Reminding Schools of their Responsibilities and Possibilities
Dear Colleagues,
Introduction
Earlier this Spring, near the 65th anniversary of the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case, I wrote two Blog messages addressing the national issue and reality of how students and schools are inequitably funded relative to their students’ psychoeducational and multi-tiered academic and behavioral needs.
One of the “bottom lines” discussed was that:
While segregated educational facilities were deemed by the Supreme Court to be inherently unequal, the quality of instruction and the availability of resources and money in today’s schools—for many students from poverty and students of color—is unequal.
[CLICK HERE for Part I of this Series:
Solving Student Crises in the Context of School Inequity: The Case for “Core-Plus District Funding” (Part I). When Schools Struggle with Struggling Students: “We Didn’t Start the Fire.”]
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[CLICK HERE for Part II of this Series:
The Journey toward Real School Equity: Students’ Needs Should Drive Student Services … and Funding (Part II). The Beginning of the Next School Year Starts Now: The “Get-Go Process”
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In this new Blog message, we will summarize the two previous Blog messages above. Then, we will review two critical parts of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA): (a) the requirement that districts and schools annually report how they are using their federal funds relative to administration, personnel, and—most importantly—to directly address students’ multi-tiered needs; and (b) the flexibility within ESEA specific to equitable per pupil funding.
In this latter section, we will include the flexibility within the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, 2004) that allows districts to spend up to 15% of their federal special education funds on preventative services and supports to students not identified with disabilities.
The bottom line of this Blog will be:
While there are still challenges at the federal and state levels, districts and schools may have more permission and flexibility to distribute their funds to differentially address different student needs than they actually take.
Indeed, the Shanker Institute reported—in its April, 2019 analysis, The Adequacy and Fairness of State School Finance Systems—that there is a cumulative state education funding gap of $23 billion per year favoring white over non-white districts nationwide, and experienced by approximately 12.8 million of our nation’s students.
But beyond this, a corollary from the two parts of ESEA that we will discuss today is that:
When parents and community leaders realize how funds in their district and schools are being used (if they are being used inequitably, wastefully, or in ways that do not largely or directly impact students), districts and schools may have to change their funding processes anyways—due to the public pressure.
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Summarizing the Recent Inequitable School Funding Series
In Part I of this Series, we provided data from a number of sources showing that high-poverty non-white schools in this country receive significantly less money per pupil each year than high-poverty white schools and middle or upper class dominated schools, respectfully. While this involves approximately 12.8 million students—many of them attending schools in urban settings—this is a nationwide problem.
Because of the financial inequity, these high-poverty schools have fewer resources than middle or upper class-dominant schools, and they are typically staffed by less experienced teachers who have more skill gaps, and who resign from their schools more often and after fewer years in-rank. In addition, the students in these schools typically have less access to high level science, math, and advanced placement courses, and less access to needed multi-tiered academic and social, emotional, and behavioral services, supports, programs, and interventions.
Correlated with the poverty, many of these students exhibit health, mental health, academic, and social, emotional, and behavioral challenges, that also triangulate with stress and trauma—including the impact of hunger and poor nutrition, parental incarceration and loss, abuse and neglect, and the exposure to violence and drugs.
From a school perspective, all of this translates into lower numbers of academically-proficient students, and schools that are either in their state’s ESEA-driven school improvement programs or that are rated at the low end of their state’s school report card scale.
From a student perspective, all of this translates into negative effects on students’ school attendance and expectations, classroom engagement and motivation, academic readiness and proficiency, emotional self-control and prosocial interactions and, ultimately, their high school graduation and readiness for the workforce.
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Critically, the sources of the existing financial inequities start from the top and move down.
Indeed, financial inequity occurs at the federal level relative to funding for students with disabilities. Some of the inequity rests at the state level relative to their respective funding formulas and how they distribute educational funds to all of their districts. Other inequities occur at the district levels relative to funds generated from local property taxes, and the ability of parent groups to generate discretionary money through fund-raisers and other donations.
