Show-Me Institute Podcast

What to Do About Empty Desks with Daniel DiSalvo

In this episode, Susan Pendergrass speaks with Daniel DiSalvo, a Senior Fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a professor of political science in the Colin Powell School at the City College of New York–CUNY, about his recent report on the policy response to declining public school enrollment. They explore the causes behind the drop in student numbers, the effectiveness of current educational policies, the challenges faced by public schools in adapting to these changes, innovative approaches to address enrollment declines, and more.

Read the full report here: https://bit.ly/3LCvFVw

Produced by Show-Me Opportunity

Duration:: 17m
Broadcast on:: 23 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

[MUSIC] This morning, I'm going to be talking to Daniel DeSolveau. I don't know if you could buy Daniel or Dan of the Manhattan Institute about a topic that I feel like in the last six months or a year, I talk about all the time. And I'm having a hard time sort of breaking through with people, or I feel like I'm always surprising people that really birth rates in the United States sort of started going down in the last great recession and haven't really recovered. And that public school enrollment, K-12 enrollment, has been kind of on a steady decline before the pandemic. And in Missouri, it absolutely has been on a decline. And when I talk to people in different states, they're like, where are the kids going? I'm like, it's not really that the kids are going somewhere. In many cases, it's just that they were never born. So you have a new article out about empty desks. And what to do about this public school enrollment decline or what has been done about the public school enrollment decline that's been happening. And really, the response to it has been a little oxymoronic, I would say. What do you think? Well, we did a big report on this. And in your opening remarks, you hit upon, I think, one of these big debates, which I confess we don't go into in great detail, which is, what is the cause of declining school enrollment across the board? Now, every state is different. Some states have seen an increase in enrollment, Texas and Florida and some of these other southern states. New York, California, elsewhere, have seen declines. And then we drill down into looking at basically the nine biggest cities in the country, the 10th biggest city, Phoenix, had some data problems. And but the causes of this decline are much debated, as you mentioned, just declining birth rates. But I don't think what our report shows is that's not the full story, and it's different in different places. And when we look at these big cities, what we see is that perhaps cities aren't the most friendly places to educate children these days, right? So Texas, for example, has not seen big enrollment increases in its cities, but it's seen overall statewide increases in enrollment. So there you see that paradox somewhat in Texas. And then in places like Illinois, you see real declines in Chicago and elsewhere where people are leaving the public schools. You could say the traditional public schools for charter schools, for private schools, for homeschooling options. So really, what we're getting at in our report is what's happening to enrollment in the traditional public schools and post-pandemic where we can see that they become less popular. So the declining enrollment isn't just birth rates, it's that people are moving with their feet as well. You know, we've long had these graphs that show school spending going up, kind of regardless of where school enrollments going or school spending going up faster than enrollments going up. And I think what your report points out in such an interesting way is like school enrollments going down and spending is either staying level or going up, but that can't go on forever. Is that right? I mean, aren't we going to hit a wall with this? Well, it could go on. You know, again, this is the debate that I think the report tries to raise is, you know, what do people really want from the schools, right? Now, the long-standing position of teachers unions, you could say, of some parents and others, was that what we really want is a lower teacher-to-student ratio and more heavily staff schools. That's going to produce better education outcomes. That's one view. Another view is this is, you know, a very expensive proposition and the gains, you could say, in student achievement, according to some research and studies, is pretty small or marginal as a result of this kind of spending. So in a sense, this, our recent experience of over the last five years of increasing staff and increasing teachers, despite declining enrollment, raises once again, you could say this debate about the character of school staffing. Now, people could try to maintain current levels of staffing, which are high, you could say, but that's going to be expensive. The property taxes will have to increase, right? This is going to be a whole big political debate going forward, or this is going to have to be clawed back and there'll have to be some retrenchment, right? Reducing teacher employment or reducing staffing employment. And that's going to be a tough political debate too. And I think we've seen, I guess, teachers unions and school administrations has happened in St. Louis come out politically against adding any more charter schools to these city school systems, like New York City school systems, right? Just don't add any charter schools, lock the doors on the kids who are in the traditional public schools and don't let them leave because every time they leave, we run into this money situation. That's not sustainable either, would you say? If parents want to go? Yeah, I mean, again, this is also