we did that, the school district said, well, gee! 18:49:32 I would I would normally be cutting some of these funds from these schools with these big, abrupt robot declines. 18:49:38 But it doesn't seem like a great time in the middle of a pandemic to lay people off and move them around. 18:49:43 So why don't we use some of this money to keep the things going? 18:49:46 Also, we get so much money that maybe we should haveire some more counselors right now, and maybe some more nurses. 18:49:53 And we we it was so hurt you know, at the beginning of the pandemic that we didn't really look ahead to say, What does that look like in the end of 2,024, when the money is gone and our students haven't recovered and these 2 things are a bit out of 18:50:08 whack, and that's why we're expecting a lot of disruption. 18:50:12 And the more that people in the schools understand how it works, the more they can have a say in what the pathway looks going forward. 18:50:20 Otherwise it's going to feel like it got done to them. 18:50:23 Right, but I think your slide did predate the pandemic, if I'm not mistaken. 18:50:28 But didn't show. Am I mistaken on that? 18:50:30 Did it go back t020-13-2014. 18:50:30 No, you're right. You need to put it back up again. 18:50:34 I I I can do that. 18:50:35 Only! 18:50:36 Yes, it showed. It showed that New York City was already starting to well, to be to be fair also, you know, 2,013 is the starting year. 18:50:47 We're kind of coming out of the last recession. 18:50:50 We had some unbelievable growth in State recession. We had some unbelievable growth in state revenues, and so you saw kind of this investing in school districts. 18:50:57 But New York City has been losing students for for quite a while, and and some people would argue the goal was was to add a few more staff, because we had some needs in our city, and we wanted to address them, especially when it comes to social and emotional things like that but maybe it's better that. 18:51:18 We have more staff than we used to, but right now, when you're looking at these upside down budgets, you're worried. 18:51:23 It's not, you know. You become worried. It's not gonna be sustainable. 18:51:26 Right? Right? Just a quick sort of a question on policy. 18:51:32 And I, you know I went to grad school for masters in public policy. 18:51:37 But I don't have the expertise you do, and you know I took these classes, but I've not practiced them that over the years like you have, and study them. 18:51:44 Don't worry. There's still the certificate, and it's finance. You can still get it. 18:51:45 But I'm just curious. Yeah, exactly. But I'm just curious, you know, in talking to you talking to folks from, you know, other folks in this. 18:51:55 It seems to be a real challenge to model outcomes. 18:52:01 And one thing that struck me about the the working group is that there? 18:52:05 There wasn't a modeling of outcomes there wasn't something a process of okay. 18:52:10 Let's look at the look at the inputs. 18:52:14 Look at the money spent and then let's look at test scores. 18:52:19 Is that really? I mean, I I'm assuming that should be the way the the way that we're focusing on the things we're focusing on. 18:52:26 But what are the challenges with sort of modeling and trying to, you know, use regression, analysis, and statistical models to predict education outcomes and then sort of the follow-up to that is what are the best tools, whether it's like cost-benefit analysis or what should we be 18:52:44 using and thinking of, especially as parents. How can we sort of be equipped to have these conversations? 18:52:49 Yeah, well, I will. I'll share with you like a career frustration. 18:52:52 Of mine, which is, that the answers are not all in those data sets. 18:52:57 So we, you know, and I will say this career frustration of mine because I spent many, many years digging into the data set, saying we should be able to predict outcomes based on the amount we spend. 18:53:08 And then how the money was used, and yet the amount we spend, and how the money was used is predicts very little. 18:53:16 Even when you take into account the mix of students, it predicts very little of the portion of variation. 18:53:20 In student outcomes, and that is, and that is a career frustration of mine. 18:53:25 It is a major source spot for for many in the field. 18:53:30 It's not saying that there's no relationship. It's that it doesn't predict much of the relationship. 18:53:36 And so what we've got done now in the last decade has gone back and said, Well, what does? 18:53:43 Let's start with those schools that get a higher than predicted outcome. 18:53:46 If there's nothing in there that really tells us about the best way to spend money, because there's spending in the same way as some of these other schools, what is there? 18:53:56 And I'll maybe I'll take that back to a true or false, so true or false, 2 schools can spend the same amount of money with the same mix of kids roughly, and get the same, and get different outcomes. 