[Speed Gibson,
Sunday December 9, 2007 at 9:05pm]
I Had No Idea - Part 5
If you're still with me, having read parts one, two, three, and four, you now know as I do how complicated our K-12 funding formulas really are. Allow me to illustrate further, revisting the Transportation Sparsity Revenue calculation.
I re-worked the provided example for the mythical "Gopherville" public school district, only the numbers didn't tie out. Here's what the "Financing Education in Minnesota 2007-08" booklet said:
Do you see any logarithms here? True, the exact mathematical formulation of .46 to th 26/100 power is exp(.26 x ln (.46)), but on a spreadsheet, it's typically just .46^.26. For once, the law is more clear than the interpretation, one provided by Minnesota House of Representatives' Department of Fiscal Analysis.
Let me say that again. An agency of our Legislature cannot interpret the laws being passed. I dare say that a sizable majority of our 201 Legislators couldn't follow it either. It was the creation of policy wonks with too much time of their hands.
Doing a little more spreadsheet analysis also suggests that the final aid amount calculated is actually fairly linear vs an inferred number of student-miles. I submit that simply paying the districts the IRS standard mileage (48.5 cents per mile in 2007) times the student-miles actually driven is about the same as this wild formula. Actually, it pays the districts a little more, and I'm sure they wouldn't turn it down.
The best news for you the reader may be that this is the final part of this particular series! But as The Drudge Report says, "developing..."
I re-worked the provided example for the mythical "Gopherville" public school district, only the numbers didn't tie out. Here's what the "Financing Education in Minnesota 2007-08" booklet said:
Transportation Sparsity Revenue per Pupil Unit = [(formula allowance x .1469) x (the logarithm of the district's sparsity index and .26) x (the logarithm of the district's density index and .13)] - (forumula allowance x .0485).Previously, I simply noted that logarithms of fractions like this are negative, but I should have checked further. The numbers don't compute as shown. Could they have meant natural (base e) logarithms? Did ".2 and .26" not mean their sum, .46? Nothing worked, so I looked up the underlying statue 124C.10, sub-division 18:= [($5,074 x .1469) x (the log of .2 and .26) x (the log of .09 and .13)] - ($5,074 x .0485).
Total Transportation Sparsity Revenue = Revenue per Pupil x Pupil Units
= [$745 x .658063 x .731226] - $246
= $358 - $246
= $112= $112 x 1,000
= $112,000
Pupil transportation sparsity and safety revenue allowance.
(a) A district's transportation sparsity allowance equals the greater of zero or the result of the following computation:
(i) Multiply the formula allowance according to subdivision 2, by .1469.
(ii) Multiply the result in clause (i) by the district's sparsity index raised to the 26/100 power.
(iii) Multiply the result in clause (ii) by the district's density index raised to the 13/100 power.
(iv) Multiply the formula allowance according to subdivision 2, by .0485.
(v) Subtract the result in clause (iv) from the result in clause (iii).
(b) Transportation sparsity revenue is equal to the transportation sparsity allowance times the adjusted marginal cost pupil units.
Do you see any logarithms here? True, the exact mathematical formulation of .46 to th 26/100 power is exp(.26 x ln (.46)), but on a spreadsheet, it's typically just .46^.26. For once, the law is more clear than the interpretation, one provided by Minnesota House of Representatives' Department of Fiscal Analysis.
Let me say that again. An agency of our Legislature cannot interpret the laws being passed. I dare say that a sizable majority of our 201 Legislators couldn't follow it either. It was the creation of policy wonks with too much time of their hands.
Doing a little more spreadsheet analysis also suggests that the final aid amount calculated is actually fairly linear vs an inferred number of student-miles. I submit that simply paying the districts the IRS standard mileage (48.5 cents per mile in 2007) times the student-miles actually driven is about the same as this wild formula. Actually, it pays the districts a little more, and I'm sure they wouldn't turn it down.
The best news for you the reader may be that this is the final part of this particular series! But as The Drudge Report says, "developing..."