Tag Archives: Education Funding

Southern Education Foundation report: Juvenile justice education programs do more harm than good

Plessy v. Ferguson established the principle of “separate but equal” in race issues. Brown v. Board of Education which overturned the principle of “separate but equal.” would not have been necessary, but for Plessy. See also, the history of Brown v. Board of Education

If one believes that all children, regardless of that child’s status have a right to a good basic education and that society must fund and implement policies, which support this principle. Then, one must discuss the issue of equity in education. Because of the segregation, which resulted after Plessy, most folks focus their analysis of Brown almost solely on race. The issue of equity was just as important. The equity issue was explained in terms of unequal resources and unequal access to education.

Alyssa Morones reported in the Education Week article, Juvenile-Justice System Not Meeting Educational Needs, Report Says:

Many of the teenagers who enter the juvenile-justice system with anger problems, learning disabilities, and academic challenges receive little or no special help for those issues, and consequently fall further behind in school, a report released Thursday concludes.
“Way too many kids enter the juvenile-justice system, they don’t do particularly well from an education standpoint while they’re there, and way too few kids make successful transitions out,” said Kent McGuire, the president and CEO of the Atlanta-based Southern Education Foundation, which produced the report, “Just Learning: The Imperative to Transform Juvenile Justice Systems Into Effective Educational Systems.”
The report characterizes the problems plaguing the juvenile-justice system as “systemic.” It found a lack of timely, accurate assessments of the needs of students entering the system, little coordination between learning and teaching during a student’s stay, and inconsistency in curricula. Many of the teaching methods were also inappropriate, outdated, or inadequate, and little or no educational technology was used.
“We need to help find ways to create structures and dramatically change how schools and principals and teachers [in the juvenile-justice system] are held accountable,” said David Domenici, the executive director of the Center for Educational Excellence in Alternative Settings, in Washington.
“We have kids who have not done well in school, but, more or less, they have to come every day. They’re a captive audience,” he said. “We can transform their perspective on school. But the reality is, education has been forgotten [in juvenile-justice systems].”
On any given day, 70,000 students are in custody in juvenile-justice systems across the country. Nearly two-thirds of those young people are either African-American or Hispanic, and an even higher percentage are male. Those systems, though, may be doing more educational harm than good, according to the report. http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2014/04/17/29justice.h33.html

Here is the press release from the Southern Education Foundation:

Juvenile Justice Education Programs in the United States and Across the South Do More Harm Than Good
ATLANTA-April 17, 2014-With awareness growing that schools are disciplining and suspending minority students at alarming rates, a report released today by the Southern Education Foundation (SEF) provides powerful evidence that young people placed in the juvenile justice system-predominately minority males incarcerated for minor offenses-are receiving a substandard education.

The report-Just Learning: The Imperative to Transform Juvenile Justice Systems into Effective Educational Systems-argues that education for the 70,000 students in custody on any given day is setting them even further back in their ability to turn their lives around.

Drawing upon the most recently available data from the nation’s largest database on teaching and learning in juvenile justice systems, the report finds that the quality of the learning programs for incarcerated youth have had “little positive, enduring impact on the educational achievement of most children and youth in state custody.”

In 2009, for example, most “longer-term” students (those enrolled for 90 days or more) whose progress was documented failed to make any significant improvement in learning and academic achievement. Incarcerated youth in smaller facilities closer to their local communities actually made less progress than students enrolled in state systems. That was particularly true in the 15 Southern states, where the proportion of students enrolled in local facilities increased from 21 percent of all incarcerated students in 2007 to almost 60 percent in 2011. Part of the problem, the report says, is that the programs, which serve youth with serious learning and emotional problems, provide young people with limited supports.

Taken as a whole, the report found that effects of juvenile justice programs are “profound and crippling,” and set young people back when they should be turning lives around, according to the report.

An ‘Invisible Population’
“We conducted this study to get a clear look at what happens to a truly invisible population,” says Steve Suitts, vice president of the Southern Education Foundation and author of the study. “The juvenile justice education programs that serve hundreds of thousands of students are characterized by low expectations, inadequate supports to address student needs, and ineffective instruction and technology. Students come out of the juvenile justice system in worse shape than when they entered, struggling to return to school or get their lives back on track.”

While some studies show that as many as 70 to 80 percent of young people released from residential correctional facilities will return to jail after two or three years, Just Learning notes that this is not inevitable. “Because effective education in the juvenile justice system helps to reduce recidivism and the number of youth who are in need of custody in the future, it can reduce the need and cost of future placement in juvenile justice facilities,” the report says.

Savings from Reducing Recidivism
According to the report, juvenile justice programs that help prevent young people from becoming re-offenders could save society about $3.9 million per youth.

“The institutionalization of hundreds of thousands of young people is a detriment to their future and to society’s interests,” says Kent McGuire, president of the Southern Education Foundation. “It is up to states to ensure that students in custody leave with the skills that can help them be independent and self-sustaining.”

Emulating Effective Models
The report says that education in juvenile justice programs can be successful. It cites programs-such as the Maya Angelou Academy in Washington, D.C.-that use teaching and learning approaches that have proven to be effective for many high-risk students and in the general population. The report also highlights research on an innovative educational program in Chicago demonstrating that cognitive behavior therapy resulted in a 44 percent reduction in violent crime arrests among participants during the program, as well as gains in schooling, measured by days in attendance, GPA, and school persistence.

Recommendations
To ensure that youth leaving the juvenile justice system have the skills and education they need to reenter school, find jobs, and become productive members of society, the report urges that states:
* Re-organize programs so that they are designed and operated to advance the teaching and learning of students.
* Set and apply the same educational standards that exist for all students in a state to the schools and educational programs in the juvenile justice system.
* Establish effective and timely methods of testing and reporting on the educational status and progress of every child and youth in the juvenile justice system.
* Develop and implement an individual educational plan and learning strategy-including special education, developmental services, academic motivation and persistence, and meta-cognition-to guide the instruction and services of every student in the juvenile justice system.
* Establish systems of coordination and cooperation to provide a seamless transition of students from and back into public schools.
* Create and maintain data systems to measure institutional and system-wide educational progress and identify areas in need of improvement.

Read the summary and the full report.
Just Learning: Executive Summary http://www.southerneducation.org/cmspages/getfile.aspx?guid=7c8e630f-aa97-4e9c-846e-a3b564b8a655

Just Learning:The Imperative to Transform Juvenile Justice System Into Effective Educational Systems http://www.southerneducation.org/cmspages/getfile.aspx?guid=b80f7aad-405d-4eed-a966-8d7a4a12f5be

Kids Count Data Center has statistics about the number of children in detention centers.

According to the report, Youth residing in juvenile detention and correctional facilities:
Location Data Type 2001 2003 2006 2007 2010
United States Number 104,219 96,531 92,721 86,814 70,792

Rate 335 306 295 278 225
INDICATOR CONTEXT
COLLAPSE
A change is underway in out nation’s approach to dealing with young people who get in trouble with the law. Although the United States still leads the industrialized world in the rate at which it locks up young people, the youth confinement rate in the US is rapidly declining.
Read Reducing Youth Incarceration in the United States to learn more.
http://datacenter.kidscount.org/data/tables/42-youth-residing-in-juvenile-detention-and-correctional-

facilities#detailed/1/any/false/133,18,17,14,12/any/319,320

Although, the number of children in detention was declining as of the date of this report, these children must have their needs addressed and the Southern Education Foundation report indicates that that is not happening.

Related:
3rd world America: Many young people headed for life on the dole https://drwilda.com/2012/09/21/3rd-world-america-many-young-people-headed-for-life-on-the-dole/

The Civil Rights Project report: Segregation in education https://drwilda.com/2012/09/19/the-civil-rights-project-report-segregation-in-education/

Study: Poverty affects education attainment https://drwilda.com/2012/08/29/study-poverty-affects-education-attainment/

Center for American Progress report: Disparity in education spending for education of children of color https://drwilda.com/2012/08/22/center-for-american-progress-report-disparity-in-education-spending-for-education-of-children-of-color/

Education funding lawsuits against states on the rise https://drwilda.com/2012/01/25/education-funding-lawsuits-against-states-on-the-rise/

3rd world America: The link between poverty and education https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/11/20/3rd-world-america-the-link-between-poverty-and-education/

Race, class, and education in America https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/race-class-and-education-in-america/
Where information leads to Hope. © Dr. Wilda.com

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Tags: Brown v. Board of Education, civil rights struggle, Education Access, Education Equity, Education Funding, Education Lawsuit, Expansive Survey of America's Public Schools Reveals Troubling Racial Disparities, Funding Education Equitably, government, Juvenile Justice Education Programs in the United States and Across the South Do More Harm Than Good, juvenile justice system, Juvenile-Justice System Not Meeting Educational Needs Report Says, Plessy v. Ferguson, politics, school districts, Southern Education Foundation, students

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Categories Dr Wilda

U.S. Department of Education report: Still unequal after Brown

3 Apr

People tend to cluster in neighborhoods based upon class as much as race. Good teachers tend to gravitate toward neighborhoods where they are paid well and students come from families who mirror their personal backgrounds and values. Good teachers make a difference in a child’s life. One of the difficulties in busing to achieve equity in education is that neighborhoods tend to be segregated by class as well as race. People often make sacrifices to move into neighborhoods they perceive mirror their values. That is why there must be good schools in all segments of the city and there must be good schools in all parts of this state. A good education should not depend upon one’s class or status.
Moi knows that the lawyers in Brown were told that lawsuits were futile and that the legislatures would address the issue of segregation eventually when the public was ready. Meanwhile, several generations of African Americans waited for people to come around and say the Constitution applied to us as well. Generations of African Americans suffered in inferior schools. This state cannot sacrifice the lives of children by not addressing the issue of equity in school funding in a timely manner.

The next huge case, like Brown, will be about equity in education funding. It may not come this year or the next year. It, like Brown, may come several years after a Plessy. It will come. Equity in education funding is the civil rights issue of this century.

