Archives for category: Budget Cuts

Last year the Arizona legislature passed legislation to make vouchers available to all students in the state. Horrified parents and educators in Arizona—led by Save Our Schools Arizona—gathered over 100,000 signatures to put a referendum on the ballot. The Koch brothers sent in their legal team to try to block the referendum. They failed. The courts kept the referendum on the ballot. The referendum question is called Proposition 305. It asks voters whether they want universal vouchers.

To stop vouchers, vote NO.

To learn more about SOS Arizona, open this link.

ARIZONA: JUST SAY NO TO UNLIMITED SCHOOL VOUCHERS!

Arizona voters have the opportunity to show their state’s lawmakers – and the entire nation – that they support their public schools by voting NO on Proposition 305. Thanks to a successful and hard-fought grassroots campaign, the November ballot will include a question about expanding Arizona’s voucher program (currently targeted to special categories of children) to all 1.1 million students in the state.

A NO vote on the November referendum will keep public funds in the public schools, instead of diverting those resources to pay for vouchers for private and religious education. This is a particularly important vote in Arizona, where 95% of students attend public schools, while the state ranks 48th in the country in terms of public school funding level.

According to the “National Report Card: Is School Funding Fair?” published by the Rutgers University Graduate School of Education and Education Law Center, Arizona receives an “F” in the “Effort” category, meaning the state makes a lower than average effort to fund its public schools.

The grassroots group that spearheaded the voter referendum, Save Our Schools Arizona, is leading the campaign for the NO vote. The goal is to make sure there are no further cuts to public education, especially since a whopping $4.65 billion has already been cut since 2009. The organization notes that $160 million could be diverted from the state’s public schools – every year – if the expanded voucher program is implemented.

Arizona public school advocates know what many states, and even the federal government, have found to be true – voucher programs are highly unpopular and therefore extremely difficult to establish or expand. In November, Arizona voters will get the chance to save their schools and send a message that will be heard across the country: Just Say NO to Vouchers!

For more information about vouchers, visit Voucher Watch on the ELC website.

Education Law Center Press Contact:
Sharon Krengel
Policy and Outreach Director
skrengel@edlawcenter.org
973-624-1815, x 24

Categories Arizona, Budget Cuts, Funding, Vouchers

Jeremy Mohler: Schools Are Underfunded on Purpose

By dianeravitch

October 2, 2018 //

Jeremy Mohler of “In the Public Interest” writes about a new report showing that public schools are underfunded on purpose.

“Like many reports, the latest from the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS) drops a number of disturbing facts.
Between 2005 and 2017, the federal government neglected to spend $580 billion it was supposed to on students from poor families and students with disabilities. Over that same time, the personal net worth of the nation’s 400 wealthiest people grew by $1.57 trillion.

“Seventeen states actually send more education dollars to wealthier districts than to high-poverty ones.
Over 1.5 million students attend a school that has a law enforcement officer, but no school counselor. The school policing industry was a $2.7 billion market as of 2015.

“But Confronting the Education Debt doesn’t just throw numbers against other numbers to see what sticks. It tells a tragic story: the rich are getting richer, and our public schools are broke on purpose. And it comes to an indisputable conclusion: black, brown, and low-income students and their schools are owed billions of dollars.
That’s because many public schools do in fact work, but only when they are fully resourced, which tends to be in white, middle class, and affluent communities.

“These findings drive home that adding market forces to public education — so-called “school choice” — is a superficial and, even, harmful attempt at solving a deep and enduring problem. After being hijacked as a political project by private investors and billionaires, charter schools have begun to threaten the existence of public education itself. As they grow in number, they siphon more and more funding from school districts, forcing cuts at traditional, neighborhood schools. Charter schools are costing San Diego Unified School District, for example, over $65 million annually — or about $620 per neighborhood school student.”

The answer is clear: fully fund our public schools and drop the fantasy that the market will fix the problems of underfunded schools.

