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Zephyr Teachout: The Hunger Games

By dianeravitch
November 26, 2014 //
16

Zephyr Teachout, who ran against Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary and won 1/3 of the vote despite no money and no name recognition, has written a brilliant column in The Daily Beast, warning that the millionaires and billionaires who bought the State Senate now are aiming to take over public schools.

She compares their strategy to “The Hunger Games.”

“The same hedge-fund managers who bought the New York State Senate now want to take over public education in the state and strip it bare, while they celebrate excessive wealth in high style. They’re pushing for a special session in Albany this December to cement the takeover of education policy….”

“In New York’s Hunger Games, just like in the books and movies, those in the Capitol live in a very different reality than the rest of us. In our Capitol, Albany lawmakers enjoy a flood of money, personal accounts, and protection for incumbents against attacks. In the Districts—the cities and towns of New York—the reality is bleaker. Citizens must work to survive and make do with the limited resources afforded to them by the Capitol….”

“Like President Snow, who starves the Districts, tests the residents with the Hunger Games competition, and then sets out to destroy them, the hedge-funders want to take over our schools with the same three steps: Starve, Test, Destroy. Budgets are cut severely, tests reveal “poor performance,” and then public schools, having been thus gutted, are replaced by privately managed charters.

First, the starvation: The state of New York is being sued again for funding public schools below constitutional levels. Cuomo’s budgets have stripped grade schools of art, music, sports, and counselors. Without money, classrooms grow so large no teacher can manage them, and kids can’t learn. Billionaires benefit as the money “saved” by not funding schools goes to tax breaks for the rich….”

“Second, the testing: Children are subject to a ridiculous battery of tests that lead to huge profits by corporations like the testing company Pearson but does little to improve the lives of the children. We’re talking about high-stakes, high-stress testing, including testing of the controversial Common Core. These tests prod and poke the children, creating lots of anxiety and taking away from the joy of learning.”

“Third, the destruction: These hedge-fund managers want to eliminate all limits and oversight of charter schools. They want to take control of New York City schools away from Mayor Bill de Blasio and let privatization run rampant. And they want billions in new funding from taxpayers to build new charter schools everywhere across the state, taking even more resources away from hard-pressed public schools.”

Read it all. It is amazingly insightful.

Categories Charter Schools, Cuomo, Andrew, Education Reform, Funding, New York

Michigan Court: State Has No Obligation to Provide Quality Public Education

By dianeravitch
November 25, 2014 //
55

In a shocking decision, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled 2-1 that the state has no legal responsibility to provide a quality education to every child. The case centered on the Highland Park school district, where achievement was lagging; the state turned the entire district over to a for-profit charter operator that had no track record of improving low-performng schools. The American Civil Liberties Union had filed the suit.

 

In a blow to schoolchildren statewide, the Michigan Court of Appeals ruled on Nov. 7 the State of Michigan has no legal obligation to provide a quality public education to students in the struggling Highland Park School District.
A 2-1 decision reversed an earlier circuit court ruling that there is a “broad compelling state interest in the provision of an education to all children.” The appellate court said the state has no constitutional requirement to ensure schoolchildren actually learn fundamental skills such as reading — but rather is obligated only to establish and finance a public education system, regardless of quality. Waving off decades of historic judicial impact on educational reform, the majority opinion also contends that “judges are not equipped to decide educational policy.”

 

“This ruling should outrage anyone who cares about our public education system,” said Kary L. Moss, executive director of the American Civil Liberties of Michigan. “The court washes its hands and absolves the state of any responsibility in a district that has failed and continues to fail its children.”

 

The decision dismisses an unprecedented “right-to-read” lawsuit filed by the ACLU of Michigan in July 2012 on behalf of eight students of nearly 1,000 children attending K-12 public schools in Highland Park, Mich. The suit, which named as defendants the State of Michigan, its agencies charged with overseeing public education and the Highland Park School District, maintained that the state failed to take effective steps to ensure that students are reading at grade level.

 

“Let’s remember it was the state that turned the entire district over to a for-profit charter management company with no track record of success with low performing schools,” said Moss. “It is the state that has not enforced the law that requires literacy intervention to children not reading at grade level. It is the state’s responsibility to ensure and maintain a system of education that serves all children.”

 

In a dissenting opinion, appellate court judge Douglas Shapiro accused the court of “abandonment of our essential judicial roles, that of enforcement of the rule of law even where the defendants are governmental entities, and of protecting the rights of all who live within Michigan’s borders, particularly those, like children, who do not have a voice in the political process.”

