The Education Gadfly Weekly

The State Board of Education will vote next week on a new method of allocating and spending education dollars as well as a call to boost state K-12 spending by $1 billion.

The ideas are major recommendations of the board's school-funding subcommittee. Their report, An Integrated Approach to School Funding in Ohio, is the result of two years of hard work by board members and education department staff to develop recommendations for improving how Ohio finances public education.

Most notably, the report moves toward proposing a system of Weighted Student Funding (WSF). WSF enjoys bi-partisan support as a fair way to allocate education dollars (see Fordham's Fund the Child report here), and it gets a thumbs-up from educators who use it (see here). WSF rests on a handful of principles: school-funding must be transparent; funding must be based on students' educational needs; funding must be portable and follow a child to the building level and move with the child when he or she changes schools; and educators at the school level must be empowered to allocate resources as they see fit to meet individual student needs (see here).

The subcommittee's report calls for adopting weights for students with disabilities, economically disadvantaged students, limited English proficient students, and gifted students. And, it does the tough job of recommending what those weights should be, defining eligibility, and estimating the cost. The report also recommends that Ohio build a better system to track building-level needs and spending and hold districts accountable for allocating money among buildings based on the learning needs of their students.

The report ultimately falls short of a true WSF plan, however. The subcommittee report continues central office control over real spending decisions and does not empower school leaders closest to the children. Nor do the recommendations call for funding to follow the child from school to school. Unfortunately, as written, the recommendations are a missed opportunity and may simply result in funding the education status quo to the tune of $1 billion more per year (see here).

Other noteworthy recommendations contained in the report:

• Attach clear timelines to district-funding guarantees so that they are truly short-term and transitional.
• In terms of school funding, define "economically disadvantaged" students by family eligibility for free and reduced lunches-the same number that is already reported to the federal education department and the public in annual local report cards.
• Require a fair local contribution to education funding.

 Read the full report here and an insider's take on it here.

A six-year, $6-million study of the American school-finance system has determined what many education experts conclude every day-that the system is broken and must be reformed before any true long-term education fix can be fashioned.

The study, funded by the Bill and Melina Gates Foundation, comes just months before Gov. Ted Strickland unveils his school-funding reform plans and just as the Ohio State Board of Education considers a recommendation to add $1 billion to the $17 billion the state already spends on K-12 schooling (see above).

The report, Facing the Future: Financing Productive Schools, recommends that spending concepts such as Weighted Student Funding are far better at targeting resources for the education of individual students. Facing the Future is the work of more than 40 economists, lawyers, financial specialists, and education policymakers. It includes more than 30 separate studies, including in-depth looks at Ohio, North Carolina, Texas, and Washington.

"Like an old computer that has become so laden with new applications that it can no longer do anything well, our school finance system is a product of many unrelated policies and administrative arrangements that, in combination, freeze everything up," said lead author Paul T. Hill, director of the Center for Reinventing Public Education, at the University of Washington. "We need a new model that is optimized to do one thing, that is, ensure that every child learns what she needs to become an involved citizen and full participant in a modern economy."

Hill and the report's other authors conclude that the current system "is controlled by decisions made in the past, sometimes for reasons and on behalf of people who are no longer in the system, and at such a distance from schools, that educators have scant flexibility to adapt to the needs of the here and now. Teachers and principals, the people whose work the whole system is supposed to support, get complexity and constraint rather than help. In the meantime, the costs of everything are hidden, and people who would like to make trade-offs in pursuit of more effective schools cannot do so."

Thus, when the State Board of Education considers a proposal to spend an additional $1 billion on education, what will that money really accomplish unless the way it is spent is actually changed? While the board's school-funding subcommittee has used some principles of Weighted Student Funding to determine statewide needs, it failed to recommend two critical principles-portability and site-based decision making (see previous article).

Facing the Future makes four recommendations that Ohio's lawmakers need to consider for any meaningful school funding fix:

1. Drive all funds to schools based on student counts (numbers with disabilities, learning needs, or advanced placement needs, for example).
2. Link data about the uses of funds and results.
3. Encourage innovation.
4. Hold schools and districts accountable for student performance and continuous improvement.