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding

Steven Singer: The U.S. Shortchanged Public Schools by Hundreds of Billions of Dollars

By dianeravitch

September 19, 2018 //

Steven Singer describes a new report that reached a startling conclusion: the federal government shortchanged the nation’s public schools by hundreds of billions, at the same time that the top earners raked in billions of dollars.

He writes, in part:

Fun Fact: Between 2005 and 2017, the federal government withheld $580 billion it had promised to spend on students from poor families and students with disabilities.

Fun Fact: Over that same period, the personal net worth of the nation’s 400 wealthiest people ballooned by $1.57 trillion.

So, rich people, consider this the bill.

A new report called “Confronting the Education Debt” commissioned by the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS) details the shortfall in minute detail.

For instance:

$347 billion owed to educate low-income students most of whom are children of color.

$233 billion owed to provide services for students with disabilities.

And this is just the shortfall of the last dozen years! That’s just money due to children who recently graduated or are currently in the school system!

We’ve been cheating our children out of the money we owe them for more than half a century!

Categories Accountability, Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Funding, Poverty, Standardized Testing, U.S. Department of Education

Jeff Bryant: How the Rich Get Richer by Destroying Public Schools

By dianeravitch

September 18, 2018 //

I think we are beginning to understand the real purpose of Corporate Reform. The 1% and their minions repeat ad nauseum that school choice will fix all education problems, lift the poor out of poverty, and no new taxes are needed. Indeed, they have pushed for tax cuts and cheered on deep cuts to public education. We are watching a generation of defunding public schools, refusing to invest in teachers’ salaries, and a massive transfer of resources from the public sector to private institutions.

Jeff Bryant explains it here.

“Recent news stories about wealthy folks giving multi-million donations to education efforts have drawn both praise and criticism, but two new reports by public education advocacy groups this week are particularly revealing about the real impact rich people have on schools and how they’ve chosen to leverage their money to influence the system.

‘The Education Debt’

“The first report, “Confronting the Education Debt” from the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools examines the nation’s “education debt” – the historic funding shortfall for school systems that educate black and brown children. The authors find that through a combination of multiple factors – including funding rollbacks, tax cuts, and diversions of public money to private entities – the schools educating the nation’s poorest children have been shorted billions in funding.

“One funding source alone, the federal dollars owed to states for educating low-income children and children with disabilities, shorted schools $580 billion, between 2005 and 2017, in what the government is lawfully required to fund schools through the provisions of Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

“The impact of not fully funding Title I is startling, the report contends, calculating that at full funding, the nation’s highest-poverty schools could provide health and mental health services for every student including dental and vision services, and these schools would have the money to hire a full-time nurse, a full-time librarian, and either an additional full-time counselor or a full-time teaching assistant for every classroom.

“State and local governments contribute to underfunding too by keeping in place tax systems that chronically short schools, particularly those that educate low-income students, mostly of color. Two school districts in Illinois are highlighted – one where 80 percent of students are low-income and gets about $7,808 per pupil in total expenditures, while another, where 3 percent of students are low-income, spends $26,074 per student…

“In the meantime, while the nation’s education debt expands, the accumulated wealth of the richest Americans continues to grow. During that time period the federal government was shorting schools billions, the personal net worth of the nation’s 400 wealthiest individuals grew by $1.57 trillion, the report notes.

“There is a direct correlation between dwindling resources for public schools and the ongoing political proclivity for transferring public dollars to the nation’s wealthiest individuals and corporations,” the report declares. “The rich are getting richer. Our schools are broke on purpose.”

This is the context for Bryant’s discussion of the NPE Action Report, “Hijacked by Billionaires.” The 1% buy control of state and local races so they can advance their tax-cutting, budget-cutting ideas and promote school choice.

“What motivates these wealthy people from exerting their will in the electoral process varies. They are bipartisan politically. Some are directly connected to the charter school industry. Others have expressed disdain for democratically controlled schools and argue, instead, for school governance to transfer to unelected boards. Some are motivated by their hatred of teachers’ unions. While others believe strongly that public education needs to be opened up to market competition from charters.

