Here’s a little Friday afternoon fun with the updated Census Fiscal Survey data through 2009-2010. I’ve written recently about the national school funding fairness report card, which I work on with colleagues from the Education Law Center. The report card can be found here:

http://www.schoolfundingfairness.org/

I also recently wrote a blog post about America’s Most Screwed City School Districts. It was clear to some readers that the most screwed city school districts happen to be concentrated in certain states like Illinois and Pennsylvania, and also in Connecticut which is often perceived as a reasonably well funded and fairer state (than the other two).

Par for the course, as soon as we release the School Funding Fairness report card using data from 06-07 to 08-09 (most recent available at the time we put it together), the Census Bureau releases their 2009-10 district level finance figures… leading to the usual flurry of misinterpretations of data (which I’ll get to another day). Not being able to resist the temptation, despite a heavy backlog of other work to do, I decided I had to play with the updated fiscal data. I also decided for fun to take an alternative look at the data, bridging the idea I presented on my blog about screwed city schools with the general idea of state school funding systems. I decided to ask which states screw the most low income kids.

Here’s my operational definition of screwed for this post. A district is identified as screwed (new technical term in school finance… as of a few posts ago) if a) the district has more than 50% higher census poverty than other districts in the same labor market and b) lower per pupil state and local revenues than other districts in the same labor market. As I’ve explained on numerous previous occasions, it is well understood that districts with higher poverty rates (among other factors) have higher costs of providing equal educational opportunity to their students.

I then tally the percent of statewide enrollments that are concentrated in these screwed districts to determine the share of kids screwed by their state. And here are the rankings… or at least the short list of states that screw the largest share of low income students:

Not much new here. The same culprits make up the list. Nebraska is elevated to its position of disgrace by its systematic underfunding of Omaha Public Schools, which seemed to improve for a fleeting few years, but recent data don’t look so good. Woonsocket and Pawtucket bring Rhode Island into the mix… but raising additional fun questions regarding placement of blame (another post, another day… but should the city managers/local officials have the authority to deprive children in their jurisdiction of state constitutional rights? under what circumstances and by what mechanism should the state step in? Can they?).

Here are a few graphs showing the distributions of individual districts in Illinois, Pennsylvania and Connecticut. On the horizontal axis is the relative poverty rate of districts compared to all other districts in the same core based statistical area. On the vertical axis is the state and local revenue per pupil relative to the average for all other districts in the core based statistical area.

Again, Allentown, Reading and Philadelphia are massively screwed (yep… a new school finance classification). Meanwhile… Lower Merion… in the Philly ‘burbs is not screwed at all. An intriguing contrast in Pennsylvania school finance is that Pittsburgh has long had far more adequate funding than Philadelphia for a variety of reasons. It is important to understand here that the highest poverty districts – those with 3x the average for their labor market – likely need FAR MORE revenue per pupil than their neighbors to get by – not just the same. So, while York and Harrisburg are decidedly less screwed than Allentown or Reading, they too are not in particularly good shape. They have about the same revenue per pupil as surrounding districts, and 3x the poverty rate.

Here’s Illinois:

Waukegan and Aurora East, along with Round Lake hold the coveted spots of “most screwed” but Chicago Public Schools isn’t far behind (with over 400k students). A multitude of smaller high poverty districts in the Chicago metro not shown here also have very low relative revenue per pupil.

Finally, here’s Connecticut once again:

Again, Bridgeport and New Britain, along with Waterbury (among others) remain substantially screwed. Recall from my previous post that Hartford and New Haven funding is somewhat distorted by magnet school aid.

So why does any of this matter anyway. Well, at face value it’s patently unfair to systematically deprive these districts of resources comparable to their less needy neighbors.  If money doesn’t matter to New Britain or Bridgeport, then why does it matter to Greenwich or Westport? Really, if money is so damn trivial for improving schooling quality, they why don’t all those districts in the upper right hand corner of these graphs just give all that useless money to those in the lower right hand corner. Oh, wait… perhaps money does matter…???…!!!

One thing about school finance that’s really important to understand is that the relative position of districts matters a great deal. It matters a great deal because education is a labor intensive industry. It is about getting a sufficient quantity of sufficient quality teachers in front of kids who need them. The spending behavior and negotiated agreements, and working conditions in districts like Westport and Greenwich matter for the teacher recruitment potential for Bridgeport.  The distribution of quality teachers across districts in a labor market depends on numerous factors, many of which tie back to available resources. And in these states, large numbers of children attend high need districts that simply lack resources to compete.

Notably, those districts sitting pretty in the upper left hand corner of these figures also have had traditional teacher contracts, tenure, seniority preferences and likely other policies that would make “reformers” cringe for years.  But most are doin’ just fine.  So too do the even higher spending and lower poverty elite private schools in the same labor markets! Most don’t use test scores as the basis for providing merit pay and I’m quite sure that few if any of them use test scores as the basis for firing the bottom 5% of their teachers every year. They haven’t been and aren’t being subjected to manipulative heavy handed takeovers, school closures and massive charter school expansion.

None of that reformy junk would likely do much good for the Westports, Greenwiches or Lower Merions of the US school system.  And none of that reformy junk is likely to be much good for the Bridgeports, New Britains, Allentowns, Readings, Philadelphias or Chicagos!

I find it particularly infuriating when I hear news of these “most screwed” districts being blamed for their own failure by the state officials who have deprived them systematically of resources for decades.

What these districts need as a baseline – a fair starting point – is equitable & adequate funding. Once that has been accomplished, then, and only then can we start having a reasonable conversation about how to best leverage that funding to improve student outcomes. But without the funding, there are no options for leveraging it.

 

 

 

 

Today, I, along with colleagues at the Education Law Center released the second round report on school funding fairness which can be found here:

http://www.schoolfundingfairness.org

We cover much ground in this report and develop what we believe are a useful set of indicators for comparing state school finance systems. In this new version of the report, we also include interactive tables and graphs thanks to the efforts and expertise of Danielle Farrie.

http://www.schoolfundingfairness.org/ia_reports.htm

But there’s always more to the story. There’s always more to be discussed/addressed that can’t be fully captured in a short policy report. Specifically, I would like to address a handful of potential misconceptions regarding funding fairness.

First, it is important to understand that unfair conditions may occur even in states that would appear in our updated report to be generally fair.

Second, it is really important to understand that the percent of money that comes from the state – from state tax revenue sources – does not seem to predict/influence the overall level of fairness. Fairness is not achieved by pushing all funding away from property tax revenues and onto state source revenues. In fact, such a move might do little to improve fairness while substantially increasing revenue volatility (income tax revenues which fuel state general funds are typically far more volatile – elastic to economic conditions – than are property tax revenues.   The real key to a good school finance formula is to figure out how to integrate the revenue sources into a system that is overall fair, and stable.

Third, federal revenues make things only marginally fairer. Their effect is minor. Yes, they are targeted to higher poverty districts generally. And yes, for those districts the resources are needed and may seem substantial. But, in the big picture of funding fairness, it comes down to providing that right mix of state and local funds to achieve a system that is overall fair.

Let’s take a closer look at each of these issues.

There are unfair conditions even in states that appear fairer!

Let’s begin with a look at Connecticut, a state that appears to a) spend a fair amount on its schools and b) spend marginally more on higher poverty districts. Or at least so the federal data on state and local revenues which we use in the funding fairness report indicate.

Connecticut is a particularly interesting case. As it turns out the fairness we find in our report is selective in two ways. First, the progressive tilt to the formula overall is significantly influenced by special aid provided primarily to Hartford and New Haven. Other high poverty districts lack this benefit. It is selectively applied. Second, the aid to which I refer is aid targeted for magnet schools which partly serve children from other districts in an effort to integrate minority and non-minority, low income and non-low income students. That this aid shows up in the expenditures of Hartford and New Haven also creates some distortion to the calculation of per pupil spending.

