Senate File 0422 Creates Huge New Unfunded Mandate by Phasing Out Compensatory Revenue

Earlier this week, (click here), I began a discussion of the reasons that some students cost more than others to educate. As I was writing my second post in the series, I received a notification of a hearing later this week on a bill, Senate File 422, which would begin to roll-back compensatory funding as a proposed solution to the education funding crisis. Compensatory funding is the money that school districts receive to pay for Minnesota's No Child Left Behind mandate that all children must reach a high level of proficiency regardless of the obstacles that would otherwise interfere with their educational success. Compensatory funding derives from a longstanding recognition in this State that its more costly to educate children who come to school far behind, than it is to educate students who come to school ready to learn. Regrettably, Senate File 422 is basically just another proposal to defund a mandate, without repealing the mandate.

There are some legislators who believe that school districts who receive compensatory funding are rolling in extra money. But this is not true. Most of these districts are actually the most financially stressed districts in Minnesota, because they tend to be districts with very high special education deficits. In most cases, when you net these districts special education deficits against their compensatory funding, you find that the districts are still deep in the hole, when both state mandates (special education and no child left behind) are netted out together.

In short, most of these districts consume their compensatory education revenue to pay for the other great unfunded mandate, special education, leaving them with nothing to address the NCLB proficiency mandate that compensatory revenue is supposed to pay for. For example, Brainerd receives $3.5 million in compensatory funding, but it carries a $4.4 million special education deficit. Bloomington receives $5.5 million in compensatory funding but carries an $8 million special education deficit. Mankato receives $2.6 million in compensatory funding but has a $4.2 million special education deficit. Each of these districts, and many others like them, are buried in a sea of state mandated red ink, because the legislature underfunds the special education mandate, by $5.5 million in Bloomington. By $4.2 million in Mankato. By $8.6 million in St. Cloud.

You might expect that Senators who are concerned about unfunded mandates in public education would be proposing to do something about the projected $700 million per year under-funding of the special education mandate. But no, they are actually sponsoring legislation further to impoverish those very districts who suffer the most from the State's massive unfunded mandates. The plan in SF 422 is to defund a second state mandate, and bury these districts even further with unfunded mandates.

Now for those of you who think that the mandate that all students must be educated to high levels of proficiency has no cost consequences, I have to tell you that you are living in a dream world. Achieving success in Minnesota's proficiency mandate requires extra mentoring, extra remedial instruction, more summer school, and a variety of other reforms that have costs attached to them. You cannot get something for nothing. This proficiency mandate, completely well intentioned, is a huge undertaking. It cannot be accomplished for free. Senate File 422 takes these costs off the backs of the taxpayer, and puts them onto the backs of children by forcing school districts to reallocate resources away from traditional average students who are coming to school ready to learn. Its a tax on children to pay for a gigantic unfunded mandate.

In my first post, I quoted extensively from a report by the conservative Thomas Fordham Foundation. The Foundation is an active proponent of school reform and has argued in favor of voucher funded private and parochial funding as a vehicle to close the achievement gap. The Foundation's 2006 report Fund the Child, argued persuasively that what ever delivery system we choose must recognize that meeting the national goal of educating all children to a high level of proficiency will require extra funding for those students who have high educational needs. The Foundation's report explains:

"Although we may wish that achieving this [proficiency] goal were easy for every student, numerous studies have shown that some students require more resources than others:

• Some start behind because their lives prior to school did not provide them with the same educational opportunities as other children.
• Some home circumstances present problems related to health, nutrition, parental support, and other conditions, all of which materially impact children’s performances.
• Some have disabilities that lead them to require additional education services and attention.
• Some are from homes where English is not the primary language.
• Some are recent immigrants who had little formal education in their home countries"Then

In Minnesota, that extra funding is provided by the compensatory funding formula which seeks to provide additional funding based on the number of students who have high educational needs based on poverty, which is roughly (but not exactly) correlated with higher costs to reach the goal of universal proficiency.

The No Child Behind mandate in Minnesota, like other states, requires not merely that school districts meet higher levels of standards. It actually raises the standards, year after year. The chart below graphs the ever increasing proficiency standards adopted by Minnesota and Wisconsin respectively. Each year, the percentage of students who must meet the standards must increase, and each year, the required scores increase as well.

The proficiency standard in Minnesota requires all students to reach proficiency at a second year algebra level. How many of you genuinely believe that it is possible to get to the point where all students master second year algebra without substantially increased costs.

Frankly, I'm going to bet that a fair number of you never even took Algebra II, and a high percentage of you who did, couldn't meet the proficiency standard that Minnesota has demanded of all children. Minnesota's implementation of No Child Left Behind for mathematics not only demands that a significantly higher percentage of students perform at the proficient level in mathematics than ever before in history, it defines proficiency at significantly higher level than ever before. We are expecting students to perform proficiently at a second-year algebra level, when many of their parents were not even required to take or pass first year algebra. Trying to accomplish this at the same inflation adjusted price would be like trying to equip everyone with a private jet for the price of an automobile. If you are scoffing at that, just remember what algebra II consists of: factoring, elementary matrix algebra, solution of multiple linear equations, graphing of and solution of quadratic equations, inequalities, probability, and a whole lot more.