 

MEAP test results from 2012 painted a bleak picture for Highland Park students and parents. In the 2013-14 year, no fewer than 78.9 percent of current fourth graders and 73 percent of current seventh graders will require the special intervention mandated by statute. By contrast, 65 percent of then-fourth graders and 75 percent of then-seventh graders required statutory intervention entering the 2012-13 school year.

 

At the time the state of Michigan decided to privatize the Highland Park schools and turn them over to the Leona Group, some saw it as a last-ditch effort to save the district from its debt. 

 

The Wall Street Journal wrote in 2012:

 

Phoenix-based Leona will receive $7,110 per pupil in state funding, plus an as-yet-undetermined amount of federal funds for low-income and special education students. In addition, the Highland Park district will pay Leona a $780,000 annual management fee.

 

Unions have been sidelined after the district’s entire professional staff was laid off, as allowed by the state emergency law, but teachers can apply for jobs with Leona. Leona has budgeted about $36,000 a year for Highland Park teachers on average, the company said—compared with almost $65,000 a year the teachers received in the 2010-11 school year.

 

In a typical school it takes over, Leona has hired back about 70% of the teachers, the company said. Leona also will lease the Highland Park district’s buildings.

 

Under the five-year contract with Leona, the new city charter board will monitor the company’s progress in improving student performance.

 

Leona runs 54 schools in five states. Students in almost half of them fail state academic benchmarks. But of its 22 Michigan schools, 19 meet the mark, Leona officials said.

 

Leona Chief Executive William Coats said the company had no incentive to cut corners in Highland Park. “As we build equity, we give that back to the schools,” he said during Wednesday’s meeting when an audience member raised doubts about the for-profit approach. “We’re trying to manage this so you [the district] stay in business.”

 

Highland Park is where Henry Ford opened his first assembly line and Chrysler Corp. built its original headquarters. It has suffered the same ills as Detroit, its larger neighbor: an exodus of auto jobs, depressed housing stock and a surge in crime.

 

The city, which spreads across three square miles, lost nearly 30% of its population from 2000 to 2010, according to the latest U.S. Census. Nearly half of the 11,776 residents live below the poverty line.

 

Students and parents complain of dirty classrooms, exposed wiring in the schools, rationed textbook and swimming pools—once used by powerhouse swim teams—that now sit drained of water.

 

John Holloway, the school board president, said the problems became a “runaway train that we could not stop.”

 

As the situation worsened, the state gave the district a $4 million loan in July 2011 and advanced it $450,000 more earlier this year just to meet its payroll.

 

A union-backed initiative that could go to voters statewide in November seeks to repeal the emergency-manager law under which Ms. Parker was appointed to run the district. The law had been strengthened in 2011 by the governor.

 

Glenda McDonald, a Highland Park resident and laid-off teacher, said that the problem was not entirely the fault of the community. “The disinvestment in our communities led to the disinvestment in our schools, and that’s why people left,” she said. “We had nothing to offer them.”

 

After Leona took over, things did not go well. Enrollment dropped sharply. The company closed the district’s high school. It agreed to waive its fee for one year because of a lingering deficit.

 

 

Categories Accountability, Charter Schools, For-Profit, Funding, Michigan

Alan Singer: Time to Act Against Racism in East Ramapo, New York

By dianeravitch
November 23, 2014 //
25

Alan Singer says it is time to protest the inequitable conditions in East Ramapo, NewYork, where Orthodox Jews control the school board. The school board starves the public schools of resources, but is very generous to the private religious schools their own children attend.

He writes:

“Nine thousand Black and Latino children attending East Ramapo, New York public schools are warehoused in over-crowded, under-funded failing schools because a school board controlled by a White religious group is using public school dollars to subsidize their own children who attend religious schools. District school budgets have been defeated four of the last five years and eight of the last eleven, the highest rate of budget rejection in New York State. Meanwhile Andrew Cuomo, the Governor of New York State, Merryl Tisch, the Chancellor of the State Board of Regents, the governing body for education in New York, and John King, the Education Commissioner, have all remained silent. That is why it is time to march against racism in East Ramapo…..

“The district is now bankrupt because of all the money channeled to private religious schools despite major cuts in public education spending…..”