18:54:10 True. Yeah, true. 18:54:09 You know. Obviously true. Right? Okay, 2 schools can spend the same amount of money in the same way with with about the same mix of kids so they're spending the same money, and they're spending in the same way and get different outcomes. 18:54:26 And that's that's true, too, right? Because the humans matter a lot. 18:54:31 In schooling. Of course they do right. I think if we had just an entire group of teachers here they would be rolling their eyes at us, saying, Step away from the spreadsheet, not all the answers are in this spreadsheet and and and they're right. 18:54:47 You know, the humans matter inormously when it comes to schooling. 18:54:50 We all deeply know that right, that some mix of teachers work harder or better for certain kinds of kids. 18:54:57 Some families are have a different relationship with their school they're the students matter. 18:55:02 The teachers matter it all matters so what we've found when we studied the high arroi schools schools that beat the odds for their kids with the money that they have is what they're doing is instead of ignoring the human factors there tapping the human factors and putting them to work 18:55:20 they're not saying, you know, a teacher is a teacher. 18:55:22 A librarian is librarian. It's all the same to us. 18:55:25 What they're saying is, no, these humans are the equation. 18:55:29 How do we make them come to work every day and roll up their sleeves and do their best work? 18:55:33 And the best way to do that is to go to school in a system they believe is fair, and so that that you need to have what feels like an equitable or some sort of fair amount of money, and it can't be the case that you're you look a lot like another school but they get twice 18:55:47 as much money that you do. Then you throw up your hands and you don't do your best work, so they have to go somewhere. 18:55:52 That's fair. They have to have regular data that measures how successful they are, and they have to have some say in how the resources are used in their buildings, that agency that ability to participate in the decisions actually affects behavior, and so that's some of the ideas behind the the descentralized models 18:56:15 is trying to tap into that human stuff and and put it to work instead of pretending it does not exist. 18:56:21 And I wanna move on to others questions. But I I did know. 18:56:25 I think in some of your research you have recommended potentially different pay teachers who get stronger outcomes in the classroom potentially deserve more pay to to just say it simply. 18:56:34 So, yeah, we teachers hate that, by the way. And so, after a decade of efforts, where people try to do performance based pay. 18:56:47 The idea is that they're not very stable because teachers hate them. 18:56:51 They don't really trust how they're measured. 18:56:52 But they are okay with higher pay for more workload, and if you give more effective teachers, the opportunity for more workload, and then you pay them for the additional workload, everybody is more satisfied with that. 18:57:07 So that I think that would be the better way to do that. 18:57:10 So stronger teachers could take on more students and then get a corresponding pay for having maybe a larger class size than normal. 18:57:17 Got it. Thank you. That's a good distinction. 18:57:20 I just wanna go to some of our other co-hosts for questions. 18:57:23 Now, Effie, are you? Do you have a question you'd like to ask Dr. 18:57:26 Rosa! 18:57:26 Thank you very much. Apologies for the video not working on my computer tonight. 18:57:31 I'm a member of the Pep. Just so. 18:57:34 People know I am very impressed by what you said. 18:57:39 I think that's one great suggestion is that to maybe have a larger classes or more workload to certain teachers who prove. 18:57:50 And the question is, how do you measure that? They are? The, let's say, above average teachers. 18:57:54 I guess that's something up to the principle or school administration to decide how to, because it's a principle, really, who gets the budget for the school and then decide how to allocate that budget, whether it's teachers programs through students and all that I wanted to ask 18:58:08 you. You have a lot of experience in this, and the graphs you show. 18:58:13 If anything, almost indicate that the more money we spend on a school, the lower the outcome. 18:58:19 It has a clear negative slope. If you look at the graph from your experience, what would be like 2 or 3 tips that you would give New York City based on your all your experience, how we can get better outcomes, and I want to emphasize the word academic outcomes for our. 18:58:34 Right as I think, what you're seeing in New York City, and we use a graph as an example, because some other districts have a similar pattern. 18:58:43 But not all. Is that that the schools are getting these real small schools are getting more expensive, and they're not delivering. 18:58:50 And I think the question for the city is, if we have only so many dollars. 