raising this debate about charter schools and alternatives to the traditional public school. Really, you could say this is a big, you know, four alarm warning for traditional public schools that what they're offering, at least in the big cities that we studied in this report, isn't that attractive? And parents are very keen to seek out alternatives, whether that's charter schools, whether it's homeschooling, or whether it's private school options. So, that's saying that the product on offer is not the most attractive, and that also raises the question about throwing more money and good money after bad. So, I think there, you know, the charter school debate has heated up in these places because it's, you know, it's doing what might argue what advocates of charters long suggested, which is finally putting some pressure on public schools, either to improve and up their game, or suffer some wrong with the client. I imagine that that's what happened in some of these cities in Texas because the fact that traditional public school enrollment went down in Austin was surprising to me because I feel like Austin is growing by leaps and bounds. And so those, those families must be choosing alternatives and I think there's a pretty good potential for Texas to become one of these states that does universal school choice to and I think that will be difficult in those cities to keep all their schools open. Yeah, it could also be the case, you know, we don't have a clear position on this in our report. It certainly could be the case, as you might suggest in Texas that the more charter options are leading to declines in the traditional public schools. It could also be the case that, you know, the demographics of cities are changing, right, who are cities attracting people to move in. It's, you know, singles, right, and people without families or without very many children. Right. So that could be another explanation is that cities, you know, and are not the most hospitable places to families or larger families. Right. And there is also the demographic fact that people are having fewer children. They just are and so the United States, you know, I think we're wall below replacement rate on birth rates and so I just think that a lot of these places, and this is what you point out. They don't have a declining enrollment mindset. And I think it's going to set in at some point, like, you know, blockbuster couldn't think they were going to expand forever like you have to begin to think about a declining enrollment mindset, which is, you know, the edge of a cloud of Georgetown has plenty of lists of suggestions for districts and what they can do in terms of not filling vacancies in terms of consolidating schools and programs. And I don't think that a lot of the cities in your report, the major Texas cities, New York, LA, San Diego, Philadelphia, have appear to be adopting a declining enrollment mindset. Would that sound right to you. I think that sounds exactly right, which is that the policy response so far to this declining Roman has basically been, let's wait and see, right? Yeah, let's not make any go come back. These students will come back, maybe, you know, the economy will grow faster and will do better on our revenue collection such that we won't have to make cuts. It's a sort of wait and see attitude, right. Which, in one way, as you could see is a kind of prudent thing to do and the other hand, you know, it is spending substantially more to educate fewer. I mean, speaking of that you have a student teacher ratio table that I think is shocking because in New York and Chicago. To divide the number of students into the number of teachers you get like 10, 10 students per teacher or fewer than in Chicago it's 11.7 students per teacher that. Those numbers used to be in the 20s right like 20 to 25 students per teacher, maybe 50 years ago I mean that's, that's a precipitous declining when you get down to like 10 or 11 I know it sounds attractive but what if we get into single digits. Well, I think that raises this debate that we were a little bit touched on earlier, which is how much educational benefit is there as you noted there has been over the last 50 years, a long secular decline in the student teacher ratio, meaning more teachers are educating fewer teachers unions like that because they're, you know, the schools are employing more teachers teachers themselves like that it's an easier job if you have 11 kids in a class instead of 21. Parents like it because they think their child is getting more individualized attention so in a way it's really an attractive proposition. On the other hand it's not clear from, you know, much research that it increases dramatically student learning outcomes and student performance right so even parents feel like it's better, it may not in reality make much difference. So in that sense this the expense of doing this is it worth the money and I think that's one of the questions that our report raises or brings back to the floor. To think about it yeah I mean because, you know, when when when you look at staffing numbers to like non teaching staff, you can see a real surge, almost across across the entire country and, you know, people want to know like why there's a problem like you've made decisions along the way to continue to hire staff you've made decisions you may not realize that it was not necessarily a zero some decision because budgets always kind of grow in education. But the decisions were made to hire staff and those decisions like you pointed out are hard to get out of it's hard to fire teachers. Right, and they've got contracts and that's most of the budget is human resources so you set yourself up in that situation and, and I feel like in some declining enrollment districts, you're seeing investments in capital like buildings