Trends in the News Archive - Page 15 of 53

Trends in the News

READ AFTON'S "TRENDS IN EDUCATION FINANCE"

All Posts

Texas Tribune, 12/17/18

Analysis: You can’t fix Texas school finance until you agree on the meaning of “fix”

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and other lawmakers have promised they will tackle “school finance” in the 2019 legislative session, but it’s already clear that not everyone is talking about the same thing. Those folks are all signaling an urgency, but their priorities differ: Property tax relief? Leveling the state and local shares of public education spending? More money for schools? This much is clear: They don’t have the money on hand to do much of anything with even one of those questions. That raises another question: How will they pay for whatever they decide to do? Even if it’s possible to line up the priorities, the numbers are daunting. Local taxpayers will be on the hook for 55.5 percent of the cost of public education in 2019, according to estimates by the Legislative Budget Board. The state will be responsible for 35 percent, and the federal government will make up the rest.

Local Education Funding State Education Funding

Education Dive, 12/18/18

Few federally funded ed innovations show positive gains

The field of education, just like other industries, has been fascinated by innovation in recent years, but this wave, as a federal report demonstrates, doesn’t guarantee positive change among the students it’s oftentimes supposed to help. Since 2008, the U.S. Department of Education has spent more than $1.5 billion in grants on nearly 200 educational innovations, but out of 67 evaluations of these innovations — which make up $700 million of the total — only 12, or 18%, found positive effects on student achievement, this report finds.

Alternative Education Models and Funding Mechanisms Federal Education Funding School Money and Performance

Education Week, 12/16/18

End Head Start, school lunch programs to cut deficit? Federal report probes options

Capitol Hill’s budget arm says that among the many options federal lawmakers have for cutting the budget deficit, they could consider eliminating Head Start and federally supported school meal programs. Instead of the current funding and structure provided to school meal programs, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) outlines an approach familiar to many who deal with education policy and politics: block grants. The CBO also outlines an option that would eliminate Head Start. The savings? From 2020 to 2028, the CBO estimates the savings would add up to $92 billion. “The main argument for this option is that many of the children expected to be enrolled in Head Start in the future would be enrolled in alternative preschool or child-care programs (both public and private) if Head Start was eliminated,” the report states.

Federal Education Funding

Chalkbeat, 12/17/18

Does money matter for schools? Why one researcher says the question is ‘essentially settled’

“Throwing money at the problem” has long gotten a bad rap in education. But a string of recent studies have undermined that perspective. Now, a new review of research drives another nail into the argument’s coffin. The review looks closely at 13 studies focused on schools nationwide or in multiple states. Twelve found that spending more money meant statistically significant benefits for students, including rising test scores and high school graduation rates. Students saw big gains in school districts where spending jumped between 1972 and 1990, one study found. A 10 percent increase in spending across a student’s 12 years in public school led students to complete an additional one-third of a year of school and boosted their adult wages by 7 percent. The gains were largest for low-income kids.

Federal Education Funding Local Education Funding School Money and Performance

Washington Examiner, 11/15/18

Stop trying to claim charter schools ‘steal’ money from traditional public schools

The claim that charter schools divert money from traditional public schools seems correct on its face. Because most states allocate education money based on each district’s enrollment numbers, districts that lose students to charter schools will, by definition, receive less funds. But this is hardly unfair or inequitable. The state shouldn’t maintain the same level of funding for students who are no longer there. Funding also falls when students transfer from one traditional school district to another — but nobody would say public dollars are being “stolen” in that case, even though that’s exactly what happens with public charter schools. To be fair, charter school expansion does contribute to declining enrollment in traditional districts, which leads to pressure on those districts to downsize. It is difficult in the short run to get rid of staff and scale down school facilities. But it is absurd when charter opponents suggest that traditional districts simply cannot survive downsizing in the long run.

