impact of fiscal inequity on at-risk schoolchildren in St. Louis (Testimony of Kern Alexander, March 12, 1996), The

Journal of Negro Education, The, Summer 1997

Alexander, a former middle school teacher and college professor, was an expert witness for the St. Louis city board of education in the fields education in the fields of education and educational finance. He was examined first by Kenneth Brostron, the board's attorney.

BROSTRON: Have you formed an opinion as to whether. . .the state of Missouri discriminates against Black children in the city of St. Louis in its provision of funding for the St. Louis public schools?

ALEXANDER: Yes, sir, I have.

BROSTRON: And would you tell us what that opinion is?

ALEXANDER: [From my] analysis of these data. . .it appears that the state of Missouri does discriminate against Black children in St. Louis.

BROSTRON: And Dr. Alexander, do you have an opinion as to [whether] the board of education would lose the desegregation funding that's presently given to the board through the court order, whether the board will have sufficient funds to provide an adequate educational opportunity for the Black children in the city of St. Louis?

ALEXANDER: My opinion is that if those funds are lost that it would not have sufficient funds to operate a system that is required of a core city program that is predominantly African American and poor.

[Alexander next described the state's financing system and data relevant to it. He noted the following: (a) Missouri, with 5.2 million people, ranks 18th among the states in population and 27th in wealth; (b) the average Missouri public school daily attendance in 1995 was 779,000; (c) 60% of the state's public school revenues come from local rather than state sources; and (d) Missouri ranks 11th in the country in degree of reliance on local funding, with the state providing about 37%, placing it 42nd in the country in that regard. He also noted that the state ranks 44th in expenditures per pupil in average daily attendance, and that Missouri residents spend $38 per $1,000 of personal income for public schools, placing them at a level between 40th and 44th in the U.S. For Missouri to exert an effort equal to the national average, Alexander testified that it would need to spend another $511 million for its public schools.]

BROSTRON: Does Missouri have the fiscal ability to increase its. . public education efforts to children in the city of St. Louis?

ALEXANDER: Yes, sir. Missouri has. . .substantial abilities to remedy any educational problem it might have.... Unfortunately,.. .the effort.. .has declined. . .

BROSTRON: And the. . amount of money that. . .[it] is devoting to get its ranking to 42nd out of 50, does that include the desegregation money that the court has ordered the state to fund programs in Kansas City and St. Louis?

ALEXANDER: Yes . This money....includes all of the money that is reported as an expenditure on elementary and secondary education in Missouri.

BROSTRON: So the ranking would be even [lower], more toward the 50th state if the desegregation money was removed from that calculation?

ALEXANDER: Yes, sir.

BROSTRON: Does money make a difference in the educational outcome of the kids?

ALEXANDER: Of course money makes a difference. There's no credible evidence that money doesn't matter in provision for education or provision for anything else in our society virtually-in the private sector or the public sector.

BROSTRON: Is there a difference in a classroom of 15 kids that are coming from poverty levels than in a classroom with 40 kids?

ALEXANDER: Yes, there is a substantial difference in the quality of the education. All other things being equal, the fewer the students that the teacher must deal with and direct their attention to,. . .the greater the quality of the educational process.

THE COURT: I suppose [your conclusion is based on the presumption] that [students] have a good teacher; correct? Are you talking about teachers being [of] quality?

ALEXANDER: Yes, sir. Several studies have shown that the verbal ability of the teachers to communicate and convey information to the students ic critical. Assuming that you have the same verbal capacity and the same knowledge of the teacher, then of course the number of stu dents that the teacher can spend time with and address themselves to has an important influence on the quality of education.

THE COURT: Let's take a 15-to-1 student/teacher ratio as opposed to a 40-to-1, [ratio] and you have the same quality teacher. Would a better job be done [at] the 15-to-1 or the 40-to-1, [level] or would they [yield] the same results?

ALEXANDER: There's absolutely no doubt that a better job would be done with the 15-to-1 [ratio] .... Quality of education improves-yes, sir.... I might say parenthetically that studies that have been done in this regard, [and] many of them have just glossed over the type of expenditure or the ratios that are used. If you...use the average for a school district and you ignore the fact that you might have a small class for chemistry, a small class for mathematics, and you have 80 students in a history class, all of those tend to be averaged together in many of these studies.