Education Archives - Spera Connect

Property tax value index by county

Are you getting enough bang for your buck? When it comes to paying property taxes, it’s not easy to tell.

SmartAsset analyzed this by comparing how good schools are, how safe the area is, and how high are the property taxes.

They analyzed all 3,000+ counties across the U.S. by a metric called “tax value index.”

Schools are ranked from 10 (the best) to 1 (the worst) according to an average of math and reading performance proficiencies in standardized tests, weighted by number of students. Counties that rate a 10 have schools in the top decile in the state.

Law enforcement is judged according to violent and property crime rates per 100,000 people. According to the FBI, violent crime includes murder, rape, robbery and aggravated assault. Property crime includes things like burglary, motor vehicle theft and arson.

The effective tax rates were derived from national census data: The median amount of tax paid divided by the median home value in each county.

To create the tax value index, the county school rankings have been divided by the total violent and property crime rates per 100,000 people in each county and then that number is divided by the average property tax amount paid per person per year to obtain a number representing public service value per tax dollar. We then multiplied that number by 1,000,000 to form the tax value index. Basically, the greater the number, the more residents get for their tax dollars.

We then ranked all counties with populations greater than 50,000 people to find the top 10 and the bottom 10.

For some comparison, the average US county, with a population of 92,840, charges a 1.13 percent property tax rate for $742.06 in property taxes per capita per year, has schools ranked at 5.53, and sees 101.3 violent crimes and 826.6 property crimes per 100,000 people yearly.

Role of religion in society, again

The practice of religion is a powerful antidote to many of our nation’s pressing social ills, many of which have reached historically high proportions. Yet, despite the societal benefits of religion, the expression of faith in the public square has faced many challenges.

Social science research indicates that permitting and accommodating free religious practice is necessary to move society in positive directions.

Because education is important in so many ways for all citizens, any factor that promotes academic achievement is important to the common good. Academic expectations, level of education attained, school attendance, and academic performance are all positively affected by religious practice. In two literature reviews conducted by Mark Regnerus of the University of Texas at Austin, educational attainment aspirations and math and reading scores correlated positively with more frequent religious practice. The below graph, based on analysis of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, gives a picture of GPA scores across the U.S. for adolescents in grades 7-12.

Parents’ religious practice also affects their children’s educational outcomes. The greater the parents’ religious involvement, the more likely they will have higher educational expectations for their children, and the more likely they will communicate with their children about schooling.6) Their children will be more likely to pursue advanced courses, spend more time on homework, establish friendships with academically oriented peers, avoid cutting classes, and successfully complete their degrees. According to Dr. Patrick Fagan and Dr. Scott Talkington’s analysis of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, individuals who attended religious services frequently were more likely to graduate from high school and to receive a Bachelor’ s degree.

Students in religiously affiliated schools tend to exhibit a higher level of academic achievement than their peers in secular schools, particularly in low-income urban neighborhoods. For example, studies continue to find that inner-city students in public schools lag behind in educational achievement, compared with students in Catholic schools.

The cultural values of a religious community are also a significant pathway to academic success for adolescents. For example, to earn a high school diploma or take advanced math courses, children must plan for the future and structure their activities accordingly. Religious communities typically invest in forming an ethic of such discipline and persistence. A recent study confirms both this indirect contribution of religious community values and the direct influence of the students’ own religious activities in promoting academic achievement.

Earlier studies found this same relationship between religious practice and academic discipline. For example, in 1985, the groundbreaking work of Richard Freeman of Harvard University revealed that attendance at religious services and activities positively affected inner-city youth school attendance, work activity, and allocation of time—all of which were further linked to a decreased likelihood of engaging in deviant activities. Youth who frequently attended religious services were five times less likely to skip school, compared with peers who seldom or never attended.

Social and economic benefits of public education

Public education is a vital function of local governments. And making up the majority of annual budgets, its spending is often under the most scrutiny during public referendums.

Many studies have been performed that analyze the social impact and economic benefits of public school spending and performance. One of these studies, published by Penn State, outlines several key impacts and offers business cases for further investment.