In the final analysis, Part I of the Series described a vicious cycle due to all of this.
Despite the fact that teachers’ relationships with their students are one of the strongest predictors of student engagement and learning, these relationships are hard to establish and maintain given the effects (noted above) that occur in many underfunded schools. This is compounded due to the intensity of the conditions in these schools’ communities and of the students’ needs.
Because of the under-funding, many of these schools do not have the effective multi-tiered system of supports and resources that the students need. Thus, the students’ problems persist or expand, classrooms and schools go into crisis, staff become reactive instead of proactive, more students are sucked into the negative climate and culture, and the entire cycle begins anew.
Part I ended with a plea for systemic changes relative to federal, state, and district funding policies, principles, and practices. We recommended a “Core-Plus Funding” process whereby all schools in a district receive the core funding needed for student success, but where the schools with additional or significant student needs receive, annually, the additional funds and resources needed for their success.
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In Part II of this Series, we discussed a new report showing the impact of poverty and the importance of inequitable school funding, and revisited our Part I recommendation that districts and their school utilize a Core-Plus Funding process.
Core-Plus Funding is when every school in a district receives the “Core” funding that it needs to implement a sound educational program for its students. The “Plus” funding involves the additional funds that each school receives based on the intensity of the academic and social, emotional, and behavioral needs of its students.
While a few states practice a variation of Core-Plus Funding (e.g., Wyoming), our experience is that many districts do not utilize this approach.
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Because this Blog message was published at the end of the 2018-2019 school year, Part II described the “Get-Go” process as an effective way for districts to identify the “Plus” part of their funding by functionally reviewing the status and needs of all the students in their respective schools.
In addition to its contribution to strategic and differential budgeting, we have also used the Get-Go process across the country to help districts and schools identify and prepare for their diverse, multi-tiered student needsfor the first day of the new school year.
Finally, we described how the Get-Go process helps districts know how to best deploy and align existing staff, services, and support—or determine what new staff to hire and assign—to meet as many student needs as possible.
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Revisiting the Importance of Equitable School Funding
On May 15, 2019, Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce published a study, Born to Win, Schooled to Lose: Why Equally Talented Students Don’t Get Equal Chances to Be All They Can Be.
[CLICK HERE for this study]
This study used data from a number of national longitudinal databases to investigate the impact of students’ socio-economic status in kindergarten on their college and career outcomes. Among the databases used were: the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey, the Consumer Expenditure Survey, the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (to determine students’ socio-economic status); and the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study: Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999, and the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002.
The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study’s 1998-1999 kindergarten cohort involved a representative sample of 21,260 kindergartners from across the country. The Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 sampled a nationally representative group of over 15,000 10th graders from over 750 schools beginning in 2002.
This study is important to our discussion of inequity because it (a) demonstrates that socio-economic inequity for students in kindergarten has dire, long-term effects; and (b) that schools with large numbers of poor students (many of whom are students of color) need more (not fewer—as shown in Part I of this Blog series) resources and funding to address these students’ needs.
Here are the Key Findings from the Born to Win, Schooled to Lose study.
- In America, it is often better to be rich than smart. Among the affluent, even a kindergartner with test scores in the bottom half has a 7 in 10 chance of reaching high SES among his or her peers as a young adult. But for similarly talented White, Black, Latino, and Asian children from low-SES families, the meager material supports available along the way to adulthood subvert nature’s generosity. Across racial and ethnic groups, a disadvantaged kindergartner with test scores in the top half has approximately a 3 in 10 chance of being high SES by the age of 25.
- Even at an early age, environmental disparities by class, race, and ethnicity are evident in measures of children’s achievement. Only about a quarter of lowest-SES kindergartners have top-half math scores, compared to around three-quarters of highest-SES kindergartners. Children’s early scores also vary by race, in part because Black and Latino children are twice as likely as White children to come from lowest-SES families.