I want to be clear. There is evidence that we can do a much better job of educating more children at a very high level of mathematics. Some of the necessary changes require new teaching methods. Some of them require more classroom time. Some require more teachers who have strong subject matter backgrounds in mathematics in the earlier grades. And some require more mentoring, more parental support, more individual attention for students who are falling behind. Some of the necessary changes don't require more expense, but some require significantly greater expense, and the special help required for some students make those students more costly to educate than other students. If the State wants more students to perform proficiently, and that is the current requirement in Minnesota, then a much greater investment is going to be required for those students who would otherwise fall behind.

SF 422 is a really bad idea. Its more of the same from a legislature which has historically talked about eliminating unfunded mandates while actually doing the opposite.

Some Students Cost More to Educate than Others (1)

In the last year or so, as we confront a financial crisis in public education, it has become popular to attempt find an easy fix that will make our problems disappear as if by magic. From time to time I hear people advance the idea that we could solve our education finance troubles quite simply if we would suddenly declare that "all children cost the same to educate." This thesis has a simplistic appeal. All children are worth the same in the eyes of God and country, are they not? So why should we then spend more on some children than others, the thesis goes? This thesis is especially popular, of course, in localities that are receiving less state funding per student than others, because their schools enroll far fewer students deemed costly to educate. Wouldn't it be really simple, they argue, if we would simply move all of the "extra" funding that goes to the districts with students who have higher educational needs, and "equalize" it so everyone is treated the same. The result would be a significant increase in funding for the districts with less costly students, and wreak havoc on the others.

Now before you start writing your conservative-liberal driven comments on this topic, I want to point out that the thesis that some children are more expensive to educate than others is NOT a liberal or conservative idea. In fact, one of the most aggressive advocates for properly funding children based on true cost to educate is the conservative think-tank Thomas Fordham Institute, The Thomas Fordham Institute is a some-time proponent of vouchers and other conservative education reforms. One of the critical components of a voucher-based system, or any system that assures that all students can reach proficiency, the Institute argues, is that we must provide funds in accord with the educational needs of the children being served. Recognizing that different students need different levels of educational support is not a liberal idea, it is plain common sense.

In its 2006 Report, Fund the Child, the Institute argues: "Although we may wish that achieving this [proficiency] goal were easy for every student, numerous studies have shown that some students require more resources than others:

• Some start behind because their lives prior to school did not provide them with the same educational opportunities as other children.
• Some home circumstances present problems related to health, nutrition, parental support, and other conditions, all of which materially impact children’s performances.
• Some have disabilities that lead them to require additional education services and attention.
• Some are from homes where English is not the primary language.
• Some are recent immigrants who had little formal education in their home countries"

The advocates for vouchers recognize, then, that in order for public schools to be effective, or in order for private and parochial systems to run effective voucher-based programs to educate the hard to educate, the State must provide greater funding for the students who cost the most.

As parents, we know that some of our children seem to thrive at school effortlessly, and some require tremendous extra assistance at school and at home. We put "Pat the Bunny" in front of one of our children, and almost as if by magic, it seems, they are reading at an early grade. But a second child, raised in the same home, by the same parents, with the very same level of dedication to learning, doesn't catch on until years later than the other. One child needs almost no encouragement from the teacher, the other desperately needs it. As parents, we don't say, "all of my children are equal, so I'm not going to give any more help to one of my children than the other." In fact, we know that when we love our children equally, it means that we give each the amount of help that they need to thrive. We discover as well, that often the children who needed extra help in school, nonetheless thrive and may later even equal or excel as compared to the sibling who seemed to thrive effortlessly in elementary school.

And if it is true that our children need different levels of help to thrive even though they are raised in the same home, it stands to reason with greater force that children raised in radically different environments, with very different obstacles to surmount, are going to need greater or lesser supervision, instruction and mentoring. The goal of proficiency for all students is not attainable if we refuse to recognize that some children cost more to educate than others.

That point is punctuated by the support for "funding the child" differently in accordance with cost to educate by the proponents of public voucher support. Private schools could not and would not accept the challenge of educating all children who come to them unless they received an elevated funding allocation for the children who cost the most to educate. We cannot expect public schools to do so either. Indeed, when we hear advocates from communities with very small populations of hard-to-educate children, they seldom advocate that they should get their share of the costly students along with the extra funding. Very few of these advocates would make that trade, because they know, in fact, that Minnesota's current funding system actually under-funds the hard-to-educate. They would not regard it as an acceptable solution to get the extra funding and the students who cost more along with it.

This is a complicated subject. If some students cost more to educate, how much more? How do we know that the extra money for costlier students is being used efficiently? How do we know that we are getting our money's worth? I'll try to discuss that in a future post.