The impacts of education are vast, ranging from employment to health to civic participation. And maybe most critically from a net-positive to net-negative perspective, education has a tremendous influence on crime in a given area.

The public bears a huge financial burden from crime and its related costs to society. The overall “price tag” for crime includes tangible and intangible costs to victims, court costs associated with the prosecution of crime, the costs of incarceration (infrastructure, staff, housing and food, counseling, prisoner education programs), the indirect economic costs associated with productivity and wages lost to both victims and offenders, and the decreased opportunities available to those with a prison record.

The National Institute of Justice estimates that these costs total $450 billion annually, or $1,800 for each U.S. resident (using data for the period between 1987 and 1990).

Public education provides one of the best opportunities to reduce crime and its cost to society by helping children to gain knowledge, skills, and character that help them avoid criminal activity. The following data demonstrates the strong correlation between the lack of educational achievement and crime:

– Roughly 41 percent of all federal, state, and local prisoners in 1997 and 31 percent of probationers had not completed high school or received a GED, while that was true of only 18% of the general population age 18 or older [59].

– Black and white males in prison and 20 to 39 years of age (Two-thirds of all state inmates in 1997) were half as likely to have a high school degree as the same group in the general population.

– In 1999, Caucasian men aged 30-34 who had not completed high school were four times more likely to have a prison record than Caucasian men of the same age who had completed high school; African American male drop outs aged 30-34 were two times as likely as those with a high school degree to have a prison record.

The main reasons that well-educated people are less likely to engage in criminal activity are related to their employment status and their perception of their own employability. Crime is more attractive to individuals who are unemployed or under-employed, or who consider their prospects for permanent, purposeful employment to be limited. Generally, studies show that the more formal education a person receives, the less likely he or she is to engage in crime, especially violent crime.

Levels of criminal activity within a community are generally lower when the average level of education is higher.

The public system of education is therefore an important buffer between an individual and the likelihood they will commit a crime because it is the first and most comprehensive employment and life preparation program available to all residents of the state. Quality schools improve personal and collective intelligence by improving individual problem solving skills, social perspective and ability, and employability. The lack of quality education or incomplete education is a major contributor to unemployment, crime, and incarceration.

What is the connection between home values and school performance?

Is there a relationship between school performance and property values?

It is largely accepted that school systems tend to be major drivers where many families decide to live. Now while it isn’t always easy to judge how “good” a particular school district performs, it’s much easier to use per-pupil spending as a proxy.

According to a report by the National Bureau of Economic Research, there may be a real connection between school spend and property values. This can be a valuable tool for municipalities looking to weigh budget decisions against the potential impact of growing or shrinking the property tax base.

According to the National Bureau of Economic Research, there is a definite correlation between school expenditures and home values in any given neighborhood. A report titled, “Using Market Valuation to Assess Public School Spending,” found that for every dollar spent on public schools in a community, home values increased $20. These findings indicate that additional school expenditures may benefit everyone in the community, whether or not those residents actually have children in the local public school system.

While the findings of this national study are compelling, they do not paint a full picture of the link between school spending and home values. According to the website, some school districts may operate more efficiently, so while expenditures are lower, the quality of education is still high. In addition, the size of the district or proximity of schools from neighboring districts could impact the perception of a specific school’s value, beyond the simple expenditure formula.

Researchers that published the report also found that wealthy school districts, where home values may tend to be higher, spend their funding more efficiently. The greatest spending was seen in school districts filled with low-income families, large districts and districts containing fewer homes – areas where home values may be lower overall. The results indicate that while home buyers may associate school quality with spending to some degree, this factor will not be the most significant one in influencing home values. Still, the trend has been noted on a national level, which offers some credibility to the association between the two.

Investing in pre-school beats the stock market

We’re beginning to learn a lot more about the human brain. Many aspects that were once was thought of as influenced by genetics, are increasingly being understood as environmentally influenced.

According to Gabor Mate, “Genes do dictate the basic organization, developmental schedule, and anatomical structure of the human central nervous system, but it’s left to the environment to sculpt and fine-tune the chemistry, connections, circuits, networks, and systems that determine how well we function.”