The state-appointed monitor, Hank Greenberg, “Prior to delivering his report to State Education, Greenberg told reporters he did not believe the East Ramapo school board acted “out of base or venal motives.” Rather, their concern about the children from their own religious group had “blinded them to the needs of the entire community.” This is surprising language from a lawyer given that Greenberg’s job was to investigate legal and financial impropriety, not determine whether the school board was moral but blinded by good intentions. However, I am not a lawyer. Greenberg found the district’s funding pattern to be “unique” in New York State and charged the faction in control of the East Ramapo school board of “abysmal” fiscal management and noted the district was teetering “on the precipice of fiscal disaster.” This is an example of institutional racism, whether school board members think they are acting in good faith to meet the needs of children from their own religious community. That is why it is time to march against racism in East Ramapo.

“Since 2009, the non-venal majority in control of the East Ramapo school board has eliminated 245 public school positions, including special education teachers, guidance counselors, social workers, and elementary school assistant principals. It replaced full-day kindergarten with half-day, eliminated instrumental music for younger children, ended transportation for field trips, reduced athletic and extra-curricular activities by fifty percent, closed the summer school, and depleted the district’s emergency reserves, money it is legally required to maintain for insurance, liability and unanticipated costs. That is why it is time to march against racism in East Ramapo.

“Meanwhile, district spending on programs benefiting private religious school students have increased substantially. From 2006-7 to 2013-14, district spending on transporting private school students specifically increased nearly 77 percent. From 2010-11 to 2013-14, the cost of providing special education for students enrolled in private religious schools increased by 33 percent. More than 23,500 students are transported daily to private religious schools in East Ramapo, 18,000 by private companies that are essentially subsidized by the school district. Special education students receive services in forty different religious schools, which are also essentially subsidized by the school district. These subsidies to families that send their children to private religious schools make up over one-third of the district budget.”

The state may be reluctant to intervene because it has poor record of taking over entire districts (e.g., Roosevelt in Long Island), but the state should take over to protect the children from a school board that doesn’t care about them.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Alan Singer when he wrote about the district, the East Ramapo board sold a closed school for use as a religious school at what appears to be less than its fair market value. The state did not object.

Categories Funding, New York

How the Good Citizens of Marion County, Florida, Are Supporting Their Public Schools

By dianeravitch
November 19, 2014 //
2

Colleen Wood of 50thNoMore in Florida sent me this message. Colleen is a member of the board of directors of the Network for Public Education:

Diane – I wanted to share this with you:

http://www.yesformarionschools.com/about

This effort was started by Ray Seaman, a constant supporter of public education and a progressive leader in Florida, and is proof of what local communities can accomplish when public school supporters work together across party lines.

Marion County is extremely conservative, but the grassroots leaders have been building support for public education over the last 6 years or so. It has paid off. This referendum will bring 1 mil of funding ($14 – $16 million) to their schools and it was the motion to put it on this November’s ballot passed unanimously by the School Board and the all-Republican County Commission.

They’ve put in countless hours of work to try to combat the attacks coming out of Tallahassee, and they have rallied the community to support their public schools.

Thank you!
Colleen

 

PS: the referendum passedproducing another $14 million for the public schools of Marion County.

 

“Marion County voters gave a rousing yes to a property tax aimed at bringing an additional $14 million annually to the county’s public school system for the restoration of art, music and physical education programs, the hiring of teachers, and reduction of class sizes.”

Categories Florida, Funding

Colorado Court Rejects State’s Effort to Dismiss Funding Case

By dianeravitch
November 15, 2014 //
5

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COLORADO COURT DENIES STATE’S MOTION TO DISMISS SCHOOL FUNDING CASE

November 14, 2014

On November 12, 2014, the Denver District Court brought the State of Colorado one step closer to fulfilling the promise of increased per pupil education funding that Amendment 23 in the Colorado Constitution requires.

In Dwyer v. State of Colorado, the Court denied the State’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which means the Court will now hear and rule on the merits of whether the State has violated Amendment 23 by cutting K-12 education by $1 billion each of the last four years. Added to the constitution by the voters in 2000, Amendment 23 requires the state to adjust annually the statewide base per pupil funding proportional to the rate of inflation.

On hearing the news, lead plaintiff Lindi Dwyer said, “This is a good start and a good day for Colorado. The voters made a promise in 2000 that the state would increase funding and provide educational opportunities to all students. The promise is in our constitution and today takes us one step closer to fulfilling that promise.”

Judge Herbert Stern, III ruled that, “Amendment 23 prescribes minimum increases for state funding of education.”

As explained by the plaintiffs’ counsel, the Dwyer suit “alleges that the General Assembly violated Amendment 23 by slashing education funding by over a billion dollars through a gimmick the State calls the Negative Factor.” In 2010, the legislature adopted the negative factor in a statute in an attempt to override its Amendment 23 responsibilities. 　

