01:00 AM EDT on Sunday, April 9, 2006

Every state in the nation is wrestling mightily with how to support its public school districts -- rich and poor, urban and suburban. This is America, so in principle, any child from any community should be able to get a fair shake from his or her public education.

In fact, as we all know, the quality of education varies hugely from district to district. And sometimes, by no means always, money plays a big role in determining school quality.

To get the lay of our land, In$ite 2006 reports that Rhode Island's average per pupil expenditure is $11,980. That includes everything from pencils to debt service, from lunches to special-program tuitions. (Rhode Island's per pupil expenditure is high nationally, but our neighbors' -- Massachusetts and Connecticut -- are higher.) Our per pupil expenditure's range from Cumberland's frugal (some say stingy) $8,938 to Block Island's $22,320, which doesn't really count because it's for 143 kids in one K-12 school on an expensive island. The top, then, is Narragansett at $14,918, supported in part by many summer second homes.

So, like many other states, Rhode Island has hefty internal disparities.

In the late 1980s and 1990s, many low-income districts took their state governments to court, demanding "equity." Those districts argued that as a matter of equal opportunity, states should help poor districts level up to the ppe of their wealthier neighbors. This led to a number of "Robin Hood" laws, beloved by the poor and loathed by the comfortable.

Leveling-up is a very high-cost option. Furthermore, even at exactly the same ppe, the middle-class kid with professional parents will probably be much easier -- and less expensive -- to educate than the low-income child who watches far too much TV.

So the new buzzword is "adequacy." "Adequacy" means that public schools will educate each student to "proficiency," or better, using only as much money as is needed to do the job, otherwise known as 'least cost option.' "Equity" leveled up to the standard of the rich districts; "adequacy" levels up more modestly, leaving out the extras that the comfortable can afford. (I confess the word "adequacy" gives me the chills, because it does not sound like it includes music or art, nor any shred of creativity.) Rhode Island, along with many other states is now commissioning an "adequacy study" to get a handle on how much money it would take -- minimally -- to get most kids to proficiency. Rhode Island's proposal defines it as "the amount of per pupil funding necessary to support an effective and efficient educational system." (My italics.) (Rhode Island's proposal is at: www.rilin.state.ri.us/EaProposals.doc )

State Rep. and adequacy-study committee co-chairwoman Edith Ajello says, "I'm hoping the study gives us a product that we can be vested in, from which we can derive a formula for state aid."

Ajello says that the committee's charge is to identify the "lowest cost option" for educating each kid henceforth, without regard to how the money has been spent so far.

Commendably, they are studying how to exploit some obvious economies of scale of which this tiny state rarely avails itself, such as redesigning 36 different healthcare and transportation contracts and systems to be on a statewide basis. (Finally!)

But not to examine how the money's been spent so far is . . . well, insane, because ignoring Rhode Island's gritty, stubborn and sometimes perverse psychology ignores the significant obstacles to change. Those who do not know their history are condemned to repeat it.

Two little examples of hundreds demonstrate how a lack of curiosity can make both adequacy and equity virtually impossible.

First, the bite taken out of the per pupil expenditure for contributions to the teachers pension fund is pretty much the same district by district. But some districts added yet more benefits on top of these already-generous pensions. The 2005 Information Works! chart called "out-of-district expenditures" shows that Newport spent about $900 per pupil giving their retirees healthcare benefits for life. But 9 districts out of Rhode Island's 36 give no such benefit at all, and so spend zero dollars per pupil on retiree healthcare.

When the state comes up with an adequacy formula, how will they handle this discrepancy? Will the taxpayer be asked to raise the extra $900 per pupil so Newport can meet its obligation? Or will they allow the Newport child to do with $900 less in order to pay for the contractual obligations? (To my knowledge, Newport, Jamestown and Bristol-Warren have ended that extra benefit, but will still be paying for eligible retirees until they are gone.)

Okay, here's a different kind of example. A few forward-thinking districts and all of the charter schools have very professional rules governing hiring and evaluation of personnel. Others are stuck with completely inflexible seniority systems. The salary for a teacher who was picked for the job, shines in evaluations and gives really good service is roughly the same as for the klunker whose contract protects him or her from accountability. The money is the same, but the value is not. What's "adequate?"

A definition of "adequacy" will be critically useful as a standard or a baseline against which we can measure and understand each district's per pupil expenditure. But those devilish details will demand attention either up front in the study itself or later on when the state tries to apply the new standard of adequacy.

Our 36 regular school districts have gotten themselves saddled with many years' accumulation of contract, policy and past-practice constraints on how they spend their money. The regular districts' per pupil expenditure has long been spent to meet contractual inflexibilities, step increases, across-the-board raises, increases in healthcare, fuel costs and so forth. Almost never do they have the fiscal flexibility to adjust their academic priorities or programs.

So even if you had a formula, money would still flow to the kids through the district filters at very different rates, unless you start cleaning out those filters as well.

The perfect per pupil expenditure is the number that everyone agrees will get the job done, in most every case. Good luck finding that number.

But unless we look for it aggressively, passionately, the price of education will continue to climb while improving the lot of the kids will not.

Julia Steiny is a former member of the Providence School Board; she consults and writes for a number of education, government and private enterprises. She welcomes your questions and comments on education. She can be reached by e-mail at juliasteiny@cox.net or c/o The Providence Journal, 75 Fountain St., Providence, R.I. 02902.