18:58:56 Is this school a good investment? Is it worth to keep spending money on a school that costs a lot and gets low outcomes and I think that's a conversation even with the school. 18:59:08 So our suggestion is the kind of data that we've displayed here that we use those data on a regular basis with principals. 18:59:15 And we ask them, What do you make of the fact that your school is in this quadrant, whether it's the the upper left, you know, and it's an roi superstar, and it's beating the odds you know at that point if that's one of your schools you should 18:59:29 keep doing what you're doing, if you're school over in the lower right handhand quadrant, you're very expensive, and you have these kind of lower outcomes, you know, the school should know that. 18:59:40 And the school should be saying, Well, what is it we can do to turn it around? 18:59:45 We often find that people can do to turn it around. We often find that people talk about the money at one conversation, and they talk about the outcomes. 18:59:50 Another, and they don't put them together so you end up when you're talking about the student outcomes. 18:59:56 You hear people say, well, we don't have money for summer school, and we don't have a nurse, and we don't have a social worker. 19:00:01 Instead of saying, Well, we do have this much money per student. 19:00:06 Can we deliver? Let's figure out how to deliver the outcomes, and if not, then maybe it's the case that our school isn't a viable option for these kids like we. 19:00:18 I think you need to engage the humans in those buildings on what the solutions are they're the ones who know their kids. 19:00:25 They know if it's that they're not reading, but they're trying, or they're not coming to school, and it's attendance, or there's so many holes they can't sit in a math class anymore. 19:00:34 So they're the ones that can and should weigh in on that. 19:00:38 I don't think it's it's the it's going to work in the long run for a district like New York City that has sustained such significant enrollment declines to not go back and and really examine its data and think about which schools are the ones worth putting the public 19:00:56 dollar in to going forward. I think we've got it. 19:01:00 Use that achievement and those spending data, line them up next to each other and invite everybody in to study them. 19:01:07 Hey? Thank you very much. Alex sincerely hope that they actually do that. 19:01:10 Thank you. 19:01:13 Thanks. Fie, Alyssa! Did you wanna ask a question? 19:01:17 Hi! Thank you so much for coming tonight. Dr. Rosa was a really interesting and enlightening presentation. 19:01:23 I'm going to pull a couple questions out of the chat. 19:01:26 If that's okay, and then I have one about special education. 19:01:28 We have a question from Usha, Catala, Walla, when you look at outcomes, what matters more, the teacher or the size of the school, or the principal, or the curriculum? 19:01:40 What enables the district to develop and retain strong teachers. 19:01:46 So teachers matter a lot. But interestingly so, teachers are obviously a critical value. 19:01:54 Teachers can. A teacher can work for one school, one principal, and get a higher return than if that same teacher goes to another school. 19:02:04 So the principal matters, 2. And what we've found, you know, there are cases where schools are using the wrong curriculum right, like maybe an outdated reading curriculum. 19:02:15 And the kids aren't, aren't reading, or they they don't have a you know the right curriculum. 19:02:22 I think the problem in there are a lot of variables in it, but what we find in our roi superstars, schools that beat the odds for their mix of kids, and don't do it with disproportionately. 19:02:35 More money is, they are committed to solving their problems. 19:02:38 What they are doing is saying they're looking at their data all the time. 19:02:42 They're chasing down kids to make sure that they're reading by any means possible. 19:02:47 Whether that's the librarian handing them a book on their way out. 19:02:50 The building on a Friday afternoon, or it's the teacher calling the parent and saying, Don't forget we've got a test tomorrow. 19:02:56 Can you go over this with your child? We see a strong commitment to looking at the data and solving the problems and we've seen some amazing efforts by that around the country where high school will say, we've got a problem with our our 17 year. 19:03:17 Old boys. They're not coming to school. How do we solve that problem? 19:03:20 So, though the in the end, what matters most in, or what matters a lot is this commitment to leveraging your limited dollars to do the most for your kids and revisiting in a continuous improvement cycle? 19:03:36 How to constantly get better at doing that, and if we don't have all of these humans in the system, sort of pointed in that direction of trying to get the most for their kids then we're not likely to get it because this human stuff matters a lot so the schools that are doing it are very focused on 19:03:54 it! 19:03:55 I'm gonna ask another question from the chat from Michael Ffrey. 