And a large portion of this environmental influence occurs in the first few years of life. This means, how a kid is brought up will likely determine his or her full potential and destiny in this world. This should not be taken lightly.

So we’re beginning to understand that pre-school years are critical for development. Can we quantify it? I mean, if we could attach a fixed return on investment for pushing more kids into developmental programs before they reach kindergarten, certainly we can influence health, crime, and workforce related outcomes.

Professor James J. Heckman conducted research titled The Lifecycle Benefits of an Influential Early Childhood Program to accomplish just that.

The research shows that high-quality birth-to-five programs for disadvantaged children can deliver a 13% per year return on investment—a rate substantially higher than the 7-10% return previously established for preschool programs serving 3- to 4-year-olds. Significant gains are realized through better outcomes in education, health, social behaviors, and employment.

A past program that’s very relevant today.

Lifecycle Benefits analyzes the effects of two identical, randomized-controlled preschool experiments conducted in North Carolina in the 1970’s: The Carolina Abecedarian Project (ABC) and the Carolina Approach to Responsive Education (CARE). They offered comprehensive developmental resources to disadvantaged African-American children from birth to age five, including nutrition, access to health care and early learning. Children were randomly assigned into either the treatment group or the control group that had access to alternatives such as lower quality center-based care or in-home care. Given that many high-quality programs today include the components central to ABC/CARE, evidence from ABC/CARE is relevant today. About 19% of all African-American children would be eligible for the program today. And, research shows that the negative effects of a disadvantaged early childhood are similar across races.

Rich data provides insight into long-term benefits.

Existing research on the effectiveness of early childhood programs largely focuses on short-term academic gains when it is long-term benefits that provide a more relevant measure of value. Lifecycle Benefits analyzes a wide variety of life outcomes, such as health, the quality of life, participation in crime, labor income, IQ, schooling and increases in mothers’ labor income as a result of subsidized childcare. ABC/CARE collected data on the participants throughout childhood and well into adulthood, allowing for an in-depth analysis of long-term effects in multiple dimensions of human development. From birth until the age of 8, data was collected annually on cognitive and socio-emotional skills, home environments, family structure, and family economic characteristics. After age 8, data on cognitive and socio-emotional skills, education, and family economic characteristics were collected at ages 12, 15, 21, and 30. In addition, there is a full medical survey at age 35 and detailed records of any criminal activity.

The benefits of high quality starting at birth.

Children who received treatment had significantly better life outcomes than those who did not receive center-based care or those who received lower quality care. 75% of the control group children were enrolled in relatively low quality alternative childcare centers, usually after age 3; others stayed at home. Consistent with other research, results varied by gender. For females, ABC/CARE had positive effects on high school graduation, years of education, adult employment and the adult labor incomes of participants and their parents. These treatment results are higher when compared with the alternative of staying exclusively at home. The results for males show lower drug use and blood pressure, as well as positive effects on education and later labor income. The results for employment, hypertension, and blood pressure are higher when the treatment group is compared to the children who attended alternative childcare centers. Separation from the mother and being placed in relatively low quality childcare centers have far more negative consequences for male subjects than for female ones. This suggests that high program quality is necessary to generate quality outcomes.

A two-generation effect on workforce.

ABC/CARE improved the economic prospects of treated children and their mothers, allowing the latter to enter the workforce and increase earnings while their children gained the foundational skills to make them more productive in the future workforce. ABC/CARE provided childcare to the parents of treated children for more than nine hours a day for five years. Only 27% of mothers of children lived with a partner and this status barely changed during the program, making employment critical for upward mobility. Childcare generates positive effects in maternal education, labor force participation, and parental income.

Comprehensive quality care pays off.

While the costs of comprehensive early childhood education are high, the rate of return of programs like ABC/CARE implies that these costs are good investments. Every dollar spent on high-quality, birth-to-five programs for disadvantaged children delivers a 13% per annum return on investment. These economically significant returns account for the welfare costs of taxation to finance the program and survive a battery of sensitivity analyses. The cost of ABC/CARE was $18,514 in 2014 U.S. dollars. The average cost of childcare alone in the United States ranges from $9,589 to a high of $23,354 with few assurances of the quality necessary to generate quality life outcomes for children.

