Study Shows California Significantly Underfunds Its Schools

-->

The problem of the SCUSD budget crisis is not a problem of teacher health benefits. Rather It is the failure of California School Finance.

Present funding, including LCFF is substantially unfair, inadequate, and unequal. 

The report, “The Adequacy and Fairness of State School Finance Systems,’ from Rutgers University shows that California ranks 41^stout the 50 states in state fiscal effort, and 47^thin adequacy of funding. 

These shortages produce the strikes in Los Angeles, Oakland, Sacramento and more to come. 

Teachers are insisting that their districts provide at least adequate funding for the students. This inadequacy is seen more clearly in out of control class sizes. 

You would think that California, the richest state in the nation, could at least get to average.

 We need a new tax structure – like the Schools and Communities First proposal, to fix the budget problems and properly educate our children. 

The Adequacy and Fairness of State School Finance Systems

NEW REPORT FINDS THAT EDUCATION FUNDING IN MOST STATES FALLS WELL BELOW ADEQUATE LEVELS

 [ California ranks at the bottom on most measures !]
WASHINGTON – Most states’ education finance systems do not target resources at districts that serve high-poverty students, and funding systems in virtually all states fail to provide adequate support to all but the most affluent districts, according to a new report released today by researchers at the Albert Shanker Institute and Rutgers Graduate School of Education.
Over the past decade or so, a political consensus, backed by high-quality empirical research, has started to emerge about the importance of adequate and equitable funding for U.S. public schools. While there is plenty of important debate about how money should be spent, virtually all of the best policy options require investment. The idea that “money doesn’t matter” in school funding is no longer defensible.
This new consensus, however, is not reflected in most states’ school finance systems. The report, “The Adequacy and Fairness of State School Funding Systems,” evaluates states’ systems using three “core” indicators:

1. Effort: How much do states spend as a proportion of their total economic capacity?
2. Adequacy: Do states spend enough to meet common outcome goals?
3. Progressivity: Do states target more resources at the districts with the most need?

These three measures are calculated using data from roughly a dozen sources, and control for various factors – such as Census poverty, labor market costs, population density, and district size – that affect the value of the education dollar. The data presented in the report apply to the 2015-16 school year.
The authors find, predictably, that states vary widely on all three measures. There are states, such as Wyoming, New Jersey, and Massachusetts, in which education funding is relatively adequate and distributed progressively. In most states, however, the results are disappointing and, in some cases, deeply troubling.

1

Highlights

Effort

• On average, states devote about 3.5 percent of their gross state products to K-12 education.
• These effort levels vary between roughly 2.5 percent in Hawaii and Arizona to over 5 percent in Wyoming and Vermont.
  Adequacy

• Virtually all states spend far less than what the authors estimate would be required for students in their higher-poverty districts to achieve national average test scores, which the report uses as a common “benchmark” to assess states’ funding levels.
• Although our estimates are state-by-state, a rough calculation of U.S. average adequacy indicates that actual spending on the 20 percent of districts with the highest poverty levels in the typical state is approximately 67 percent of estimated adequate levels. In other words, the typical state would have to increase spending by 50 percent to reach the adequate level.
  
  

Unexamined assumptions in Getting Down to Facts

The educational pundits who seldom spend time in a classroom ( like the Bee’s Daniel Weintraub) have quickly focused in on the recommendation from Getting Down to Facts, to give Principals the power to dismiss teachers who they regard as failing.
A problem with this recommendation is that it carries a number of unstated, and unwarranted, assumptions.
The recommendation assumes that principals are better prepared and more professional than teachers and that they have the interests of students are their first priority. I know of no research evidence to support these assumptions.
In over 34 years of working in schools and working with principals all that I can assume from the data is that principals want a different job. In teacher preparation I frequently encounter people who have not even taught yet, but they plan to become principals. They want the shortest route to the top. They do not want a job working with children and youth. They want a job that is primarily management of resources. And, where they can manage teachers. And where they can get paid much more. During their first years of training most principals spend far more time expelling students and punishing students than time spent educating students.
If any readers have evidence that principals have more professionalism and/or more concern for children than teachers, please let me know. My first hand experience contradicts this assumption.
The argument that to promote quality education principals need to be able to dismiss a few incompetent teachers. Well perhaps.
Again from decades of working in schools and participating in teacher and administrator preparation I then offer a parallel argument. I could accept the process of principals having the power to dismiss a few less than competent teachers – if- and only if- teachers had the power to dismiss incompetent principals and superintendents. There is no evidence that the percentage of incompetent teachers is higher or lower than the percentage of incompetent principals- and I suggest superintendents.
Also, as suggested by author Kathy Emory in an excellent post on edjustice.blogspot.com, we should have a process for measuring the quality of researchers who reside in universities and who write reports – Like Getting Down to Facts.

Duane Campbell