Related Stories:

“Keep the Promise” to Fund Schools as Colorado’s Constitution Requires

Press Contacts:
Kathy Gebhardt, Children’s Voices:
(303) 588-8804
Timothy Macdonald, Arnold & Porter, LLP:
(303) 863-2334

Education Justice Contact:
Molly A. Hunter, Esq.
Director, Education Justice
email: mhunter@edlawcenter.org
voice: 973 624-1815 x19
http://www.edlawcenter.org
http://www.educationjustice.org

Copyright © 2014 Education Law Center. All Rights Reserved

Education Justice Initiative | c/o 60 Park Place, Suite 300 | Newark | NJ | 07102

Categories Budget Cuts, Colorado, Funding

South Carolina Court Declares School Funding Unconstitutional

By dianeravitch
November 14, 2014 //
11

About Us | More News

SOUTH CAROLINA SCHOOL FUNDING DENIES STUDENTS CONSTITUTIONAL OPPORTUNITY

November 14, 2014

On November 12, 2014, in Abbeville County Sch. Dist. v. State (Abbeville II), the South Carolina Supreme Court declared that “South Carolina’s education funding scheme is a fractured formula denying students … the constitutionally required opportunity.”

The Court questioned “the prudence of creating school districts filled with students of the most disadvantaged socioeconomic background, exposing students in those school districts to substandard educational inputs, and then maintaining that nothing can be done.”

The Court also held that, “our State’s education system fails to provide school districts with the resources necessary to meet the minimally-adequate standard,” and “the cost of the educational package in South Carolina is based on a convergence of outmoded and outdated policy considerations that fail the students of the Plaintiff Districts.” (emphasis in original)

Responding to the Court’s ruling, co-counsel for the plaintiff school districts, Laura Callaway Hart, of Duff, White & Turner, LLC, said, “We are grateful that the South Carolina Supreme Court recognizes that all children, no matter where they live or how much money their parents have, must have access to meaningful opportunities to learn in school. We look forward to working with our state government on crafting an effective means of delivering those opportunities to them so that they will grow into adults who are productive and can contribute in positive ways to our state. As Chief Justice Toal wrote in the opinion, ‘there is no loser’ in this case. We have all won an important victory.”

The Court reviewed the record from the trial and found that the state’s teaching quality and certification regime led to: many uncertified and “substandard” certified teachers; high teacher turnover; and, even teachers without college degrees teaching core courses, such as math and science. Substandard certification is available to teachers unable “to meet minimal teaching-competency standards.”

The Court also concluded that poverty and poor transportation created major barriers to learning for students in the plaintiff districts. Evidence presented by both the Plaintiff Districts and the Defendants argued that poverty accounts for much of the shortfall in learning and test scores, and other expert analysis demonstrated that poverty caused many children to be behind in skills needed for school success even before their schooling begins. The record also showed two-hour bus rides, each way, and the Court held that “inadequate transportation fails to convey children to school or home in a manner conducive to even minimal academic achievement.”

In its overall conclusion, the Court criticized the State Defendants:

During this case the Defendants asserted that achievement may not be legislated and that this Court could not possibly review the Plaintiff Districts’ claims … . These arguments ring hollow when compared to the Defendants’ failure to comprehensively analyze the troubling issues preventing educational opportunity in the Plaintiff Districts.

Although the Court noted that the General Assembly has primary responsibility to cure the constitutional deficiency, it also said that its findings present “a new opportunity” to the parties to work together.

Moreover, the Court retained jurisdiction and directed both plaintiffs and defendants “to reappear before this Court within a reasonable time from the issuance of this opinion, and present a plan to address the constitutional violation announced today.” Similar to the Washington Supreme Court in the McCleary case, the Court gave leave to the parties “to suggest to the Court precisely how to proceed. In particular, we invite the parties to make additional filings suggesting a specific timeline for the reappearance, as well as specific, planned remedial measures.”

Interestingly, the Court wrote that “the Defendants may find the remedies fashioned by other states’ courts instructive,” explaining briefly the cost- and needs-driven remedies ordered by other state high courts, in CFE v State of New York (CFE II) and Campbell County v. State of Wyoming.

Amici in this appeal included the League of Women Voters of SC and the SC Conference of the NAACP, jointly, in a brief arguing for high quality preschool and written by Education Law Center (ELC).

Years earlier, in Abbeville I, the South Carolina Supreme Court denied the state’s motion to dismiss because plaintiffs had stated a valid claim under the state constitution’s education clause, which the Court interpreted to mean that the legislature must provide children with a “minimally adequate education.” This case then went to trial.　