“But what billionaire donors all have in common, the report authors write, is their devotion to blaming schools and educators for problems posed by educating low-income children. Instead of using their political donations to advocate for more direct aid to schools serving low-income kids, wealthy donors “distract us from policy changes that would really help children,” the report argues, “such as increasing the equity and adequacy of school funding, reducing class sizes, providing medical care and nutrition for students, and other specific efforts to meet the needs of children and families.”

Their one unifying idea is lower taxes.

His third example is a new book about how predatory elites subvert democracy.

“Rich people are playing a double game,” writes Anand Giridharadas in his new book ‘Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World.’ “On one hand, there’s no question they’re giving away more money than has ever been given away in history … But I also argue that we have one of the more predatory elites in history, despite that philanthropy.”

Categories Billionaires, Budget Cuts, Corporate Reformers, Democracy, Education Industry, Funding, Inequality, Inequity, Injustice, Philanthropy, Privatization

New Hampshire: How to Get More Spending, Higher Taxes, Less Opportunity

By dianeravitch

September 2, 2018 //

Tom Loughman writes here about the harmful impact of vouchers, which were recently defeated by a slim margin in the state legislature.

He writes:

“When I was a little boy, we lost my father to cancer. Not long after, my family lost everything else too and we struggled to make ends meet. We were always thinking about getting through the week and end of the month. But for all its challenges, my childhood taught me empathy, grit, and drive; drive to make a better life for myself. I knew I only needed the opportunity.

“That opportunity came in the form of a public education. The one thing we never had to worry about was whether I would get a great education and a hot lunch at school. I made the most it and have made a better life for my family.

“As a parent now, I followed closely the efforts of New Hampshire Republicans to pass Senate Bill 193, which would establish one of the most comprehensive school voucher programs in the country. It would siphon money from our public schools and divert them to private, religious and home schools.

“Fiscally responsible constituents would be alarmed at the financial implications of the school voucher bill. According to the legislative staff, it would have siphoned off $100 million over the first 11 years from public schools to send 2,000 children to private, religious and home schools. As expensive as that is, Sen. Dan Innis voted for a far more sweeping version twice, which would more than double those costs.

“You can imagine the impact: a reduction in public school quality and big increase in local property taxes. Despite all that spending to privatize more of our education system, there is no anticipated improvement in achievement. According to studies like the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education, private schools were not better than public in producing higher achievement.

“The bottom line is that the school voucher bill significantly increases the costs of education in New Hampshire and puts the burden on local property taxpayers. Don’t take my word for it; take Republican fiscal hawk and House Finance Chairman Neil Kurk’s who said, “this bill downshifts $99 million to local property tax payers in ways that they will not be able to avoid by reducing expenses. I was not elected to downshift money on my constituents.” A few Republicans stood with him and House Democrats to defeat the bill by a slim margin. Fiscal responsibility prevailed.

“Sen. Innis and his colleagues have pledged to try again. Innis said in a recent op-ed that he believes in school choice for all New Hampshire children. However, the vouchers would not cover the full cost of private school tuitions. Therefore, the only families that can take advantage of these vouchers and attend private schools would be people who can afford a few thousand dollars difference between the voucher and tuition.

“The results of this voucher bill are entirely predictable. Children from families who can afford private education could pay less by applying a voucher to their tuition bill. Children from families who cannot afford to pay thousands will remain in public schools that would now face budget shortfalls. It’s actually even worse because private schools can deny admissions to students with disabilities, excluding them entirely from the “choices” vouchers give their fellow students. That makes education opportunity less equal.

“These reverse Robin Hood policies of taking resources and opportunities from lower income families to give to wealthier ones is a non-starter. The high costs of living on the Seacoast are already impacting our seniors, working families and small businesses. New Hampshire Republicans should stop pushing a radical bill that would significantly increase our spending, raise property taxes, and hurt our public schools.