19:04:02 Doesn't socioeconomic status of the students have the largest impact on student outcomes out of all the factors. 19:04:08 Right. So I'm assuming that as not one that the district can adjust so obviously, the student outcomes have for a long time been highly predictive of of student outcomes, but not sort of the student, the mix of student characteristics has been highly predictive of student 19:04:26 outcomes, but not definitive. So what, even when you looked at our high-poverty schools, you see some high-poverty schools that outperform peer high poverty schools with similarly high need student populations, and that's what I mean about that continuous improvement we want 19:04:43 all schools that whatever level they are to be trying to take their level of resources and and get to that next higher level of performance for their students. 19:04:53 Okay. The last one. I wanna ask you said something earlier in the presentation that smaller schools with specialized populations, maybe high need special Ed students, the outcomes may not match the dollar spent. 19:05:08 So I just want to clarify when you were speaking about schools, not having outcomes, that there are certain schools that are not expected to have. 19:05:14 Hi outcomes, you know, based on the dollars because of the needs. 19:05:20 And that kind of leads me to the question of special Ed weights. 19:05:24 So the complexity of the weights for special education services seems daunting. 19:05:29 And is there a national bat, a best practices, model? 19:05:31 Is there something you can recommend to take this highly complex formula based system and apply it to spec education funding in a simpler way? 19:05:41 So on the first part, I think the you know, when you go to compare one school to the next to the next, you obviously have to take into account the mix of kids. 19:05:51 And so if you suddenly see a school that has a lot of kids with a particular disability that might change, it might not be a good comparison for the next one across the street, even if their poverty measure levels match and that we do not have done on the chart and that's some of the 19:06:07 additional information that you you all could bring with those, but even among schools that serve very highly complex students, they're looking around the country for similar schools, meaning they serve similar mix of kids. 19:06:21 And they're saying, How are you doing? How are we doing? You know. 19:06:23 Have you? You have a group of high schoolers that are over age, meaning they're they're 19 years old now, and maybe been in and out of corrections or something. 19:06:32 They're trying to compare their school to a similar one somewhere in another city, saying, How are we doing compared to yours? 19:06:40 And I think that continuous improvement mindset, I think that applies to all of the schools. 19:06:45 Now, when it comes to schools with disabilities. New York City has very expensive special education programs, very expensive. 19:06:53 It has more staffing in special Ed than we see in many other places around the country. 19:06:59 There is no standard. There are places that are delivering special Ed services differently with a different mix of staff. 19:07:08 Some of them get better outcomes. Some of them get worse outcomes, but it is an area where I think there will be a lot of attention in the next 4 or 5 years, because the costs of special Ed have just really kind of skyrocketed and and are looking to be in many States 19:07:24 unsustainable, and the increased investments, at least in some States, are delivering what some people at hoped for. 19:07:33 The mix of kids. I will say that compared to 40 years ago, we are doing a lot better with kids, with disabilities. 19:07:39 But we've gone to a point where that the programs have become very, very expensive. 19:07:45 And it's time for us to just take an inward look and say we're spending this much money and these are the outcomes we're getting. 19:07:51 Is everybody happy, or are there ways we can maybe doing this differently, and maybe even deliver greater value for these families. 19:07:58 Thanks so much. I'm gonna pass it back to Steve. 19:08:01 Thank you so much. 19:08:01 Good questions, Alisa. Thank you, Lucas. Did you want to ask a question? 19:08:06 Sure. Thanks a lot. Thank you so much for your time. 19:08:09 You actually answered my question. On what are some of the high-performing districts doing that are resulting in higher form? 19:08:17 And so another part of my question is, you know, what are the top? 19:08:21 2 or 3 recommendations. You think New York City could do, given. 19:08:27 Its large size, which sort of separates it from many other districts. 19:08:33 A strong teachers, union. And what is, you know that you think that New York City could do? Given those? 19:08:39 And then also, what do you think are some of the obstacles are challenges on New York City faces in achieving some of those recommendations. 19:08:51 Great. I think that's that's a good question, and I'm not a New York city native. 