A call to do more and better for disadvantaged children.

Child poverty is growing in the United States; investing in comprehensive birth-to-five early childhood education is a powerful and cost-effective way to mitigate its negative consequences on child development and adult opportunity. Elements of the ABC/CARE program exist today through a number of often disjointed home visiting, child well-being, nutrition, early learning, childcare and preschool programs. Policymakers would be wise to coordinate these early childhood resources into a scaffolding of developmental support for disadvantaged children and provide access to all in need. The gains are significant because quality programs pay for themselves many times over. The cost of inaction is a tragic loss of human and economic potential that we cannot afford.

See a question/answer session conducted by NPR about the potential bill promising free, full-day pre-school to 3-year-olds in New York City.

What’s the point of libraries?

For years libraries have stood as centerpieces in our towns. But with tightening budgets and the rise of internet as a source for information, we find them slipping further and further into obscurity.

Or do we?

More than just books and banks of computers, libraries are still places where individuals gather to explore, interact, and imagine.

Here are some of the top benefits libraries play in our communities. For the rest of the list, see the original article published in Public Libraries Online.

1. Libraries help revitalize struggling or depressed neighborhoods and downtowns.

Place-based economic development stresses the importance of offering attractive, functional, and community-based places, such as libraries, in town squares and depressed neighborhoods. Like a major department store in a mall, libraries attract large numbers of people, creating economic opportunities for a myriad of businesses and organizations in the surrounding area. Large cities (such as Chicago), medium-sized ones (Hudson, Ohio), and even small towns (Putney, Vermont) have successfully transformed their libraries into the hubs of vibrant neighborhoods.

3. Libraries’ special collections grow out of specific community needs.

In addition to RPL’s seed lending library, there are other examples of libraries that provide circulating collections of everything from cake pans to fishing rods to bike locks. The Iowa City (Iowa) Public Library circulates framed posters and original artwork through its Art-to-Go collection. The Temescal Branch of the Oakland (Calif.) Public Library literally builds the community through its Tool Lending Library, which was created in 1991 to help rebuilding efforts after a disaster. Libraries that start such unique collections show how locally responsive and flexible a truly community-centered library can be.

9. Libraries provide important business resources, especially for small local businesses.

With the recent collapse of many big corporations, it has become more widely acknowledged that small businesses provide most of the new jobs in our current economy. Libraries have a long history of serving local entrepreneurs and businesses, but some, like the District of Columbia Public Libraries (DCPL), are taking their business services to a new level. The Urban Libraries Council report, “Making Cities Stronger,” describes several library initiatives, including DCPL’s Enchanced Business Information Center (e-BIC) project. Located at the main branch library, e-BIC includes not only business resources, but also a state-of-the-art video conference room, full-time librarian, and staff-training workshops.

14. Libraries provide access to nonmainstream points of view and give voice to local artists.

Public libraries strive to provide collections and services that represent various points of view, and often work closely with local artists to do so. In many communities, local authors seek out public libraries as places to promote and make their new books available, and library services like Overdrive allow local musicians to upload and distribute their work. From the art gallery at the Newton Free Library in Massachusetts to NYPL’s collection of zines, local arts abound in public libraries.

17. Libraries serve as the “people’s university.”

In a time when education is increasingly expensive, public libraries provide information and educational opportunities free for all people, regardless of their socioeconomic status. Offered by libraries across the county, ALA’s Let’s Talk about It programs are wonderful examples of scholar-facilitated learning opportunities in libraries. In addition, many libraries present classes and discussion programs, and some even provide online continuing education courses such as the Universal Class database.

23. Libraries are important partners in child development.

Through library collections, programs, and physical spaces, children learn to share, to be engaged in their communities, to participate in the arts, and to explore their immediate world and the world at large. There are surely endless examples of innovative library services for children, including the Middle Country Public Library’s (in Centereach, N.Y.) Nature Explorium, which engages children in learning about the natural world.

