by Jan Resseger, Education Advocate, United Church of Christ
[Even as the Ohio Legislature struggles to comply with the DeRolph ruling to reform school funding in Ohio, and also struggles to balance the budget in difficult economic times,] they are also being asked to comply with stringent accountability requirements of the one-hear-old No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), the most recent federal reauthorization of what is technically known as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. NCLB imposes far-reaching federal regulation of public schools, despite that federal money averages only seven percent of total school funding. States and the nation’s 14,000 local school districts spent 2002 struggling to begin complying with this law, whose sanctions for school failure began to be imposed in September 2002, even before the United States Department of Education released final rules for its implementation in the last week of November.
Some of the most notable features of NCLB are:
that states write academic standards for all core subjects and test students annually in grades 3-8 to assess student achievement relative to state standards.
that data from standardized tests be disaggregated by race, economic level of students, disability, and English-learning level to allow for study of achievement gaps.
that all disaggregated achievement data be reported to parents and the press in state report cards that rate all local schools.
that all schools be able to demonstrate "adequate yearly progress" for students in all demographic groups and that schools falling behind receive assistance. If they still don't improve, they will be sanctioned through reconstitution, closure, or financial support for students to move to better schools, which districts will be required to provide.
that all children be guaranteed a "highly qualified" teacher by the end of the 2005-2006 school year. "Highly qualified" is defined as fully certified, holding an academic major in the primary subject they teach, and receiving on-going teacher training in their school district.
These requirements will add significant cost. All states must design or upgrade their curricular standards. They must redesign standardized tests to reflect new standards. They must pay for printing of tests required for all elementary and middle school students every year. They must pay annually for the grading of these tests that may include complex problem solving and essays that cannot be scored by computers. They must design and implement programs to raise achievement in so-called "failing" schools, those that serve our poorest and most mobile students. They must improve teacher training programs in their university systems and help the bleakest urban schools and the remotest rural schools find a way to attract highly qualified teachers within three years. Unless the federal government can provide money to support these lofty goals, states in the midst of deep budget crises will find themselves strapped with unmanageable federal mandates. Jack Jennings, whose Center on Education Policy studied states' efforts through 2002 to begin implementing NCLB, writes:
Our study found that states are committed to the goals of the legislation and are trying hard to carry them out, but the prescriptive nature of the requirements is causing great concern.... We also found that the fiscal crisis in most states, coupled with the prospect of limited additional federal aid, could threaten the successful implementation of this very ambitious law.
In one other important piece of federal legislation, the Individuals with Disabilities Act (IDEA) Reauthorization will once again be considered by the 108th Congress, because the 107th Congress failed to agree on a reauthorization bill. While the original IDEA enabled the federal government to pay 40 percent of the cost of special education services, the federal government has never paid more than approximately 15 percent. Since federally mandated funding for special education has made up 38 percent of the total increase in education spending since 1967, and since the federal government has paid only a tiny share of this mandate, which is the largest drain on the budgets of local school districts, it would help states and local school districts, especially in the context of state budget crises, if the federal government were to pick up the full 40 percent of the cost of special education, as enabled in the original legislation. Conservatives in Congress are instead proposing to offer vouchers which parents of disabled students can use to seek services in the marketplace.
Will more money really address Achievement Gaps? NCLB is intended to address the achievement gap between rich and poor children and among racial and ethnic groups of children, but while the law says there will be financial help for schools that need support to move toward "adequate yearly progress," it does not guarantee any set level of funding to help school districts design or deliver services. NCLB's failure to guarantee financial support for what the law deems "failing" schools contributes to the myth that if these schools just tried harder, they would succeed. NCLB locates the problems inside the "failing" school, where, it is implied, teachers are not working hard enough.
There is, however, increasing documentation that external factors contribute to the achievement gap. Following a half century of middle class out-migration, public schools in America's big cities are now segregated not only by race but also by poverty. Today many urban schools are economically segregated to such a degree that over 90 percent of children qualify for free or reduced price lunch. Demographic studies also show that "Heavily minority schools are much more likely to be high-poverty schools than heavily white schools .... Schools that are 90-100 percent black and Hispanic are fourteen times more likely to be majority poor than schools that are 90 percent white." [Richard D. Kahlenberg, All Together Now, 2001] Gary Orfield, director of the Harvard Civil Rights Project, believes that city schools post low test scores because "...segregated minority schools are overwhelmingly likely to have to contend with the educational impacts of concentrated poverty ...."
We need to advocate for giving schools the tools to do a better job of educating very poor children. In a new book that evaluates decades of research about improving schools, Timothy Hacsi names the one reform most likely to close the gap: "Smaller classes, which are the most expensive of the issues detailed in this book, also have the strongest support in the evaluation literature .... To have the kind of quality schooling many of us claim we want for all children, we will need to spend more money than we do now." Writing for the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Kevin Carey also identifies key reforms that promise higher achievement for previously under-performing students: class size reduction, improved teacher quality, and enriched early childhood education.
While there is a growing agreement about how to close the gap, our society is far from demonstrating a willingness to pay for it. Carey summarizes "costing-out" studies recently conducted in Maryland, Wisconsin, and New York to calculate the cost of programming to support high achievement among children in high poverty schools. These independent studies demonstrate the need to allocate between two and two-and-a-half times more funding to support high achievement in districts serving concentrations of poor children. "It is striking to note that all of the studies, using different analytical approaches - produced estimates of the additional cost of educating low-income students that greatly exceed those reflected in the actual funding policies adopted by any state prior to 2002." Carey points out that politicians usually simply determine the amount of money available for categorical funding for poverty support and then divide that total by the number of poor children to determine what is called in many state budgets a poverty weight. Poverty weights currently average one-sixth of what the Maryland, Wisconsin, and New York studies are suggesting is necessary to close the gap. We are only beginning to recognize the magnitude of difference between equal and equitable school funding.
Sources:
Children's Defense Fund, The State of Children in America's Union: A 2002 Action Guide to Leave No Child Behind
Kevin Carey, "Overview of K-12 Education Finance," Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, November 7, 2002; also "Education Funding and Low-Income Children: A Review of Current Research," Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, November 5, 2002
Timothy A. Hacsi, Children as pawns: The Politics of Educational Reform (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002)
Jack Jennings, "Commentary", From the Capital to the Classroom (Washington, DC: Center on Education Policy, 2003)