“We are proud of our public schools. On the Seacoast, they are without a doubt, one of the best draws we have to attracting working families to live and work here. I believe Sen. Innis’ support for defunding them and prompting tax increases is an untenable position to hold as our senator. It does not reflect our values or interests.”

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding, New Hampshire, School Choice

Oakland Parent to EWA: Charters Are Killing Our Public Schools

By dianeravitch

August 27, 2018 //

Recently the Education Writers Association Blog posted a “debate” between distinguished economist Helen Ladd of Duke University and charter advocate Robin Lake of the Center for Reinventing Public Education about whether charter schools were harming public schools financially. Ladd had completed a study of the amount of money that districts in North Carolina had lost to charter schools. Gates-funded CPRE exists to sell charters and portfolio districts.

Jane Nylund, an Oakland public school parent, sent the following comment to the EWA:

“As a supporter of public schools, and as a parent who has experienced firsthand the financial damage done to portfolio districts like ours in Oakland, it is disappointing but not surprising to see how the authors of this debate on financial impact to districts fail or simply ignore the fact that charter and district populations are different.

“Clearly, this debate was framed around the myth that charters do more with less, when in fact, they do less with less. District school students cost more because of higher levels of special education (which CRPE conveniently leaves out), as well as higher ELL and FRPL in many cases. District schools also provide food, transportation, after-school programs, and enrichment programs such as art, music, and sports. District schools also value wraparound services such as health clinics, on-site nursing care, psychologists, and counselors. Charter schools aren’t required to provide any of this, nor are they required to have experienced teachers to educate the neediest kids.

“So in summary, charters take the cheapest kids to educate, and then unfairly compare the cost to districts which provide many important services for ALL kids. Anecdotally, the $57M that our district has lost to the 40+ charters that have opened here has impacted our district to the point where they have decided to eliminate 50% of our sports programs that serve our district children.

“There is no debate, here. That is a fact. Please do your research next time and use a different source than CRPE if you still feel the need to “debate” the financial impact of all this disruption. CRPE is front and center of the privatization movement that has caused so much financial misery in Oakland. “Nimble” is code for school closures and teacher layoffs, so that more unaccountable charters can have our district buildings. “Sticky costs” is code for experienced teachers, which CRPE wants to classify as variable costs ala Milton Friedman.

“CRPE would like nothing more than to see “nimble” districts hire and fire cheap teaching labor at will; helps get rid of those “sticky costs”, and also to close down our schools to keep us nice and “nimble”. Going forward, impress us with a well-balanced debate complete with complete, accurate, well-documented, unbiased information. That’s a lot to ask, isn’t it?”

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Reform, Funding, Oakland

Biased Reporting from the Education Writers Association Blog

By dianeravitch

August 22, 2018 //

I was astonished to read a post on the EWA blog today about whether charter schools reduce the funding available to public schools.

https://www.ewa.org/blog-educated-reporter/how-much-do-charter-schools-cost-districts?utm_source=salsa&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter

“There’s no question that the growth of charter schools presents significant financial challenges for many school systems, especially in cities where they serve a large share of students. Where researchers disagree is how great the costs to districts are, and to what extent charter schools are to blame.”

The author posed the question as a “debate” between the distinguished economist Helen Ladd of Duke University—whose bio is star studded with degrees and honors—and Robin Lake, who is an advocate for the charter industry at the pro-charter Center for the Reinvention of Public Education. Ladd is a scholar. Lake is not.

And yet they are treated as equals by this shoddy reporting.

The writer didn’t bother to contact scholar Gordon Lafer, author of the “One Percent Solution” and of a recent study demonstrating that charters diverted tens of millions of dollars from public schools in three urban districts in California.

Report: The Cost of Charter Schools for Public School Districts

When school districts cut their budgets because of charter schools, they must lay off teachers and cut programs. That affects the education of the vast majority of students. Why is that a debatable issue?