Here is an arguably more accurate portrayal of the selective fairness of funding in Connecticut. To clarify – selective fairness is… well… unfair.

This graph relates current spending per pupil (Net current expenditures per ADM 2011) after removing magnet aid from district expenditures. Overall, Hartford and New Haven remain better funded than other high poverty districts, but lower than with magnet aid included. Further, several very high poverty Connecticut districts have very low funding compared to their surroundings, precisely what landed them on my previous list of most screwed school districts.

Figure 1

Allocating more state aid doesn’t make it fairer if aid is allocated unfairly!

There exists a common assertion that disparities in school funding across districts are largely caused by disparities in property tax base – local property wealth – and the failure of states to allocate enough aid to offset those disparities. At times, I even hear advocates suggesting that if we could just do away with property tax funding of schools, and move all of the funding to state taxes and make the system completely state controlled, all of these equity concerns would be resolved. Wrong. Wrong… and double Wrong.

First, as a tangent which I mentioned above, allow me to point out that property tax revenues actually play a really important role in stabilizing school revenues over time and acting as a counterbalancing force to state aid fluctuations. State school finance systems require a balanced portfolio of revenue sources!  State income tax revenues are much more volatile to economic cycles.

That aside, the figure below shows as we did in our first edition of the report, that states where districts on average receive a higher share of funding from the state (either as actual state disbursements, or in some cases as cleverly reclassified local property tax revenues raised by state mandated minimum tax rates, perhaps with revenue sharing), do not necessarily have fairer- more progressive – distributions of state aid.

Figure 2

So, how can this be? The implication of this is that state aid itself is being allocated unfairly? Is that possible? How might a state allocate aid in ways that fails to improve the fairness of the overall distribution of state and local revenue?

Well, let’s start with a hypothetical of what should be, or the distribution of aid as it might appear in a progressively funded state like New Jersey or Ohio. The figure below shows that state aid must counter two forces of local economics. First, state aid must be allocated in higher amounts to districts with less local capacity to raise that aid on their own. Second, to achieve progressiveness, aid must be allocated in higher supplemental amounts – or weighted amounts – to districts with greater student needs. If we totally oversimplify these issues and assume that low capacity districts also tend to have higher needs, it might look something like this:

Figure 3

And, as it turns out, states like New Jersey actually do look something like that:

Figure 4

But even New Jersey isn’t “perfect” in this regard. Note that middle wealth districts actually drop below the highest wealth districts. The pattern “dips” when it should perhaps climb more consistently from left to right.

So then, what the heck is going on in other states? Well, here are a few examples of the state aid distributions in states that scrape the bottom of the fairness barrel in our updated report. I will have a new report out this fall supported by the Center for American Progress in which I dissect how states actually use their aid formula to make things worse! Unbelievable, but true. Some states actually allocate state aid so inequitably as to make funding gaps bigger! (see this post for an explanation of the pig!)

Figure 5. North Carolina

Figure 6. Texas

In this final figure, I show how New York State “tweaks” their aid formula from its initial calculations to its final calculations in ways that actually increase the funding gap from lower to higher poverty districts. The first cut (left hand side of the figure) calculations of state aid in New York would have many districts getting little or no state general foundation aid. But, the state aid formula then tweaks that amount by guaranteeing a minimum aid of $500 per pupil and an upward adjustment to the aid share for districts that are middle to upper middle wealth. Then, as I’ve discussed in previous posts, the state allocates disproportionate property tax relief aid to the wealthiest districts. Overall, these adjustments have the effect of increase the low poverty to high poverty funding gap from $1,100 per pupil to $2,300 per pupil. Yep… using state aid to double the funding gap! The politics of state school finance systems at work!

Figure 7. New York

Federal aid is no substitute for a sound, well designed, progressive state school finance system!

Finally, what about that federal aid and specifically what about that biggest chunk federal aid allocated to local districts primarily on the basis of poverty? Doesn’t that do the trick? Doesn’t the federal aid create the necessary upward tilt? Well… uh… no… it doesn’t. It helps, indeed. But Federal Title I aid creates only marginal improvements.

Consider that according to the most rigorous empirical research on the topic that it generally costs double to achieve comparable outcomes in a district that is 100% low income versus one that is 0% low income. That is, each low income child would warrant a “weight” of about 1.0 if counting low income as qualifying for free/reduced lunch (185% income level). When using the more stringent 100% poverty threshold, the required weight is about 1.5.

The following figure and table show that on average nationally federal title I funding adjusts upward the tilt of revenues per pupil by about 5% for a district that is 30% in poverty (100% poverty level). This would be comparable to about a 5% adjustment for a district that is 70% or more “low income” (qualified for free or reduced lunch, see page 31). That’s a relatively modest and far from sufficient adjustment!

Figure 8

Figure 9

So, while Federal Title I Aid is not entirely irrelevant, it is far from sufficient for achieving the extent of need-based targeting required for high poverty settings.

A sound, well-designed, progressive state school finance system is required.

Sadly, far too few of such systems presently exist.

Equitable and adequate financing of public school systems in the U.S. remains largely a state responsibility, and some states continue to either throw their entire education systems under the bus (Arizona, Tennessee), or selectively disregard children living in high poverty settings. Put simply, money matters. School funding equity and school finance reforms matter.

It’s not sexy and it’s not reformy. In fact, it’s quite possibly anti-reformy, but the reality is that equitable and adequate financing of state education systems remains the necessary underlying condition for providing quality schooling and achieving equal educational opportunity for all children.

65 Cent Solution (now defunct?)

What is it? It was (thankfully this one is pretty much dead!) a policy proposal being pitched in the mid-2000s which would require, through state mandate/legislation or regulation, that local public school districts show on paper that they spend 65% of their total budgets on “instruction.”

The argument was that the average district nationally allocates somewhat less than 65% to instruction. Instruction is good. Private sector businesses use benchmarks, therefore education should use benchmarks. 65% is a benchmark. Therefore it should be used! Viola… freakin’ brilliant?

Backers of this proposal argued that the policy allowed state legislators to claim they were increasing classroom spending without actually allocating more money.

But, the backers were caught with their pants down in a memo leaked to the Austin Statesmen newspaper in Texas. In an article in Educational Policy (full citation below), Doug Elmer & I summarize the whole memo debacle:

In addition to these criticisms of what qualified as instructional spending, many opponents of the bill questioned the motives behind FCE (First Class Education) and the 65% solution proposal. These suspicions were in part confirmed by a memo written by Mooney to Republican legislators and obtained by the Austin American-Statesman in 2005 (Embry, 2005). In the memo, Mooney (2003) listed several political benefits of the 65% Solution, including the following:

• Splitting of the Education Union. The 1st Class Education proposal pits administrators and teachers at odds with one another. . . .
• Direct Fix for Public Education. While voucher and charter school proposals have great merit, large segments of the voting public—especially suburban, affluent women voters—view these ideas as an abandonment of public education . . . targeted segments of voters may be more greatly predisposed to supporting voucher and charter school proposals, as Republicans address the voting public with greater credibility on public education issues. . . .
• Allows the Use of Unlimited Non-Personal Money for Political Position Advantages. The aforementioned benefits can be achieved with funding in any amount and from any source.
• It Wins! As with initiatives proposing tax limits, term limits, and the definition of marriage, ballot successes for the 1st class is exceedingly likely.

Of course, one thing that never seemed to get discussed in this process was that empirical research on the issue of instructional spending shares of budgets, student outcomes and other school quality measures suggests little if any relationship – especially with respect to the 65% threshold.

Thankfully, this particular bit of copy and paste education policy foolishness seems to have come and gone!

Research

Taylor, L, Grosskopf, S. (2007) Is a Low Instructional Share an Indicator of School Inefficiency?