Kimberly Hefling of AP reported in the article, Five things to know about today’s report on unequal education:
Here are five things to know about the department’s findings:

ACCESS TO ADVANCED CLASSES:
STEM is the buzzword in education these days. Education in the fields of science, technology and engineering and math is considered critical for students to succeed in the global marketplace. Yet the department found that there was a “significant lack of access” to core classes like algebra, geometry, biology, and chemistry for many students. That lack of access was particularly striking when it came to minorities….
EXPERIENCED TEACHERS:
Quality teachers can play a key role in student performance.
Minority students are more likely to attend schools with a higher concentration of first-year teachers than white students. And while most teachers are certified, nearly half a million students nationally attend schools where nearly two-thirds or fewer of teachers meet all state certification and licensing requirements. Black and Latino students are more likely than white students to attend these schools.
There’s also a teacher salary gap of more than $5,000 between high schools with the highest and lowest black and Latino students enrollments, according to the data….
DISCIPLINE:
The Obama administration issued guidance earlier this year encouraging schools to abandon what it described as overly zealous discipline policies that send students to court instead of the principal’s office, the so-called “schools-to-prisons pipeline.” But even before the announcement, school districts had been adjusting policies that disproportionately affected minority students. The civil rights data released Friday from the 2011-2012 school year show the disparities begin among even the youngest of school kids. Black children represent about 18 percent of children in preschool programs in schools, but they make up almost half of the preschoolers who are suspended more than once. Six percent of the nation’s districts with preschools reported suspending at least one preschool child.
Overall, the data show that black students of all ages are suspended and expelled at a rate that’s three times higher than that of white children. Even as boys receive more than two-thirds of suspensions, black girls are suspended at higher rates than girls of any other race or most boys. More than half of students involved in school-related arrests or referred to law enforcement were Hispanic or black.
SECLUSION AND RESTRAINT:
“Seclusion and restraint” is a term used to describe when students are strapped down or physically restrained in schools. The data show students with disabilities represent about 12 percent of the student population, but about 60 percent of students placed in seclusion or involuntary confinement and three quarters of students restrained at school. While black students make up about one in five of students with disabilities, more than one-third of the students who are restrained at school are black. Overall, the data show that more than 37,000 students were placed in seclusion, and 4,000 students with disabilities were held in place by a mechanical restraint….
PRESCHOOL:
The Obama administration views access to preschool as a civil rights issue. It says 40 percent of school districts do not offer preschool programs. Their numbers don’t include private programs or some other types of publicly funded early childhood programs outside of school systems. Obama has sought a “preschool for all” program with the goal of providing universal preschool to America’s 4-year-old that would use funding from a hike in tobacco taxes. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/five-things-know-todays-report-unequal-education/

See, School Data Finds Pattern of Inequality Along Racial Lines http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/21/us/school-data-finds-pattern-of-inequality-along-racial-lines.html?_r=0

Here is the press release from the Education Department:

Expansive Survey of America’s Public Schools Reveals Troubling Racial Disparities
Lack of Access to Pre-School, Greater Suspensions Cited
MARCH 21, 2014
Contact:
Press Office, (202) 401-1576, press@ed.gov
The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) released today the first comprehensive look at civil rights data from every public school in the country in nearly 15 years.
The Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC) from the 2011-12 school year was announced by U.S. Department of Education Secretary Arne Duncan and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder at J.O. Wilson Elementary School in Washington, D.C.
This is the first time since 2000 that the Department has compiled data from all 97,000 of the nation’s public schools and its 16,500 school districts—representing 49 million students. And for the first time ever, state-, district- and school-level information is accessible to the public in a searchable online database at crdc.ed.gov.
“This data collection shines a clear, unbiased light on places that are delivering on the promise of an equal education for every child and places where the largest gaps remain. In all, it is clear that the United States has a great distance to go to meet our goal of providing opportunities for every student to succeed,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said. “As the President’s education budget reflects in every element—from preschool funds to Pell Grants to Title I to special education funds—this administration is committed to ensuring equity of opportunity for all.”
“This critical report shows that racial disparities in school discipline policies are not only well-documented among older students, but actually begin during preschool,” said Attorney General Eric Holder. “Every data point represents a life impacted and a future potentially diverted or derailed. This Administration is moving aggressively to disrupt the school-to-prison pipeline in order to ensure that all of our young people have equal educational opportunities.”
The federal government has collected civil rights data about schools since 1968, but the Obama Administration revamped the CRDC to include key information on preschool student and school discipline tactics. The data measures whether all students have equal educational opportunity and provides critical information to the Department on enforcing federal civil rights laws.
CRDC data helps inform policy and regulatory work by the federal government. For example, the Departments of Education and Justice recently released guidelines to school districts on zero-tolerance policies and discipline tactics, a powerful example of the federal government using data to take action to bolster outcomes and reduce disparities for minority students.
The data released today reveals particular concern around discipline for our nation’s young men and boys of color, who are disproportionately affected by suspensions and zero-tolerance policies in schools. Suspended students are less likely to graduate on time and more likely to be suspended again. They are also more likely to repeat a grade, drop out, and become involved in the juvenile justice system.
The 2011-2012 release shows that access to preschool programs is not a reality for much of the country. In addition, students of color are suspended more often than white students, and black and Latino students are significantly more likely to have teachers with less experience who aren’t paid as much as their colleagues in other schools.
The 2011-12 school year was the first time the CRDC collected data on preschool discipline and the first year that all public schools reported data separately for Native-Hawaiian/Pacific Islanders. As a result, the CRDC shows that racial disparities in discipline begin in the early years of schooling: Native-Hawaiian/Pacific Islander kindergarten students are held back a year at nearly twice the rate of white kindergarten students.
“This rich information allows us to identify gaps and cases of discrimination to partner with states and districts to ensure equal access to educational opportunities,” said Catherine E. Lhamon, assistant secretary for civil rights. “From Native American tribal nations to inner city barrios, all of our children deserve a high quality education.”
Among the key findings:
• Access to preschool. About 40% of public school districts do not offer preschool, and where it is available, it is mostly part-day only. Of the school districts that operate public preschool programs, barely half are available to all students within the district.
• Suspension of preschool children. Black students represent 18% of preschool enrollment but 42% of students suspended once, and 48% of the students suspended more than once.
• Access to advanced courses. Eighty-one percent (81%) of Asian-American high school students and 71% of white high school students attend high schools where the full range of math and science courses are offered (Algebra I, geometry, Algebra II, calculus, biology, chemistry, physics). However, less than half of American Indian and Native-Alaskan high school students have access to the full range of math and science courses in their high school. Black students (57%), Latino students (67%), students with disabilities (63%), and English language learner students (65%) also have less access to the full range of courses.
• Access to college counselors. Nationwide, one in five high schools lacks a school counselor; in Florida and Minnesota, more than two in five students lack access to a school counselor.
• Retention of English learners in high school. English learners make up 5% of high school enrollment but 11% of high school students held back each year.
As CRDC data indicates the opportunity gap among Americans hurts life-transforming opportunities for children that strengthen and build a thriving middle class. To address these issues, as part of his budget request, President Obama proposed a new initiative called Race to the Top-Equity and Opportunity (RTT-Opportunity), which would create incentives for states and school districts to drive comprehensive change in how states and districts identify and close opportunity and achievement gaps. Grantees would enhance data systems to sharpen the focus on the greatest disparities and invest in strong teachers and leaders in high-need schools.
State-, district- and school-level data may be viewed at the CRDC website at crdc.ed.gov. For more information on the work of the Office for Civil Rights, click here.
The question which this society has to answer is how to provide a good education for ALL despite their race or social class.

3rd world America: Many young people headed for life on the dole
https://drwilda.com/2012/09/21/3rd-world-america-many-young-people-headed-for-life-on-the-dole/

The Civil Rights Project report: Segregation in education
https://drwilda.com/2012/09/19/the-civil-rights-project-report-segregation-in-education/

Study: Poverty affects education attainment
https://drwilda.com/2012/08/29/study-poverty-affects-education-attainment/

Center for American Progress report: Disparity in education spending for education of children of color
https://drwilda.com/2012/08/22/center-for-american-progress-report-disparity-in-education-spending-for-education-of-children-of-color/

Education funding lawsuits against states on the rise
https://drwilda.com/2012/01/25/education-funding-lawsuits-against-states-on-the-rise/

3rd world America: The link between poverty and education
https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/11/20/3rd-world-america-the-link-between-poverty-and-education/

Race, class, and education in America
https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/race-class-and-education-in-america/

Where information leads to Hope. © Dr. Wilda.com

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART©
http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda Reviews © http://drwildareviews.wordpress.com/

Dr. Wilda © https://drwilda.com/

Tags: Brown v. Board of Education, Center for American Progress, civil rights struggle, Education Access, Education Equity, Education Funding, Education Lawsuit, Expansive Survey of America's Public Schools Reveals Troubling Racial Disparities, Five things to know about today’s report on unequal education, Funding Education Equitably, government, Plessy v. Ferguson, politics, school districts, State Finance Lawsuits Roil K-12 Funding Landscape, students

