We at MassBudget just released a new report titled “Cutting Class: Underfunding the Foundation Budget’s Core Education Program,” which finds that districts across the state are hiring fewer teachers, providing less professional development, and spending less on materials & technology than the state funding formula considers appropriate for a quality education. Under-spending on these core education inputs, which is particularly acute in lower-wealth districts, is likely hampering our ability to close persistent achievement gaps.
Why is this happening? Because the foundation budget—the model school budget on which state aid is based—has not been updated to reflect the current costs of education. Currently, the foundation budget underestimates health insurance costs by more than $1 billion dollars, and special education costs by another billion. Spending on health insurance and SPED, driven largely by outside factors like national health care cost growth and increasing proportions of high-needs SPED students, are costs over which local districts have limited control.
On several occasions, the state has also failed to make inflation adjustments indicated by the law.
In the state’s highest-wealth districts, such shortfalls are often made up with additional local revenues. But in many communities, raising local revenue is extremely difficult. Because the formula has failed to reflect growing costs, lower-wealth districts have been forced to reduce spending elsewhere in their school budgets. The lowest-wealth districts, for example, spend 32 percent less on regular education teachers than is specified in the foundation budget formula. Teacher spending below foundation levels has likely resulted in hiring fewer total teachers than foundation calls for, resulting in larger class sizes, less planning and meeting time for teachers during the school day, and the hiring of fewer specialist teachers, such as literacy specialists, language teachers, art teachers, etc.
To accompany “Cutting Class,” we also created an online interactive tool that allows people to look more closely at how these issues play out in each of the state’s 328 school districts.
Also, a Sunday Globe story on the report is available HERE
Luc Schuster
MassBudget Policy Analyst
to improving our schools, but it is a necessary component. Massachusetts is backsliding, but California is rapidly divesting in education funding.
Linda Darling-Hammond has done the research and published it her most recent book The Flat World and Education. This article has a lot of the same materials.
the next time you hear how those dumbass cities and towns can’t control their spending and always have their hands out. Unlike the wise Masters of Beacon Hill.
Oh yeah, speaking of that: Too bad cupboard is bare for kids but Go Ponies!
Let me put a few simple concepts out there for people to digest, using Lawrence and Wellesley as examples. I’m going to list my conclusion first, because this is a long post.
1) The state has set foundation budgets which, although somewhat progressive, still appear to be wildly inadequate, perhaps only representing 42% of what should be spent if you look at Lawrence vs. Wellesley.
2) Wealthy communities like Wellesley routinely spend 30-50% higher than their foundation budgets.
3) Poor communities like Lawrence spend at or below their foundation budgets.
4) Poor communities like Lawrence cannot even come close to funding their already inadequate foundation budget with property tax levy, which is capped via Proposition 2.5.
If that interests you, read the justification for my conclusion below.
The Foundation Budget is the minimum amount of money that a community is supposed to spend on its schools. It can be found on the state’s DOE website. There is a formula – incredibly complex, I don’t understand it – which outlines the contribution that each community should make from property tax levy toward the foundation budget. The state then contributes aid to the community up to the foundation budget level, via Chapter 70 money.
Lawrence’s foundation budget to educate 10,920 students in FY 2012 is $144,327,894.
Lawrence’s legal limit on property tax collection under Proposition 2.5 – for all city services – is $49,642,351.
Anyone else see the problem here? Lawrence can only legally collect 34% of the levy of what it is required to fund its schools at the lowest acceptable level.
Next up is problem #2. Let’s look at the amount of “discretionary” spending toward education that goes on in this state. I define “discretionary” as the amount over and above the foundation that communities spend. That should be a good indication as to how good the foundation numbers are, right?
In FY11, across the entire state, districts spent 16.2% more than they were required to spend on education. That number is falsely low, because it includes districts like Springfield which have actually been spending slightly under the state required minimum.
Look at a district like Wellesley. They have consistently spent 48% over the foundation budget over the past 5 years. Lincoln-Sudbury is spending 42% more. Longmeadow is in the 30% range. Winchester is in the 30% too.
Meanwhile, Lawrence is spending 2% below foundation. Holyoke is 4% over. New Bedford is 0%. Fall River is 3 over%. Springfield is 2% under.
OK, you say – maybe the foundation budget just isn’t fair to wealthy communities. Maybe it progressively gives more to poor communities and the dollars provided are adequate to educate children in those communities.
One only has to look at per-pupil spending to understand how wrong that is.
Wellesley is required to spend $8,627 per student. It spends $13,190. Lawrence is required to spend $10,920 per student. It spends $10,748. So Wellesley is spending more on its students than Lawrence is required to spend.
Now think about the foundation numbers for a minute. Lawrence is required to spend 26.5% more than Wellesley per student. Just how much more is 26.5%? Well, if you have a class of 20 Lawrence students, 26.5% more students is 25 Wellesley students.
Think harder about that. The foundation budget is claiming that it costs the same to educate 25 Wellesley students as it does 20 Lawrence students. Those dollars are to educate students in each community to the same level of proficiency.
That is absurd on its face, and that shows how broken education is in this state. If I had to make a ballpark guess, I’d guess that Lawrence should be spending twice as much per student on education as Wellesley – primarily to reduce class sizes and to pay teachers more. Yet it is spending just 81% of Wellesley.
Let me again summarize for you.
1) The state has set foundation budgets which, although somewhat progressive, still appear to be wildly inadequate, perhaps only representing 42% of what should be spent if you look at Lawrence vs. Wellesley.
2) Wealthy communities like Wellesley routinely spend 30-50% higher than their foundation budgets.
3) Poor communities like Lawrence spend at or below their foundation budgets.
4) Poor communities like Lawrence cannot even come close to funding their already inadequate foundation budget with property tax levy, which is capped via Proposition 2.5.
Why has this happened? Educational/economic segregation. Children from poorer families who are traditionally more difficult to educate were/are segregated into certain communities. Those communities could not afford to fund their schools at high levels due to Proposition 2.5. This caused a feedback loop, lowering property values even further in those communities, and increasing property values in other communities. More high-end development goes to wealthy communities, more low-income housing goes to poor communities.
How do we fix this? A few ways:
1) Dramatically change educational funding. Make the quality of education in poor districts so good that people in wealthy districts start to think about sending their kids to the poor district schools. Have class sizes of 8-10 kids. Have superior educational materials. Pay teachers more so that there is a higher percentage of outstanding teachers in poor districts.
2) Regionalize school districts in such a way that combines wealthy and poor communities. This was done in the South, I can’t recall just where. This is probably politically hard to do though since the segregation is so severe, and there are more rich than poor – and it is reminiscent of busing.
Why should this be fixed? Because it is harming our state. Our population is shrinking. Why? Because our economy is corrupted to the point where many young people can’t live here. Why not? Because they can’t afford the communities they want to live in, and don’t want to live in the communities they can afford. So they move elsewhere. This causes companies to have to pay higher wages, which normally isn’t a bad thing, but the increase in wages are all going toward housing costs.
The segregation has thrown our state’s economy out of balance, and it is getting worse, not better. It may be good for the people who live in the good communities (and really bad for those who live in the poor communities), but it isn’t sustainable. The odds are increasing that your kids will need to leave the state when they grow up. You will likely not get to know your grandchildren. Taxes will grow as inequality grows, and things won’t get any better – crime will rise, unemployment will be high, and we will waste more and more human capital.