Jan Resseger reviews the AFT report on “A Decade of Neglect,“ a decade in which states cut funding for public schools and diverted the shrinking pie to charters and vouchers. This state-by-state attack on public schools is the match that ignited the teachers’ strikes and may ignite even more in the future. Teachers will be silent no more. They will vote in massive numbers in November for those who support public schools. Many teachers are running for state legislative offices. Good luck to them!
The new report from the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), A Decade of Neglect, is one of the most lucid explanations I’ve read about the deplorable fiscal conditions for public schools across the states. It explains the precipitous drop in school funding caused by the Great Recession, temporarily ameliorated in 2009 by an infusion of funds from the federal stimulus (a financial boost that disappeared after a couple of years), compounded by tax cutting and austerity budgeting across many states, and further compounded by schemes to drain education dollars to privatized charter and voucher programs all out of the same budget.
The report delineates the conditions tangled together over the decade: “While some states are better off than most, in states where spending on education was less in 2016 than it was before the recession, our public schools remain nearly $19 billion short of the annual funding they received in 2008, after adjusting for changes in the consumer price index… The recession ran from December 2007 through June 2009 and prompted a crisis setting off a chain of actions that resulted in significant budget cutting by our state governments. When the recession hit, it devastated state budgets. Job losses, lower wages, the crash in housing prices and the panic in the financial markets all worked to lower state tax revenues, while the demand for government services in the form of unemployment benefits, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and housing and Medicaid assistance drove up expenditures. The Brookings Institution estimated that by the second quarter of 2009, income tax collections were 27 percent below their prior-year levels, and total state taxes were 17 percent lower… The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s annual report of education indicators recently found that U.S. spending on elementary and high school education declined more than 4 percent from 2010-2014…. Over this same period, education spending on average, rose 5 percent per student across the 35 countries in the OECD.”
Many states also adopted an ideology promising that tax cuts would bring the economy back. Sam Brownback’s Kansas experiment in supply side economics, however, exemplifies the failure to confirm these hopes. In Kansas the economy didn’t improve and state revenues collapsed. Only in the past two years has the legislature there raised taxes—beginning an effort to undo the damage. Overall, according to AFT’s report: “In 2016, 25 states were still providing less funding for K-12 schools than before the recession, after adjusting for inflation… Eighteen of the 25 states that provided less funding for k-12 education reduced their tax effort between 2008 and 2015.” The eight states that cut taxes most deeply were: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Virginia. And, “In 38 states, the average teacher salary in 2018 is lower than it was in 2009 in real terms… According to the Economic Policy Institute, teacher pay fell by $30 per week from 1996-2015, while pay for other college graduates increased by $124. The gap between teachers and other college graduates has continued to widen and deep cuts in school funding leave states unable to invest in their state’s teacher workforce… In 35 states, between 2008 and 2016, the ratio of students to teachers grew.”
Here is an example of the result: “(W)hile some states are doing better than others, no state is really doing well enough. California is a leader on many of the measures used in this report. But there are less than one tenth the number of school librarians as is recommended. Most school districts don’t have a nurse and there are only about a quarter of the recommended number of school counselors.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
So depressing. The report could be subtitled “A Nation of Teachers and Students at Risk.”
If a foreign country had inflicted upon our public education system what Ed Reform plutocrats and their toadying political sycophants have implemented upon it, we would have considered it an act of war.
Brilliant, Ohio Algebra Teacher! May I steal your line?
Would be an honor, Diane. Absolutely.
I am reminded of a political pundit saying that the War On Poverty is over: The poor lost.
The war on poverty is lost. It was more than a defeat, it was a disaster. see
https://www.forbes.com/sites/louiswoodhill/2014/03/19/the-war-on-poverty-wasnt-a-failure-it-was-a-catastrophe/#3ee4a8816f49
No, it wasn’t, Charles. Millions of people were lifted out of poverty. We quit before the job was done. Our government lowered tax rates on the rich.
