School Isn’t Closed for Lack of Money

Teachers union influence, not government funding or the latest science, drives reopening decisions.

By Corey A. DeAngelis and Christos A. Makridis. Excerpts:

"Private schools have either been open for most of the past year or have been fighting to reopen. Kentucky private schools took the fight to the U.S. Supreme Court to return to in-person instruction, and private schools in Ohio and Michigan pursued similar legal action. A private school in Sacramento, Calif., even rebranded itself as daycare to get around the government’s arbitrary closures.

Many teachers unions, by contrast, have been fighting to stay at home. The difference is one of incentives. Public schools get their funding regardless of whether they open their doors.

A study published by Brown University’s Annenberg Institute found that public schools with more Catholic school competition nearby were more likely to reopen in person in 2020. It also found, and three other studies confirm, that public school districts with stronger teachers unions are substantially less likely to reopen in person.

Our new analysis throws another wrench in the teachers union narrative. We examine data from more than 12,000 school districts nationwide, covering more than 90% of school-age children, and find no evidence to suggest that higher revenue or expenditures per student are associated with a higher probability of reopening schools for in-person learning.

Instead, we find that public school funding is either uncorrelated or even negatively correlated with in-person instruction. Some models suggest that schools that went fully remote were better off financially than their in-person counterparts in the same state."

"School reopening was strongly related, however, to county-level voting patterns in the 2016 election.

The contrast between Florida and California is a prime example. This month’s data from Burbio indicates that in Florida, which spends about $10,700 a student each year, nearly all public schools offer full-time in-person instruction. In California, which spends about 38% more per student and has much stronger teachers unions, most public-school students still don’t have access to in-person learning options.

Another analysis, from researchers at Georgetown University, found that public school districts that decided to teach remotely generally had financial surpluses. The researchers estimated that Los Angeles public schools, which opted to keep their doors shut, had a more than $500 million funding surplus, or about $1,100 a student, for the 2020-21 school year."

"Something doesn’t add up. From Virginia to California, some school districts have opened public-school buildings for in-person child-care services but not for in-person learning. A California teachers union leader working to delay school reopening took his own daughter to an in-person private preschool. A Chicago union leader urged teachers to refuse to return to the classroom while vacationing in Puerto Rico."