19:08:55 So there's there's plenty I don't know about New York City, but among districts that have kind of a similar mix of situation characteristics, I would say the benefits. 19:09:04 Bill is a big one in New York City. The special Ed money is is a big one. 19:09:10 There's a lot of money in those places, and the the benefits one you know you're not alone in having a strong teachers, union and a teachers. 19:09:22 Union will argue for you know the preferred mix of resources for the teachers. 19:09:27 Union, but that conversation could be broadened to involve more voices. 19:09:32 So junior teachers? Would they rather see higher salaries, or do they want this really kind of gold plated benefits, plan and and broadening that conversation, and inviting more input on that? 19:09:43 I think would make sense. So what I would suggest is putting. 19:09:49 And I would suggest this brandy district quite a few concrete options on the table and invite a lot of people to weigh in and decide. 19:09:58 What do we think? Where do we think there's some give and some way of room? 19:10:04 New York City is lucky in that. It has a large amount of money per student for its schools, and the question going forward is, Can we can we get more value out of it for our students the last piece of that I would suggest is a real regular look at the data school by school 19:10:26 you know these kind of scatter plots I've shown you so more people should have the opportunity to dig in on those and think about solutions. 19:10:32 The teachers at each building should kind of get a chance to wrestle. 19:10:36 It and wrestle with the data with their, with their principal, and try to weigh in on how we can solve the problems and maybe take our school and move the outcomes up a notch each and every year and so I think we need to make our those in the system. More. 19:10:50 Fluid in the data, and more have more opportunities to to dig in on that. 19:10:56 So I felt like that was not a very clear answer. But that's my sort of first impression on that one. 19:11:03 But what about obstacles? What do you think are some of the biggest obstacles we face here in New York City? 19:11:08 It's a big district, I mean, it's really, really big. 19:11:11 And in big districts, you know, there will be some forces that say we want a one-size-fits. 19:11:16 All. Everybody has the same thing, and and then that will lock everybody in and commit them to a set of rules or prescriptions, or even the class size thing that may not be the best fit fit for every building. 19:11:33 I'm nervous for you all about the implications of this class size piece as it it comes down. 19:11:42 But you know the systems that are able to deliver greater value for students are the ones that are more nimble and adaptive, and can make adjustments over time and you want you want to make sure that that the schools in New York city have that flexibility to sort of look at the 19:11:58 needs of their kids understand who they're staff are working together to try to deliver the maximum value for each and every one of those schools. 19:12:10 Thank you. 19:12:13 Next up. Ben or Janie did wanted to ask a question for District 2. 19:12:20 I'll ask the question. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Dr. 19:12:24 Rosa, for for your presentation tonight. It's been absolutely fascinating, and you you brought up some points that that are coming real quickly. 19:12:35 That that have to be discussed in New York City with the small class size class sizes. 19:12:43 That's gonna create more hiring, more hiring of teachers. 19:12:47 And you brought up a point that I wasn't aware of of the 60 cents to every dollar that New York City is spending on benefits. 19:12:55 But actually, maybe newer teachers might prefer the the money up front versus the benefits. 19:13:04 Is there a model, or that you recommend, or city? 19:13:09 That's you know, that's doing it. 19:13:12 So differently that we should be looking to replicate, or where you could start mixing. 19:13:21 You know the budget allocations given that this is gonna you know, this is gonna impact us. 19:13:29 Yeah, I I mean, first of all, I I would get in there and dig into that money right? 19:13:34 So some of it is going to these pension plans, and the Pension plans never change, because very few people engage in them. 19:13:42 And so that that deserves some detention. But the other thing you might do is say, Well, let's create 3 cost equipment alternatives. 19:13:50 So one is a month leaner set of benefits and higher pay raise, you know, whatever it is, $10,000 pay, raise for everybody. 19:14:00 And then I would say, a fixed fixed rate dollar pay, raise versus a percentage, pay, raise. 19:14:07 That's another thing. People like their pay in in dollars a fixed dollar rate versus a percentage. 19:14:12 It's the junior teachers with a lot of turnover. 