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Bill
Bennett was Ronald Reagan’s Secretary of
Education. John Podesta was Bill Clinton’s Chief
of Staff. They agree on very little but they do
agree on this: Education funding in America is
broken.
More
importantly, they agree on how to fix it … and
their solution offers the seed of an idea around
which liberals and conservatives (even senators
and delegates) in Virginia can unite.
The
problem is this: Education funding is designed for
“Ozzie and Harriet.” The stars of that old
‘50s-era TV show were not poor, they spoke
English, their children rarely had acknowledged
disabilities. Furthermore, they and their
neighbors never moved out of the neighborhood and
always attended the nearest school. If some kids
didn’t do as well as others, if there were
achievement gaps … well, people just looked the
other way. Guys named “Lumpy” could always
make a decent living as an auto mechanic.
But
in a standards-based era, achievement gaps are
not, and cannot, be tolerated. The jobs of
tomorrow, whether rocket scientist or auto
mechanic, demand a higher level of skill,
training, and education than those required to fix
a 1955 Chevy.
Other
changes are taking place, too. Mom and Dad move a
lot, with 15 percent to 20 percent of school-aged
children changing residence each year. In fact,
the U.S. General Accounting Office found that one
out of six children attend three or more schools
by the end of the third grade – a figure
profoundly higher among military families and
low-income children.
But,
while no one doubts the greater difficulty of
educating low-income, highly mobile, Limited
English Proficient or disabled students, our
funding mechanisms fail to recognize that harder
(and more expensive) task. Education dollars flow,
not on the basis of students, but on the basis of
staffing ratios, special program formulas, and the
political savvy of individual school district and
school leaders.
Worse,
while principals and teachers are now held
accountable for their results, they have little
control over how money is used at their school or
in their classroom. How school dollars are spent
is decided elsewhere, using complex budgets and
allocations that leave educators, parents, and
taxpayers in the dark.
This
leaves us with the worst of all worlds –
expenses that can’t be tracked or understood,
funds that don’t reach the targeted populations,
and an inflexibility is both archaic and
inefficient in a 21st Century world.
For
Bennett, Podesta, and more than 75 leading
educators and policy leaders the answer is clear:
Tackle inequity and antiquity in school finance by
creating a system of “weighted student
funding.” These folks are part of a bipartisan
coalition aimed at cutting red tape that wastes
time and money and trying to focus education
dollars on the disadvantaged students that need
them. Their proposal, which can be found here,
operates on five fundamental principles:
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Funding
should arrive at the school as real dollars
(i.e., not teaching positions, ratios or
staffing norms) that can be spent flexibly,
with accountability systems focused more on
results and less on inputs, programs, or
activities.
The
idea is simple: Determine a dollar value for each
student. Make it higher for students requiring
more help. Drive those dollars down to the school
level, empowering school-based leadership to
decide how best to spend the funds educating the
students. By putting resources for decision-making
at the school level, principals can do for kids
what’s needed at their particular school, not
what’s decided at the district level. If one
school needs more tutoring, or another needs an
additional aide, or a third needs more teacher
training for new teachers – the school chooses,
rather than a “one-size-fits-all” central
office decision.
Most
school systems will ask: “What does this mean
for my schools?”
Fortunately,
we already have a pretty good idea of what that
impact might be. Last December, former Virginia
State Board of Education member Lil Tuttle
analyzed a similar idea for the Clare Boothe Luce
Policy Institute, providing a foundational state
student funding allowance of $6,000 per student
and adding additional amounts for low-income,
limited English Proficiency and students with
disabilities.
The
result was an increase in state funding for all
but 13 school divisions. For those 13 that lost
money, a proposed “hold harmless” provision
would cost only $3 million. And the added
advantages – through increased budget
transparency and local school flexibility – far
outweigh the cost.
To
be sure, there are plenty of questions: Which
decisions should still be centralized, and which
should not? How much weight should be assigned to
different student categories? Should local funding
be included, and how?
It's
time that reform of education funding be put on
the table, and not with a timid “nibble around
the edges” discussion but with a major overhaul
that merits full-throated debate and recognizes
the demographic and social forces
confronting education in Virginia.
--
July 10, 2006
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