Guy Banicki is an assistant professor of educational administration at Illinois State University in Normal. He previously was superintendent at Catlin CUSD 5 in Vermilion County for eight years.
The discussion of public education funding has been acrimonious, controversial and is sure to be debated well into the future. A similar debate has been ongoing over student achievement and the use of assessments to ensure student — and school district — success.
Constituents have the perception of “failing schools” because of test scores on the ISAT and PSAE not reaching the levels of achievement required by the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) federal legislation of 2002 and subsequent testing required by state statute. Increased emphasis is being placed on these single-test scores as the barometer of success or failure of each local school.
Long before NCLB was enacted, the Illinois General Assembly passed legislation in 1991 to limit the amount of local property taxes that could be levied for all municipal forms of government, which included public school districts. The legislation is known as the Property Tax Extension Limitation Law (PTELL). It limits the amount of property taxes that can be levied based on the lesser of either a maximum of 5 percent or the Consumer Price Index (CPI), which most recently has been less than 1 or 2 percent.
So what do student learning, test scores and tax caps have in common? More than you may think.
PTELL was first mandated by the legislature for the “collar counties” of Chicago (DuPage, Kane, Lake, McHenry and Will) in 1992 and in 1995 in Cook County. Since 1996, legislation permits other counties to decide, through a referendum, whether to impose this tax cap or not. Currently 38 of 102 counties have approved tax caps for their municipalities, including the local school districts. These 38 counties represent 75 percent of the state’s population.
Since 1991, numerous studies have been done analyzing the consequences of the law. In 1997, a study by Richard F. Dye and Therese J. McGuire of Cook County and the collar counties found a limited effect on school district operating expenses and no effect on school district instructional spending.
A study by D.N. Figlio, also in 1997, showed property tax limitations are associated with lesser levels of services, and directing additional revenues to school instruction can impact success in test scores.
In 1998, Dye and McGuire repeated their study, this time led by Thomas A. Downes, and again the data found that PTELL had limited effect on student performance.
But all of this research was conducted shortly after the tax cap legislation was approved, so significant differences were not observed in these studies. Additional research was needed to investigate any relationship between property tax caps and student achievement on a larger scale — especially after the advent of high-stakes testing with NCLB.
In a 2009 study of all unit school districts in Illinois, conducted by Colin Manahan, a professor at Illinois State University, no significant relationship was found between PTELL and scores on the Illinois State Achievement Test (ISAT) for each of three years studied (2006 through 2008). But the results of the study did suggest, however, that there was a significant relationship between PTELL and student achievement in terms of the three-year trend differences over this time frame.
In other words, the effects of PTELL were ramping up at the same time that high-stakes testing was requiring more students to meet higher levels of proficiency.
Achievement effect
While knowing that PTELL impacts the amount districts can levy, has the law had any effect on student learning in the past 15 to 20 years? To answer this question, I analyzed test scores by district type and PTELL status to determine if PTELL legislation is affecting student learning as measured by test scores, comparing schools that are under tax caps with schools that are not in tax cap counties.
NCLB requires annual student testing. In Illinois, learning can be quantitatively measured using two testing instruments: the ISAT for elementary and junior high students and the Prairie State Achievement Exam (PSAE) for high school students. The PSAE consists of two components: the ACT, a national college admissions and placement exam, and Work Keys, a test that assesses workplace readiness.
Data for this study were 2009 test scores from the PSAE and ISAT, which had been administered in the spring. The scores were reported by school site and were compared by status of tax-capped and non-tax-capped districts. Additionally, scores were compared by type of district: unit, elementary or high school.
The first comparison was mean scores on the ISAT between PTELL schools and non-PTELL schools. A difference was found, with students in tax-capped schools scoring significantly lower.
Average mean ISAT scores:
ISAT results when further compared by district type (unit or elementary) found that elementary districts scored significantly higher than unit district schools.
The next comparison was mean scores on the PSAE between PTELL and non-PTELL schools. A small difference was found in the test scores with the tax-capped schools scoring slightly lower. Comparing this further between unit districts and high school-only districts, I found that high school districts scored higher than unit districts.
Average mean PSAE scores:
When looking just at ACT scores, a small difference was found with tax-capped schools scoring higher on the ACT than high schools in non-tax-capped districts. But when comparing high schools in unit districts to high school-only districts, high school districts scored significantly higher on the ACT than high schools in unit districts.
Average mean ACT scores:
Implications
So what does all this mean? The findings above would indicate that tax caps have placed a further burden on school districts trying to balance their budgets and maintain an adequate level of programming to achieve educational goals. Student achievement, as measured by state tests, places additional pressure on schools to perform well.
As time goes on, districts under PTELL are being adversely affected by tax caps when it comes to student achievement. The more significant effect is seen in the ISAT with lower scores found in both elementary and unit districts, but more pronounced in unit districts. PSAE differences were more pronounced by district type, with high school districts scoring higher than unit district high schools. The interaction of PTELL status and district type was also significant in lower test scores.
Further study needs to be done on the types of district organization, since unit district schools scored significantly lower on the ISAT when compared with elementary schools and lower on the PSAE when compared with high school districts. Additional comparisons of test scores as data becomes available in subsequent years will need to be studied as well.
As the bar for meeting or exceeding on state tests continues to rise, the tax caps imposed on students in counties that represent three-fourths of the state’s population may be having a more detrimental affect on
student learning than originally thought.
References
Thomas D. Downes, Richard F. Dye and Therese J. McGuire, “Do limits matter? Evidence on the effects of tax limitations on student performance,” Journal of Urban Economics, 1998
Richard F. Dye and Therese J. McGuire, “The effect of property tax limitation measures on local government fiscal behavior,” Journal of Public Economics, 1997
D.N. Figlio, “Did the ‘Tax Revolt’ reduce school improvement?” Journal of Public Economics, 1997
Colin Manahan, “The Property Tax Extension Limitation Law and Its Effect on Student Achievement For Unit Type School Districts in The State of Illinois,” Illinois State University