19:14:14 So that's better for them, anyway. So I would say, put some some real alternatives on the table, and open it up to the larger community to weigh in, and by that I mean all the different groups of teachers, because you might see that that teachers aren't as wedded to this benefits 19:14:32 plan as as maybe the Union thought it was, or that the system is sort of default of, you know, in a default way, expected. 19:14:40 They were. So I I think the best route here is, if you put options on the table and invite people to weigh in, you're more likely as a system to move to something that is optimized, whether it's you're gradually getting there or it's a big kind of radical 19:14:56 change. But you know there's a lot of money here, and it deserves a lot more eyes on it. 19:15:03 Hey? Thank you very much. 19:15:08 Thanks. Ben Joe Joe Benedetto, did you wanna ask a question? 19:15:12 Yes, thank you. Yes, I appreciate that. Thank you, Dr. Ross. 19:15:14 Yeah, no. Problem. 19:15:16 Thank you for such an enlightening presentation, and we appreciate that you gave us the time this evening. 19:15:20 I come from a district that has higher performing students, and some of which the schools are not spending as much money as in other areas. 19:15:33 But I'm asking you, what do you predict will happen to these districts, especially if you're not from a high poverty district. 19:15:42 Should we be concerned about losing money per student? 19:15:45 I think all of the districts will lose money per student. 19:15:50 All of them right right? 19:15:51 Understood, but I think these higher performing I mean the I mean I'm looking at my constituents and they're very concerned that the money will be taken away from our districts first, right? 19:16:06 Because the students are performing well. So the need is not there right? 19:16:11 That's the logic. 19:16:11 Yeah, I think I mean what one this sort of relates to a question that I don't think I properly answer. 19:16:17 Now that I'm thinking back on it, why not give either more money to the low performing, or take it away from the low performing what you really want is the money to not not follow performance, but the money to follow? 19:16:29 Students, and then the expectations to follow students. So the we people will not try hard unless they feel the system is fair, and they want their fair amount of money per each of their kids. 19:16:45 They don't want this negative andentive like. The more I did better. 19:16:48 They took money away, or that's unfair for them, the worse they do, the more cash they get, or vice versa. They don't. 19:16:54 They don't really like that in their systems. They want the money to come with their kids and then it's their job to deliver the highest value possible. 19:17:03 I I will say that one of the things that threatens everybody's money is a pressure to continue to fund every school at the same level. 19:17:14 We funded it 5 years ago, even though they may have lost a third of their kids. 19:17:20 And if you if you go fund the school, it's called a hold harmless. 19:17:25 If you go find a hall a hold harmless at a school that money is gonna come from somewhere and the system is, gonna look around and figure out where to to take it from. 19:17:36 And so so I think you know, in that sense, you know, making sure that the system is transparent and the dollars are following kids watching the weights to make sure that we should spend more on high needs kids, but that we're not pulling money out of the system to kind of prop up but that we're not pulling money out of the system to kind of prop up 19:17:58 the half. 19:18:00 Thank you. 19:18:05 Al suhoo, did you wanna ask a question? 19:18:07 Yeah, sure, since Matt is not able to meet, I'm gonna ask like a two-part question. 19:18:13 So. Thank you, Dr. Rosa, for coming to this meeting first. 19:18:18 I want to point out that we share a connection to the Department of Defense. 19:18:25 I was. 19:18:21 I see in your bio that you were the tenant and maybe back in the day so long ago I worked for the office of the Secretary of Defense over the Pentagon. 19:18:31 My office, now across the street from the Us. Department of Education at Plaza. 19:18:37 So how's that? For coincidence? 19:18:39 That's great. I love it. 19:18:40 However, I like you. I'm no expert in education, so I'm glad you're here to share your experience and expertise. 19:18:48 So before I get to my question, I just thought about something a possible explanation for the small schools being very expensive. 19:18:55 Prostate is that much of the per capita funding for these small schools is used to pay for the comparatively high fixed operational costs that may not be an issue for large schools. 19:19:07 So in other words, a one size fit all weighted student funding model is probably too simplistic. 19:19:13 If you don't account for the widely varying a school sizes and a sprawling district like New York City. 19:19:19 So optimally, I think the fixed amount should vary, depending on the size of the school. Otherwise you're not really comparing apples to apples and using a formula to determine funding for such schools. 19:19:32 So I'll point out that small schools don't have to cost more around the country. 