See the report here. For a detailed explanation of Weighted Student Funding, see the Thomas B. Fordham Institute's study, Fund the Child: Bringing Equity, Autonomy, and Portability to Ohio School Finance, here.

There's a good chance-logically speaking-that Attorney General Nancy Rogers will not appeal the latest rejection of the state's claim that a poorly performing charter school violates the Ohio charitable trust law (see here).

First, the Nov. 24 decision by a Hamilton County Common Pleas judge rejecting Rogers' attempt to close the Harmony Community School is the third time in three months a court has turned down the AG's interpretation of the statute, so precedent is building. Second, the 30-day deadline for appealing the decision falls just before Ohio Treasurer Richard Cordray becomes the new attorney general in January.

Rogers-and Cordray-may feel that, given the budget cuts now being made across the board in state government (see here), spending tens of thousands of additional dollars on a rejected legal theory may not be a prudent use of taxpayer money.

As Gadfly has argued from the start, it never was (see here). The Hamilton County case was one of a trio of lawsuits launched by former Attorney General Marc Dann, at the behest of the Ohio Education Association (see here). The OEA originated the novel and now twice-discredited legal claim that the schools are charitable trusts and that their dismal academic performance violated the law. In ruling against the AG, Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Jody M. Luebbers echoed a September ruling in Montgomery County Common Pleas Court in favor of the New Choices charter school. Unfortunately for taxpayers, Rogers decided to appeal the New Choices decision.

The AG lost another case, against Miami Valley Academies in Dayton, in Montgomery County earlier in November.

Harmony is not out of the woods since Luebbers did rule that the AG's case against the school for allegedly failing to keep up its workers' compensation premiums can go forward.

However, Luebbers was blunt on the charitable trust idea. "Simply put, nowhere in [state law] does it state that the attorney general has the authority to shut down a community school through its powers over charitable/public trusts," Luebbers wrote in her decision, adding that "...if the General Assembly desired the attorney general to have this authority, they would have specifically granted it."

And, it is important to remember, state law has been in place that forces persistently failing charter schools-those ranked F on the state's academic rating system for three consecutive years-to close. Two will close at the end of this year and 23 are at risk for closure in 2010 (see here).

There is a right way and a wrong way to go after failing charters, and the AG is absolutely going about it in the wrong way.

UPDATED: The online version of this article was updated 12/5/08.

The State Board of Education will vote next week on a new method of allocating and spending education dollars as well as a call to boost state K-12 spending by $1 billion.

The ideas are major recommendations of the board's school-funding subcommittee. Their report, An Integrated Approach to School Funding in Ohio, is the result of two years of hard work by board members and education department staff to develop recommendations for improving how Ohio finances public education.

Most notably, the report moves toward proposing a system of Weighted Student Funding (WSF). WSF enjoys bi-partisan support as a fair way to allocate education dollars (see Fordham's Fund the Child report here), and it gets a thumbs-up from educators who use it (see here). WSF rests on a handful of principles: school-funding must be transparent; funding must be based on students' educational needs; funding must be portable and follow a child to the building level and move with the child when he or she changes schools; and educators at the school level must be empowered to allocate resources as they see fit to meet individual student needs (see here).

The subcommittee's report calls for adopting weights for students with disabilities, economically disadvantaged students, limited English proficient students, and gifted students. And, it does the tough job of recommending what those weights should be, defining eligibility, and estimating the cost. The report also recommends that Ohio build a better system to track building-level needs and spending and hold districts accountable for allocating money among buildings based on the learning needs of their students.

The report ultimately falls short of a true WSF plan, however. The subcommittee report continues central office control over real spending decisions and does not empower school leaders closest to the children. Nor do the recommendations call for funding to follow the child from school to school. Unfortunately, as written, the recommendations are a missed opportunity and may simply result in funding the education status quo to the tune of $1 billion more per year (see here).

Other noteworthy recommendations contained in the report:

• Attach clear timelines to district-funding guarantees so that they are truly short-term and transitional.
• In terms of school funding, define "economically disadvantaged" students by family eligibility for free and reduced lunches-the same number that is already reported to the federal education department and the public in annual local report cards.
• Require a fair local contribution to education funding.

 Read the full report here and an insider's take on it here.