- As children progress through primary school, they can improve on measures of achievement, but their chances of improvement correlate to their class status. Becoming high achieving is less likely for low-SES kindergartners with bottom-half math scores. By the eighth grade, fewer than 1 in 5 lowest-SES kindergartners with bottom-half math scores will score in the top half, compared to more than 2 in 5 highest-SES kindergartners with bottom-half math scores.
- A child from an advantaged class is more likely to maintain high scores than one from a poor family, and White and Asian children are more likely to do so than Black or Latino children. For low-SES students with top-half math scores, staying at the top throughout their academic journeys is difficult. In addition, Black and Latino students with top-half math scores in kindergarten are less likely than their White and Asian peers to persist in earning top scores.
- Achievement patterns are largely set by the time children enter high school. This is particularly evident for students with the lowest scores: students with bottom-quartile scores have difficulty improving their scores once they reach high school. Most tenth graders who score in the bottom math quartile will still score in the bottom quartile in twelfth grade.
- High school achievement sets the stage for college attainment—but family class plays an even greater role. The highest-SES students with bottom-half math scores are more likely to complete a college degree than the lowest-SES students with top-half math scores.
- Class mobility in America is limited—but education can be a lever for change. The lowest-SES tenth graders with top-half math scores are twice as likely to become high-SES (top-half) young adults as their peers with bottom-half math scores. Disadvantaged students who show promise can achieve, but their chances are better with interventions—and while lowest-SES tenth graders with bottom-half scores can become high SES, their chances are very slim.
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And here are some additional data from the study:
- According to report, more-affluent students are often provided with more resources both in and out of school, which may benefit their education.
- White and Asian tenth graders are more likely than Black and Latino tenth graders to earn a college degree in 10 years, no matter their high school math scores.
- Most tenth-graders who score in the bottom math quartile maintain their low grades through twelfth grade.
- Improving scores in high school is uncommon, but highest-SES students are twice as likely as lowest-SES students to move into a higher math quartile.
- Lowest-SES tenth graders with top math scores are less likely to immediately enroll in a college than highest-SES tenth graders with bottom math scores. These lowest-SES tenth graders also are less likely than highest-SES students to complete college 10 years later—regardless of their high school math scores.
- Affluent children with low test scores have a 71% chance of becoming affluent adults at age 25, while poor children with high test scores only have a 31% of chance of becoming wealthy in adulthood.
- The disparity becomes more severe when broken down by race. Fifty-one percent of black and 46% of Latino 10th graders with high math scores were more likely to earn a college degree within 10 years than similar students with low scores, but they were still less likely to early a college degree than their white and Asian high-scoring peers. Among the latter groups, 62% and 69%, respectively, received degrees.
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These results crystallize the long-term impact of poverty. And while the Georgetown University report did not analyze whether low-SES students attending better resourced schools had better outcomes, past research suggests that quality education and sound multi-tiered supports can mediate the impact of poverty. This, then, reinforces the critical need for funding for schools by student need when they have high numbers of students from poverty.
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ESEA Requirement: Reporting School Funding on Each State and District Annual Report Cards
According to a 2018 report by the Aspen Institute, Ensuring Equitable Funding, ESEA requires:
- States and school districts to produce report cards that include information about per-pupil expenditures, including actual personnel and non-personnel expenditures disaggregated by source of funds at the district and school levels.
- Districts are required to conduct resource reviews for schools that are identified for comprehensive support and improvement and additional targeted support and improvement.
Given these requirements, this document suggests that Districts have an opportunity “to drive bigger conversations around equitable funding, expanding the equity conversation beyond funding to include other dimensions affected by funding like teaching, school design, instructional support, and central services.”
This Report goes on to encourage District leaders to meet the requirements above by reporting the financial information in the most meaningful and parent/community-friendly ways by:
- Using comparative data to understand relative differences—not just absolute values.
- Sharing school resource data in context of school need and school performance.
- Including explanatory data that show what drives differences in spending levels across schools.
- Integrating other dimensions of resource equity to show the ways in which financial resources are (or are not) invested in strategies and structures that drive student achievement.