19:19:38 We find plenty of small ones that don't. It's a district choice to sort of subsidize their small ones. 19:19:44 Their smallest, very little of it is the operational cost a lot of, I mean, it's all labor, really. 19:19:50 Still, it's not utilities and custodial, or things like that mostly what we're seeing is that the higher cost of a small school is because the small school has the still a full company of one per school staff, like the librarian, the nurse. 19:20:08 The clerk, the principal, the vice principal, the PE teacher, etc. 19:20:13 And then very many fewer students, sometimes half empty classrooms. 19:20:17 So the teacher is teaching, you know, many fewer students, even in the class maybe there's a full time music teacher, half as many kids. 19:20:24 That kind of thing. So it's still in staffing, in small schools, in some parts of the country the the school is able to still function on an appropriately smaller amount of money maybe the principal teaches a class. 19:20:40 The PE teacher doubles as the something else. The counselor. 19:20:44 And we've we've seen that some of the electives might even be delivered by a virtual programs. 19:20:50 My own kids went to a small school and took in some virtual classes online for their Ap. 19:20:57 Econ electives when we had lived in a small rural area, and that can still work. 19:21:05 So just to point out most of it is still labor. 19:21:07 And I I'll point some of you are nervous about my gates. 19:21:11 Affiliation. I am I don't work for Gates now. 19:21:16 I did a leave of absence from Academia for about a year and a half, a little over 10 years ago, and worked as an economic adviser to the Gates Foundation at that time. 19:21:27 But my research center does have a gate script, full disclosure, but that that Grant is not funding my commentary here, or any of the work related to the analysis you've seen today. 19:21:41 So, although I you know I'm not trying to hide anything about about that. 19:21:48 If that the grants that I have had on and off over the years from from the Gates Foundation. 19:21:52 Okay, thank you. So let me ask the last part. 19:21:56 So in 2,017, the Institute of Educational Education Sciences at the Us. 19:22:02 Department of Education funded a 3 year study for you and your team at Georgetown to examine spending patterns with the way to assume funding and one of the research questions was to identify changes, to learning outcomes due to the implementation of way to student funding and determine if 19:22:22 the treatment gaps have narrow. So long. Story short, your research does not determine does not show any conclusive evidence that outcomes have been proved as a result of implementing waked student funding. 19:22:37 And furthermore, research indicates that any increase in outcomes is marginal at best, and in fact, you research shows that achievement gaps widened for blacks and Hispanic students versus white students. 19:22:50 So, even though your research demonstrates that implementation of wasteful funding has increased funding to high-risk students. 19:22:58 What, exactly is the point of doing so? If there's no evidence that increased funding will improve outcomes. 19:23:05 So actually, I I love that you written. 19:23:10 Read that the the research study is published in so our center didn't do the part of that research that addresses the student outcomes. 19:23:18 It's actually not our capacity. We were the pass through for that we did the equity parts of it. 19:23:24 And a researcher named Bethany Gross did a lot of that analysis. 19:23:28 And it's it's a bit more mixed than that. 19:23:30 It's not a slam dunk, and it's more correlation than causation, in part, because it's a really hard thing to study like there's not a matched case for New York City there's no other New York city district in the country that we could say they did this and here's 19:23:45 the other one that they did this. So so they she did their team. 19:23:50 That did I think, a thoughtful study on that they showed some positives, outcomes. 19:23:56 And you're right. It's not causation. 19:24:00 It's also possible for a a district to be centralized and deliver strong outcomes. 19:24:08 We found some cases of that, and they're, you know, no other ones that are as large as New York City, and mostly where we saw districts adopted student formula. 19:24:21 It was in these kind of Mega districts, and some of these Mega districts have have popped up to deliver. 19:24:29 Really larger than expected outcomes, including Chicago, which which is one that that researchers are following with the large gains and New York City had larger gains than it expected during the time. 19:24:44 So I would encourage anybody. It's in the Peabody Journal of Ed to look in and read that research. 19:24:49 If you want, and while you would just warn my heart that you went in there and read it, so I appreciate that we we just, you know, have a hard time getting people to dig in on this stuff. 19:25:00 So that alone made me happy for tonight. 