The trial court ruled that the state’s failure to develop and fund early education intervention programs through at least grade 3 denied plaintiff schoolchildren their right to a minimally adequate education. But, the trial court denied plaintiffs’ requested findings regarding quality teaching, which the Supreme Court has now overruled.

Education Justice Press

Contact:

Molly A. Hunter, Esq.
Director, Education Justice
email: mhunter@edlawcenter.org
voice: 973 624-1815 x19
http://www.edlawcenter.org
http://www.educationjustice.org

Copyright © 2014 Education Law Center. All Rights Reserved.

Education Justice Initiative | c/o 60 Park Place, Suite 300 | Newark | NJ | 07102

Categories Funding

Is Public School Spending Counter-Productive? These Two Letters to Wall Street Journal Say No.

By dianeravitch
November 11, 2014 //
45

The Wall Street Journal published an article by Kate Bachelder called “The Top 10 Liberal Superstitions.” The first “superstition” she cited was that “spending more money improves education.” Her proof: we have spent more money since 1970, but SAT scores and international scores have not gone up.

The article on the WSJ is behind a paywall, but on this site you can read the article in full. Here are two replies that should help to educate Ms. Bachelder and the readers of the WSJ:

 

 

 

Kate Bachelder’s first liberal superstition (“The Top 10 Liberal Superstitions,” op-ed, Oct. 31) is that “spending more money improves education” and she cites the fact that inflation-adjusted spending for K-12 has more than doubled since 1970, with corresponding decreases in SAT scores.

 

I don’t know what Ms. Bachelder’s age is, but I graduated from high school in 1971 and can say that up to that point in my public education my schools served exactly one special-education student. Spending on special education was nonexistent in 1970 as well as spending on teaching English to non-speakers. Oh, and I remember taking only one statewide test, in fifth grade, not the never-ending expensive testing regimen today’s students must endure.

 

Spending on education today can’t be equitably compared with spending in 1970, since we are now funding massive programs that didn’t exist 45 years ago.

 

Julie Hollingsworth

Fort Wayne, Ind.

 

 

Spending cuts in public education hurt children, families and eventually the economy. Cuts cause shortages of school nurses, libraries, fine arts and P.E., amenities taken for granted in private schools. They result in larger class sizes. At the same time states have slashed education funding ($5.4 billion in Texas in 2011), the number of students continues to increase, especially children who are low income and English-language learners. Educators aren’t making excuses when they point out that these children are more difficult to teach. Poor children suffer more toxic stress and move frequently. They have fewer books in the home (Beverley Hills’s average of 199 versus 0.4 in nearby Watts) and need more support from wraparound services. Slovakia is held up as an example for spending less on education, but 25% of U.S. children live in poverty compared with only 13% in Slovakia. In Texas over 60% of all public school children qualify for free or reduced lunch.

 

I respect Republicans for fiscal conservatism, but cutting public-education funding isn’t an investment in the future and doesn’t “conserve” the tradition of our public schools.

 

Sara Stevenson

Austin, Texas

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding

Pennsylvania: Néw Lawsuit Seeks Equitable Funding

By dianeravitch
November 11, 2014 //
12

The state of Pennsylvania is being sued by the following petitioners:

WILLIAM PENN SCHOOL DISTRICT; PANTHER VALLEY SCHOOL DISTRICT; THE SCHOOL DISTRICT OF LANCASTER; GREATER JOHNSTOWN SCHOOL DISTRICT; WILKES-BARRE AREA SCHOOL DISTRICT; SHENANDOAH VALLEY SCHOOL DISTRICT; JAMELLA AND BRYANT MILLER, parents of K.M., minor; SHEILA ARMSTRONG, parent of S.A., minor; TYESHA STRICKLAND, parent of E.T., minor; ANGEL MARTINEZ, parent of A.M., minor; BARBARA NEMETH, parent of C.M., minor; TRACEY HUGHES, parent of P.M.H., minor; PENNSYLVANIA ASSOCIATION OF RURAL AND SMALL SCHOOLS; and THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE—PENNSYLVANIA STATE CONFERENCE.

The petitioners are represented by the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia and the Education Law Center of Pennsylvania.