Are the Europeans so much smarter than us? They don’t have the high poverty rates that we do.
I disagree. After 50 years and $22Trillion dollars spent, the percentage of people in poverty continues to climb. (See chart 6 provided by the US Census Bureau) see
https://www.heritage.org/poverty-and-inequality/report/the-war-poverty-after-50-years
Poverty won. The black family is virtually destroyed. 78% of all black children are born to unmarried females. There are more black males in prison, than in college.
If this is not a disaster, what is?
Charles,
Shouldn’t we learn from the European and other nations that have reduced poverty.
We have increased poverty by lowering tax rates for the richest 1%.
You have given up but I have not.
Oh, for crying out loud, the War on Poverty was wrongfully abandoned in the 1970’s. The War on Equality is the status quo, and has been for generations.
Ding, ding, ding! LCT gets the answer right. And now on to Final Jeopardy. Thanks, LCT! The war on poverty was lost—if it was lost at all—because of Vietnam. It’s not rocket science.
And to Diane’s point, in western Europe, where there are much stronger anti-poverty programs and more income equality, there are very, very few places with the abject poverty that can be found in every state and large city in the U.S. You claim to have lived everywhere, Charles. Where was the abject poverty in western Europe?
The decade of neglect of public schools coincides with the period ed reformers utterly captured politicians in both the federal government and most state governments, to the extent that powerful people in government hear from no one else.
They’re lousy advocates for public school families and children. Our schools just take hit after hit under their leadership and “governance” schemes.
Peel off all the marketing and carefully crafted political rhetoric and that’s the track record- public schools don’t fare well when ed reformers are in power, and boy are they ever in power- Congress and many statehouses hear from no one outside “the movement”. Ohio once held a hearing on public schools at the statehouse a couple of years ago. They called 15 witnesses. 14 of them came from an ed reform lobbying group.
Our schools and families aren’t even invited, let alone permitted to advocate on behalf of our kids.
Ohio Algebra II Teacher hit the right note.
This AFT report really is a keeper, with state by state information, graphs, and pie charts that show significant cuts in state funding with more burden on local communities for financing. Have it handy as you participate in discussions leading up to the next elections. Congrats to the AFT for a clear and compelling document, and Jan for her summary, and Diane for giving it added visibility.
Speaking of California, Arne Duncan supports fellow reformer Marshall Tuck for CA State Superintendent of Education. While Duncan asserts that it is a “lie” that Tuck advocates for the policies of DeVos and Trump, this screed is surprisingly light on what Tuck does actually support and is predictably laden with EdReformer clichés. The irony of Duncan bemoaning the influence of “bureaucrats” and “politicians” on schools is almost palpable. https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2018/08/03/opinion-forget-the-lies-in-the-state-school-superintendents-race/
Not only was it not a coincidence that Citizens United began a new era of campaign finance starting in 2010, this was a concerted long term effort, piloted in Midwest states like Wisconsin to recruit and groom an army of puppets to serve oligarchs like the Kochs and Waltons.
The aim was austerity, with a side order of union-busting, and the outcome, brilliantly illustrated by Trump, is a generation of under-educated voters easily swayed by fear and hatemongering propaganda to vote against their own economic interests.
I cannot stress the importance of CAP and John Podesta as the link between Obama, the Clintons and the Bushes who ushered a seamless transition of ed reform pay-for-play through Democratic and Republican administrations for decades.
It was also Podesta’s carelessness that cost Hillary the election, in my opinion, giving up his “passw0rd” to Russian spearfishers, but when his emails were made public, they showed Obama’s cabinet was handpicked by Wall Street and Hillary’s campaign was courting billionaire ed reformers.
Just this week we learned the lobbying group run by Podesta’s brother was refererred by special counsel Mueller to the NY Southern District as they had, like Manafort, been working on behalf of a Putin connected bank on sanctions relief, but had failed to register as a foreign lobbyist.