19:25:02 Okay, so a final comment for you is, you know, you mentioned that you and other researchers are frustrated, that you're unable to predict outcomes by examining the school funding data. 19:25:13 And you mentioned human factors. That could be a that may not be captured in school funding data. 19:25:19 That's possible, certainly, but perhaps there is a structural problem with the underlying assumption that there is a cause relationship between school spending and outcomes. 19:25:31 Have you considered that factors outside of the school environment could be much stronger predictors about outcomes? 19:25:38 And that no amount of funding added to a school can definitively improve outcomes for higher students. 19:25:45 So you have just entered into one of the largest researcher debates that's out there in the space. 19:25:53 And so you're you're absolutely there. Researchers kind of on on all corners of this kind of working on it. 19:25:59 And digging into the data. And this was apparent in many of the questions it your you're absolutely right. 19:26:06 We do not have perfect information. We don't have perfect information on each kid. 19:26:11 So you know, just describing the kid as low income and non-english speaking enough or should we be categorizing them based on whatever their home language is, or how long they've been in the Us. 19:26:24 Or whether they've had interruptions in their schooling, and there is a set of researchers that are trying to scoop up more and more data on students about neighborhood and other kinds of variables that they're finding are also in some ways predictive we're dealing with the field is 19:26:42 not not there yet, on having the perfect data to make a predictive kind of production function equation that can guarantee these outcomes. 19:26:55 But what we can see is that some schools still redeemine, deliver higher than expected outcomes for their kids after we've taken into account everything we can measure. 19:27:07 And so that's what we're trying to strive for is more of that. 19:27:10 And I that's probably an unsatisfying answer. 19:27:13 But I hear you. 19:27:14 Thank you for trying. I can see. 19:27:16 Hmm. Yep, thanks, thanks, everyone, and we are coming up at 7, 37, 30. 19:27:23 We could definitely talk about this for hours. I know Dr. Rosa. 19:27:27 Just a quick request. We've had a number of questions, either in the chat or on our submission form, that we haven't been able to answer. 19:27:33 If we were to email those to you. It's not that many. 19:27:35 It's maybe a dozen or so. I'm looking at them. 19:27:38 Would you be able to just take a look at those after the meeting is over, and perhaps share responses? 19:27:41 I will take a look, but I will also say that if you left this hungry for more edge finance, we are coming to New York City. 19:27:48 And. 19:27:55 Perfect. 19:27:48 For our superior program. So I think that if you're if you're looking for an answer we'll have a lot of time to dig in during those 2 days, and maybe my colleague Deb could put the link in the chat again, if that's something that would be interesting to you but 19:28:03 yes, I will. I will take a look and see if there's there's some information I could circle around and kind of answer those. 19:28:10 Yeah, that'd be great, and you know, good for you for being a smart businesswoman. 19:28:21 Okay. 19:28:16 Well, I don't. My pay is not affected. Whether about whether you sign up or not, or whether no one signs up, I actually get the same page check. 19:28:26 But we we we did several years ago start these programs. 19:28:29 And people didn't think this kind of school finance stuff was a field that was that was really interesting. 19:28:34 And our view was that the more people who are smart and engaged in this, the more likely communities and districts and schools will make really thoughtful decisions. 19:28:43 So it's more of a passion than sort of a prophecy situation. 19:28:47 Okay, sorry. I just. 19:28:47 But but anyway, if you could swing it, we'd love to have. 19:28:51 Got it great. Thank you so much. And just a reminder that you can there is a scholarship application, or something. 19:28:59 If the cost of the program is, is a concern. 19:29:02 That's right. 19:29:03 Great thanks. Well, we should probably it's a good place to end everyone. 19:29:08 Thanks everyone for attending. This has been really, really interesting and insightful, and a great community conversation. So Dr. 19:29:16 Rosa Marguerite. Thank you so much. 19:29:19 And you know, hopefully, we'll continue to be entitled to be in touch on this stuff where, you know, we're trying to get more involved in this, as parents, you're insights are really really useful. 19:29:27 So thank you. 19:29:27 Well, nice to thank you for having me, and I appreciate you all being paid with my long-winded answers. 19:29:35 No problem. It was wonderful. Thanks, and have a good night. 19:29:38 Thank you. 19:29:53 And interpreters, you are dismissed, you can leave. 19:30:00 Okay. Thank you. 19:29:56 Thank you for your help. I should have thank you. And when everyone was here, thank you so much.