The Grade: Incomplete
The Boston Globe
May 2, 2004
Tax cutters trembled last week when Superior Court Judge Margot Botsford ruled that the state is failing in its constitutional duty to provide effective education in all Massachusetts communities without regard to income. Many advocates gleefully envisioned new programs without regard to cost. Both groups misjudged the nuanced ruling.
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The judge's finding doesn't recommend that the state deliver a blank check to struggling school districts, nor should it. There would be no sudden transformation if students in Springfield, where per pupil spending is $8,160, suddenly had access to the $9,504 per pupil in well-to-do Carlisle.
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Still, state funding mechanisms remain an important part of the overall effort to close the achievement gaps between needy and well-off children. That legal responsibility requires state education officials to revisit the so-called "foundation formula" created as part of the Education Reform Act of 1993, which was designed to bridge the gap between what school districts need to provide for education and what they can reasonably raise through local property taxes.
An updated formula
The formula needs an overhaul. In the early 1990s, considerable guesswork went into determining specific staffing levels and materials for foundation budgets. Common sense dictated that higher subsidies would be needed in low-income communities, such as Lawrence and Chelsea, with weak tax bases. But much was still unclear. Academic standards were just beginning to take shape, along with the curriculum frameworks and assessment tools to support them. It would be years before the first student would even take a practice run on what would become the high-stakes Massachusetts Comprehensive Assessment System tests. There is no reason to assume that the formula is still valid.
Paul Reville, executive director of the Rennie Center for Education Research & Policy at MassINC, supports the state's argument that it is not necessarily how much money is spent per pupil but how it is spent. But Reville adds that nothing short of a court case was likely to get the Legislature to focus on how a decade's worth of educational data should apply to the current funding debate.
"Now that we have standards we can do a better estimate," says Reville, who calls the ruling "a significant step forward."
If nothing else, the ruling should serve as a sharp reminder to Governor Romney and the Legislature that education funds are not a frill. Botsford made careful note in her decision that the $40 million reduction in this year's budget for MCAS tutoring has had a "deeply negative impact" on school systems trying to pull up failing scores. MassInsight Education, a nonprofit school reform group, also released a report this week showing that student-to-teacher ratios in MCAS remedial classes are climbing while hours for tutoring are being cut back, leading to a "fraying of Massachusetts' commitment to students on the front lines of school reform."
Persistent inequities
The state's business is hardly done now that 95 percent of high school seniors have met the MCAS requirement for graduation. A more reliable indicator is the ability of students to attain a rating of "proficient" or even "advanced" on the exam. It is there that the gaps between rich and poor districts and white and minority students widen. Last year, for example, 69 percent of white 10th-graders reached such competencies on the English portion of the MCAS exam. That figure fell to just 35 percent for black students and 26 percent for Hispanics. In addition, too many students still don't even make it to senior year.
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Mark Roosevelt, the director of the nonprofit Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education and one of the original authors of the 1993 Education Reform Act, urges officials at the state Department of Education to show how carefully targeted resources and technical assistance to failing schools can improve student performance. He warns that it will be more expensive, but not necessarily more effective, if the court compels the state to adopt all of Botsford's recommendations.
