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Notes provided by: Colleen Kirby (with additions from Norma Shapiro) Reinventing Public Education Hosted by Representative
Jay Kaufman This was a joint forum with Norma Shapiro of the ACLU who has been working on education financing issues since 1982 and Betsy MacIntyre, lawyer working with the Hancock case. 1. Norma Shapiro gave a history of education financing in Massachusetts. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a 1973 case called Rodriguez v. San Antonio that disparities in equal opportunity relating to public education were not properly under the jurisdiction of the federal courts because education is governed by state constitutions. Twenty-six states then filed suit immediately in their state courts including MA which had the second worst disparity from school system to school system in terms of resources. 2. The case Webby v. Dukakis, was filed in the MA courts and the legislature took action without there being a court ruling. The state developed the first comprehense funding plan for education in all school districts to make things more equitable. But proposition 2.5% was limiting funding. A return to court resulted in a new formula before the courts could rule again. The formula proved to be ineffective and less equalizing than planned. There was also a recession that began in 1988 and resulted in two years of drastic cuts to the funding. Many school districts dismantled programs and fired large numbers of teachers. 3. In 1989, went to the courts for a definition of the constitutional responsibility of the state for providing education to the children of the Commonwealth. This was the McDuffy case and they ruled that the legislature is responsible for ensuring adequate funding for a high quality education as they defined it to include 7 capabilities that must be developed in each student. They asked the state to define the specifics of what to teach to make this goal a reality. And they said the state must do this quickly. 4. 3 days later the legislature passed the 1993 Education Reform Act which established the 7 curriculum frameworks as the program that would provide the constitutionally adequate education. The state has made progress since then in implementing these frameworks but recently there have been setbacks thanks to the state's refusal to look at the foundation level of support for schools and bring it into alignment with the frameworks. In other words, the State formula was set in 1993 based on data from 1990, and never updated after the schools were required to teach to the frameworks, and the students were required to pass MCAS based on two of the frameworks. In addition, for the past 2 years we have been pulling back funds from education and so we have not yet reached adequacy in all school districts. 5. More than 50% of all children in the Commonwealth are in school districts where they are not being educated sufficiently, ie not up to the state standards as defined by the Education Reform Act. So we are back in the courts and filed the Hancock case. 6. In the Hancock case we are arguing that you can't test kids on these mandated frameworks if the state isn't ensuring that there are enough resources for the schools to implement the required curriculum. In general poor, urban school districts are suffering the most, but so are poor rural school districts (eg. Winchendon). Within districts certain students are not getting the resources necessary, such as children with extreme special needs and some children who speak English as a second language. 7. 4 districts are the case studies for the Hancock case (3 urban and one rural) providing evidence of the insufficient resources to bring those districts on line with regard to teaching the curriculum frameworks. In many of these districts or student subgroups dropout rates have not decreased nor have graduation rates increased since 1993 when Ed Reform was instituted. In Lowell, 60-90% of children are not reading at grade level, and are doing even worse in science, health, the arts... In Springfield, half of the graduating class of about 2500 students have never had an art class in their K-12 experience despite the fact that that is required by Ed Reform. 8. The argument is that the state is not meeting the needs of its children's education. Certain special needs children need preschool or they will be permanently left behind educationally. In some schools, there are no libraries, no electrical outlets so you couldn't plug in a computer even if you had one, etc. 9. The Hancock case is asking the court to mandate that the state figure out how much it would cost each school district to teach the curriculum frameworks to the students in that district--understanding that those with special needs, living in clusters of poverty, and with limited English ability cost much more than a regular student. It is not asking the court to mandate a particular level of funding for the state but just to figure out the goal for how much it would cost to really teach the standards we are requiring. The current foundation formulas are not tied to the curriculum standards. This is what the State Supreme Judicial Court is now considering. 10. The justices are concerned about separation of powers questions. Can the judicial branch order the state to spend money as that is the job of the legislature? Recent studies show that special education funding needs to be 2-3X higher to meet the standards. It has been found that many administrators are not trained properly to run many of the poorer school districts. The Superior court judge who did the fact-finding report for the SJC did report on programs needed such as class sizes below 20 during K-3 especially if there are many kids with special needs in the school population. There is a 300 page comprehensive report on this. See www.goodschoolsformass.org for more information. 11. Where is this needed money going to come from? It will not work to take money from wealthier districts and give it to poorer districts. The state needs to pick up the slack. We do need to look into taxes, such as a dedicated sales tax or restoring the income tax rate to previous levels. This is an investment in the future of Massachusetts. Early education returns $4-$7 for every $1 invested. Massachusetts is not a resource rich state, what we have to offer is an educated workforce. 12. Jay added that over the last 15 years we have moved toward equalizing funding. 13. Norma said that now we need to equalize opportunity and it may take more investment into the poorer areas to take care of their poorer infrastructure and need for more services such as social workers, teaching English, etc. The legislature will have to make many decisions about how to implement recommendations from the court. For example, they can specify targeted programs to 40-50 school districts, or we can fund targeted child groups such as certain special needs or ESL learners. Or can we possibly fund a comprehensive program that can raise all boats? How much it will cost will depend on what compromises the legislature makes to balance the needs with a reasonable amount of taxation. Of course, if too many compromises are made, we might have to return to court. 14. Kentucky is one state that has a good model we can look at. 10 years ago in MA we were spending $1700/student in some districts and $17,000/student in others. This is no longer the case, we have narrowed that gap. However, the gap is probably wider than evident because wealthier school districts have educational foundations to support curricular or extracurricular or enrichment programs that are simply not available to the poor. 15. Fees are not a good way to go, that is privatizing public education and places a larger burden on those who can least afford it. We need to keep public education public. 16. How much money are we talking about? We are talking about adequacy not equilization. We don't know how much it will cost which is why we are asking the state to figure that out. It will cost a lot. It's a complicated task. We cannot rely on property taxes as that introduces inequities from area to area. 40% of education funds come from the state now. Nationally the average is 50% comes from the state. So we are underpaying. Some states pay 60% of the tab. Many states have counties rather than 351 different districts as we have here in MA. Much of the money these states use come from sales and income taxes. We also plan to do our own study as well and are looking for grants to fund it. 17. The MA Taxpayers Foundation released a report last week showing that Massachusetts ranked 47th in terms of total tax burden in all states. See THIS and THIS for more details. 18. The Hancock case was argued on October 4th and we expect a decision in early January. We are hoping that the state will be asked to do a cost study within 6 months so we may see some changes within the next year. We hope to see Public Hearings to hear what school systems need. We need to educate legislators on this issue. These are my notes taken to the best of my ability and should not be taken as official minutes. SPOT
offers these notes as a service to the community. |
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