Charter Schools School Money and Performance State Education Funding

USA Today, 12/9/18

Nation’s first charter school strike ends, but could portend more battles on choice

Teachers and administrators agreed Sunday to suspend the nation’s first-ever charter school strike, ending a four-day work stoppage at one of the largest charter networks in Chicago. But the fight could portend more to come in the labor movement’s long-running battle with the alternative schools. The strike against the Acero charter school network affected only about 7,500 of Chicago’s 371,000 public school students. But the impasse over pay, class sizes and other issues was closely followed by labor leaders and charter advocates around the country… The tentative agreement calls for staff raises over a four-year contract, a shorter school day more in line with the traditional city public school schedule and the incorporation of a “sanctuary schools” provision that Acero says meets staff concerns.

Charter Schools School Money and Performance

Education Week, 12/6/18

School spending is up, and other key takeaways from latest federal data

Despite a growing chorus of teachers and public school advocates complaining about America’s spending on its public schools, spending actually increased 2.9 percent between fiscal year 2015 and 2016, according to a report released Thursday by the National Center for Education Statistics. America collected $678.4 billion for its public schools in the 2016 fiscal year and spent $596.1 billion. Local revenue increased by 3.7 percent, state revenue increased by 4.9 percent, and federal revenue increased by 1.1 percent in that same fiscal year.

Federal Education Funding Local Education Funding State Education Funding

The 74 Million, 11/19/18

Analysis: How Bloomberg’s $1.8 billion gift to Johns Hopkins will elevate the national conversation about helping first-generation students complete their college degrees

What Bloomberg did is just one sliver of a barely noticed breakthrough playing out around boosting the college success rates for first-generation students. For decades nothing much worked to boost the college success rates for low-income and minority students. Although their rate of entering college rose impressively over the past decade, their actual degree-earning rates have been little better than flat. Instead of walking away with degrees, they walk away with disappointment, debt, or both. But that grim story appears to be changing, Richard Whitmire, author of The B.A. Breakthrough: How ending diploma disparities can change the face of America, outlines three factors driving this breakthrough: 1) The top charter school networks serving low-income students, which always promised parents they would find a way to ensure their children would earn college degrees, have carved out pathways to actually make that happen, 2) Colleges and universities have redoubled efforts to both admit more first-generation students and make sure they succeed, 3) Smart college advising aimed at first-generation students has always been sparse, which means many promising students end up at universities where they are unlikely to earn degrees. But that’s changing fast, thanks to an explosive growth in foundation-sponsored college advising programs.

Charter Schools Higher Ed

Chicago Tribune, 11/27/18

Gov.-elect Pritzker taps committee, including CPS CEO, to come up with fixes to state education woes

Gov.-elect J.B. Pritzker tapped a new committee Tuesday to tackle some of Illinois’ urgent issues in K-12 and higher education, leaning on Chicago and state officials to develop solutions to immense challenges worsened by long-standing budget problems. That group of school administrators, union officials, think tank executives and higher education officials may have to address the billions of dollars still needed to fully finance the state’s new K-12 education funding model, a teacher shortage that’s left some school districts struggling to staff classrooms and the ongoing loss of local high school graduates to out-of-state colleges. “To provide a quality education for every child, one of the major components is funding equity around the state,” Pritzker told reporters. “But now, where are the dollars and how do we accelerate so we get to where we’re trying to get to as fast as possible? Where are we going to bring efficiencies in state government, what dollars can we bring into state government immediately, as well as over a near and medium term?”

Higher Ed State Education Funding

5280, 11/26/18

What’s the deal with education funding in Colorado?

If there’s one thing state legislators can agree on, no matter their party affiliation, it’s that the way schools are funded in Colorado should change. But the failure of Amendment 73—which would have increased taxes to fund P-12 education—in the 2018 midterms was a reminder that solutions are hard to come by. Education has been funded mostly the same way in Colorado since 1994, when the Public School Finance Act—which dictates how the state collects and distributes revenue for education—was adopted. “We’re still allocating in ways that are not demonstrably linked to achievement,” says Leslie Colwell, vice president of education initiatives at the Colorado Children’s Campaign, a nonprofit group that advocates for education and healthcare for kids. “We allocate more than $1 billion for the cost of living factor, and that overwhelming goes to districts where it’s expensive to live, but those are also districts that have the ability to raise funds locally.”

State Education Funding