So brother Tony seems to be in hot water now, but John Podesta’s influence on American education cannot be understated, helping create this bipartisan army of privatizers.
Ed-deform was already well underway in über-Republican state admins before the recession started: union-busting, tax-lowering & privatization, sold as NCLB-driven ‘accountability’ – & more cynically, as civil-rights-expanding ‘school choice’ for the urban schools being de-funded. How dispiriting to see the writing on the wall spelled out here: a bona fide financial crisis in state funding, timed perfectly to put those efforts on steroids in the name of austerity. Worse: remembering how Obama’s admin jumped on the ‘do more with less’ bandwagon via big-corp-friendly computerized stds/ assessments/ evalns for publics, while throwing money at charters poised to pick up biz from schools closed by that process.
Privatization started and flourished largely in blue states first. I believe Minnesota implemented the first charter law (something Mr. Nathan is fond of telling us) and the first vouchers were in Milwaukee. Red states tend to be more rural, which make privatization much more tricky (read: not profitable), except for virtual schools. It’s mostly major urban districts in blue states that have been charterized. Admittedly, red states like Indiana are doing well on the voucher front, but the overall aims of deform have been fully bipartisan since inception. If anything, Democrats have been more successful. Bush 43 could only dream about what Obama accomplished.
I agree.
Charters are partial-privatization, in many cases, full privatization for profit.
Bill Clinton fully supported charters. So did George W. Bush. So did Barack Obama.
Charters are the gateway to vouchers.
Vouchers have been imposed, without any referendum, mostly in red states.
Every referendum on vouchers has lost decisively.
The next one will be this fall in Arizona, where the Legislature passed a bill to offer low-cost vouchers to everyone, and a coalition of parents and teachers collected enough signatures to force a vote in Nov 2018
Yes you’re right dienne, my history is off: the red wave came after the fin crisis (presumably in response to it), whereas case-in-point states like once-blue Wisc got ed-reform underway back when they were still blue [union-busting gloves came off w/Walker]. And I don’t quibble that this has been bi-partisan from the get-go. It feels like red-state thing to me, so I checked a map of % pubsch studs attending charters here (scroll to 3rd graphic)
https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cgb.asp
It’s 2015 info, so I compared to a red/blue state map from 2016. There are blues represented in the 8 biggest [9-16%] charter states, but most of them are red, pink & purple. And enough low %s in the 42 others to pull the natl ave down to 6%. Granted a mixed picture, but not dominated by urban centers in blue states.
The latest reinvention of Ed-deform is coming from virtual charters, “personalized” and blended learning compliments of Silicon Valley moguls that generally consider themselves Democrats. Both parties are guilty of trying to monetize public education.
Then there’s this perspective– and food for thought– from the far left, accusing unions and the DNC as engaging in a “dirty double cross” in WV: https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/07/31/expo-j31.html
“Neglect or Abuse?”
A decade of abuse
Is what it really was
The schools are bound to lose
From all Deformer does
Quite purposeful, in fact
And not an oversight
The thing was not “neglect”
But born of purest spite
Yep
and a spite still so very powerfully ONGOING as state after state now lauds a Democratic gubernatorial candidate likely to win over the current Republican in November….and yet so many of these Democratic candidates are known to take money from, and bow down to, DFER command.
I work with kids who have autism as well as those who have emotional difficulties. I was telling someone at a party about how much I love my school and how well we serve the kids.
Intelligent person. Her first response:
“Oh. Is this a charter or private school?”
She was surprised when I told her it was a longtime school in the NYC Dept of Education. I encouraged her and any of her friends to come by for a visit. Anytime.
Unreal. Mission accomplished on the part of the deformers? Two decades of relentless propaganda will do that.
And that, unfortunately, is why I have a clue of the Trump supporters claims of “Fake News”. There’s no doubt that the media slanted the news to favor the reform movement. It’s just that Trump has used THAT propaganda to further balloon what is his own.