Exploring the 65-Percent Solution http://bush.tamu.edu/research/workingpapers/ltaylor/The_65_Percent_Solution.pdf

Baker, B.D., Elmer, D.R. (2009) The Politics of Off-the-Shelf School Finance Reform. Educational Policy 23 (1) 66-105

Parent Trigger

The Parent Trigger is perhaps even more obnoxious and deceptive than the 65 cent debacle. What is it? Well, the Parent Trigger is a policy that allows the majority of parents of students in any failing (generally meaning high poverty/minority concentration) school to vote, by simple majority to have the school taken over by a private company, charter operator, or to simply fire all of the teachers and the principal and start fresh (options may vary). The assertion is that this mechanism gives low income and minority parents “rights” that they are simply unable to assert through bloated and non-responsive urban district bureaucracies. While it may be true that some urban district bureaucracies are less than responsive, the parent trigger sure as hell isn’t the solution.

The parent trigger basically permits a simple majority of parents of children who happen to attend a given school for a period of time to stage a takeover of that school, and this could be done for a variety of motives in a variety of ways with a plethora of possible distorted, negative consequences. A group of middle school parents (during their 3 to 4 year window) might, for example, take a year to take-over their school and turn it over to a private charter management company.  The parent majority might, for example, have a gripe against LGBT students, or students of a particular race, culture or religion. Charter takeover would allow the simple majority to makeover the school into a themed school – like a school for traditional family values, or a English only academy. The simple majority could easily use this tool to oppress any minority population (and don’t give me that crap about this being better than the tyranny of the district oppressing everyone).

Further, if the simple majority of parents do forcibly convert the school to a privately managed charter, it may turn out that all parents and children lose important statutory and constitutional rights, as I have discussed in previous posts regarding parental/student/teacher rights in privately managed charter schools.

Notably, this hostile takeover could have occurred under the majority rule of parents on one cohort of students and have lasting adverse effects on subsequent cohorts of children whose parents had little input.

Further, this mechanism removes from the process any/all other residents of the community surrounding the school (who contribute tax dollars to the school), placing all control in the hands of the simple majority of parents with children attending the school at any one point in time.

It’s a ridiculous approach granting disproportionate, ill-defined power to an ill-defined majority constituency seemingly intended to do little more than stimulate infighting among low income and minority populations as a distraction from the larger policy issues.

Blog Posts

Potential abuses of the Parent Trigger

https://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2010/12/07/potential-abuses-of-the-parent-trigger/

Public/Private Status of Charter Schools

https://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2012/05/02/charter-schools-are-public-private-neither-both/

Why Public/Private Status Matters: Legal Issues

https://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2012/05/04/follow-up-on-why-publicnessprivateness-of-charter-schools-matters/

Weighted Student Funding Reformy edition

This one is an example of a totally reasonable policy concept that has been dreadfully abused and over-emphasized as a panacea for urban district budgeting and management, and conflated with many other management policies strategies.

Weighted student funding itself is simply an approach to calculating the need and cost based funding to be delivered to schools or districts. Several states used weighted student formulas to drive money to districts. Several districts use weighted student formulas to allocate budgets out to schools.

But, in the reformy world, weighted student funding has taken on the meaning of a Money Follows the Child coupled with Decentralized School Site Control model. Put simply, there really isn’t much evidence that decentralized governance across schools within districts is particularly effective policy for improving productivity and efficiency, or equity for that matter! (see Baker & Elmer article below).

But, the most frustrating part of the WSF discussion for me has been that it has encouraged many to argue that the big problem with school funding today is the disparities in budgets across schools within large city districts. Yeah… there are some significant problems there. But those are not the biggest problems. Between district disparities and state school finance systems continue to severely constrain district’s ability to target funds to their highest need schools.

Sadly, despite there being some virtues of WSF as a funding approach, the reformy takeover and complete mis-representation of the issue has led to some truly baffling think tanky reporting on WSFs. Take for example 2010 Bunkum Award Winner The Reason Foundation:

http://nepc.colorado.edu/bunkum/2010/time-machine-award

This Reason Foundation report has multiple features that make it an award winner. It engages in definitional acrobatics, pouring a kitchen sink’s worth of assorted reforms into a vessel it calls Weighted Student Formula (WSF) reforms. And, in a truly breathtaking innovation, the report enters its time machine and attributes positive reform outcomes to policy changes that had not yet been implemented. In broad terms, WSF reforms involve linking funding to each student, with that funding calculated as the student’s base allocation and any additional funds for special needs, economic deprivation or other reasons. The Reason report somehow manages to squeeze into this WSF concept three additional reforms: (a) site-based management; (b) site-based budgeting; and (c) school choice. The expert third party reviewer said this about the Reason “umbrella labeled as WSF:” “[it] deceptively suggests that all related policies are necessarily good—even going so far as to credit those policies for improvements that took place before the policies were implemented.”

“The report then irresponsibly recommends untested, cherry picked policy elements, some of which may substantially undermine equity for children in the highest-need schools within major urban districts.” For example, the plan suggests that extra funds for economically deprived students be eliminated but that added money should be given to gifted and talented students. The report also ignores a large body of relevant literature on within-district equity and school site management in its uncritical effort to find support for the foundation’s ideological policy preferences.

Look… a good weighted student formula is not a bad idea at all. Pretending that district weighted student formulas and decentralized governance will solve the most pressing equity issues in education today, however, is totally ridiculous!

Research on WSF

Baker, B. D., & Welner, K. G. (2010). “Premature celebrations: The persistence of interdistrict funding disparities” Educational Policy Analysis Archives, 18(9). Retrieved [date] from http://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/718

Baker, B. (2009). Review of “Weighted Student Formula Yearbook 2009.” Boulder and Tempe: Education and the Public Interest Center & Education Policy Research Unit. Retrieved [date] from http://epicpolicy.org/thinktank/review-Weighted-Student-Formula-Yearbook

Baker, B.D., Elmer, D.R. (2009) The Politics of Off-the-Shelf School Finance Reform. Educational Policy 23 (1) 66-105

Baker, B.D. (2009) Evaluating Marginal Costs with School Level Data: Implications for the Design of Weighted Student Allocation Formulas. Education Policy Analysis Archives 17 (3)

Baker, B.D. (2012) Re-arranging deck chairs in Dallas: Contextual constraints on within district resource allocation in large urban Texas school districts. Journal of Education Finance 37 (3) 287-315

Toxic Trifecta Teacher Evaluation Policies

Another type of cut-and paste policy that’s been driving me up the wall lately is what I refer to as the Toxic Trifecta Teacher Evaluation Framework. I have explained in previous posts the issues associated with Value Added Models for determining teacher effects on student outcomes. I have also explained how Student Growth Percentiles are not appropriate for the task at all. But, I have also explained how this information might be responsibly used, for example, for exploring patters across teacher within a school or district, while retaining the option to decide that the data were simply wrong.

Toxic trifecta policies, in very simple terms, MANDATE THE MISUSE OF STATISTICAL INFORMATION FOR MAKING TENURE AND DISMISSAL DECISIONS.

They negate responsible human judgment altogether and replace it with rigid, ill-conceived frameworks reflecting a baffling degree of statistical ignorance (and educational and management ignorance).  

Here are the elements to look out for in Toxic Trifecta Teacher Evaluation Policies:

1. Mandating potentially invalid VAM or necessarily invalid SGP scores to be used as a fixed share in determining personnel decisions.  Necessarily becomes an overriding factor!
2. Forcing precise cut-point determinations through data with absurdly wide error ranges (creating categories of performance with defined cut points for VAM or SGP estimates).
3. Forcing that personnel decisions be made on the basis of this information, on strict timelines, without consideration of any other contextual factors (or the possibility that the estimates are simply WRONG)

Really, any one of these elements alone is bad enough. But in combination, they are a complete disaster (except for the legal profession)!

As I’ve explained on many occasions, simply saying that the VAM or SGP measure of teacher effect on student test score change is “only 20%” or “only 40%” of the evaluation is unhelpful. It is still assumed to be valid and important and it may be neither.

Further, that element which varies most in the overall scheme is likely to tip the scales on most decisions. And the variance in VAM or SGP estimates is a mix of a) real effect, b) noise and c) bias (likely heavy bias in SGPs). Further, noise and bias are quite likely to dominate any “real effect” (and the real effect may not be an important effect). And we simply can’t know what share is real, bias or nose.

On the second element, it is utterly foolish to try to set up cut-scores for defined performance categories (with a point or two difference changing the category) given the extent of noise and bias in the measures. How can say that a 25 is unacceptable and a 26 is okay, when both have error ranges of 50 points on each end?  It then stands to reason that it is even more foolish to tie high stakes decisions to falling just above or below these cut scores from year to year.

Now,  I don’t know what the current TEACHNJ (Ruiz) bill includes from the toxic trifecta, but on my last read, it included all three components, the worst of which was the absolute requirement that teachers lose tenure after 2 bad evaluations, stated rigidly as follows:

Notwithstanding any provision of law to the contrary, the principal, in consultation with the panel, shall revoke the tenure granted to an employee in the position of teacher, assistant principal, or vice-principal if the employee is evaluated as ineffective in two consecutive annual evaluations. (p. 10)

Further, in an effort to rub salt in the wound following this mandated misuse of statistical information, the versions of the bill which I had reviewed indicated that teachers could only appeal these decisions on procedural grounds. Several other states have already adopted trifecta elements in part or entirely.

As I’ve mentioned in a few recent blog posts, there might (though I’m increasingly pessimistic) exist some reasonable uses of VAM estimates or SGPs for informing management decision making in schools.  Those reasonable uses invariable acknowledge that these measures are not only noisy but may also simply be wrong, and permit human judgment to make that call. Toxic trifecta policies prohibit those reasonable uses, and will ultimately mandate that bad decisions be made based on inadequate information.

Related Articles

Green, P.C., Baker, B.D., Oluwole, J. (2012) Legal implications of dismissing teachers on the basis of value-added measures based on student test scores. BYU Education and Law Journal 2012 (1)

Blog Posts

Toxic Trifecta: https://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2012/04/19/the-toxic-trifecta-bad-measurement-evolving-teacher-evaluation-policies/

If it’s not Valid, Reliability Doesn’t Matter: https://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2012/04/28/if-its-not-valid-reliability-doesnt-matter-so-much-more-on-vam-ing-sgp-ing-teacher-dismissal/

Video Post: https://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2012/05/23/video-thoughts-on-test-scores-vam-sgp-teacher-evaluation/

Mutual Consent Hiring/Assignment/Dismissal

This is one of those policies that had seemed relatively pointless and innocuous. Originally it was mostly about district human resource management policies, not about state requirements. But, as a state mandate and in conjunction with other teacher evaluation policies (the toxic trifecta), mutual consent policies take on new meaning.

Mutual consent policies – when adopted as state legislation or regulation – require that principals have the “last  word” on which teachers are assigned to or hired to work within their buildings. These policies have been driven by two ideas/purposes. On the one hand, there were the outrage-invoking news stories of principals being forced to draw from pools of excess teachers (implied [without validation] to be awful teachers and completely unqualified) in large city districts, when they supposedly knew they could get someone better from the outside. Second… and originally… these policies were intended to improve the distribution of teacher qualifications across more and less advantaged schools within districts.  Both are virtuous to the extent that a) the problem is real and b) the solution works.

But, there are many problems of both basic logic and of operational reality when it comes to mutual consent policies. Here’s a short list:

1. Mutual consent assumes only good decisions are made at building level and bad ones at district level;
2. Mutual consent ignores that district officials hire/fire and assign principals;
3. Mutual consent sets up scenario where central office may wish to assign ‘good teachers’ to weak school but principal could reject (district might even be trying to groom new leaders for the school);
4. Research suggests that it doesn’t actually accomplish much if anything!

In really simple terms, mutual consent causes administrative chaos, by mandating that the subordinate has final word, when the subordinate never really has the final word. What kind of silly crap is that? At least as a state policy mechanism?

It’s one thing if a district decides to have a collaborative process, or even a policy of collaboration regarding personnel decision between building leaders and central office. But having the state mandate that building leaders have authority over central office, when central office ultimate has authority over building leaders is ludicrous. Suggesting that this is based on how big business in the private sector works is even more ludicrous!

Further… what’s particularly warped is when a mutual consent policy is proposed in the same legislation as the toxic trifecta elements above. The toxic trifecta mandates who the principal must fire or at least de-tenure and under what specific circumstances and based on measures over which the principal has no control and may have limited statistical understanding????  And then the mutual consent policy “empowers” the principal? Are you kidding me?

Look, districts should design personnel policies such that school leaders can build good teams. I’m all for that, and have conducted and published research on that very topic. I favor building level involvement in personnel policy toward the goal of building effective teams. State mandated “mutual consent” does little or nothing to advance this goal.

As for the research on mutual consent, the one study done on a large district that used the policy found that it did not achieve its goal of improving the distribution of teacher quality:

We conduct an interrupted time-series analysis of data from 1998-2005 and find that the shift from a seniority-based hiring system to a “mutual consent” hiring system leads to an initial increase in both teacher turnover and share of inexperienced teachers, especially in the district’s most disadvantaged schools. For the most part, however, these initial shocks are corrected within four years leaving little change in the distribution of inexperienced teachers or levels of turnover across schools of different advantage. http://www.nctq.org/docs/Mutual_Concent_8049.pdf

Blog Posts

Regarding research on mutual consent: https://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2010/10/08/nctq-were-sure-it-will-work-even-if-research-says-it-doesnt/

This post is the second in a series (of unknown number) focusing on how states harm local public school districts through illogical, ill-conceived state school finance systems and components of those systems. One goal of this post is to illustrate the types of problems/manipulations that exist in state school finance systems, how they work, and the severity of the problems they can cause.  I have written previously, for example, how states find ways to actually use state aid to make their finance systems less equitable (school finance pork). I have also written about policies like census based financing of special education and it’s adverse effects on high need districts. The Commonwealth Triple-Screw takes it to another level.

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania has among the least equitable state school finance systems in the country. Pennsylvania operates a school funding system that on average provides systematically less state and local revenue per pupil to the state’s highest need large and mid-size city districts. Among the nation’s most “screwed” city districts are Philadelphia, Reading and Allentown.

But amazingly, in Pennsylvania, the pain doesn’t end there. Pennsylvania also has one of the least fair, least logical approaches to special education funding, both in terms of the way in which special education aid is distributed to local public school districts and in the calculations for determining how much should be paid by local public school districts to charter schools for serving special education students.

Apparently, this issue is of current interest in PA: http://www.mcall.com/news/local/parkland/mc-lehigh-valley-cyber-charter-schools-20120604,0,2970776.story

The hit comes in three parts and I call it the Commonwealth Triple-Screw. Here’s a run-down.

Screw 1: Census based financing of special education, assuming a uniform share of students in need on its face provides less support to districts with greater shares of students in need.

First, Pennsylvania is among a handful of states which continue to use an approach called Census Based financing of special education. In brief, what PA does is provide to each school district, in general regardless of their local wealth and regardless of their actual number of special education students, a flat, base allocation of special education funding per 16% of total enrollment (the assumed flat % special ed across districts).

The argument is that funding special ed in flat amounts avoids the incentive to over-classify students. This argument ignores the possibility – the simple reality – that populations of all types vary in their geographic distribution for a variety of reasons and that includes families of children with disabilities. Funding on this basis necessarily deprives districts that through no fault of their own have far more than 16% special education. Further, and more illogically, for districts having only about 7% special education, this approach arbitrarily over-funds their needs (at least relative to higher need districts). I have written extensively about the research and realities of Census Based funding in this recent article:

• Baker, B.D., Ramsey, M.J. (2010) What we don’t know can’t hurt us? Evaluating the equity consequences of the assumption of uniform distribution of needs in Census Based special education funding. Journal of Education Finance 35 (3) 245-275

Here are a few quick snapshots of how this works out globally (Statewide) then locally (Chester Upland School District). The following figure is drawn from my Summer 2011 final update to my testimony in the case of C.G. v. Commonwealth (a Federal Court challenge to PA special education funding). The figure shows that districts with higher special education population shares and higher Market Value/Personal Income ratios (hence low wealth/income) generally receive less special education aid per special education pupil as a function of the underlying census based formula.

Figure 1. Special Education State Aid per Special Education Pupil

In the rest of this post, I will show in particular how this formula along with other calculations dramatically undercut the financial viability of Chester Upland School District, a high need district facing dire financial circumstances in recent years.

Table 1 provides a walk-through of Chester Upland’s position with respect to special education state funding. CUSD was reported to have been allocated just over $5 million in SEF funding for 2010-11, with that funding having been frozen for the past several years. CUSD’s actual percent of enrollment in special education programs has typically been about 22% over time (based on several sources, including the NCES common core of data). That would amount to over 1,500 special education students, consistent with counts reported later. This yields special education funding per actual special education pupil of about $3,200 (placing CUSD among the red squares in Figure 1 which lie at approximately 22% special education and have low wealth [high MVPI]).

Table 1 walks through the hypothetical difference in funding that would occur if CUSD was allocated SEF per actual pupil rather than per 16% ADM. CUSD’s SEF allocation per 16% ADM is $4,429, or $1,200 per pupil higher than it is per actual pupil in need. If CUSD received $4,429 per actual child in need, then CUSD would receive nearly $2 million more in special education funding, or a 38% increase. For a district with minimal local capacity to offset this loss, that’s a significant hit. But, it’s also the smallest hit of the triple-screw!

Table 1. Special Education Funding in Chester Upland

[a] SEF data from: http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt?open=514&objID=509062&mode=2

[b] MVPI Aid Ratios from: http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/financial_data_elements/7672

[c] IEP % Data from: http://www.nces.ed.gov/ccd/bat

Screws 2 & 3: The charter school funding formula for special education students exacerbates these problems by requiring high need, under-resourced districts to pay special education tuition to charter schools at the rate of the average special education expenditure per special education child of the host district.

Pennsylvania’s formula for determining the amount of money that must be transferred from sending districts to charter schools for serving students with disabilities is poorly conceived, creates perverse incentives for charter school operators, and inappropriately drains disproportionate resources from sending districts. CUSD is perhaps more harmed by this ill-conceived mechanism than any other district in the state both because of the characteristics of CUSD and because of the enrollment practices of Chester Community Charter School.

Note that the following analyses present the hypothetical adverse effects of the Pennsylvania charter school funding formula on CUSD, using enrollments of Chester Community Charter School to illustrate those effects. CUSD may also be sending children with disabilities to other charter schools, where the effects would play out similarly to the extent that other charters also siphon off children having lower cost disabilities. Further, the hypotheticals are based on enrollment-by-classification data from 2008-09 and conditions may have become even more severe in recent years.

The funding hit comes in two parts. First, Table 2 shows how the spending special education tuition rate is set. CUSD spent in 2011-12 about $17.3 million in “selected” special education spending. Even though this spending was used for approximately 22% of the district population, the tuition sending rate is calculated per only 16%, incorrectly inflating the special education spending per special education pupil.  16% of CUSD ADM is just under 1,200 students. Thus, the special education expenditure divided by that figure is $14,670. This is the “additional expenditure” per special education child. Each special education child also has associated with him/her a “base” (regular education) expenditure. That figure for CUSD is $9,858. Therefore, the total including BASE + SE is $24,528. If we take the $24,528 and multiply it times the total number of special education students sent to Chester Community Charter School, that amounts to over $15 million.

Okay… so let’s stop for a minute. The district receives in SEF funding about $3,200 per special education student, and must send out over $24,000. That’s difficult enough… but… the $24,000 is miscalculated substantially in two ways!

If we consider that CUSD actually served about 22% special education (or about 1,620 students), the special education spending per pupil, with the base added in, would be $20,527. If we use this figure instead to determine the payment to the charter school, CUSD would send only $12.7 million to the charter.

This arbitrary use of the 16% figure to determine sending tuition rates costs CUSD nearly $2.5 million (or about 50% of its state special education funding)!!!!!!!

Table 2: Over-expenditure to Charter Special Education Part I

But this is only the first and smaller portion of the miscalculation of sending tuition rates for special education students. Table 3 shows distribution of counts of students by disability type for CUSD and for Chester Community Charter School. Also in Table 3 are the average additional expenditures per special education student based on analyses from the Special Education Expenditures Project (SEEP). I’ve chosen to use these average additional expenditure margins so that I can simulate the effects on host districts of charter schools choosing to serve only the least needy (and least costly) special education students. 92% of the children with disabilities in the charter school are those with the lowest cost disabilities, compared to only 66% in CUSD. Yet, CUSD must pay out to the charter on the basis of an already inflated average special education cost per special education pupil.

Table 3: Distribution of District & Charter Special Needs Students & Related Cost Margins

Table 4 provides a walkthrough of the estimated impact of this financial hit. First, if we take the actual special education spending per actual special education pupil in CUSD ($10,699) and express it with respect to the spending per average non-special education child in the district we get a ratio consistent with research literature over time. On average, in CUSD, the special education child is allocated just over 2.0 times the average non-special education child (where the base non-SE child is just under $10k and the special education spending margin is just over $10k, see Table 2). I have performed this check simply to see that average special education spending margins in CUSD are in line with prior research findings.

In Table 4, I estimate the additional expenditure of an SLD child by taking the research based additional expenditure ratio of 1.6 and multiplying it times the average additional expenditure of a non-special education child in CUSD (1.6 x $9,858).  That gives me an estimated additional expenditure per SLD child of $15,774. I do the same for children with speech impairment, yielding an estimated additional expenditure of $16,759. Indeed, even the charter serves some children with disabilities estimated to have higher than average additional expenditure, but very few of them.

Calculating the charter payment based on the inflated district average (based on the error mentioned in Table 3 above), CUSD must allocate over $15 million for children with disabilities in Chester Community Charter School.

But, if we re-calculate the charter allocation using the additional expenditure ratios from research, where some children will have higher than average cost and some lower than average cost, we find that CUSD would need to allocate just over $10 million.

In short, the district is overcharged by nearly 50%. The district is overcharged by an amount equal to nearly all of the district’s state special education funding, even though the district is left with more than half of the total special education children to serve and nearly all of those with more severe disabilities.

Table 4: Over-expenditure to Charter Special Education Part II

Arguably, this mechanism actually provides incentive for Pennsylvania charter schools to seek out, recruit and serve children with mild disabilities, creating similar budget pressures for other districts across the state.

Cumulative effects of the Commonwealth Triple Screw

Chester Upland School District’s expenditure budget for its own students is now approximately $54 million (after transfers to charters).  Note that if Chester Upland had received special education revenue from the state based on actual percent special education, the district would have received about $2 million more in revenue to spend, some of which would have been transferred to charters for serving special education kids. But let’s assume that about half should have stayed with the district. So, there’s a $1 million hit to start. Then there’s the big double hit, which amounts to $4.8 million!

So, we’re talking about a cumulative hit of, oh… hypothetically… about $5.8 million, or over 10% of the district’s budgeted expenditures (in other words, they should have received and kept roughly an additional million in state special education funding and should pay out a simulated/estimated $4.8 million less to charters for special education students).

And that, my friends, colleagues, co-bloggers, tweeters and avid readers is the Commonwealth Triple-Screw!

Contrary to reformy wisdom regarding spending bubbles… the harmlessness …. oh wait… the benefits of spending cuts… and the fact that we all know as a reformy fact that we’ve already dumped plenty of money into our high need districts nationwide – it turns out that there actually are still some school districts out there that appear somewhat disadvantaged when it comes to funding.

Soon, we will be releasing our annual update of our report on school funding fairness. In that report, we emphasize that school funding fairness is an issue primarily governed by and primarily a responsibility of the states. And school funding fairness varies widely across states.  First, the overall level of funding varies significantly from state to state. Second, the extent to which states provide additional resources to districts with higher concentrations of children in poverty varies widely across states. In fact, several large, diverse states still maintain state school finance systems where the highest need districts receive substantially less state and local revenue per pupil than the lowest need districts. These states include Illinois, New York, Pennsylvania and Texas among others.

It’s important to understand that the value of any given level of education funding, in any given location, is relative. That is, it doesn’t simply matter that a district has or spends $10,000 per pupil, or $20,000 per pupil. What matters is how that funding compares to other districts operating in the same labor market, and for that matter, how that money relates to other conditions in the region/labor market. Why? Well, schooling is labor intensive.  And the quality of schooling depends largely on the ability of schools or districts to recruit and retain quality employees. And yes… despite reformy arguments to the contrary – competitive wages for teachers matter!  The largest share of school district annual operating budgets is tied up in the salaries and wages of teachers and other school workers. The ability to recruit and retain teachers in a school district in any given labor market depends on the wage a district can pay to teachers a) relative to other surrounding schools/districts and b) relative to non-teaching alternatives in the same labor market.

In our funding fairness report, we present statewide profiles of disparities in funding with respect to poverty. But, I thought it would be fun (albeit rather depressing) here to try to identify some of the least well-funded districts in the country. Now, keep in mind that there are still over 15,000 districts nationwide. I’m focusing here on large and mid-sized cities using a Census Bureau Locale classification.

Following are two lists. In each case, I have selected districts where:

• The combined state and local revenue per pupil is less than the average for districts in the same labor market (core based statistical area);
• The U.S. Census Poverty rate for the district is more than 50% higher than the average for districts in the same labor market.

Put very simply, districts with higher student needs than surrounding districts in the same labor market don’t just require the same total revenue per pupil to get the job done. They require more. Higher need districts require more money simply to recruit and retain similar quantities (per pupil) of similar quality teachers. That is, they need to be able to pay a wage premium. In addition, higher need districts need to be able to both provide the additional program/service supports necessary for helping kids from disadvantaged backgrounds (including smaller classes in early grades) while still maintaining advanced and enriched course options.

The districts in these tables not only don’t have the “same” total state and local revenue per pupil than surrounding districts. They have less and in some cases they have a lot less! In many cases their child poverty rate is more than twice that of the surrounding districts that continue to have more resources.

Among the least well funded cities are Chicago, Philadelphia and Bridgeport, CT. All have much higher poverty than their surroundings.

Table 1. Least fairly funded large, midsize and small cities [Preliminary single year analysis]

District	State	State & Local Revenue Ratio	Poverty Ratio
West Fresno Elementary School District	California	71%	1.97
Roosevelt Elementary District	Arizona	74%	1.87
Alhambra Elementary District	Arizona	75%	1.85
Reading School District	Pennsylvania	78%	2.50
Allentown City School District	Pennsylvania	78%	2.48
Franklin-McKinley Elementary School District	California	79%	1.92
Chicago Public School District 299	Illinois	80%	1.67
Alum Rock Union Elementary School District	California	82%	1.52
Isaac Elementary District	Arizona	83%	1.91
Sunnyside Unified District	Arizona	85%	1.70
Creighton Elementary District	Arizona	87%	1.96
North Forest Independent School District	Texas	87%	2.13
Manchester School District	New Hampshire	87%	1.77
East Hartford School District	Connecticut	87%	1.60
Murphy Elementary District	Arizona	87%	2.88
Schenectady City School District	New York	88%	2.53
Lansingburgh Central School District	New York	89%	1.94
Pontiac City School District	Michigan	90%	3.04
Kankakee School District 111	Illinois	91%	1.69
Utica City School District	New York	91%	1.98
National Elementary School District	California	91%	1.74
San Antonio Independent School District	Texas	91%	1.66
Bloomington School District 87	Illinois	91%	1.73
Godfrey-Lee Public Schools	Michigan	92%	1.81
Hueneme Elementary School District	California	92%	1.72
Dallas Independent School District	Texas	92%	1.83
Balsz Elementary District	Arizona	92%	1.66
Adams-Arapahoe School District 28J	Colorado	93%	1.77
Binghamton City School District	New York	93%	1.91
Fort Worth Independent School District	Texas	93%	1.70
Norfolk City Public Schools	Virginia	93%	1.77
Magnolia Elementary School District	California	93%	1.65
Parkrose School District 3	Oregon	93%	1.69
Godwin Heights Public Schools	Michigan	94%	1.57
Philadelphia City School District	Pennsylvania	94%	2.12
Alief Independent School District	Texas	94%	1.69
David Douglas School District 40	Oregon	96%	2.00
South San Antonio Independent School District	Texas	96%	1.61
Lansing Public School District	Michigan	96%	2.00
Clarenceville School District	Michigan	96%	1.65
Harrison School District 2	Colorado	96%	1.81
Holland City School District	Michigan	96%	1.71
Lebanon School District	Pennsylvania	96%	2.08
Bridgeport School District	Connecticut	98%	2.63
Edgewood Independent School District	Texas	98%	1.71
Turner Unified School District 202	Kansas	98%	1.62
Biddeford	Maine	98%	1.84
Saginaw City School District	Michigan	98%	1.73
North Little Rock School District	Arkansas	98%	1.63
Burlington School District	Vermont	98%	1.90
Milwaukee School District	Wisconsin	98%	2.09
Omaha Public Schools	Nebraska	98%	1.72
Santa Ana Unified School District	California	99%	1.63
Birmingham City School District	Alabama	99%	1.77
Erie City School District	Pennsylvania	99%	1.70
Crooked Oak Public Schools	Oklahoma	99%	1.73
Lancaster School District	Pennsylvania	99%	2.11
Lima City School District	Ohio	99%	2.24
Gainesville City School District	Georgia	99%	1.78
Oakland Unified School District	California	99%	1.84

Data Sources: Based on Census Fiscal Survey (f33) 2008-09 [http://www.census.gov/govs/school/] and Census Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates

Table 2. Least fairly funded fringe districts of large, midsize and small cities [Preliminary single year analysis]

District	State	State & Local Revenue Ratio	Poverty Ratio
Clearview Local School District	Ohio	67%	1.57
Cicero School District 99	Illinois	67%	1.60
Waukegan Community Unit School District 60	Illinois	68%	1.97
Posen-Robbins Elementary School District 143-5	Illinois	69%	1.74
Lincoln Elementary School District 156	Illinois	71%	1.76
Maywood-Melrose Park-Broadview School District 89	Illinois	72%	1.52
Kannapolis City Schools	North Carolina	72%	1.53
Round Lake Community Unit School District 116	Illinois	72%	1.72
Ravenswood City Elementary School District	California	73%	1.82
Zion Elementary School District 6	Illinois	73%	1.99
Community Consolidated School District 168	Illinois	75%	1.79
Inkster City School District	Michigan	75%	1.55
Woonsocket School District	Rhode Island	76%	1.78
Dayton Independent School District	Kentucky	76%	1.82
Port Huron Area School District	Michigan	77%	1.93
Highland Park City Schools	Michigan	78%	2.03
Harvey School District 152	Illinois	79%	1.76
Pawtucket School District	Rhode Island	80%	1.56
Clintondale Community Schools	Michigan	80%	1.68
Bessemer City School District	Alabama	80%	1.86
New Miami Local School District	Ohio	80%	1.78
Hamtramck Public Schools	Michigan	80%	2.13
Chicago Heights School District 170	Illinois	80%	1.84
Kenosha School District	Wisconsin	81%	1.63
Blackstone-Millville School District	Massachusetts	81%	1.63
North Chicago School District 187	Illinois	82%	2.06
Waterbury School District	Connecticut	82%	1.94
Ludlow Independent School District	Kentucky	82%	1.52
Revere School District	Massachusetts	83%	1.82
Chicago Ridge School District 127-5	Illinois	83%	1.67
Laurel Highlands School District	Pennsylvania	83%	1.62
Brentwood Union Free School District	New York	84%	2.17
Glendale Elementary District	Arizona	84%	1.57
Pleasant Hill School District 69	Illinois	84%	2.08
Lennox Elementary School District	California	85%	1.53
Rochester School District	New Hampshire	86%	1.65
Spalding County School District	Georgia	86%	1.64
Campbell City School District	Ohio	86%	1.61
Castleberry Independent School District	Texas	86%	1.55
Connellsville Area School District	Pennsylvania	86%	1.65
Fredericksburg City Public Schools	Virginia	87%	2.81
Alta Vista Elementary School District	California	87%	1.58
Paulsboro Borough School District	New Jersey	87%	2.58
Chelsea School District	Massachusetts	87%	2.17
Uniontown Area School District	Pennsylvania	87%	1.86
Pleasant Valley School District 62	Illinois	88%	2.07
Everett School District	Massachusetts	88%	2.52
Carbon Cliff-Barstow School District 36	Illinois	89%	2.14
Madison Public Schools	Michigan	89%	2.02
Freehold Borough School District	New Jersey	90%	2.44
Caldwell School District 132	Idaho	90%	1.85
Twin Lakes No. 4 School District	Wisconsin	90%	1.67
Edinburgh Community School Corporation	Indiana	90%	1.70
Riverview Gardens School District	Missouri	90%	1.79
Independence Public Schools	Missouri	91%	1.61
Hazel Park City School District	Michigan	91%	1.88
Winooski Incorporated School District	Vermont	91%	2.19
Carteret Borough School District	New Jersey	91%	1.79
Penns Grove-Carneys Point Regional School District	New Jersey	92%	1.51
Speedway School Town	Indiana	92%	1.54
Hopewell City Public Schools	Virginia	92%	2.00
Bound Brook Borough School District	New Jersey	92%	1.73
New Britain School District	Connecticut	92%	2.46
Somersworth School District	New Hampshire	92%	1.62
Watervliet City School District	New York	92%	1.57
Centennial School District 28J	Oregon	92%	1.59
William Floyd Union Free School District	New York	93%	1.92
Fountain School District 8	Colorado	93%	1.65
Lowell School District	Massachusetts	93%	2.55
Lorain City School District	Ohio	93%	1.95
St. Bernard Parish School District	Louisiana	93%	1.64
Cahokia Community Unit School District 187	Illinois	93%	2.79
Northridge Local School District	Ohio	93%	2.20
Hudson Falls Central School District	New York	94%	1.62
Reynolds School District 7	Oregon	94%	1.84
Woodbury City School District	New Jersey	94%	2.00
Aldine Independent School District	Texas	94%	1.63
Bartonville School District 66	Illinois	94%	1.65
Westwood Heights Schools	Michigan	95%	1.81
Hazel Crest School District 152-5	Illinois	95%	1.81
New Kensington-Arnold School District	Pennsylvania	95%	1.59
Cascade Union Elementary School District	California	95%	1.63
Malden School District	Massachusetts	95%	2.29
Seabrook School District	New Hampshire	96%	1.64
Lynn School District	Massachusetts	96%	1.87
Newport Independent School District	Kentucky	96%	1.91
River Forest Community School Corporation	Indiana	96%	1.60
Willow Run Community Schools	Michigan	96%	2.19
Big Beaver Falls Area School District	Pennsylvania	96%	1.70
Norwood City School District	Ohio	97%	1.69
Beecher Community School District	Michigan	97%	2.31
Jennings School District	Missouri	97%	2.06
Hammond School City	Indiana	97%	1.55
Freeport Union Free School District	New York	97%	2.17
Monessen City School District	Pennsylvania	97%	1.83
Copiague Union Free School District	New York	97%	1.87
McKeesport Area School District	Pennsylvania	98%	2.07
Lawrence School District	Massachusetts	98%	2.41
Covington Independent School District	Kentucky	98%	2.37
Clinton School District	Massachusetts	98%	2.26
Adams County School District 14	Colorado	98%	1.82
Beloit School District	Wisconsin	99%	1.71
Brooklawn Borough School District	New Jersey	99%	1.51
Oak Park City School District	Michigan	99%	2.21
Lindenwold Borough School District	New Jersey	99%	2.08
Bay Shore Union Free School District	New York	99%	1.88

Data Sources: Based on Census Fiscal Survey (f33) 2008-09 [http://www.census.gov/govs/school/] and Census Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates

Now, it’s one thing for reformy pundits to be making the absurd arguments I laid out in the introduction above. They simply don’t know crap about any of this stuff. I’m convinced of that. They simply don’t know what districts spend, how it compares to other districts – or even that school finance is primarily a state by state issue. Invariably, when speaking on issues of school funding, they make statements that are patently false – and most often passed down through the reformy bad graph archive.

What concerns me more is when local representatives of children attending these districts, including the superintendents of many of these school districts simply don’t stand up for their own constituents. Somehow, the solution for Philadelphia public schools is to close more of them? To shift more control to additional private managers? But to ignore entirely that Pennsylvania continues to maintain one of the least equitable state school finance systems in the country? The same applies to Chicago? Do we hear the City of Chicago’s leaders condemning the fact that Illinois also maintains one of the nation’s least fair funding systems? One of the nation’s most racially disparate state school finance systems?

I also don’t expect to see Governors of these states continue to point the finger of shame at these districts – and state departments of education continue to set up ill-conceived and unfair accountability systems and unfunded intervention strategies through new powers awarded to them under NCLB waivers.  When they do – if, for example, NY’s Governor Cuomo chooses to point the finger of shame at Utica (purely hypothetical), I sure as hell hope that Utica points right back! And I hope others including Schenectedy and Binghamton stand by their side. Likewise for Reading and Allentown, PA! These districts have been persistently slammed by their state school funding system. We are talking about districts that a) have 2.5 times the poverty rate of their surroundings and b) less than 80% of the state and local revenue.

And likewise for Bridgeport, CT along with New Britain and Waterbury! And what about Waukegan, IL… which by these measures has only about 68% of the average state and local revenue of their surroundings and nearly double the poverty rate!

Leaders in these cities should be outraged by their treatment under state school finance systems. We should be hearing it, and hearing it loudly. We shouldn’t just be hearing about how their incompetent and greedy teachers and administrators are to blame and how we need to simply shut down more of their schools and turn them over to someone else. Fairness in funding is a critical first step. It is a prerequisite condition. And without it, we can expect continued difficulties in these districts – difficulties that will certainly not be remedied by current slash/burn & blame policies.

Note: The analysis presented here is a preliminary run using a single year of national school finance data (but built on a 3-year panel). In several of these cases however, especially those that I call out individually, I have conducted numerous additional analyses which are consistent with those above. I can say with confidence that the Illinois, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and New York State disparities represented above are entirely consistent with analyses of multiple years of state data and federal data. Cities like Utica, NY, Bridgeport, Waterbury and New Britain CT, Allentown and Reading, PA are consistently among the worst funded districts relative to their state as a whole and their specific labor market surroundings. Riverview Gardens and other poor inner urban fringe St. Louis districts are also among the most disadvantaged, similar to low income, high-minority concentration Chicago suburbs. Texas and Colorado findings are also consistent. Others may be as well, but I’ve not yet had the chance to reconcile the findings for each city/state with state data systems.

I’ve long been perplexed that the Thomas B. Fordham Institute frames as its top two policy priorities:

1. Implementing the Common Core
2. Advancing Choice

Their new web site layout makes this more obvious.

More recently, a report released by the Council on Foreign Relations (referred to largely as the Rice-Klein report in the media and on twitter) argued that our “failing” education system is  a national security concern, and that the road to addressing that concern involves:

1. expanding the Common Core State Standard initiative to include subjects beyond math and English Language Arts;
2. an expansion of charter schools and vouchers

Now, as I understand it, there’s at least a subtle difference between these two sources on the point regarding vouchers and charter schools in that Fordham does not appear these days to be out front on promoting vouchers and instead seems to be favoring charter expansion (avoiding the word “voucher” but welcoming “other approaches that provide parents and children solid options and the capacity to make maximum use of them”).

Let me be clear that this post isn’t about favoring or slamming either vouchers or the common core, but rather pointing out that favoring both is entirely inconsistent, unless there’s some weird, warped agenda behind it all. This post IS about slamming the two, when used in combination. It just doesn’t make sense.  Let’s throw into this mix other policies promoting standardization of the operations of traditional public schools like forcing those schools to make personnel decisions based largely on student assessment data.

Collectively what we have here is a massive effort on the one hand, to require traditional public school districts to adopt a common curriculum and ultimately to adopt common assessments for evaluating student success on that curriculum and then force those districts to evaluate, retain and/or dismiss their teachers based on student assessment data, while on the other hand, expanding publicly financed subsidies for more children to attend schools that would not be required to do these things (in many cases, for example, relieving charter schools from teacher  evaluation requirements).

For example, if we believe that improving understanding of core scientific concepts is important for our national security or economic competitiveness, why would we be trying to increase the number of students who opt out of those standards, opting instead to attend fundamentalist religious institutions which may be decidedly anti-science? It seems like it would be one or the other? Certainly, TB Fordham Institute appears concerned with the importance of teaching science, and evolution specifically. When they simultaneously promote “other” choice alternatives, are they suggesting the regulation of science curriculum in those alternatives?

Also, if one believes that competitive pressures create improvement across schools (by stimulating innovation), why set up totally different rules – absurd constraints – in fact – for the largest set of schools in the mix. That seems rather counter productive and certainly limits any potential for real innovation. My critique all along about Race to the Top as a stimulus for innovation was that RTTT was anything but a stimulus for innovation and was instead a bribe to get states to fast-track a handful of preferred and completely unfounded reformy template policies – effectively squelching any real innovation that might have otherwise occurred.

One might instead argue for forcing all schools – public, private (if voucher receiving) and charter – to adopt the common core and evaluate teachers with student test data – and to simultaneously promote a broad based choice program. Yeah… let’s try really hard to make all schools the same and then let individuals choose among them? What we would have is a program that allows parents to choose which school adopts the common core better, and uses testing data better when firing teachers. That doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense, either.

No matter how you cut it, combining these two broad preferences leads to a ridiculous mix of policies, whichever side you’re coming from (unless, of course, you’re trying to come from both at once).

So, this all has me wondering if the real objective here – among advocates of these seemingly contradictory policies – is actually to make traditional public schooling so utterly unbearable for both teachers and students by expanding the testing and standards driven culture, expanding curricular standards across areas previously untouched, sucking any remaining creativity out of teaching, and mechanizing the teaching workforce in traditional public schools, making even the worst of the less-regulated alternatives seem more desirable for future generations of both teachers and students?

 

Taxpayer outrage arguments are in style these days (as if they ever really go out of style). Two particular taxpayer outrage arguments that have existed for some time seem to be making a bit of resurgence of late. Or, at least I think I’ve been seeing these arguments a bit more lately in the blogosphere and on twitter.  First, since now is the era of crapping on public school teachers and arguing for increased accountability specifically on teachers for improving student outcomes, there’s the “I pay your salary so you should cower to my every demand” argument (I’ve heard only a few warped individuals take this argument this far, but sadly I have!).  Second, there’s the persistent I pay for those schools and don’t even use them argument, or the variant on that argument that I pay twice for schools because I send my kids to private schools.

I (the taxpayer) pay your (the teacher) salary

This is a strange, obnoxious and easily diminished argument. Not that it’s not important to be sensitive to the demands of school constituents, but rather, that it’s more important to be sensitive to the demands of the broader public regarding their preferences for public schools more so than it is to be hypersensitive to any one loud-mouthed individual who would invoke this obnoxious argument. I explain more about that broader public under the next topic below.

For this one, a simple hypothetical is in order. Let’s assume the individual invoking this argument owns a residential property valued at $350,000 in a school district serving 5,000 students, where that district spends about $15,000 per pupil per year and where the effective property tax for schools is about 1.5%.  So, the school property tax bill on this house is 1.5% x 350k = $5,250.  Meanwhile the school total budget is 5k x 15k = 75 million. So, this one household is contributing far less than 1% (about .007%) of the district budget (which is then about $4.20 of a $60,000 teacher salary). And other households and owners of other property types within the district, as well as the broader base of taxpayers contributing to the state aid pot and any federal revenue sources all play a part in paying the salaries of teachers in this school.

This is by no means to suggest that any one person’s “say” in a district should be proportionate to one’s tax bill as a share of the budget. But rather, that one voice is one voice from the broader mix of voices that contribute to the financing of and shaping of public goods and services like schools.

[implications of disproportionate philanthropic giving from within or outside a district raise other serious questions to be addressed another day]

I (the taxpayer) pay for those public schools and don’t even use them!

Thus is the nature of public versus private goods. In the simplest model, taxpayers in a municipality contribute property taxes for a mix of public services, including local parks, fire protection, police and schools. I probably use our public park much less than others, and I rarely get a chance to attend the summer concert series. Should I get a refund for my contributed share, so that I can put that money towards buying Broadway tickets or a family vacation instead? Hey, I’m paying twice for entertainment and don’t even attend those free concerts in the park. And, I never sat on one of those benches. Can I please get a refund for my share of the cost of installing those benches and maintaining them, so I can invest in my own benches in my own back yard? And about those fancy fire trucks. We’ve had a few house fires in my town in my time living there. Why am I paying for the fire trucks to go to someone else’s house? Let’s say I live in a town that has public tennis courts, but I decide I want to join a private tennis club. Should I get a refund for the public courts I don’t use? In the amount of property tax I contributed? How about roads? Should I have to pay for roads I don’t ever intend to drive on?

Of late, I’ve been seeing the private school parent argument that “I pay twice for schools, since I pay my taxes for the public schools and pay private tuition.” This one is frequently invoked in conversations involving voucher and tuition tax credit programs. It should be noted that many residents of any given community pay taxes for schools – and all of the other stuff above – but may or may not use any of all of it. Families without school aged children also pay for schools. Further, since schools are financed by a mix of local, state and federal revenues, lots of different people, within and outside of any given community, are contributing to the financing of that community’s schools (to the extent that the schools receive intergovernmental revenue). Thus is the nature of publicly financed services.

But there’s even more to it than that. The above statements make the uninformed assumption that one receives absolutely no benefit from the presence and quality of these public goods and services simply because one does not make direct use of them. In reality (as well as in economic theory – which doesn’t always match reality), there’s this thing called capitalization! There is value to living in a community with such amenities as nice parks, good schools and police and fire protection. That value exists whether you actually use those things or not. That value is reflected in property values. As the quality and mix of services changes, those changes may be reflected in property values. Communities that have relatively better schools over time (even as reflected in crude grading systems in state accountability systems) see increases to property values. Residential property owners, not just those with kids in the public schools, see this benefit.

In short, the “I pay twice”, or “I pay for a service or amenity I don’t use” argument presents a dreadful oversimplification and misunderstanding of very basic principles of the provision of public goods and  services.

Instead, if taxpayers really want something to fuss about, read my previous post!