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Categories Dr Wilda

California addresses school funding inequity

22 Aug

Moi wrote in The next great civil rights struggle: Disparity in education funding:
Plessy v. Ferguson established the principle of “separate but equal” in race issues. Brown v. Board of Education which overturned the principle of “separate but equal.” would not have been necessary, but for Plessy. See also, the history of Brown v. Board of Education
If one believes that all children, regardless of that child’s status have a right to a good basic education and that society must fund and implement policies, which support this principle. Then, one must discuss the issue of equity in education. Because of the segregation, which resulted after Plessy, most folks focus their analysis of Brown almost solely on race. The issue of equity was just as important. The equity issue was explained in terms of unequal resources and unequal access to education.
People tend to cluster in neighborhoods based upon class as much as race. Good teachers tend to gravitate toward neighborhoods where they are paid well and students come from families who mirror their personal backgrounds and values. Good teachers make a difference in a child’s life. One of the difficulties in busing to achieve equity in education is that neighborhoods tend to be segregated by class as well as race. People often make sacrifices to move into neighborhoods they perceive mirror their values. That is why there must be good schools in all segments of the city and there must be good schools in all parts of this state. A good education should not depend upon one’s class or status.
I know that the lawyers in Brown were told that lawsuits were futile and that the legislatures would address the issue of segregation eventually when the public was ready. Meanwhile, several generations of African Americans waited for people to come around and say the Constitution applied to us as well. Generations of African Americans suffered in inferior schools. This state cannot sacrifice the lives of children by not addressing the issue of equity in school funding in a timely manner.
The next huge case, like Brown, will be about equity in education funding. It may not come this year or the next year. It, like Brown, may come several years after a Plessy. It will come. Equity in education funding is the civil rights issue of this century. https://drwilda.com/2011/12/02/the-next-great-civil-rights-struggle-disparity-in-education-funding/

Alan Greenblatt wrote in the NPR article, California Upends School Funding To Give Poor Kids A Boost:

As the school year begins, districts in cities such as Oakland, Fresno and Los Angeles have not gone on a hiring spree.
But they might soon.
California has revamped its school funding formula in ways that will send billions more dollars to districts that educate large numbers of children who are poor, disabled in some way or still learning to speak English.
It’s an approach that numerous other states, from New York to Hawaii, have looked into lately. But none has matched the scale of the change now underway in the nation’s largest state.
“The trend is toward more and more states providing additional assistance to students with special needs,” says Deborah Verstegen, a school finance expert at the University of Nevada, Reno. “California is moving into the forefront with this approach.”
It wasn’t an easy sell. There was a lot of debate in Sacramento about whether this was a Robin Hood approach, robbing from the rich to give more to the poor.
In the end, however, the old system was so convoluted that no one was willing to defend it.
“The former school finance system had not really been conceptually revised since the early 1970s, when President Reagan was governor of California,” says Michael Kirst, president of the California Board of Education. “It had no relationship to student needs.”
How It Got That Way
California spends more money on education than other states — not just because of its size, but because of the complex nature of state and local finances there.
Around the country, a significant share of education dollars still comes from local property taxes. In California, though, the state itself picks up a larger-than-average chunk — nearly 60 percent of the total K-12 tab.
Traditionally, Sacramento has not only provided the funds but dictated to districts how they spend big parts of their budget. The state sent out money through more than 40 categorical grant programs, which meant that schools had to spend a certain amount of dollars on a wide variety of specific mandates, from anti-tobacco lessons to reducing class sizes for younger kids.
In addition, the complex funding formula led to lots of neighboring districts with similar student populations somehow receiving vastly different amounts of money. The whole thing had become immensely convoluted over time and “could justifiably be called lunatic,” wrote the Los Angeles Times editorial board….
Brown was able to sell the idea by giving more money to all districts. Still, superintendents in plenty of wealthier districts complain that, with their funding severely cut by the state during the recession, they should be made whole before billions per year get redirected toward poorer quarters.
Even under the old system, districts with lots of disadvantaged kids got more money, but now their budgets will increase in a big way.
“Within most legislators’ districts, they had school districts that were both, quote unquote, winners and losers,” says Margaret Weston, a research fellow at the Public Policy Institute of California. “It didn’t cut along party lines. It had Republican support, as well.”
With the new formula, every district will get a certain amount of money per student. In addition, they all will get 20 percent more for each student who is disadvantaged in some way.
The big change comes with what are called concentration grants. Districts where 55 percent or more of the student populations are poor, disabled or English learners will get 50 percent more money than the simple per-student base amount.
What drove that decision? The thinking goes that many students from poor backgrounds face challenges, but schools where they make up the dominant share of the population can be especially challenging.
The law also brings the state’s thousand-plus charter schools, many of which serve disadvantaged kids, into the regular school finance formula.
“It aligns state law with the fact that it costs more to educate these students,” says Jonathan Kaplan, senior policy analyst with the California Budget Project. http://www.npr.org/2013/08/19/212294111/california-upends-school-funding-to-give-poor-kids-a-boost

Courts are becoming the mechanism to force states to fund education https://drwilda.com/2013/01/29/courts-are-becoming-the-mechanism-to-force-states-to-fund-education/

Education funding lawsuits against states on the rise https://drwilda.com/2012/01/25/education-funding-lawsuits-against-states-on-the-rise/

Baylor University study: Unresponsive state policymakers make the racial achievement gap worse v https://drwilda.com/2013/07/09/baylor-university-study-unresponsive-state-policymakers-make-the-racial-achievement-gap-worse/

Rutgers study: Underfunding of preschool threatens at-risk children https://drwilda.com/2013/04/29/rutgers-study-underfunding-of-preschool-threatens-at-risk-children/

Where information leads to Hope. ©
Dr. Wilda.com

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Blogs by Dr. Wilda:

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http://drwildareviews.wordpress.com/

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Tags: California Education Funding, California Upends School Funding To Give Poor Kids A Boost, Disparity in Education Funding, education, Education Access, Education Funding, politics

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Categories Dr Wilda

New America Foundation report: Colleges select wealthy students for merit scholarships

12 May

Moi wrote in Race, class, and education in America:

Many educators have long recognized that the impact of social class affects both education achievement and life chances after completion of education. There are two impacts from diversity, one is to broaden the life experience of the privileged and to raise the expectations of the disadvantaged. Social class matters in not only other societies, but this one as well.

A few years back, the New York Times did a series about social class in America. That series is still relevant. Janny Scott and David Leonhardt’s overview, Shadowy Lines That Still Divide describes the challenges faced by schools trying to overcome the disparity in education. The complete series can be found at Social Class

Sam Dillion has written an insightful New York Times article, Merger of Memphis and County School Districts Revives Race and Class Challenges:

When thousands of white students abandoned the Memphis schools 38 years ago rather than attend classes with blacks under a desegregation plan fueled by busing, Joseph A. Clayton went with them. He quit his job as a public school principal to head an all-white private school and later won election to the board of the mostly white suburban district next door.

Now, as the overwhelmingly black Memphis school district is being dissolved into the majority-white Shelby County schools, Mr. Clayton is on the new combined 23-member school board overseeing the marriage. And he warns that the pattern of white flight could repeat itself, with the suburban towns trying to secede and start their own districts.

“There’s the same element of fear,” said Mr. Clayton, 79. “In the 1970s, it was a physical, personal fear. Today the fear is about the academic decline of the Shelby schools.”

“As far as racial trust goes,” Mr. Clayton, who is white, added, “I don’t think we’ve improved much since the 1970s….”

Toughest of all may be bridging the chasms of race and class. Median family income in Memphis is $32,000 a year, compared with the suburban average of $92,000; 85 percent of students in Memphis are black, compared with 38 percent in Shelby County….http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/06/education/merger-of-memphis-and-county-school-districts-revives-challenges.html?emc=eta1

Elvina Nawaguna of NBC News reports in the article, Study: Low-income students get less merit aid than wealthier classmates:

Low-income students are increasingly bypassed when colleges offer applicants financial aid, as schools compete for wealthier students who can afford rising tuition and fees, according to a public policy institute’s analysis of U.S. Department of Education data.

The study by The New America Foundation said that colleges, in their quest to advance their U.S. News & World Report rankings, are directing more financial aid to high-achieving applicants in a bid to elevate the profile of their student population.

“A lot of them (colleges) go for the same students from the rich suburban schools,” said Stephen Burd, the foundation’s education policy analyst who studied the data.

The U.S. News rankings of colleges and universities have become a popular gauge of the quality of an undergraduate and graduate institution’s education and the prestige of its degrees.

As part of their strategy to compete for the best students, colleges use merit-based aid, which does not take into account financial need. Under this strategy, institutions may, for instance, give four $5,000 awards to lure four wealthy students rather than award $20,000 to one needy student, the organization said.

While the federal government issues guidelines on distribution of its grants, it doesn’t regulate aid from an institution’s coffers. Colleges have fiercely fought efforts by lawmakers to force greater transparency in financial aid practices.

Colleges, many under tighter budgets as they offer more amenities and hire the best professors, are under pressure to raise revenues and are using tuition prices to do so.

http://www.nbcnews.com/business/study-low-income-students-get-less-merit-aid-wealthier-classmates-1C9864738

Here is the press release from New America Foundation:

NEW REPORT: Colleges Leaving Low-Income Students Behind

Schools Increasingly Using Financial Aid to Woo Wealthy Students Rather Than Help Low-Income Students Afford Tuition

Published: May 8, 2013

Washington, DC — In their relentless pursuit of prestige and revenue, American private and public four-year colleges and universities are increasingly using financial aid to attract the best and most affluent students rather than to help low-income and working-class families pay for college, according to a new report released today by the New America Foundation’s Education Policy Program.

The report presents a brand new analysis of little-examined U.S. Department of Education data showing the “net price” the lowest-income students pay after all grant aid has been exhausted. The analysis shows that hundreds of colleges expect the neediest students — those from families making $30,000 or less annually — to pay an amount equal to or even more than their families’ yearly earnings.

The report finds that over the past two decades colleges have made a dramatic switch in how they use the majority of their financial aid. Schools have gone from helping to make college more affordable for those with the greatest financial need to strategically awarding merit aid to students who can increase their standings in rankings like U.S. News & World Report and bring in more revenue. This report identifies colleges that are committed to enrolling low-income students and charging them affordable prices and others that are stingy with their admissions slots, their financial aid dollars, or both.

“Too many four-year colleges, both public and private, are failing to help the government achieve its college access mission,” Stephen Burd, author of the report, writes. “They are, instead, adding hurdles that could hamper the education progress of needy students or leave them with mountains of debt after they graduate.”

