Empowerment schools a simple solution

School districts in Clark and Douglas counties are experimenting with a new type of public school called “empowerment schools.” The concept is so simple you’ll wonder why public education hasn’t been run this way all along.

Instead of all-knowing bureaucrats in the central office deciding where resources are needed at individual schools and then assigning teachers, text books and supplies, empowerment schools receive money for each enrolling child. Then the schools decide for themselves how best to spend that money to educate their students.

Basically, think of empowerment schools as small entrepreneurial businesses focused on finding the best way to educate the kids in front of them — and traditional public schools as order-following outposts of a centrally directed command economy, as in the former USSR.

It will be a few years before we get some accurate and meaningful data on how well empowerment schools perform but initial results are promising. A Clark County School District survey in 2007 revealed that parents, teachers and students at the four original empowerment schools were all far more likely to feel positive about the school and its learning environment.

Check out NPRI’s full article on empowerment school results. Or turn to this article, which provides a bit more detail about how empowerment schools operate.

Florida wins again

*Graph by Dr. Matthew Ladner

There is no shortage of ways for Nevada’s education system to look bad — especially if your only measure is spending. However, NPRI has stumbled across more evidence that suggests how much you spend matters far less than how effectively you spend.

According to U.S. Census Bureau reports for the 2003-04 school year, Nevada ranks 49th in K-12 education expenses per $1,000 of personal income. Specifically, Nevada spends just $34.43 per pupil for every $1,000 of per-capita personal income of state residents, taken collectively. Under this metric, Alaska is the biggest spender at $62.92 per pupil. That means Alaskans devote almost twice as many dollars, per capita, toward education. The national average is $43.68.

So who earns the dreaded 50th place? Florida — which spent a mere $34.36 per $1,000. Yet Florida, as you may recall, is the same innovative state where Hispanic students outperform the statewide average of all students in 16 other states. And these states include not only Nevada, but also the very white state of Oregon and those big spenders up in Alaska.

Florida’s schools have improved so much that their minority students perform as well, or better, than minority students in some of the wealthiest states in the country — including big-spending Massachusetts. And non-minority students weren’t left behind: They improved, too. Florida proves that how education dollars are spent is much more important than how much is spent.

Fortunately for Nevadans, both the Clark County and Washoe County school districts are experimenting with empowerment schools — public schools that put their focus on effectively spending the money, as judged by the principal at the school, as an alternative to Nevada’s current command-and-control model, where district central offices try to run everything, with significant waste of dollars as a consequence.

Nevada has only a handful of empowerment schools at present, but it’s a start.