being built and land being purchased which those are long long term decisions that are not supported by the context I don't know if you explored that at all in this report. We didn't. There's been some other recent and interesting research that touches on on this question. But, and this really goes to the longer what will be the debate about what the policy response is because, while they're not districts that we looked at per se there's certainly going to be rural districts and elsewhere. We're going to need to as you mentioned consolidate, you're not going to need as many schools now what do you do with that infrastructure and what do you do with the schools that you're not no longer using or no longer using to full capacity. Right, those are going to probably be important debates down the line. You know we've, I'm sure you've heard the term fiscal cliff it's out there, you know that as this money dries up in September the federal money at all these districts, all of these districts in your report are facing fiscal cliffs. And which could be dramatic. And when you pair those with declining enrollment. If reality, you know, if there are formulas behind these things the reality will be that school budget district budgets will go way down. And I expect a lot of difficult conversations. What are you hearing in New York City? Are you hearing anything about that? Well, the mayor just pushed through, you know, very controversial and difficult budget in New York that didn't. That still remains very rosy and many of its assumptions. So, in that respect, we have not reached the point where, you know, in my hometown, the, the tug has fully come. Yeah, you guys might get below millions, a million students at some point right you're sort of heading that way you've always New York City's always been the largest district. And then Los Angeles and I think there's a potential, you know, both of those districts New York and Los Angeles seem like when charter schools became an option. Parents, blood to them, and New York certainly has some of the highest performing in the country so in some cases it's been a really good result but it's been interesting to watch those. Do you feel like those districts got too big? I mean, those are really big districts. Well, it's an incredibly complicated system without taking us down into the weeds of New York City. But, you know, there's two big debates in New York going forward which is about one that has been about the number of charter schools there's about 50,000 families on the waiting list for charter schools so demand charter schools is very high. On the other hand, you know, there's a big debate New York has a slightly different system, which is called mayoral control which is the mayor is technically the head also of the school system whereas in many of these other places, the school systems are you could say separate governments with superintendents appointed by board, an elected school board. New York did have that way of running at schools a superintendent with an elected board. Many people saw that as leading to all kinds of problems in New York and being overrun and part by the UFT the teachers union in New York City. Mayor Adams hold on mayoral controls again one of these is only up now for two years renewal it's been a political ball and Albany. So that's a big question mark for how New York is going to manage and run its schools going forward. I think in general, I feel like you're, you're sort of conclusion to this as a smart one which is that these, these urban districts that just continually asked for more tax money or to raise property tax rates, because we need to support our public schools have seen an erosion and the trust that parents put in them and obviously parents want to leave them in many cases so they're going to have to work harder going forward right to earn that back. We're going to have to show some results I mean I know some of the worst performing districts around the city of St. Louis are like, we are so low performing and we have to stand by us right like only 3% of our eighth graders are proficient in math so you have to give us money and keep let us keep the kids and that to that logic I think is going to be challenged more going forward. Yeah I mean the sympathize in some ways for the people who are running these schools and neighborhoods, you know they're constrained by union contracts which are only renegotiated every three to five years. They're not the most nimble organizations there's a lot of, you know, to use a wonky term path dependence of like this is the way we've always done things is the way we keep doing them, you know bureaucratic culture. So you know there's a lot of pressures and you know but it's one of the hugest and most important policy challenges is trying to improve, you know, these big urban districts. I mean, Arizona opening up to universal school choice I was speaking with the colleague from there who believes that it had a strong positive impact on their urban districts. Because they basically were like you know we're coming for you if you if your families aren't happy they're going to be free to leave and that can spur change. Maybe that will be something in these Texas districts that will make a difference Illinois, Chicago, I don't know what the solution is for Illinois. I'm like too big of a problem but but you're, you report super interesting and it is called remind me what it's called. Empty desk empty desks yes. Policy response or as we've discussed non response to define an enrollment. Very interesting at the Manhattan Institute well thank you so much for coming to speak with us Dr. Disselfo I appreciate it I love reading things that can confirm what everything else I've been thinking so I thought it was very interesting thank you. It's my pleasure. [Music]