What are the impacts of after-school programs?

For governments, schools and nonprofits looking to make a difference in kids’ lives, graduation rate is one of the most overused indicators of success.

Yes, your goal is to improve the likelihood that a child succeeds in life, and what better (or easier) measure is there than whether he graduates or not? But as many detractors point out, up-front investment into single, localized programs have a real possibility of diminishing impact as the student moves on from the program and down his normal trajectory.

Is this accurate?

Studies have been done that show the impact of successful investments in after-school programming. And these impacts go beyond mere graduation rates, which by themselves, mean nothing.

In fact, economic analysis demonstrates the gains attributed to program participants through high school, into college, and into middle age and beyond. One of the most impressive actors here is CYCLE, with its after-school programs offered in the notoriously downtrodden Cabrini Green area in Chicago.

The public schools operated as dropout factories, graduating fewer than 30 percent of their students. Educators had bottom-of-the-barrel expectations for their charges, blaming the neighborhood for these dismal outcomes. Students who later transferred to better schools were jolted by the realization that they were years behind their classmates. When William Bennett, then the U.S. secretary of education, pronounced Chicago’s public schools to be the worst in the nation, these schools were the worst of the worst.

Out-of-school ventures have a decidedly mixed track record, especially those in neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage like Cabrini-Green. How could it be otherwise? How could a program that filled a couple of hours of a child’s daily life make any difference in such an inhospitable world? But CYCLE bucked the odds.

Here’s why attention should be paid: About 90 percent of the youngsters who participated in its scholarship programs and mentoring activities graduated from high school, and about a third went to college. That’s astonishing, but what’s more astonishing still are the long-term reverberations.

The CYCLE alumni are now middle-aged, and the impact of the program continues to be felt. Among the alumni are two medical doctors, 11 with doctorates, and a host of master’s degree-holders. Most of the alums, McLaughlin noted, “live middle-class lives; they are teachers, social workers, small business owners, administrators, coaches.”

“The impressive accomplishments … show that the negative outcomes predicted for kids who grow up in concentrated poverty like Cabrini-Green … are not inevitable,” she wrote. “They result not from a so-called ‘culture of poverty’ but from a poverty of opportunities.”

Merely throwing money at a problem does not guarantee success, however. So what made CYCLE so different than many other similar, yet less successful programs across the country? They adapted to the community being served and took a longer-term view of the impacts they were trying to achieve.

Lesson one — take a broad view of impact. Research on the effects of an education initiative typically looks only at later educational outcomes, but these investigators examined the impact of preschool on the totality of these children’s lives. What they found has transformed our understanding of why early education matters.

Lesson two — take the long view. Most education research adopts a short time horizon, rarely looking at the impact of a program beyond two or three years. But the Perry study lasted for decades, and that made all the difference. Had the researchers ended the study after third grade, as so many studies of preschool do these days, they would have concluded that the Westinghouse report was right and that preschool’s effects dissipate. Only later — sometimes decades later — did the full significance of the program emerge.

When thinking about the long-term effects of improvement in children’s life trajectories, it is easy to count the potential economic impacts. Higher school attainment leads to higher lifetime earnings, upward economic mobility, more stability in raising a family and providing better for the next generation.

Programs like CYCLE offer unique models that should be studied and leveraged in other communities looking to invest in their future.

What spending on education means for economic growth

Plenty of analyses have been done on the effects of education and economic growth.

Is economic growth driven by new ideas, new discoveries that result in better products and services for society?

The logical answer would be yes. A more educated workforce provides these ideas. It provides the human capital required to increase the ROI on research and development investment.

However, researchers and lawmakers often question this rationale in hopes of reducing the annual spend on education items in a government’s budget. So can we say definitively that government spending improves education?

Academic research in this area is characterised by a certain degree of technical complexity and results often differ across studies depending on the methodology used, the sample considered, or how education is measured.

A survey of this vast literature identified 57 studies, many of which measure education in terms of outcomes (eg enrolment rates, literacy rates, years of schooling in the workforce) rather than expenditure.