Here is the summary of their challenge to the state:

PETITION FOR REVIEW IN THE NATURE OF AN ACTION FOR DECLARATORY AND INJUNCTIVE RELIEF

Petitioners, by and through their counsel, for their Petition for Review in the Nature of an Action for Declaratory and Injunctive Relief against Respondents, state and allege as follows:

INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT

The good Education of Youth has been esteemed by Wise men in all Ages, as the surest foundation of the happiness both of private Families and of Common-wealths. Almost all Governments have therefore made it a principal Object of their Attention, to establish and endow with proper Revenues, such Seminaries of Learning, as might supply the succeeding Age with Men qualified to serve the publick with Honour to themselves, and to their Country.1

1. From the earliest days of the Commonwealth, Pennsylvania has recognized a societal interest in public education—a charge that Respondents here are sworn to carry out. Under the Pennsylvania Constitution, Respondents have an obligation to support a thorough and efficient public school system that provides all children an equal opportunity to receive an adequate education. Through legislation and regulation, Respondents have established state academic standards that define precisely what an adequate education entails. But rather than equip children to meet those standards and participate meaningfully in the economic, civic, and social life of their communities, Respondents have adopted an irrational and inequitable school financing arrangement that drastically underfunds school districts across the Commonwealth and discriminates against children on the basis of the taxable property and household incomes in their districts.
In adopting this arrangement, Respondents have violated Article III, Section 14, of the Pennsylvania Constitution (the “Education Clause”), which requires the General Assembly to “provide for the maintenance and support of a thorough and efficient system of public education to serve the needs of the Commonwealth.” They have also violated Article III, Section 32 (the “Equal Protection Clause”), which requires Respondents to finance the Commonwealth’s public education system in a manner that does not irrationally discriminate against a class of children.

2. The General Assembly’s delegation of much of these duties to local school districts cannot elide its ultimate responsibility under the Education Clause and the Equal Protection Clause. Through this lawsuit, Petitioners seek to hold the General Assembly responsible for and accountable to its constitutional mandate.

3. Respondents are well aware that the current school financing arrangement does not satisfy that mandate. In 2006, recognizing its constitutional duty to ensure adequate school funding, the General Assembly passed Act 114, which directed the State Board of Education to conduct a comprehensive statewide “costing-out” study to determine the “basic cost per pupil to provide an education that will permit a student to meet the State’s academic standards and assessments.” Upon the study’s completion in 2007, Respondents learned that 95% of the Commonwealth’s school districts required additional funding, a shortfall that totaled $4.4 billion.
In response, the General Assembly approved a bill in 2008 that established funding targets for each school district and a formula for distributing education funds in a manner that would help ensure that all students could meet state academic standards. Even with a financial crisis sweeping the nation, Respondents were able to rely on that funding formula to begin to more equitably distribute state funds and federal stimulus money, which collectively increased funding for school districts by more than $800 million over three years. Beginning in 2011, however, Respondents abandoned the funding formula, slashed funding to districts by more than $860 million, and passed legislation to severely restrict local communities from increasing local funding. Meanwhile, the cost of meeting state academic standards continued to rise, opening a perilous and widening gap between the actual resources provided to school districts and the resources necessary to provide children in Pennsylvania an adequate education.

4. These funding cuts have had a devastating effect on students, school districts (especially less affluent school districts), teachers, and the future of the Commonwealth. The latest figures from the 2012–13 school year indicate that more than 300,000 of the approximately 875,000 students tested, including the children of the individual Petitioners in this action, are receiving an inadequate education—by Respondents’ own definition—and are unable to meet state academic standards. Specifically, these students are unable to achieve proficiency on the Pennsylvania System of Standardized Assessment (“PSSA”) exams, which the General Assembly modified in 1999 to track state academic standards and measure student performance in reading, writing, math, and science.

5. Because of insufficient funding, Petitioner school districts are unable to provide students with the basic elements of an adequate education, such as appropriate class sizes, sufficient experienced and effective teachers, up-to-date books and technology, adequate course offerings, sufficient administrative staff, academic remediation, counseling and behavioral health services, and suitable facilities necessary to prepare students to meet state proficiency standards. In fact, the superintendent of the state’s largest school district has stated publicly that school staffing levels in 2013-14 were insufficient to provide students an adequate education.

6. Nor do Petitioner school districts have adequate resources to prepare students to pass the Keystone Exams, which measure student performance in math, science, and English. Achieving proficiency or higher on the Keystone Exams (or an equivalent project-based assessment) is a graduation requirement for all Pennsylvania students in the class of 2017 and beyond. Yet over 50% of students in the Commonwealth are currently unable to pass the Keystone Exams. Many of those students will leave high school without a diploma, hindering their ability to enter the workforce or “serve the needs of the Commonwealth.” The existing system of public education is therefore neither thorough nor efficient, as measured by the Commonwealth’s own academic standards and costing-out study.