The report shows the situation is not as extreme at public universities but getting worse. One of the main ways states have dealt with dwindling state support has been to take a “high tuition, high aid” approach — raising tuition and the amount of financial aid they provide. However, this analysis finds the “high tuition, high aid” approach has been a failure for low-income students: in states such as Pennsylvania, the neediest students are being charged more than double what they are in low-tuition states.

Among the report’s findings:

• Nearly two-thirds of private nonprofit institutions charge students from the lowest income families a net price of more than $15,000. Only 11 percent charge them less than $10,000.
• Roughly one-third of public four year colleges charge the lowest-income students a net price over $10,000 and 5 percent require they come up with $15,000 or more.
• One-quarter of the public schools that charge more than $10,000 to lowest income students are in Ohio and Pennsylvania, two states that follow the high-tuition, high-aid model.
• The most expensive private college for low-income students is Santa Clara University (average net price is $46,347) and the most expensive public college for the neediest students is Rowan University in New Jersey (average net price is $20,384).

The report argues for a federal approach that follows a two-part plan laid out here:

• Offer Pell bonuses to financially strapped public and private four-year colleges that serve a substantial share of Pell Grant recipients (more than 25 percent) and graduate at least half of their students school-wide.
• Require wealthier colleges that have chosen to divert their aid to try to buy the best students so they can rise up the U.S. News rankings to match at least a share of the Pell dollars they receive.

Read the full report, “Undermining Pell: How Colleges Compete for Wealthy Students and Leave the Low-Income Behind.”

For more information or to schedule an interview, please contact Clara Hogan.

http://www.newamerica.net/pressroom/2013/new_report_colleges_leaving_low_income_students_behind

The lawyers in Brown were told that lawsuits were futile and that the legislatures would address the issue of segregation eventually when the public was ready. Meanwhile, several generations of African Americans waited for people to come around and say the Constitution applied to us as well. Generations of African Americans suffered in inferior schools. This society cannot sacrifice the lives of children by not addressing the issue of equity in school funding in a timely manner.

The next huge case, like Brown, will be about equity in education funding. It may not come this year or the next year. It, like Brown, may come several years after a Plessy. It will come. Equity in education funding is the civil rights issue of this century.

The role economic class plays in college success https://drwilda.com/2012/12/22/the-role-economic-class-plays-in-college-success/

Helping community college students to graduate https://drwilda.com/2012/02/08/helping-community-college-students-to-graduate/

The digital divide affects the college application process https://drwilda.com/2012/12/08/the-digital-divide-affects-the-college-application-process/

College readiness: What are ‘soft skills’ https://drwilda.com/2012/11/14/college-readiness-what-are-soft-skills/

Colleges rethinking who may need remedial education https://drwilda.com/2012/10/24/colleges-rethinking-who-may-need-remedial-education/

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Tags: Class, College Scholarships, Colleges Leaving Low-Income Students Behind, current-events, education, Education Equity, Education Funding, Merger of Memphis and County School Districts Revives Race and Class Challenges, New America Foundation, politics, Race, research, Schools Increasingly Using Financial Aid to Woo Wealthy Students Rather Than Help Low-Income Students Afford Tuition, Shadowy Lines That Still Divide, Social Class, Study Low-income students get less merit aid than wealthier classmates

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Courts are becoming the mechanism to force states to fund education

29 Jan

Moi wrote about education funding in Education funding lawsuits against states on the rise:

Moi has often said in posts at the blog that the next great civil rights struggle will involve access for ALL children to a good basic education. Sabra Bireda has written a report from the Center for American Progress, Funding Education Equitably https://drwilda.com/2012/01/25/education-funding-lawsuits-against-states-on-the-rise/

Andrew Usifusa writes in the Education Week article, State Finance Lawsuits Roil K-12 Funding Landscape about several lawsuits:

As state budgets slowly recover from several years of economic contraction and stagnation, significant court battles continue to play a related yet distinct role in K-12 policy, even in states where the highest courts have already delivered rulings on the subject.

This year, meanwhile, marks the 40th anniversary of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that was a turning point for the role of property taxes in financing school districts and that continues to complicate fiscal decisions for state policymakers. The 5-4 ruling, in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, held that the state did not have to justify the higher quality of education for wealthier districts that might result from their local property taxes.

In a 2008 article for the Virginia Law Review , Judge Jeffrey Sutton of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, based in Cincinnati, wrote: “For better, for worse, or for more of the same, the majority in Rodriguez tolerated the continuation of a funding system that allowed serious disparities in the quality of the education a child received based solely on the wealth of the community in which his parents happened to live or could afford to live….”

Since the 1970s, lawsuits filed in 45 states have challenged the constitutionality of school finance systems, according to the National Education Access Network, a research group that tracks lawsuits related to education finance and equity based at Teachers College, Columbia University.

DOCKET UPDATE

School funding lawsuits continue to bedevil several states still recovering from the economic downturn that began in 2007. The suits are at various stages, and concerns about the courts’ role in education finance have emerged.

Arizona
On Jan. 15, the Arizona Court of Appeals said that lawmakers were wrong to deny school funding increases to account for inflation. The court ruled that legislators did not follow a ballot measure approved by voters in 2000 that mandated K-12 funding increases for inflation.

Texas
A District Court judge is presiding over what began as four separate cases brought by hundreds of districts against the state after the legislature cut $5.4 billion from K-12 aid during its 2011 session. Districts allege that the structure of the current system creates inequalities between school systems based on wealth, and that the state has not provided the “efficient system” of public education as mandated by the state constitution.

Kansas
State Republican lawmakers indicated that they are considering changes to the state’s constitution in order to strengthen the state legislature’s power over K-12 finance and limit the state supreme court’s oversight. The move could be a significant counterpoint to a U.S. District Court ruling Jan. 11 that the state’s funding system is unconstitutional.

Colorado
Lawmakers and others are waiting for the state supreme court to rule in the Lobato v. State of Colorado case that could mandate an increase in K-12 spending by the state by anywhere between $2 billion to $4 billion annually.

Washington
Less than a year after the state supreme court ruled in McCleary v. State of Washington that the state’s K-12 funding system was constitutionally inadequate and needed to be fixed, the state’s chief justice claimed lawmakers had not done nearly enough to remedy the problem. The impact of satisfying McCleary on the court’s terms could cost the state an additional $1.4 billion in the 2013-15 budget cycle.

SOURCE: Education Week http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2013/01/23/18finance.h32.html?tkn=LWRFqQKKDXpkxTdC%2F7veHMLh%2BNzLreVfu2%2F5&cmp=clp-edweek&intc=es

Moi wrote in The next great civil rights struggle: Disparity in education funding: Plessy v. Ferguson established the principle of “separate but equal” in race issues. Brown v.Board of Education which overturned the principle of “separate but equal.” would not have been necessary, but for Plessy.See also, the history of Brown v. Board of Education

If one believes that all children, regardless of that child’s status have a right to a good basic education and that society must fund and implement policies, which support this principle. Then, one must discuss the issue of equity in education. Because of the segregation, which resulted after Plessy, most folks focus their analysis of Brown almost solely on race. The issue of equity was just as important. The equity issue was explained in terms of unequal resources and unequal access to education.

I know that the lawyers in Brown were told that lawsuits were futile and that the legislatures would address the issue of segregation eventually when the public was ready. Meanwhile, several generations of African Americans waited for people to come around and say the Constitution applied to us as well. Generations of African Americans suffered in inferior schools. This state cannot sacrifice the lives of children by not addressing the issue of equity in school funding in a timely manner.

Where information leads to Hope. © Dr. Wilda.com

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

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COMMENTS FROM AN OLD FART© http://drwildaoldfart.wordpress.com/

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Tags: Brown v. Board of Education, Center for American Progress, civil rights struggle, Education Access, Education Equity, Education Funding, Education Lawsuit, Funding Education Equitably, government, Plessy v. Ferguson, politics, State Finance Lawsuits Roil K-12 Funding Landscape

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A new take on school finance from State Budget Solutions

16 Sep

A new report from State Budget Solutions, Throwing Money at Education isn’t working has focused discussion on school finance. Moi discussed school finance in Education funding lawsuits against states on the rise:

From the executive summary of Throwing Money at Education Isn’t Working:

Throwing Money At Education Isn’t Working

State Budget Solutions | by Kristen De Pena | September 12, 2012

Download the full report here: Throwing Money at Education Isn’t Working

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY of THROWING MONEY AT EDUCATION ISN’T WORKING

Education funding remains a major issue in the United States. One controversial aspect is whether increasing funding for education guarantees better student performance.

State Budget Solutions examined national trends in education from 2009-2011, including state-by-state analysis of education spending as a percentage of total state spending, and a comparison of average graduation rates and average ACT scores per state. The study shows that states that spend the most do not have the highest average ACT test scores, nor do they have the highest average graduation rates.

The State of State Education: National Trends

Each year, the United State spends billions of dollars on education. In 2010, total annual spending on education exceeded $809 billion dollars. Although it is unclear whether that figure is adjusted for inflation, that amount is higher than any other industrialized nation, and more than the spending of France, Germany, Japan, Brazil, the United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia combined. From 1970 to 2012, total average per pupil expenditures in the U.S. has more than doubled.

Despite higher levels of funding, student test scores are substantially lower in the United States than in many other nations. American students scored an average of 474 on a 600-point scale, performing only slightly better in science, with an average score of 489. By comparison, Canadian students scored an average of 527 and 534 on the same tests, and Finnish students scored 548 and 563, respectively.

The problem of generally low performance on standardized tests in the U.S. is in addition to the problem of budget shortfalls that both states and the federal government continue to face. The federal deficit for the first ten months of the 2012 fiscal year (ending Sept. 1, 2012) totaled $974 billion. The federal budget deficit increased $70 billion in July 2012 alone, and is on track to top $1 trillion for the fourth straight year. Likewise, a State Budget Solutions report revealed that aggregate state debt exceeded $4 trillion in 2012. Hundreds of thousands of students rely on education funded by states with the largest deficits, including California, New York, New Jersey, and Illinois.