But the studies that did look at educational expenditure as a proxy for education generally reported a positive effect of education on growth.

A recent a meta-analysis considered 29 papers that specifically look at the impact of government education expenditures on economic growth. Of these 29 studies, 14 report a positive and statistically significant effect of government expenditure on growth, 12 report a negative effect, and 3 report no statistically significant effect.

Averaging across all studies, the effect of educational expenditure on growth is positive – albeit modest – in the order of a 0.2-0.3% increase in growth for an increase in expenditure by 1% of GDP.

While it appears that spending does correlate with a growing economy, it is important that the quality of education spending is maintained. Simply spending on lower-value items won’t produce the same returns as drivers of higher test scores, graduation rates, etc. A government must focus its increased expenditure on areas that provide real positive education outcomes.

Other notes:

Recent estimates that use US data suggest that this indirect effect can be large: a 10% increase in per-pupil spending each year for 12 grades of public school was found to lead to 0.27 more completed years of education, 7.25% higher wages and 3.67 percentage point reduction in the annual incidence of adult poverty.

How taxpayers benefit when students get more education

As the costs to meet education requirements continue to increase at ridiculous rates, many public schools face budgetary challenges. Furthermore, with a number of taxpayers without children in their towns’ school systems, they often feel they shouldn’t contribute toward increasing taxes toward local education.

To address these issues, RAND researchers examined the value delivered by increasing investment in school systems and how higher educational attainment affects benefits to taxpayers over time. The group looked at how increases in individuals’ educational attinment relate to tax revenues, expenditures toward social services, and spending for prisons and jails. While a bit dated (early 2000s), the directionality of the study is relevant toward working with a baseline of information in delivering cost/benefit analyses to state and local policy decisions.

Tax revenues
As expected, the higher a student rises, the greater the expected earnings he can expect and in turn, the higher amount of taxes he will pay.

Greater educational attainment increases the likelihood that an individual will be employed and raises the level of his or her wages when employed. Although researchers cannot estimate the causal relationship precisely, the available evidence indicates that more education is associated with at least 7 to 10 percent higher earnings per additional year of schooling among those who are employed. The higher earnings realized by more highly educated people result in higher tax payments and higher payments to social support and insurance programs, such as Social Security and Medicare.

Social support programs
Those with more education draw less from social support programs. An individual is less likely to draw on social programs because a higher level of education typically leads higher employment levels and higher expected wages. The programs most avoided are food stamps, Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, housing subsidies, and unemployment insurance.

The higher earnings resulting from greater educational attainment also reduce the amount that a more highly educated person is likely to collect when he or she does participate in most social support programs, with the exceptions of Unemployment Insurance and Social Security. These reductions in the costs of social support programs represent a value to taxpayers, who would otherwise have to fund the programs at a higher level. The RAND researchers found that the greatest reductions in spending on social support programs were associated with an individual graduating from high school rather than dropping out.

Incarceration costs
An increased level of educational attainment is associated with lower levels of criminal activity. This decreases the likelihood of an individual becoming incarcerated. Reductions in prison and jail populations leads to lower costs of operation and maintenance of such facilities. Like other categories, the greatest jump in savings comes from individuals graduating from high school as opposed to dropping out.

Net impact to budgets
To estimate the total impact to government budgets, the researchers calculated the sum of tax revenue increases and subtracted social service and incarceration spending related to each individual climbing the education ladder.

On average, increasing a U.S.-born white male’s educational attainment from some high school to high school graduation would be associated with increased tax payments over his lifetime equal to $54,000 (all figures in this paragraph are in 2002 present-value dollars). The increase in his educational level would also be associated with reduced future demands on social support programs and reduced future incarceration costs equal to about $22,000 and $13,000, respectively.

Thus, the average total value associated with increasing this individual’s educational level from some high school to high school graduation would equal about $89,000. Providing the additional education would cost about $15,000, so the net value to taxpayers would be about $74,000. Even if the estimated effects are reduced by 25 percent, the estimated savings for this individual would be about $51,000.