7. What is worse, the very low levels of state funding and unusually high dependence on local taxes under the current financing arrangement have created gross funding disparities among school districts—an asymmetry that disproportionately harms children residing in districts with low property values and incomes. In fiscal year 2011, local sources provided 60% of the money that funded public education, while state appropriations accounted for only 34%. That year, only three states contributed a smaller percentage of the cost of public education than Pennsylvania.

8. As a consequence, total education expenditures per student now range from as little as $9,800 per student in school districts with low property values and incomes to more than $28,400 per student in districts with high property values and incomes, according to the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s 2012–13 data.2 This unconscionable and irrational funding disparity violates the Equal Protection Clause because it turns the caliber of public education into an accident of geography: Children in property- and income-poor districts are denied the opportunity to receive even an adequate education, while their peers in property- and income-rich districts enjoy a high-quality education.

This funding disparity is not justified by any difference in student needs. To the contrary, those students with the highest needs (e.g., English-language learners, students living in poverty) receive the fewest resources to prepare them to succeed. Nor is it justified by a desire to maintain local control over education. Any such “control” is illusory under the current financing arrangement because districts with low property values do not actually control the amount of resources at their disposal or the standards to which their students are held. In fact, many low-wealth districts have higher tax rates than property-rich school districts. In other words, it is not tax effort that explains the difference in funding. Rather, these underfunded districts are in areas so poor that, despite their high tax rates, they simply cannot raise enough money to improve education without more assistance from the state.

10. Petitioner Panther Valley School District (“Panther Valley”), a property-poor district, is a prime example of the funding disparity. In 2012– 13, Panther Valley’s equalized millage rate of 27.8—the 27th highest of the Commonwealth’s 501 school districts—raised revenue of approximately $5,646 locally per student. Property-rich Lower Merion School District (“Lower Merion”), on the other hand, raised revenue of approximately $23,709 locally per student—four times more than Panther Valley—with an equalized millage rate of just 14.7, almost half of Panther Valley’s.

11. Although the state has made some effort to close that gap, contributing twice as much per student to Panther Valley as it did to Lower Merion, that still left Panther Valley with less than half the combined state and local funding of Lower Merion: $12,022 per student versus $26,700. Respondents cannot reasonably claim that $12,022 is adequate to educate a Panther Valley student—not when the State Board of Education’s own costing-out study showed that Panther valley needed $13,427 per student based on 2005–06 costs. Over the past nine years, of course, those costs have only grown.

12. Given Respondents’ failure to address the funding crisis—and the ongoing harm their failure has inflicted on children throughout the Commonwealth—Petitioners ask this Court to declare the existing school financing arrangement unconstitutional and find that it violates both the Education Clause and the Equal Protection Clause. An objective framework for such an inquiry already exists. The state academic standards and student performance measures developed by Respondents beginning in 1999, as well as the costing-out study they commissioned, provide judicially manageable standards by which the Court can assess whether the General Assembly has maintained and supported “a thorough and efficient system of public education to serve the needs of the Commonwealth,” as required by the Pennsylvania Constitution.

13. Petitioners also seek an injunction compelling Respondents, after being given sufficient time to design, enact, and implement a school financing arrangement consistent with the Constitution, to halt any funding arrangement that (i) does not provide necessary, sufficient, and appropriate funding that ensures all students have an opportunity to obtain an adequate education and meet state academic standards, and (ii) irrationally discriminates against children who live in school districts with low property values and incomes.

1 Benjamin Franklin, Proposal Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania (1749), available at http://www.archives.upenn.edu/primdocs/1749proposals.html.

2 Unless otherwise noted, throughout this Complaint, “per student” is based upon Average Daily Membership (“ADM”) as reported by the Pennsylvania Department of Education. ADM refers to “all resident pupils of the school district for whom the school district is financially responsible.” It includes students in charter schools. See http://www.portal.state.pa.us/portal/server.pt/community/financial_data_elements/7672.

Categories Funding, Pennsylvania

Charter Schools Borrow at Record Pace, Led by Texas

By dianeravitch
November 10, 2014 //
25

Bloomberg News reports that charter schools are borrowing money at a record pace, relying on state guarantees to improve their credit ratings.

 

On their own, charters would be considered junk bond status. But state guarantees allow them to issue bonds with higher ratings.

 

U.S. charter schools are issuing a record amount of municipal debt, with Texas leading the charge as borrowers rated close to junk tap a program that gives their bonds top credit grades.