High Spending, Below Average Performance in Texas, New York, & California

Texas, New York, and California consistently spend the most on education, well beyond the amount of any other state. This year (2012), California is spending $108.3 billion, Texas is spending $76.6 billion, and New York is spending $72.8 billion. The national average is $17.7 billion.

Between 2009 and 2011, all three states fell below the national graduation rate averages every single year. Although California and New York consistently scored above the national ACT average score, Texas fell behind again, scoring below the national average for three consecutive years.

Low Spending, Split Performance in Alaska

In 2006, the Alaska legislature approved the Alaska School Performance Incentive Program (AKSPIP) to combat consistently low student performance in education. The program served as an incentive for school employees to create a learning environment where student achievement substantially increased.

In the 2008-09 school year, the state paid $305,875 in bonuses to principals, teachers, and support staff for students’ success in eleven different schools. During the 2006-07 school year, the program paid $1,850,493 in bonuses, followed by $1,061,944 in 2007-08. According to the state, the program failed to win significant support because the targets were too challenging and teachers believed that bonuses should not be based exclusively on student performance.

Despite the initiative, Alaska consistently spent the least amount in the nation on education as a percentage of the state’s total spending over the three years studied. The state’s graduation rates were consistently below the national average. In 2009, the graduation rate was just 66.5 percent, followed by 69.1 percent in 2010, and 69.1 percent in 2011.

Analysis & Solutions

To successfully educate students, sustainable, reliable, and adequate educational funding is necessary. Less clear are the particulars of the spending, especially with regard to other factors that influence student performance. “Throwing money at the problem” is a commonly suggested solution to improving education; in fact, 60 percent of Google results for the search “throwing money” refer to education. But despite vastly increasing levels of funding, money alone does not change education or help to achieve our national education goals.

Better Allocation of Funds

Allocation of funds most certainly plays a role in student success. According to the results of this study, however, the amount of government spending alone does not dictate student performance outcomes. One reason for this inconsistency is that federal funding is tied to federally developed performance standards, which results in two major problems.

First, as a result of centralization, states have less authority to develop state-specific metrics to accurately measure education initiatives. Localized control results in more narrowly tailored metrics and a better understanding of failure and success based on those metrics. Oversight at a local level is more practical and more effective than federal oversight.

Second, tying federal funding to “performance-based” standards rarely results in the allocation of funds to the students and schools with the highest needs. Instead, schools that perform well get additional funding and schools that do not perform well are financially punished, making it more difficult for underperforming schools to improve their status.

Furthermore, states, school districts, and school boards all allocate funding in different ways, making it difficult to know where the money is going and what it is funding. For example, in March 2012, the Arizona Department of Education mistakenly allocated funds to schools across Arizona after the Department interpreted a state law incorrectly. The DOE did not make the districts return the money that they incorrectly received, even though it deprived other districts from adequate funding. Increasing state and school district transparency will increase accountability and encourage responsible spending.

Avoiding Waste & Fraud

Increasing educational spending transparency helps ensure that funding is reaching the right hands. In 2009, the nonpartisan Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report concluding that the Department of Education lacks a common system to track and manage potential misuse of funds. According to the Congressional Education and Workforce Committee, the GAO report comes on the heels of documented failures by the White House to properly account for how the DOE spent ARRA funds, particularly regarding oversight of $100 billion administered by the DOE.

These shortcomings ultimately result in the failure to effectively serve students. States prioritizing transparency and oversight initiatives often do better than states that fail to do so. In 2009, 2010, and 2011, Minnesota ranked in the top five states with the highest graduation rates. An evaluation of the ten largest school districts in Minnesota by Sunshine Review resulted in an overall “B” grade in transparency. Every single district published an annual budget and an annual audit, giving students, parents, teachers, and policymakers a clear idea about where and how education dollars are spent.

In comparison, Nevada had the worst average graduation rate in the nation from 2009 to 2011. Sunshine Review’s evaluation of the seventeen largest school districts in Nevada resulted in an overall “D” grade in transparency. Just nine of the seventeen school districts posted an annual budget, and only ten school districts posted an audit. More importantly, only two school districts published information informing the public about how to request public records unavailable on the schools websites. The lack of transparency and internal and external oversight at the state and federal levels directly contributes to wasteful and fraudulent spending, and ultimately deprives students of an adequate education.

Scratch Performance-Based Rewards

In the ten years since No Child Left Behind became federal law, it is clear that one-size-fits-all testing, sanctioning under-performing schools and rewarding high-performing schools, undermines actual education efforts. Critics of the policy, and of other performance-based policies such as the ASKPIP program (see Alaska), persuasively argue that these standards damage true education (a result of “teaching to the test”), narrowing the effects most severely on poor children in failing schools. Because so much emphasis is placed on student performance on standardized tests, teachers are forced to narrow the curriculum to focus primarily on the limited skills that these tests measure. Test-based incentives also do not increase the average academic performance of students.

Conclusion

Based on the findings in the full study, higher levels of funding do not ensure higher graduation rates, nor does it directly correlate to higher test scores on the ACT. Improving education requires multifaceted efforts, not solely increasing funding. http://www.statebudgetsolutions.org/publications/detail/throwing-money-at-education-isnt-working#ixzz26egDXndk

Matt Cohen has a contra opinion at Huffington Post.

Cohen argues in the opinion piece, The Myth of ‘Throwing Money at the Problem’:

Here’s the odd thing about “throwing money.” The phrase only seems to be used when people are talking about education. I’ve never heard this argument used in any business context. Nobody talks about “throwing money.” Instead, we either call it investing (if you have the money) or financing (if you have an initiative that needs funding).

If you do a quick Google search for the phrase “you can’t solve the problem by throwing money at it” (and it’s variations) you’ll see that approximately 60 percent of the time that expression comes up is in reference to education. The remaining 40 percent of instances are divided amongst other areas of the economy. The phrase doesn’t usually get tossed around many corporate boardrooms, so the other problems that can’t be fixed with money all seem to also be societal problems. Apparently, money is also powerless to make any dent in areas such as homelessness or children living below the poverty line.

In every other venture I can think of, money can be used to create change and to achieve goals. Is it possible that I’ve discovered an exception to the principles of economics? Is education immune to money? It would be nice if that were true — a Nobel Prize in economics would look great on my resume. Sadly, I think I’ve merely stumbled upon a tired and baseless talking point.

What would happen if we really did throw money at the serious shortcomings within the education system? The entire enterprise of public education is so shamefully underfunded, it would be hard to find an area where more funding wouldn’t yield a positive return on the investment. It’s time to warm up our pitching arms and start throwing some serious cash at the problem. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-cohen/the-myth-of-throwing-mone_b_857284.html

Disparity in education funding is as much an issue as accountability in how money is spent for education.

Moi wrote in The next great civil rights struggle: Disparity in education funding: Plessy v. Ferguson established the principle of “separate but equal” in race issues. Brown v.Board of Education which overturned the principle of “separate but equal.” would not have been necessary, but for Plessy. See also, the history of Brown v. Board of Education

If one believes that all children, regardless of that child’s status have a right to a good basic education and that society must fund and implement policies, which support this principle. Then, one must discuss the issue of equity in education. Because of the segregation, which resulted after Plessy, most folks focus their analysis of Brown almost solely on race. The issue of equity was just as important. The equity issue was explained in terms of unequal resources and unequal access to education.

Dr. Wilda says this about that ©

Tags: economy, education, Education Disparity, Education Equity, Education Funding, Funding Education Equitably, politics, State Budget Solutions, The Myth of 'Throwing Money at the Problem', Throwing Money At Education Isn't Working

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Center for American Progress report: Disparity in education spending for education of children of color

22 Aug

In 3rd world America: Money changes everything, moi said:

Sabrina Tavernise wrote an excellent New York Times article, Education Gap Grows Between Rich and Poor, Studies Say:

It is a well-known fact that children from affluent families tend to do better in school. Yet the income divide has received far less attention from policy makers and government officials than gaps in student accomplishment by race.

Now, in analyses of long-term data published in recent months, researchers are finding that while the achievement gap between white and black students has narrowed significantly over the past few decades, the gap between rich and poor students has grown substantially during the same period.

“We have moved from a society in the 1950s and 1960s, in which race was more consequential than family income, to one today in which family income appears more determinative of educational success than race,” said Sean F. Reardon, a Stanford University sociologist. Professor Reardon is the author of a study that found that the gap in standardized test scores between affluent and low-income students had grown by about 40 percent since the 1960s, and is now double the testing gap between blacks and whites. https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/02/11/3rd-world-america-money-changes-everything/

The increased rate of poverty has profound implications if this society believes that ALL children have the right to a good basic education.

Daniel de Vise has written the thought provoking Washington Post article, State grant aid goes increasingly to the wealthy:

But what the report really advocates is that all states base their grant programs primarily on need. Its top recommendation: “Focus resources on students whose chance of enrolling and succeeding in college will be most improved by the receipt of state support.”

A surprisingly large number of states don’t do that….http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/college-inc/post/state-grant-aid-goes-increasingly-to-the-wealthy/2012/05/15/gIQARIvHRU_blog.html

The report de Vise refers to is Beyond Need and Merit: Strengthening State Grant Programs, which was released by Brookings Institute (Brookings) .

State Profiles

Downloads

Beyond Need and Merit: Strengthening State Grant Programs

1.2 MB

Inventory of State Grants

210 KB

http://www.brookings.edu/research/reports/2012/05/08-grants-chingos-whitehurst

The Center for American Progress (CAP) has just issued the report, Students of color are being shortchanged across the country when compared to their white peers which analyzes disparity in education spending.

Here is the press release for the CAP report:

Students of color are being shortchanged across the country when compared to their white peers.

By Ary Spatig-Amerikaner | August 22, 2012

Download the report:
PDF

Download introduction & summary:
PDF

Read it in your browser:
Scribd

Endnotes and citations are included in the PDF version of this report.