I googled the author, David Loewenberg, and saw that he was TFA and the New America Foundation (funded largely by Google), and it made sense.

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Privatization

Jan Resseger on “A Decade of Neglect”

By dianeravitch

August 3, 2018 //

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.”

Categories Accountability, Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Education Industry, Education Reform, Funding, Privatization, School Choice, Vouchers

Los Angeles: UTLA Makes It’s “Last, Best, and Final Offer”

By dianeravitch

July 24, 2018 //

Negotiations in Los Angeles between LAUSD and its teachers union UTLA are at a critical point. UTLA issued this statement:

We demand a 48-hour response from LAUSD

When UTLA declared impasse earlier this month, LAUSD officials said they would bring significant proposals to today’s bargaining. Instead, they brought a previously proposed 2% ongoing salary increase, an additional one-time 2% bonus and a $500 stipend for materials and supplies. The UTLA bargaining team deemed this insulting, quickly reaffirmed negotiations are at a deadlock and gave the district 48 hours to respond to UTLA’s package proposal in a last, best and final offer.

“Our working conditions are our students’ learning conditions. We must continue to fight for a sustainable future, yet we don’t have a partner in the very school district we are trying to save,” said Arlene Inouye, Chair of UTLA’s Bargaining Team. “We have been pushing for real change, they are keeping the status quo.”

Some outstanding key issues:

Class Size Matters. LAUSD gave no proposals to reduce class size. LAUSD has some of the highest class sizes in the nation, yet refuses to eliminate section 1.5 of the contract, which allows the district to ignore class size caps.

Fund Our Schools. LAUSD gave no proposals to address funding issues. California is the richest state in the nation, yet ranks 43 out of 50 in per-pupil funding.

Support Community Schools. LAUSD gave no proposals to fund Community Schools. Community schools meet the needs in the surrounding community, including wrap-around services, broadened curriculum and parent engagement.
Less Testing & More Teaching. LAUSD gave no proposals to address overtesting. Our kids are being overtested. Their teachers should have more discretion over what and when standardized assessments are given.

End the Privatization Drain. LAUSD gave no proposals for reasonable charter accountability and co-location measures. LAUSD refuses to address the $590 million lost to the unchecked expansion of charter schools each year.

Despite the need to look at factors that impact student health, safety and well-being, LAUSD has refused to address our common good proposals. In recognition of legal constraints tied to the “scope of bargaining,” UTLA has withdrawn proposals that are not mandatory subjects of bargaining. Nonetheless, we will continue to work diligently with parents and students for these improvements we think are vital to overall student success.

Last Thursday, July 19, LAUSD Supt. Austin Beutner told a room of business leaders at a Valley Industry and Commerce Association forum at the Sportsmen’s Lodge in Studio City that if things don’t change, ‘by 2021 we will be no more.’ Read the entire LA Daily News story here.

Beutner also said the loss of $590 million to charter school expansion is a “distracting shiny ball” and not a real concern. That amounts to $4,950 per student per year.

“That is much, much more than a ‘distracting shiny ball,’” said UTLA President Alex Caputo-Pearl. “It amounts to robbing our students of educational resources and programs. That funding could mean more nurses, more librarians, more counselors, more arts, sports and music programs.”

“The real ‘distraction’ is that anti-union, pro-privatization ideologues are currently running the school district, and they are setting us up for failure, not success,” Caputo-Pearl said. “Regardless, UTLA remains steadfast in our fight for a better future for all students. We continue to fight for the heart and soul of public education in LA.”

Click here for more info on bargaining proposals. https://www.utla.net/members/bargaining

UTLA, the nation’s second-largest teachers’ union local, represents more than 35,000 teachers and health & human services professionals in district and charter schools in LAUSD.

Categories Budget Cuts, Charter Schools, Class size, Education Reform, Los Angeles, Teachers, Union