
          Dollars and Schools: Resource Development
          By Rosenfeld, Stuart A.Stuart. Rosenfeld
          Vol. 10, No. 3, 1988, pp. 12-14
          
          Today, attitudes toward education have changed--though not
necessarily for altruistic or philosophical reasons--from the
traditional view that human resource development meant higher
priorities for training than for education. Education still responds
to the needs of the private sector and economics. The difference now
is that the educational demands of jobs have risen and require more
conceptual skills. It's competitiveness that's pushing interest in
education today, despite debate about whether work is going to require
greater or less skill and knowledge, whether technology will skill or
de-skill jobs. But the reality of the impact of technology doesn't
affect education in the South as long as the accepted view of
educators and employers is that more skills and knowledge, not less,
will be needed.
          Four key education issues in the South are: adult literacy;
elementary and secondary school expenditures; vocational education;
and blacks in graduate education.
          
            Adult Literacy
          
          The strongest and most specific recommendation of the Commission on
the Future of the South was to reduce rates of adult literacy
significantly by 1992.
          FIGURE 1 reflects education in the past, the rates of adult
illiteracy in the South. The measure is of the number of adults who
had not completed eight years of education at the time of the 1980
census. Nonmetro rates are nearly twice the metro rates in many
states. And if you think that it doesn't affect jobs, look at FIGURE
2, the relation to unemployment rates. Those counties with the highest
rates of functional illiteracy had the highest unemployment and those
with the lowest, the lowest unemployment rates.
          It would seem that there is an all-out war on illiteracy. Every
Southern state except Alabama has a special task force or commission
on literacy. But much of what is happening is still a war of
words. The level of resources, is not nearly at the level of
attention. It's a good start but only a start. The federal_government
spends only $100 million on all adult education, or $3 for every adult
with less than nine years of education. States are increasing their
funding. But in most states, the total annual funding is still less
than the average annual expenditures in just one medium-sized,
medium-wealth school district.
          
            Resources
          
          It's true that more money won't necessarily improve education, but
its hard to have good schools with insufficient resources, and its not
fair when some children get much more enriched educational
environments than others. There are two issues here.
          One is interstate disparities. Some states spend less than others
either because they are poorer or because they place less value on
education. Historically, Southern_states' spending was at the bottom
nationally for both reasons--they were poorer and made less effort.
          As FIGURE 3 shows, Southern_states still spend less for education
than most other states, about 20 percent less in 1985. It's only that
high because Florida, the most populous of Southern_states, is above
the national average. Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Tennessee
all spent at least 30 percent below the national average.
          But there's more to those numbers than meet the eye. They consist
of revenues from local, state, and federal sources. Federal funds,
however, are mostly targeted to special needs and are not available
for the core educational program such as teachers' salaries, supplies,
or facilities.

          Southern_states have more children from low-income households and
with special needs and thus get more federal money than states in
other regions. Removing the federal resources brings the Southern
states even farther from the average of the non-South.
          The Commission on the Future of the South recommended a 25 percent
spending increase in 1986. Low taxes are no longer a major inducement
to industry if the result is poor schools. The fastest growing states
today are the highest taxing states. George Bragg, president and CEO
of Telex Computer Products in Oklahoma, told the annual meeting of
Southern Legislators last summer, "Many states make the mistake of
assuming that a low tax base will encourage companies to come and
stay. You get what you pay for, and I would encourage you to think
more about the quality of services--which may mean higher
taxes."
          The other issue is intrastate disaparities. Beginning in
the late 1960s, families of students who were getting shortchanged by
the education system--getting poorer quality education--went to the
courts claiming that the state owed all of its students roughly
equivalent educational opportunities.
          FIGURE 4 examines ten Tennessee districts to show the extent to
which disparities still exist. Here are last year's per pupil
expenditures in the five districts that spent the most and the five
districts that spent the least. The high spending district is nearly
twice the low spending district. The per capita incomes of these ten
school districts are just what you'd expect. The differences are not
extreme, but there is an obvious relationship between wealth and
educational revenues. The 1986 Commission on the Future of the South
made recommendations here, too, suggesting state equalization formulas
to balance the disparities among districts.
          Bear in mind that these per pupil expenditures include federal
funds. The federal share is about twice as high in the poorer
districts, but those funds are earmarked for special purposes, not for
the normal costs of education. Remove the federal share and the ratio
of spending is much more than two to one.
          But federal spending for education is declining in real
dollars. Between 1980 and 1986, federal spending for Chapter 1,
compensatory education, the largest program, decreased by 23 percent
and served 500,000 fewer students. Bilingual education decreased by 47
percent and education for the handicapped decreased by 11
percent. Moreover, in all the states improving education in the past
few years, there were almost no major reforms addressing special
needs. The Committee for Economic Development, in its report Children
in Need, stated that a dollar spent today to prevent educational
failure will save $4.75 in future costs to society.
          