In 1954 the Supreme Court declared that public education is “a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.”That landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education stood for the proposition that the federal government would no longer allow states and municipalities to deny equal educational opportunity to a historically oppressed racial minority. Ruling unanimously, the justices overturned the noxious concept that “separate” education could ever be “equal.”

Yet today, nearly 60 years later, our schools remain separate and unequal. Almost 40 percent of black and Hispanic students attend schools where more than 90 percent of students are nonwhite. The average white student attends a school where 77 percent of his or her peers are also white. Schools today are “as segregated as they were in the 1960s before busing began.” We are living in a world in which schools are patently separate.

In Brown the Court focused on the detrimental impact of legal separation—the fact that official segregation symbolized and reinforced the degraded status of blacks in America. Today’s racial separation in schools may not have the formal mandate of local law, but it just as surely reflects and reinforces lingering status differences between whites and nonwhites by enabling a system of public education funding that shortchanges students of color.

Separate will always be unequal. But just how unequal is the education we offer our students of color today? This paper answers this question using one small but important measure—per-pupil state and local spending. This fraction of spending is certainly not the only useful measure of educational opportunity. How we spend our money is perhaps more important.But newly released data give us the opportunity to shed new light, specifically on inequity in spending from state and local sources.

For the first time ever, the U.S. Department of Education in 2009 collected school-level expenditure data that includes real teacher salaries. Amazingly, this had never been done before. I use these data to examine per-pupil spending in public schools, finding that:

Students of color are being shortchanged across the country when compared to their white peers.

The traditional explanation—that variation in schools’ per-pupil spending stems almost entirely from different property-tax bases between school districts—is inaccurate. In fact, approximately 40 percent of variation in per-pupil spending occurs within school districts.

Changing a particular provision of federal education law—closing the so-called comparability loophole—would result in districts making more equitable expenditures on students of color.

Variation within a district is largely due to district budgeting policies that ignore how much money teachers actually earn. When veteran teachers elect to move to low-need schools in richer, whiter neighborhoods, they bring higher salaries to those schools. New teachers who tend to start out in high-need schools, serving many students of color and poor students, earn comparatively low salaries. This leads to significantly lower per-pupil spending in the schools with the highest concentrations of nonwhite students.

To date, the size of the problem has been difficult to measure due to a lack of data. Other researchers have made important contributions to these conversations by documenting a pattern of underinvestment in minority students, but they have been hampered by a frustrating lack of information. In 2009 the Obama administration showed that it recognized the importance of this issue by including a requirement in the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act of 2009 that districts report actual state and local spending on school-level personnel and nonpersonnel resources in school year 2008–09. In December 2011 the administration released the information to the public.

My analysis based on these new data calls into question a specific federal policy that is supposed to guard against within-district inequities. Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act is the federal government’s primary contribution to public education for students living in poverty. In order to receive Title I money, school districts have to promise to provide educational services to their higher-poverty schools that are “comparable” to those provided to the lower-poverty schools.

School districts across the country routinely tell the federal government that they are meeting this requirement. But the law explicitly requires districts to exclude teacher salary differentials tied to experience when determining comparability compliance. This is a major exclusion because experience is a chief driver of teachers’ salaries. This misleading process leads to a misleading result—districts think they are providing equal spending on high-need schools and low-need schools, even though they aren’t. This problem has been frequently called the comparability loophole.

The comparability requirement is, similar to most federal education law, silent on race. This paper builds upon the well-documented correlation between people of color and people living in poverty to assess the ongoing impact of the comparability loophole on students of color.

In the first part of this paper, I paint a detailed picture of what is happening for our students of color across the country. The second part models two alternative futures in which state and local spending experience a one-time growth of approximately 4 percent. In the first model, present policy trends continue—we do not close the comparability loophole. In the second, we close the loophole by “leveling up” spending in schools that are currently being shortchanged. Table 1 presents the top-line findings.

Ary Spatig-Amerikaner has a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s degree in public policy from the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California, Berkeley.

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In 3rd world America: The economy affects the society of the future, moi said:

One of the major contributors to poverty in third world nations is limited access to education opportunities. Without continued sustained investment in education in this country, we are the next third world country. All over the country plans are being floated to cut back the school year or eliminate programs which help the most disadvantaged.

In The next great civil rights struggle: Disparity in education funding moi said:

If one believes that all children, regardless of that child’s status have a right to a good basic education and that society must fund and implement policies, which support this principle. Then, one must discuss the issue of equity in education. Because of the segregation, which resulted after Plessy, most folks focus their analysis of Brown almost solely on race. The issue of equity was just as important. The equity issue was explained in terms of unequal resources and unequal access to education.

Report: Black students more likely to be suspended https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/08/07/report-black-students-more-likely-to-be-suspended/

Is there a ‘model minority’ ?? https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/06/23/is-there-a-model-minority/

Book: Inequality in America affects education outcome https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/06/10/book-inequality-in-america-affects-education-outcome/

Tags: Beyond Need and Merit Strengthening State Grant Programs, Disparity in Education, Education Access, Education Funding, Education Gap Grows Between Rich and Poor Studies Say, Equal Opportunity, State grant aid goes increasingly to the wealthy, Students of color are being shortchanged across the country when compared to their white peers

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Categories Dr Wilda

National Education Policy Center study compares spending by charters and public schools

7 May

Charter schools invoke passion on both sides of the argument as to whether they constitute good public policy. A good analysis of the issues can be found at Public Policy Forum Charter Schools: Issues and Outlooks presented by Judy Doesschate and William Lake http://www.rockinst.org/pdf/public_policy_forums/2007-03-28-public_policy_forum_charter_schools_issues_and_outlook_presented_by_judy_doesschate_and_william_lake.pdf Another good summary of the arguments for and against school choice can be found at Learning Matters analysis which came from the PBS program , News Hour. In DISCUSS: Is School Choice Good Or Bad For Public Education? several educators examine school choice issues. http://learningmatters.tv/blog/web-series/discuss-is-school-choice-good-or-bad-for-public-education/8575/

The National Education Policy Center examines one aspect of the charter school debate, the question of equitable funding between charters and public schools. The conclusion is the data does not support one conclusion. Here is the press release:

Contact: Bruce Baker, (732) 932-7496, x8232, bruce.baker@gse.rutgers.edu
William J. Mathis, (802) 383-0058, wmathis@sover.net

URL for this press release: http://tinyurl.com/d8dlmeb

BOULDER, CO (May 3, 2012) — Do charter schools live up to their supporters’ claim that they deliver a better education for less money?

While previous research has focused on the first half of that claim – education quality — a new report published by the National Education Policy Center examines the second half – what charters spend.

Schools operated by major charter management organizations (CMOs) generally spend more than surrounding public schools, according to Spending by the Major Charter Management Organizations: Comparing Charter School & Local Public District Financial Resources in New York, Ohio and Texas.

The finding is significant, especially when programs such as the U.S. Department’s “Race to the Top” are directing more resources to charters deemed to be successful. The NEPC report presents new research on this question by Rutgers University Education Professor Bruce Baker, working with University of Colorado Boulder doctoral students Ken Libby and Kathryn Wiley. The research team examined spending in New York City, Ohio and Texas.

“Charter school finances are hard to measure,” says Baker. “Charters generally receive both public and private funds. Also, in-kind assistance and resources from districts and states to charters vary greatly. Yet we can see that the most successful charters, such as KIPP and the Achievement First schools, have substantially deeper pockets than nearby traditional schools.”

The report explains that most studies highlighting or documenting a successful charter school have sidestepped or downplayed cost implications while focusing on specific programs and strategies in those schools. The broad conclusion across these studies is that charter schools or traditional public schools can produce dramatic improvements to student outcomes in the short- and long-term by implementing “no excuses” strategies and perhaps wrap-around services. Most charter school studies conclude that these strategies either come with potentially negligible costs, or that higher costs, if any, are worthwhile since they yield a substantial return.

But according to Spending by the Major Charter Management Organizations, a “marginal expense” may be larger than it sounds. An additional $1,837 expense in Houston for a KIPP charter school, where the average middle school operating expenditure per pupil is $7,911, equals a 23 to 30 percent cost increase.

“A 30 percent increase in funding is a substantial increase by most people’s definition,” says Baker.

The study compares per-pupil spending of charter schools operated by CMOs to the spending in nearby district schools. The report’s authors examined three years of data, including information on school-level spending per pupil, school size, grade ranges and student populations served. For charter schools, the report’s authors drew spending data from government (and authorizer) reports as well as IRS non-profit financial filings (IRS 990s). Notably, the data from these two different sources matched only for New York City; the data reported for Texas and Ohio from the two sources varied considerably.

The study found many high-profile charter network schools to be outspending similar district schools in New York City and Texas. But it also found instances where charter network schools are spending less than similar district schools, particularly in Ohio. In Ohio, charters across the board spend less than district schools in the same city.

In contrast, KIPP, Achievement First and Uncommon Schools charter schools in New York City, spend substantially more ($2,000 to $4,300 per pupil) than similar district schools. Given that the average spending per pupil was around $12,000 to $14,000 citywide, a nearly $4,000 difference in spending amounts to an increase of some 30 percent.

Similarly, some charter chains in Texas, such as KIPP, spend substantially more per pupil than district schools in the same city and serving similar populations. In some Texas cities (and at the middle school level), these charters spend around 30 to 50 percent more based on state reported current expenditures. If the data from IRS filings are used, these charters are found to spend 50 to 100 percent more.

The National Education Policy Center (NEPC) at the University of Colorado Boulder produced Spending by the Major Charter Management Organizations: Comparing Charter School & Local Public District Financial Resources in New York, Ohio and Texas, with funding from the Albert Shanker Institute (http://www.shankerinstitute.org/) and from the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice (http://www.greatlakescenter.org).

Here is a portion of executive summary:

Overall, charter spending variation is large as is the spending of traditional public schools. Comparative spending between the two sectors is mixed, with many high profile charter network schools outspending similar district schools in New York City and Texas, but other charter network schools spending less than similar district schools, particularly in Ohio.

