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READ AFTON'S "TRENDS IN EDUCATION FINANCE"

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Education Week, 7/11/18

Education funding bill progresses in House after school safety money restored

The spending bill would provide about $71 billion to the Education Department for fiscal 2019, an increase of nearly $100 million from current spending levels in fiscal 2018. It rejects President Donald Trump’s push to make a significant overall cut to the department, shrink or eliminate several education programs, and direct more money to school choice initiatives.  Committee lawmakers adopted an amendment…that maintained current funding levels of $90 million for the School Safety National Activities program. The original House bill introduced last month would have cut the program by $47 million.

Federal Education Funding
Reuters, 7/11/18

Failure to educate girls could cost world $30 trillion: report

About 132 million girls worldwide aged 6 to 17 do not attend school, while fewer than two-thirds of those in low-income nations finish primary school, and only a third finish lower secondary school, the World Bank said. If every girl in the world finished 12 years of quality education, lifetime earnings for women could increase by $15 trillion to $30 trillion, according to the report. Other positive impacts of completing secondary school education for girls include a reduction in child marriage, lower fertility rates in countries with high population growth, and reduced child mortality and malnutrition, the World Bank said.

Local Education Funding School Enrollment and Student Population School Money and Performance
The 74, 7/16/18

Aldeman: How have pension costs hurt teacher pay? If contributions were still at 2001 levels, every teacher would get a 7% raise today

Teacher salaries are flat partly due to rapidly rising pension costs.  As an exercise to see just how much rising teacher pension costs have harmed today’s teachers, imagine a hypothetical world where pension contribution rates had been frozen at their 2001 levels.  At the time, states were living high off the dot-com bubble while simultaneously cutting contribution rates to unsustainably low levels and enhancing benefit formulas. Nearly every state has subsequently been forced to reverse this trend by increasing contribution rates and cutting benefits.  In this hypothetical world, states and school districts would be able to spend about $4,300 more per teacher per year, equivalent to giving each an immediate 7.2 percent raise.  But that’s not all — 37 states and the District of Columbia have increased mandatory teacher contribution rates into their state’s pension plan. That’s effectively a cut in teacher take-home pay, and it works out to an average of about $800 a year.

Pension Costs
The Atlantic, 7/5/18

The problem with generalizing about ‘America’s Schools’

On average, states spend roughly $13,000 per student on public education—but looking at the average alone is misleading. Only about half of states spend anything close to that figure: A dozen spend 25 percent more than the national average, and 10 states spend 25 percent less. Public schools in the United States differ so much from state to state and from district to district that it hardly makes sense to talk about “America’s schools.” In fact, a focus on large-scale national reform can actually do harm, insofar as it must emphasize generic one-size-fits-all solutions that ignore state- and local-level needs.

Education Week, 7/9/18

The National Education Association to establish a fund for teacher strikes

During the National Education Association’s annual representative assembly last week, delegates voted to support teacher strikes and other protests and set up a fund to support them. Both actions came in the form of new business items, which are resolutions submitted by at least 50 delegates that direct the NEA to take action for one year. The first resolution urged the NEA to “build on the great teachers’ union victories” in several states this spring and “support a national campaign of labor action, including strike action where practicable” to improve working conditions for educators and save public services. The second resolution was a bit more concrete—it directs the NEA to establish a voluntary membership donation of at least $3. The donation would establish a fund to support strikes or other statewide labor actions, such as a short-term work stoppage.

Education Dive, 7/9/18

Arizona voters likely to see education spending bill on November ballot

Leaders of the Invest in Education campaign delivered more than 270,000 signatures to the Secretary of State’s office last week in a move that will likely place the proposal increasing funding for public schools by $690 million before the voters in November. The initiative comes after Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey signed a budget in May in response to a #RedForEd walkout that already includes $400 million in additional funding for Arizona schools — the most significant amount of education spending in recent Arizona history. If the Invest in Education Act qualifies for the ballot and taxpayers approve it, proponents say that 60% of the money will go for raises to teachers and other employment-related expenses, while the other 40% will go toward increases for support staff members, class-size reduction, dropout prevention programs, and full-day kindergarten. However, critics argue that the act would do lasting harm to the state’s economy and would not really solve the problems in the long run.

State Education Funding
Chalkbeat, 7/6/18

CPS to spend $1 billion on campus improvements, including two new West Side schools

Chicago Public Schools is plunging $1 billion into campus investments, a plan that includes two new West Side schools and two new classical schools, the district announced Friday. The new schools and classical expansion were announced as part of a larger plan to boost capital spending from a meager $189 million for the new school year to nearly $1 billion—though it appears some projects listed as part of the $1 billion spend will be spread across several years. The list of improvements includes several items, such as capital costs related to the introduction of universal pre-kindergarten. To foot the nearly $1 billion bill, the district will largely rely on borrowing. CPS anticipates selling $313 million of general obligation bonds and up to $125 million of Capital Improvement Tax bonds; the remaining $300 million will get financed at a later date as expenditures roll in.

Local Education Funding
Hechinger Report, 7/9/18

In 6 states, school districts with the neediest students get less money than the wealthiest

The 25 percent of school districts with the highest amounts of student poverty received 3.4 percent fewer funds per child than the 25 percent wealthiest districts during the 2014-15 school year. That’s a national funding gap of $449 per student. “It’s a temporary step backward,” said Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, explaining that states ran out of money after the 2008 recession, allowing rich communities to spend more and curbing extra funds to poor districts. But with the economic recovery, many states are moving back toward funding schools more equitably, Roza said. “We’ve generally seen an enormous effort by states to raise the base for the poorest students,” Roza said. “Thirty to 40 years ago, in the poorest districts, you’d have 30 to 40 kids in a class and no extracurriculars. You don’t see that anymore.”

State Education Funding
USED, 7/2/18

Puerto Rico to pilot new student-centered funding system

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced that the Puerto Rico Department of Education will be the first to pilot new flexibility under ESSA to create a student-centered funding system. ESSA provides for 50 school districts to pilot a new student-centered funding system that combines local, state and federal dollars. ESSA specifically requires that pilot districts allocate substantially more funding to support students from low-income families, English learners, and any other educationally disadvantaged group as chosen by the school district. Puerto Rico designed its system to allocate additional funds to support students from low-income families, language learners and students in rural schools.

Federal Education Funding Local Education Funding State Education Funding
Hechinger Report, 7/2/20

Is the new education reform hiding in plain sight?

Philanthropists, state education officials, reform advocates — even charter school leaders — are examining personalized learning. But personalized learning raises big questions about educational equity. Is it important for all children to be taught common skills and content? Could personalized learning spur an even more splintered society? Concerns about the content, or even the variable pace, of personalized learning derive from a middle-class educational ideal that is outdated and misses the point, says Trace Pickering, leader of Education Reimagined and co-founder of Iowa BIG. More important, he said, is for educators to ask, “How can we effectively self-actualize human beings?”

Alternative Education Models and Funding Mechanisms