School Efficiency Litigation

Expert Witness Report Summary

Expert: Testimony On: Prof. Eric Hanushek Texas Efficiency Litigation

See full report at: texasclassroomsfirst.com/efficiency

Findings: How money is spent is much more important than how much money is spent. There is no consistent relationship between increasing resources and improvements in student achievement. Nationally, the only factor with a statistically relevant impact on the National Assessment of Educational Progress is teacher experience. The noticeable impact of experience is driven by improvements in effectiveness experienced by teachers in their first two years of teaching. Teacher effectiveness is actually the driving factor. From 2010-11 data in Texas: Research indicates districts spending more are getting the lowest achievement on TAKS tests, even after adjusting for student demographics. Comparisons of the highest-spending per pupil districts and the lowest-spending per pupil districts shows that there is no relationship between spending and performance. The same applies to graduations rates. Increased teacher salaries and lower pupil-teacher ratios have had a negligible impact on TAKS performance. Research shows differences in teacher effectiveness are extremely important. Higher quality teachers are estimated to increase students future incomes, and lower quality teachers are estimated to cause symmetric losses. Replacing the bottom 5-8 percent of teachers with average teachers would result in overall student performance into the top ten globally, as opposed to 17th currently. Texas does not pay sufficient attention to teacher effectiveness or efficient resource utilization. Teacher salaries are based on tenure instead of performance. The same salary is given to teachers that differ dramatically in effectiveness. Teacher reductions is seldom based on teacher performance, but instead seniority. This results in young effective teachers being forced out of schools in favor of senior, but ineffective teachers. The policies of the state towards teachers are damaging to developing a productive and efficient system. State mandated teacher salary increases not based on effectiveness is detrimental. The attempts by courts to make judgments on common measures of school and teacher quality have been very unsuccessful. Increasing certification requirements protects the system, but is unrelated to classroom performance, and thus hurts students by denying them access to the best possible education. Texas laws and regulations prevent local districts from making decisions that would more efficiently use resources. Districts should be provided with incentives to improve student performance and to use resources more efficiently. Obstacles to innovation and efficiency should be eliminated.

TCCRI www.txccri.org 512.474.6042 PO Box 2659, Austin, TX 78768