We find that in New York City, KIPP, Achievement First and Uncommon Schools charter schools spend substantially more ($2,000 to $4,300 per pupil) than similar district schools. Given that the average spending per pupil was around $12,000 to $14,000 citywide, a nearly $4,000 difference in spending amounts to an increase of some 30%. In Ohio, charters across the board spend less than district schools in the same city. And in Texas, some charter chains such as KIPP spend substantially more per pupil than district schools in the same city and serving similar populations, around 30 to 50% more in some cities (and at the middle school level) based on state reported current expenditures, and 50 to 100% more based on IRS filings. Even in New York where we have the highest degree of confidence in the match between our IRS data and Annual Financial Report Data, we remain unconvinced that we are accounting fully for all charter school expenditures.

Here is a portion of the conclusion:

Conclusions and Implications

These analyses take an important step forward in comparing charter school spending to traditional public schools serving similar children, in similar grades and in the same city, and across multiple contexts. Further, we are able to make comparisons, with varying degrees of success, across three distinct charter school environments, based on data covering numerous major Charter Management Organizations and individual schools.

To no surprise, what we find is that charter school spending relative to public school spending varies widely. It varies widely partly because charter school spending itself varies and partly because the spending of surrounding schools varies across contexts. We find that in New York City, no charter network included in our analysis systematically spends less per pupil than comparable NYC public schools. Most spend more, and some spend substantially more. KIPP, Achievement First and Uncommon schools spend 20% to 30% more per pupil than similar traditional public schools in the city.

This finding is consistent with other data on charter school finance in New York City. First, the Independent Budget Office reports discussed above indicate that co-located charter schools receive slightly higher public subsidy levels than traditional public schools in the city. We make our comparisons against traditional public schools serving the same grade level and similar populations. Charter schools in NYC have much lower special population concentrations and city schools with lower special education shares spend less than the citywide average. Further, charter schools in our sample raise substantial additional philanthropy, above and beyond the public subsidy level. These margins of additional expenditure are also consistent with our summary and critique of the poorly-documented accounts of Fryer and colleagues regarding New York City charter schools.

Our findings regarding charter schools in Texas and Ohio are more mixed, perhaps because they appear to be hampered by data inconsistencies. We are relatively confident in the finding that Ohio charter schools appear to be spending less than otherwise similar traditional public schools in the same Ohio cities, but not as confident that we have captured precisely the magnitude of the gap, since IRS filing data appear to incompletely capture charter spending in Ohio. In Texas, IRS filing data do consistently report higher expenditures than state documented current expenditures, as expected. But, there are huge differences in spending across Texas charter schools, with some spending much less than district schools and others spending much more….

The one charter management organization that operates across settings—KIPP—consistently spends more than neighboring district schools regardless of setting, but with some variation by grade level (note that we lacked sufficient data on the Ohio KIPP school). That said, Ohio and Texas are likely among the best cases for conducting such analyses because data are available on school site expenditures. In other states, these types of analyses are simply not yet possible. And this matters if we’re to get a grasp on not only “what works,” but the equally important question of how much it costs.

The road to painting a clearer picture of charter school spending and the “costs” of charter models should take two different but concurrent paths forward. First, we must continue to make strides in improving the precision with which we are able to compare marginal spending differences across organizational units like schools or districts. Put simply, we need more comparable spending measures. We need such measures in order to make more accurate judgments about the relative efficiency of charter schools and about the relative equity of their available resources. One cannot accurately compare the relative efficiency in producing student outcomes, of one set of schools to another, where the spending measure for one set of schools is incomplete or where the spending measure for the other set of schools may include expenditures on the children in the first set. Similarly, one cannot make reasonable judgments about resource equity across children attending different types of schools where resource measures are incomplete and beneficiaries of resources are unclear.

Second, beyond looking at average expenditure differences by schools we must also begin to dig deeper into understanding the cost structure of providing specific programs and services—most notably, those programs and services that work, or that make successful charter schools tick. Determining cost structure requires: breaking the expenditures down into their parts, rather than viewing them as a whole; figuring out which programs, strategies or reforms are causing improved outcomes; determining the ingredients of successful strategies—the people, materials, supplies, equipment, physical space, and time it takes to implement these strategies; and then, calculating the cost of each factor and the cumulative cost of putting it all in place.

The substantial variation in resources introduced into urban education systems by the emergence of well-funded and less-well-funded charter schools creates significant equity concerns. Certainly cities like Houston and New York have long histories of offering competitive district-operated magnet schools of choice that have received more resources than other city schools. But these cities have also in the past decade begun to tackle this issue and design within-district resource allocation formulas intended to improve funding equity and predictability across schools.50 The press for improved within-district equity came in part from public pressure to deconstruct the system of elitism which revolved around academic competition for access to better resources. The emergence of well-endowed charter schools that are oversubscribed and have long waiting lists has replaced the old system with one in which access to more adequate educational resources is now contingent on winning a lottery.http://www.greatlakescenter.org/docs/Policy_Briefs/Baker_CharterSpending.pdf

Citation:

Baker, B.D., Libby, K., & Wiley, K. (2012). Spending by the Major Charter Management Organizations: Comparing charter school and local public district financial resources in New York, Ohio, and Texas. Boulder, CO: National Education Policy Center. Retrieved [date] from http://nepc.colorado.edu/publication/spending-major-charter.

This material is provided free of cost to NEPC’s readers, who may make non-commercial use of the material as long as NEPC and its author(s) are credited as the source. For inquiries about commercial use, please contact NEPC at nepc@colorado.edu.

There is no one “magic bullet” or Holy Grail in education. There is what works to produce academic achievement in a given population of students.

The Center for Education Reform releases 2012 charter school law guide https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/04/04/the-center-for-education-reform-releases-2012-charter-school-law-guide/

Tags: Charter School, Charter School Funding, DISCUSS: Is School Choice Good Or Bad For Public Education?, Education Funding, National Education Policy Center, Spending by the Major Charter Management Organizations

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Categories Dr Wilda

Education funding lawsuits against states on the rise

25 Jan

Moi has often said in posts at the blog that the next great civil rights struggle will involve access for ALL children to a good basic education. Sabra Bireda has written a report from the Center for American Progress, Funding Education Equitably

The old axiom that the rich get richer certainly plays out in the American classroom—often to the detriment of achieving academic success. Data on intradistrict funding inequities in many large school districts confirm what most would guess—high-poverty schools actually receive less money per pupil than more affluent schools.1 These funding inequities have real repercussions for the quality of education offered at high-poverty schools and a district’s ability to overcome the achievement gap between groups of students defined by family income or ethnicity.

The source of these funding inequities is not a deliberate scheme designed to steer more state and local funds to affluent schools. Rather it is often the result of an accumulation of higher-paid, more senior teachers working in low-poverty schools. High-poverty schools typically employ less-experienced, lower-paid teachers, thereby drawing down less of the district’s funds. The imbalance in funding created by this situation can total hundreds of thousands of dollars school by school.2 Archaic budgeting practices that track positions instead of actual school expenditures only serve to reinforce this inequity.

Aside from concerns about the inequitable distribution of veteran and novice teachers across schools, students attending high-poverty schools actually need more funding to achieve at the level of their wealthier counterparts.3 The federal government recognizes this fact with its allocation of federal funds under Title

I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, or ESEA. One condition of receiving Title I funds is that districts allocate state and local funds equitably to non-Title I and Title I schools before spending federal monies. The “comparability” provision was implemented to ensure that schools spend Title I funds on services meant to enhance educational opportunities for students at high-poverty schools and not to make up for unfair shares of state and local resources stemming from conventional management and budgeting practices.

The comparability provision should be a strong tool to correct the funding disparities created by an inequitable distribution of higher- and lower-paid teachers. But for years, districts have been able to evade true comparability between schools due to a loophole in the law. The loophole allows districts to demonstrate compliance without comparing the amount of actual dollars spent at each school. Instead, districts can show comparability by placing equal numbers of teachers, on a per pupil basis, at high- and low-poverty schools.

If a district does compare per-pupil expenditures, for example, the district can use a district-average teacher salary in calculations in place of actual salaries in school budgets. This common budgeting practice masks significant funding inequities. Under the current provision, districts can continue to receive Title I money even as their most high-poverty schools are deprived of fair shares of local and state funds.

The issues brought out by Bireda’s report are just one of a host of reasons why there must be equitable education funding.

Sean Cavanagh reports in the Education Week article, Lawsuits Say States Fail to Meet K-12 Funding Duties:

Even as they struggle to climb out of deep financial holes, states are facing lawsuits that contend they don’t meet their constitutions’ requirements to provide sufficient funding to districts and fail to provide resources for disadvantaged schools and student populations.

Ongoing or recently decided legal battles in Colorado, Texas, Washington state, and elsewhere underscore the challenges confronting states that have been battered by the extended economic downturn and are only beginning to see their revenues improve. The cases also highlight the political and ideological divides over school funding in many states, with some governors and lawmakers choosing to balance budgets by making deep cuts in spending—including for K-12—rather than raise taxes.

One of the more dramatic fights is taking shape in Texas, where four separate lawsuits—brought by an assortment of poor, middle-income, and wealthy districts, along with advocacy groups—have been challenging different aspects of the school finance system. Those cases are playing out in the shadow of deep cuts, more than $5 billion by some estimates, that lawmakers imposed last year on the state’s schools—reductions that school officials say have laid bare the flaws in the current system.

Although the outcomes of lawsuits in a number of states are not likely to be known for some time, the cases could result in courts’ directing legislatures to make fixes to school finance systems, as was the case in Washington state….

At least a dozen states are facing lawsuits that challenge some aspects of their funding systems, estimates Mr. Rebell, who is now the executive director of the Campaign for Educational Equity, at Teachers College, Columbia University, a nonprofit organization that advocates for fair funding across districts….

