Unequal Opportunity the Norm: Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey
In my favorite passage from Linda Darling-Hammond’s book, The Flat World and Education, she wonders, “what we might accomplish as a nation if we could finally set aside what appears to be our de facto commitment to inequality, so profoundly at odds with our rhetoric of equity, and put the millions of dollars spent continually arguing and litigating into building a high-quality education system for all children.” (p. 164)
The legislature in my state, Ohio, has appointed a constitutional modernization commission that is threatening to address the issue of continued school funding litigation another way, by removing the “thorough and efficient” education clause from the state constitution. Their goal: remove the state’s responsibility for protecting of equity of school investment across Ohio’s 613 school districts. A new report from Howard Fleeter, Ohio’s expert on school finance, clearly demonstrates why our legislators may be worried about litigation. Fleeter examines the per-pupil funding set-aside for school districts serving significant populations of children in poverty and documents that while the percentage of students who qualify for disadvantaged pupil aid has increased by 61.8 percent since Fiscal Year 1999, poverty aid has increased only 8.06 percent during the same period. Fleeter declares, “Ohio’s commitment to providing additional funding to districts with high concentrations of economically disadvantaged students has not even remotely kept pace with the rapid increase in the number of students in poverty across the state.” Ironically Ohio will be formally assigning letter grades to school districts and schools across the state beginning this fall. It will not be surprising when a large number of school districts serving extremely poor students receive the low grades. (Fleeter’s report for On the Money, a Hannah News Service Publication, is dated May 9, 2014 and titled “Eduction Funding for Economically Disadvantaged Students in Ohio.” This publication is behind a paywall and available only to subscribers.)
Meanwhile in Michigan, the Detroit News reports that public schools in Pontiac recently received a $10 million emergency loan to provide cash flow until the end of the school year. The Oakland County School District, where Pontiac is located, has accrued a $51.6 million deficit. Mosaica, a for-profit charter company hired by a state-appointed emergency manager to run the Muskegon Heights School District, is severing its five year contract after just two years. The state recently granted Muskegon Heights a loan of $1.4 million, “which district Emergency Manager Gregory Weatherspoon said will be used partly to pay back $761,000 owed to charter operator Mosaica Education, Inc., which has been fronting some payroll in the tiny west Michigan district.” Highland Park, another Michigan school district being Unequal Opportunity the Norm: Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey | janresseger: