|
How much is enough?
Getting a handle on the adequacy of financial support to schools is no small task. For one thing, no one knows what an adequate per pupil expenditure ought to be. The perfect per pupil expenditure is the one that reliably accomplishes the job. But since financial support is only one aspect of a complex of factors that contribute to student achievement, the “right” number remains elusive, here and throughout the nation. On the one hand, personnel contracts alone usually account for about 85% of any school’s budget, sometimes more. On the other hand, the choices about the mix of personnel, speaks to that school’s strategy for success. Some schools invest heavily in support services for their students – counselors, social workers and psychologists – others might invest in academic support such as literacy coaches. This means that no dollar figure is meaningful by itself, but needs to be seen in a larger educational context.
The funding picture statewide
This section of Information Works! is less concerned with individual school spending than with how the state looks as a whole, through the various different fiscal lenses designed by the IW! team. Each district sits in relation to its fellow districts, but again, resist drawing conclusions without investigating the district strategy for investing their resources and what achievement results they get in return.
However, the variety of lenses tell us clearly that RI has significant disparities in the overall resources available to different districts.
School aid as tied to property taxes
In the U.S. historically, schools – in the past considered to be an entirely local concern – were supported principally by their own communities, mainly through real estate taxes. During the Lyndon Johnson years of “the Great Society,” and the passage and implementation of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) of 1968, the federal government took an interest in the “savage” inequities between different schools’ resources, with an eye especially to the racial inequality that corresponded to the general inequities associated with poverty.
Over the years, that concern filtered down to the states, each of whom began to collect and expend at least some portion of state taxes in the form of “state aid” to soften the inequities. Now at the dawning of the 21st century, most states are still struggling with a way to make their school funding more equitable. Many states are in court over the issue, which is still hotly debated even in those states who have achieved equity.
1997's Budget Article 31 and Subsequent Amendments
In the late 1980's the RI General Assembly designed and started to implement a funding formula that, overall, would have shifted a higher portion of the burden of school funding to the state. The recession of the early 1990's halted the full implementation of that formula – which was considered excellent and very progressive in its day. Since then RI has developed a slightly different strategy. The new aid assumes at least level funding for all districts, even those that experience a drop in student enrollment, and tries to offer an across-the-board percentage increase when possible. On top of that, the RI General Assembly allocates money, on a per pupil basis, to support such initiatives as professional development, early childhood initiatives and improving technology. Lastly, the Assembly increased the amount of funding for the core urban districts, especially Providence, above and beyond the basic funding and the targeted investments.
One of the complicating factors of school funding, of course, is the inequity between the districts in terms of need or student challenge. Putting a realistic dollar figure on what it would take to overcome such challenges is also maddeningly elusive. Still, as long as we know that the absolute scores for student achievement are closely correlated to median family income within a given district, we are not offering every child a full opportunity to learn.
Equity: Tax revenue and expenditure, two views
The two charts on the following pages show related information about the district municipalities’ ability to generate revenue to support their municipal services, including their schools, against their efforts to do so. The data are supplied by the RI Department of Administration, Office of Municipal Affairs and is updated annually. We thank them for their cooperation and help.
|