Risky Cuts

States may be especially vulnerable if they have made budget-related cuts, such as reducing instructional time, that courts believe disproportionately affect disadvantaged students, said James W. Guthrie, a senior fellow at the George W. Bush Institute, located in Dallas at the former president’s center. He expects the number of school finance lawsuits to increase as states struggle financially…

In Washington, that state’s supreme court ruled this month that the state is not living up to school funding requirements in its constitution. It directed the legislature to correct the situation over time, and it said it would monitor its work.

Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire, a Democrat, has said she agrees with the court that the state must revamp its funding system. Changes are crucial, given recent, deep cuts to K-12 funding, said the governor’s spokeswoman, Karina Shagren. “She’s always said that the first dollars she gets go to education.”

http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2012/01/18/17finance_ep.h31.html?tkn=RPLFPmDPczvaOiPOI3pQu1h8jTMR7SG1FrRU&intc=es

Here are some resources from The National Education Access Network:

Educational Inequity and Inadequacy

Resources on Inequity and Inadequacy in America’s Schools

More than 50 years after Brown v. Board of Education, there remain enormous inequities and inadequacies in the resources and funding provided to America’s schools. These inequities and inadequacies tend to favor wealthier, suburban school districts and often prevent students in urban areas, students from low-income backgrounds, and students from minority backgrounds from having an equal and meanginful educational opportunity. Here are some resources that outline these problems.

In May 2002, Michael A. Rebell testified before United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions during their hearing entitled “America’s Schools: Providing Equal Opportunity or Still Separate and Unequal.” His full testimony (PDF) provides a wealth of information on school funding inequities and inadequacies.

Issue Area Resources:

Funding: The Education Trust publishes a report every year entitled “The Funding Gap.” Here is the latest report, “The Funding Gap: 2005” (PDF).

Teacher Quality: The Education Trust published a report in June 2006 on the gap in teaching quality between higher- and lower-income districts entitled, “Teaching Inequality” (PDF).

Facilities:

The Building Educational Success Together collaborative published a report in October 2006 on facilities inadequacies, entitled, “Growth and Disparity: A Decade of U.S. Public School Construction” (PDF).

The Education Law Center publication “Safe and Adequate” (PDF) addresses how various states have used litigation to address facilities inadequacies.

Litigation-related Resources:

There are many cases from state courts where the court decision lists the ways in which education funding is inadequate.

For detailed background on the “adequacy” movement, read Courts and Kids: Pursuing Educational Equity through the State Courts (University of Chicago Press, 2009) by Michael A. Rebell.

For a more detailed historical background on school funding “adequacy” lawsuits, read “Education Adequacy, Democracy, and the Courts” (PDF), by Michael A. Rebell.

The first major school funding “adequacy” case is the 1989 Rose case from Kentucky. It is the “classic” ruling citing school funding inadequacies: Full Text of Decision | Background

Other major decisions include:

The 2003 New York state high court’s ruling in the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit: PDF of Decision | Background

The 1990 New Jersey Supreme Court decision in Abbott II : Full Text | Background

The 2010 Washington State Supreme Court decision in McCleary: PDF of Decision | Background

Other good sources include:

The 2001 Supreme Court ruling in New York’s Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit: Full Text of Decision | Background

The 2003 trial court ruling in Kansas’s Montoy v. State lawsuit: PDF of Decision | Summary of Decision

The 1997 Ohio Supreme Court ruling in Ohio’s DeRolph lawsuit: Full Text of Decision | Background

Last updated April 2010

All children have a right to a good basic education.

Tags: Education Funding, Equity, Funding Education Equitably, Lawsuits Say States Fail to Meet K-12 Funding Duties:, The National Education Access Network

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Categories Dr Wilda

The next great civil rights struggle: Disparity in education funding

2 Dec

Plessy v. Ferguson established the principle of “separate but equal” in race issues. Brown v. Board of Education which overturned the principle of “separate but equal.” would not have been necessary, but for Plessy. See also, the history of Brown v. Board of Education

If one believes that all children, regardless of that child’s status have a right to a good basic education and that society must fund and implement policies, which support this principle. Then, one must discuss the issue of equity in education. Because of the segregation, which resulted after Plessy, most folks focus their analysis of Brown almost solely on race. The issue of equity was just as important. The equity issue was explained in terms of unequal resources and unequal access to education.

Sabra Bireda has a report from the Center for American Progress,Funding Education Equitably

The old axiom that the rich get richer certainly plays out in the American classroom—often to the detriment of achieving academic success. Data on intradistrict funding inequities in many large school districts confirm

what most would guess—high-poverty schools actually receive less money per pupil than more affluent schools.1 These funding inequities have real repercussions for the quality of education offered at high-poverty schools and a district’s ability to overcome the achievement gap between groups of students defined by family income or ethnicity.

The source of these funding inequities is not a deliberate scheme designed to steer more state and local funds to affluent schools. Rather it is often the result of an accumulation of higher-paid, more senior teachers working in low-poverty schools. High-poverty schools typically employ less-experienced, lower-paid teachers, thereby drawing down less of the district’s funds. The imbalance in funding created by this situation can total hundreds of thousands of dollars school by school.2 Archaic budgeting practices that track positions instead of actual school expenditures only serve to reinforce this inequity.

Bireda’s findings are supported by a U.S. Department of Education (Education Department) report.

In the report, Comparability of State and Local Expenditures Among Schools Within Districts: A Report From the Study of School-Level Expenditures, the Education Department finds:

For the study, Education Department researchers analyzed new school-level spending and teacher salary data submitted by more than 13,000 school districts as required by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009. This school level expenditure data was made available for the first time ever in this data collection.

Using the data from the ARRA collection, Department staff analyzed the impact and feasibility of making this change to Title I comparability. That policy brief finds that:

Fixing the comparability provision is feasible. As many as 28 percent of Title I districts would be out of compliance with reformed comparability provisions. But compliance for those districts is not as costly as some might think—fixing it would cost only 1 percent to 4 percent of their total school-level expenditures on average.

Fixing the comparability provision would have a large impact. The benefit to low-spending Title I schools would be significant, as their expenditures would increase by 4 percent to 15 percent. And the low-spending schools that would benefit have much higher poverty rates than other schools in their districts.

Joy Resmovits discusses the report at Huffington Post.

In the article, School Districts Shortchange Low-Income Schools: Report, Resmovits reports:

It’s been long suspected that schools serving low-income students receive less money to pay their teachers than those in nearby affluent schools. Now there’s data from the U.S. Department of Education to back that claim up.

“The facts are out there like they’ve never been before,” U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said on a conference call with reporters Wednesday.

And the spending disparity affects teacher quality: As veteran teachers move to more affluent schools that can pay them more, students in poorer schools are more frequently taught by unseasoned teachers with little classroom experience.

In the the 13,000 districts surveyed, which encompass 82,000 of the nation’s 100,000 schools, more state and local money went to teacher salaries in high-income schools than in the district schools serving poor children, according to the new data. And 40 percent of low-income schools spent less on school employees in the 2008-2009 school year than other well-off schools within their districts.

“Low-income students need extra support and resources to succeed, but in far too many places, policies for assigning teachers and allocating resources are perpetuating the problem rather than solving it,” Duncan said.

According to the report, between 18 and 28 percent of low-income schools aren’t adequately staffed to meet their students’ needs. The report, titled “Comparability of State and Local Expenditures Among Schools Within Districts,” used data collected from 13,000 school districts that had to self-report information on how they spend money to receive 2009 stimulus dollars.

The report attributes the gap to a loophole in the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the sweeping federal law on public education passed in 1965. That law created a special class of schools known as Title I that explicitly serve poorer students. The law aimed to ensure that those schools were appropriately funded.

But a loophole in the law’s reporting system that aimed to prevent school districts from using Title I dollars to plug overall budget gaps has allowed them to do just that. The law “often results in low-income schools subsidizing their high-income counterparts,” Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.), the former Denver schools superintendent, said in a Wednesday statement.

“Too many disadvantaged children living below the poverty line are getting short-changed now,” Duncan said. Duncan called attention to a legislative fix his department proposed that’s included in a stalled draft of the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind Act ….

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/01/school-funding_n_1122298.html?1322748997&ref=education

Poorer schools have been subsidizing their more affluent counterparts.

See: 3rd world America: The link between poverty and education https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/11/20/3rd-world-america-the-link-between-poverty-and-education/

Race, class, and education in America https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/race-class-and-education-in-america/

Citation:

“Comparability of State and Local Expenditures Among Schools Within Districts: A Report From the Study of School-Level Expenditures” and “The Potential Impact of Revising the Title I Comparability Requirement to Focus on School-Level Expenditures” are available from the Department’s website at: http://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/opepd/ppss/reports.html#title. The ARRA data set of school-level expenditures also is available on the same webpage. This data can be used to further explore disparities in school-level expenditures, the impact of district budgeting practices, and Title I comparability reform.

Related Resources:

School-level expenditures report Press call Transcript of press call

All children have a right to a good basic education.

Tags: Brown v. Board of Education, Education Disparity, Education Funding, Equity, Low-Income, Plessy v. Ferguson, U.S. Dept. of Education

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Southern Education Foundation report: Juvenile justice education programs do more harm than good

U.S. Department of Education report: Still unequal after Brown

California addresses school funding inequity

Courts are becoming the mechanism to force states to fund education

A new take on school finance from State Budget Solutions

Throwing Money At Education Isn’t Working

Center for American Progress report: Disparity in education spending for education of children of color

State Profiles

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Book: Inequality in America affects education outcome https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/06/10/book-inequality-in-america-affects-education-outcome/

National Education Policy Center study compares spending by charters and public schools

The Center for Education Reform releases 2012 charter school law guide https://drwilda.wordpress.com/2012/04/04/the-center-for-education-reform-releases-2012-charter-school-law-guide/

Education funding lawsuits against states on the rise

The next great civil rights struggle: Disparity in education funding

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