Deep thinking here. And those of us willing to see it know well that the media very much keeps on heavily slanting the ‘news’ toward the ‘broken schools/bad teachers’ educational message, year after year after year…
Here in NYC it’s approaching TWO decades of neglect. Or, perhaps I should say, “abuse”…?
Seems like a good post to update folks on the mess the Massachusetts legislature has just made of equitable funding for public schools in the Bay State.
A little background: In 1978, the city of Brockton sued the state, claiming that harm was being done to public schools in poor districts and that the state was failing its constitutional obligation to provide an “adequate education” and to “cherish” public education. The suit took so long – 15 years – that the original plaintiff graduated high school and it was renamed McDuffy for a new plaintiff. In 1993, looking to mitigate an unfavorable response to a pending ruling, the legislature struck what was characterized as a “grand bargain”, in which schools, teachers and administrators were held to greater “accountability” in the guise of high stakes testing and more stringent licensing requirements in exchange for the state’s funding of a Foundation Budget. The state would send money to districts which could not raise enough money from property taxes to pay for an adequate education. It was also the legislation which allowed the first charters in Massachusetts.
The Foundation Budget has not been updated in 25 years, and there are four main drivers which have made state spending woefully inadequate once more: health care, special education, English language learners and educating kids from low income families. In 2015, the Foundation Board Review Commission began work to ovehaul and update the foundation budget. The report, released this spring, found that the state owes public schools some $1- 2 billion. The report was bipartisan and passed unanimously. The Senate, under the leadership of Sen. Sonia Chang-Diaz, passed it. Then it went aground in the Massachusetts House.
Under the leadership of Rep. Alice Peisch of Wellesley, a proposal was made to fund only two of the drivers of increased spending – health care and special education, leaving English language learners and low income kids without additional funds. On July 12, the same coaliton that led the fight against the 2016 ballot Question 2, which would have eliminated Massachusetts’ cap on charters, staged a protest at the State House in response. Representative Peisch met with protestors, claiming that it would be irresponsible to fund the the ELL and low-income components, because no one knew how much it would cost.
Peisch cited the demise – on a technicality – of the Fair Share Amendment, which would have taxed Massachusetts’ millionaires 4% on earned income beyond $1 million as leaving no funding source for education.
http://www.wamc.org/post/massachusetts-supreme-judicial-court-scratches-millionaires-tax-ballot
On Tuesday night, July 31, negotiations to reconcile the Senate and House versions failed. Peisch cited “new information” from DESE as making fully funding public education untenable. Chang- Diaz was unstinting in her criticism:
“Chang-Diaz denied that this was the case, praising the House members of the conference and saying: ‘We offered multiple versions of major concessions — on structure, on content, on money. … In the end, House leadership rejected all our offers [and] moved the goal posts’ during the negotiations.
Chang-Diaz said the rules surrounding closed-door conference committees don’t allow her to go into detail, but she called it a ‘dark day’ for Massachusetts.”
http://www.wbur.org/edify/2018/08/01/education-funding-bill-collapses
It’s worth noting that Peisch led the pro-Question 2 side on the 2016 referendum, and that her constituents are more likely to be hedge funders than school teachers. I think perhaps the new information Peisch cited may have come from DFER instead of DESE, though often the two are indistinguishable, as evidenced when the Chair of BESE, Paul Sagan, illegally donated $600,000 in dark money to lift the charter cap without repercussion. But it may prove difficult to know exactly what forces led to the torching of the bill, thanks to Massachusetts’ opaque rules on public disclosure.
“The Legislature is exempted from the state’s public records law, which means that any documentation of the discussion among conference committee members is not required to be made public. And, conference committee members have traditionally not discussed details of these negotiations in public.”
http://www.wbur.org/edify/2018/08/02/education-funding-bill-falters
Ironically, the city of Brockton has taken preliminary steps to again sue the state for the educational funding its children are entitled to under the Massachusetts constitution, an effort the city of Worcester may join.
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