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Comment. For some districts and schools across the country, the reporting of the now-ESEA-required financial data will be the first time that the public will truly know (if reported—as above—in functional, user-friendly ways) how public funds are being used to “run” the school district and to educate its students. Consistent with the Aspen recommendations above, this will hopefully fuel a discussion—for both district personnel and the different constituencies within the community—as to how to best use the available funds as most-directed toward all students’ academic and social, emotional, and behavioral progress and proficiency.
Hopefully, from a “Core-Plus Funding” perspective, districts and schools will provide information on how much “Core” money each school needs to run an effective educational program, and how much money is needed to support each school relative to district administration. “District administration,” however, should include not just district personnel—but also, for example, the physical plant and infrastructure costs of maintaining the school buildings themselves, professional development and technology, and transportation, safety, and security.
On the “Plus” side, hopefully districts will provide detailed (but confidential) information on the different “multi-tiered intensities of student needs” in each of its schools. This information should look beyond (but include) information on poverty to also include the number of students (organized by gender and race) who are:
- Retained in each school each year—and at what grade levels and for what reasons;
- Students with IDEA-related disabilities—including the specification of their disability area, intensity of needs, and involvement of related services professionals);
- Students with 504-related disabilities—including the specification of the intensity of their needs, and the involvement of related services professionals);
- Students identified as English-Language Learners—once again, specifying their needs, and the services, supports, programs, and interventions they are receiving; and
- Other students—for example—who are homeless, who do not have a disability but are academically or behaviorally struggling, or who have moved in from other districts that are low functioning.
The Plus information above will help both district and community folk to discuss “equity and excellence” issues from a data-based perspective—describing and personalizing the needs of different students—rather than just from a philosophical or conceptual perspective.
All of this helps to add depth and breadth to the financial information that must be reported. All of this helps to move beyond reporting the information for compliance purposes, to using the information for strategic planning and student-centered decision-making.
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ESEA and IDEA Flexibility: How Funds Can Be Used to Enhance Equity
ESEA allows districts to use their federal funds in flexible ways to enhance equity. As cited in the Aspen Institute report introduced above, here are some possible examples:
- Target Funding to Title I Schools:
Title I, II, and IV. Shift money from Titles II and IV into Title I so that other title funding goes only to Title I schools.
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- Prioritize Competitive Grants to High-Needs Schools:
Title II and Other Grants. Ensure competitive grant proposals prioritize high-need schools (e.g., Teacher and School Leaders Incentive Program, Literacy Education for All, American History and Civics Education, School Leader Recruitment and Support, Magnet Schools Assistance).
Title IV. Prioritize 21st Century Community Learning Center grants for low-performing schools.
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- Braid Title IV Funds with Other Initiatives Focused on Under-Served Students:
Title IV. Target Title IV-A district grants to low-income students, minority students, and English-Language Learners.
Other Grants. Apply for ESEA’s Teacher and School Leader Incentive Fund—which prioritizes high-need schools.
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Beyond the recommendations above, there are at least two additional ways available to districts such that they can use their federal funds in more flexible ways to enhance the equitable needs of their students.
The first way involves ESEA’s Part E—Flexibility for Equitable Per Pupil Funding (Section 1501). According to ESEA, “The purpose of the program under this section is to provide local educational agencies (i.e., school districts) with flexibility to consolidate eligible Federal funds and State and local education funding in order to create a single school funding system based on weighted per-pupil allocations for low-income and otherwise disadvantaged students.
While this is a demonstration program that will involve no more than 50 districts nationwide, this option is available to districts who want to address the needs of low-income and “otherwise disadvantaged students.”
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The second way has been available to all districts nationwide since the passage of IDEA in 2004. In Section 613(f)(2)(A), IDEA—according to the U.S. Department of Education—allows the following:
- LEAs may use up to 15% of their IDEA Part B funds for coordinated early intervening services (CEIS) to assist students in grades K through 12 (with an emphasis on K through 3) who are not currently identified as needing special education and related services but who need additional academic and behavioral support to succeed in a general education environment.
- CEIS funds can be used to provide professional development to educators who are responsible for helping children who need additional academic and behavioral support succeed in a general education environment or to provide direct interventions to children who need academic and behavioral support.
- CEIS funds may be used in coordination with ESEA funds but must supplement, and not supplant, ESEA funds for those activities. Title I schoolwide school may use, to carry out the schoolwide project, an amount of IDEA funds that is the same proportion of the total cost of the project as the number of children with disabilities benefiting from the program is to the total school population participating in the program.
- In a Title I schoolwide school that consolidates Federal funds (e.g., ESEA, IDEA, etc.), a school may use those funds for any activity in its schoolwide plan without accounting separately for the funds. The schoolwide school needs to ensure that children with disabilities continue to receive FAPE, but would not need to show that IDEA funds were spent only on allowable special education and related services expenditures.
While I understand that the Federal government has under-funded special education services since the beginning of IDEA (Public Law 94-142 passed in 1975), this provision means that, for example, special education teachers who are funded exclusively with IDEA funds and who are co-teaching in a general education classroom or even teaching in their own self-contained classroom can still provide instructional or intervention services to general education (especially at-risk) students.
This similarly means that related service professionals like school psychologists, social workers, speech pathologists, and occupational or physical therapists—who, once again, are fully funded by IDEA money—also can provide some services to non-disabled students.
These professionals, for example, might be most useful as instructional or intervention consultants to general education teachers—helping them (a) to better understand academically struggling or behaviorally challenging students, and/or (b) to design and implement classroom-based interventions that will address these students’ needs.
The bottom line here is that there is flexibility within both ESEA and IDEA to allow personnel and funds to more flexibly and equitably address students who need more multi-tiered strategic or intensive services, supports, strategies, or programs. Even if districts and schools do not adopt Core-Plus Funding approaches, they still can tap into these (and other) flexibilities.
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Summary
In this Blog message, we briefly summarized two previous Blog messages—written this past Spring addressing the importance of using educational funds, resources, and personnel in more equitable and student-centered ways. We then reviewed two critical parts of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA): (a) the requirement that districts and schools annually report how they are using their federal funds relative to administration, personnel, and—most importantly—to directly address students’ multi-tiered needs; and (b) the flexibility within ESEA specific to equitable per pupil funding.
In this latter section, we highlighted the flexibility within the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA, 2004) that allows districts to spend up to 15% of their federal special education funds on preventative services and supports to students not identified with disabilities.
Throughout the entire discussion, the bottom line has been:
While there are still challenges at the federal and state levels, districts and schools may have more permission and flexibility to distribute their funds to differentially address different student needs than they actually take.
A corollary message has been that:
When parents and community leaders realize how funds in their district and schools are being used (if they are being used inequitably, wastefully, or in ways that do not largely or directly impact students), districts and schools may have to change their funding processes anyways—due to the public pressure.
_ _ _ _ _
High-poverty non-white schools in this country receive significantly less money per pupil each year than high-poverty white schools and middle or upper class dominated schools, respectfully. This involves approximately 12.8 million students.
Because of the financial inequity, these high-poverty schools have fewer resources than middle or upper class-dominant schools, and they are typically staffed by less experienced teachers who have more skill gaps, and who resign from their schools more often and after fewer years in-rank. In addition, the students in these schools typically have less access to high level science, math, and advanced placement courses, and less access to needed multi-tiered academic and social, emotional, and behavioral services, supports, programs, and interventions.
This Blog has argued that there are ways to address these circumstances. Not to take our federal and state governments off the hook, but this ultimately will be a local decision enacted by individual districts and their schools. In the end, districts need to consider the implementation and funding of multi-tiered services, supports, and interventions that are based on student need and that follow the students regardless of the schools that they attend.
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I understand the challenges. But I consult weekly with schools across the country that are taking on these challenges.
As always, I appreciate those of you reading these thoughts. If you have comments or questions, please contact me as desired. And please feel free to take advantage of my standing offer for a free, one-hour conference call consultation with you and your team at any time.
Best,