            Vocational Education
          
          For two decades, vocational education has been the accepted link
between education and economic_development, the aspect of education
that was included in the old business climate indices. States have
played to industry and subsidized training to recruit industry. In a
case study of a new plant site in rural Kentucky I asked the CEO
whether the many training subsidies were a factor. He said, "Not at
all. I can get them anywhere. The form may vary a bit from state to
state, but everyone is doing the same thing." In other words, the
subsidy no longer matters unless you don't provide it. But a good
vocational education program that combines technical and occupational
skills with sound basic education is an important part of public
education, both to the student and to the community.
          One effect of the link between vocational education and economic
development in the 60s and 70s was that the Economic Development
Administration and the Appalachian Regional Commission stepped in to
support vocational education facilities. It's a little known fact that
the two agencies invested well over a billion dollars in vocational
education facilities, much of it in depressed rural parts of the
South.
          Vocational education in the South has great opportunities and room
for exciting and positive changes. States are rethinking their high
school programs and making them more academically challenging and less
occupationally specific. And the two-year technical colleges are
upgrading and improving their degree programs and becoming more
imaginative in supporting technology transfer to existing
manufacturers, small businesses, and local development in general
while also providing community services including literacy
programs. The community and technical college no longer simply
recuits factories and provides subsidized, customized
training. It has become a community focal point 

for retraining and for economic_development.
          The federal_government plays a small but crucial role in vocational
edudcation. Federal funds are just under 10 percent of the
total, but their uses are important. Most are targeted, 22.5 percent
to disadvantaged students, 10 percent to handicapped, and smaller
amounts to women reentering the labor force, displaced workers, and
others. Many would not get the special services they need without the
earmarked funds. The rest must be used for program improvements, in
some ways that make voc ed better than it was before, and can't go
into the operating budget. The federal voc ed funding is the oldest
support for elementary and secondary voc ed, going back to 1917. In
1986, the Reagan administration recommended zero funding.
          The Commission on the Future of the South was quite specific in its
desire to support vocational education but to revamp high_school
vocational education and to transfer much of the responsibility for
job-specific education to the two-year colleges.
          
            Higher Education
          
          A critical issue is the inability to improve black enrollment in
graduate schools, especially in the sciences and engineering. Blacks
are no longer increasing their enrollments in higher education and are
still very unrepresented in graduate schools. Only a limited number of
universities contribute to the small pool of black degree recipients
in the sciences.
          FIGURE 5 shows the change in the percent of blacks enrolled in
Bachelors, Masters, and PhD programs in the South. The percentages of
Bachelors and PhDs are down slightly from ten years ago, but the
percent of Masters degrees is way down. FIGURE 6 shows black and
female enrollments in the sciences. About 45 percent of the advanced
degrees of blacks in the sciences are from the traditionally black
colleges in the South.
          These trends are important because technology playing a bigger and
bigger role in the economy and it's the scientists who are becoming
the entrepreneurs and controlling more of the capital. The latest
occupational demand projections by the Bureau of Labor Statistics
shows a large anticipated increase for technicians, engineers, and
scientists, while the programs into which minorities have been going,
the social sciences and human services fields, are declining.
          Much of the cause is attributed to the quality and quantity of high
school math and science preparation. Fewer blacks are taking four
years of math and science. That relates to the quality of inner city
schools and to the counseling and curriculum advice blacks get in
school. Later the admissions practices at colleges and availability of
financial aid affect enrollments.
          It's not hard to find the federal responsibility in all this. It
goes back to support for compensatory education, to providing access
to better schools, end to sufficient financial aid for higher
education.
          The Commission on the Future of the South recommends that the
states assume some responsibility by expanding scholarships for
minorities, disadvantaged, and rural students and providing more
remedial education to college-bound students. The committee on
technology and innovation was even more specific, recommending that
each state create and fund a Top Scholars program for math, science,
and technology and identifying and selecting qualified women and
minorities.
          
            Summary
          
          It's not enough to raise averages of measures of educational
quality. Equal opportunities are equally important, and the pot of
federal dollars, as small as it has been, has been directed at equity
and is far more important than its size indicates.
          
            Stuart Rosenfeld is director of the Southern Technology
Council of the Southern Growth Policies Board This article is adapted
from remarks he made at the annual meeting of the Southern Regional
Council in November 1987.
          
        