The institutions, privately run with public funding, have sold $1.6 billion of securities in 2014, data compiled by Bloomberg show. That’s more than all of last year and the most in Bloomberg data beginning in 2007. About $464 million has come from Texas, which for the first time in April backed a charter-school deal with its Permanent School Fund. The state-run pool guarantees bonds, lending the debt the AAA grade that Standard & Poor’s accords Texas.

Charter schools, which enroll 4.2 percent of U.S. public school students, are building a presence in the bond market as more parents seek academic options without paying private-school tuition. In Texas, the number of institutions tripled from 2000 to 2012 and enrollment jumped to 190,000 from 26,000, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

“The backing of the Permanent School Fund is critical to the growth of charter schools” given the savings it generates, said David Dunn, executive director of the Austin-based Texas Charter Schools Association. “There’s still a lot of room to go. We’re still not meeting the demand.”

 

Texas’s Growth

 

The growth in charter issuance contrasts with a slowdown in the $3.7 trillion municipal market as states and cities still recovering from the recession hesitate to borrow even as yields approach generational lows. Muni sales are down 7 percent from last year’s pace, Bloomberg data show.

Yet in Texas, home to seven of the 15 fastest-growing U.S. cities, municipalities are borrowing the most since 2008 as a swelling population fuels infrastructure investment. Charter schools have the same need, with enrollment growing about 15 percent annually in the last six years, Dunn said.

Life School, which has more than 4,500 students on campuses in Dallas County and Ellis County to the south, in April became the state’s first charter to issue debt backed by the School Fund.

Tax-exempt bonds maturing in August 2044 priced to yield 4.13 percent, or about 0.5 percentage point more than benchmark 30-year munis.

Without the guarantee from the fund, created in 1854, the school has a BBB- rating from S&P, the lowest level of investment grade. Institutions need to earn an above-junk rank on their own to get the backing.

Republican Governor Rick Perry has said more of the institutions should be permitted. The state guarantee has won over investors.

“It’s a state where you clearly see that they’re supportive,” said John Flahive, Boston-based director of fixed income at BNY Mellon Wealth Management, which oversees about $20 billion in munis and has bought debt of Texas charter schools.

“It’s a tricky sector,” he said. “Politics play a role in whether you can really see it working out for the life of the bond.”

Colorado and Utah also help boost the grades of schools in those states, said Wendy Berry at Charter School Advisors, which is based in Albany, New York, and counsels the institutions.

 

Great Hearts

 

Arizona ranks second behind Texas in issuance in 2014. Phoenix’s industrial development agency this month sold about $80 million of tax-free bonds for Great Hearts Academies in the state’s largest charter-school borrowing this year. The deal refinanced securities and paid for new facilities. S&P rated the debt BB+, one step below investment grade.

Categories Arizona, Charter Schools, Funding, Texas

Pennsylvania: How Parent Leaders Beat Governor Corbett

By dianeravitch
November 6, 2014 //
19

While Republicans made big gains across the nation, Pennsylvania was a stark exception. Democrat Tom Wolf beat Republican Governor Tom Corbett by a large margin. The main issue of the campaign was Corbett’s devastating cuts to public schools. Other budget-cutting governors won; why was Corbett whipped?

Here is the answer: Parent power. Parents never forgot what Corbett did and they built a grassroots movement to keep alive the voters’ memory and outrage about what Corbett had done to public schools.

Jesse Ramey–the blogger Yinzercation–explains here the victory strategy. Parents were relentless. They never gave up.

“What really dogged Corbett was – us! Ordinary parents, students, teachers, and community members refused to let this issue go. We wrote letters to the editor, op-eds, and blog pieces; we staged rallies and demonstrations; we held mock-bake sales; we wrote petitions and got on buses to Harrisburg to deliver thousands of signatures; we hosted public debates, lectures, and national authors. With “dogged” determination, we took every opportunity to counter Corbett’s attempts to minimize the damage he was inflicting on our schools: we took to social media and made on-line comments on news stories at every chance.

“Some folks had been doing this work for many years and became advisors and mentors to the more recent groundswell of advocacy, as we joined the long arc of the education justice movement. We connected with others across the state, from Philadelphia, to the Lehigh Valley, State College, Shippensburg, Erie, and beyond. I’m especially grateful to parent leaders such as Helen Gym, Rebecca Poyourow, Susan Spicka, Mark Spengler, and Dana Bacher. One take away message from this election is “don’t mess with Pennsylvania parents – or hurt their kids and schools!”

You can be sure that this powerful coalition will not let Governor Wolf forget why he was elected.

Categories Budget Cuts, Funding, Pennsylvania
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