Education Funding Fails the Test
Congress' No Child Left Behind overhaul needs to fix how schools are funded.
Right now, it often seems like the national education debate is dominated by a single topic: Tests. Should parents opt-out their kids? Should teachers be evaluated on student test scores? Will the new Common Core exams be better than those in the past?
These questions are all important. Clearly, we must take steps to overhaul the way that children are assessed. But the testing debate often overshadows other much-needed reforms, most notably improving the nation's education funding system. And as Congress turns its attention to reauthorizing the No Child Left Behind Act, we need to do more to ensure that education spending works to help all students.
School funding reform should be at the top of the national education agenda. In too many areas, there are deep fiscal inequities between the schooling haves and the schooling have-nots. In Illinois, for instance, a recent research report by the Education Trust found that wealthy districts land over $2,500 more per student.
In some areas, the problem lies with statehouses; almost half of the states have funding systems that supply fewer resources to high-poverty districts, according to the U.S. Department of Education. There are also issues within districts, with some high-wealth schools landing an additional $670,000 in funding, according to a recent analysis by my colleagues at the Center for American Progress.
Such limited fiscal support can keep schools from performing. A major federal commission argued a few years ago that inequities have helped to cripple academic outcomes. The "American education system is failing too many of its children," the commissioners wrote. At the same time, the research base on the benefits of school funding is growing, and a 2014 analysis found that increases in education funding helped boost outcomes in Massachusetts.
Still, Congress has not taken action, even though it has been recently been looking at reforming No Child Left Behind. Most federal K-12 education dollars flow through the law, and the current version of the statute has not been reauthorized since the band Nickelback was at the top of the pop charts – and the law often seems just as tone-deaf to current educational realities.
There's been progress in addressing a few of the law's fiscal shortcomings. Last month, a Senate committee signed off on a bill, which included a provision that would improve fiscal reporting. That bill is supposed to reach the Senate floor soon, maybe even within the next few weeks.
But the Senate bill does not do enough to address the nation's funding system, and my colleagues have recently developed a number of proposals to address this problem. One idea, dubbed the "Fair Funding Incentive Grants," would use the $1 billion included in the president's budget request to encourage more equitable school funding.
More specifically, states with progressive funding programs would receive the extra federal dollars, according to the proposal. States that did not have progressive funding systems would have to "match" state dollars to federal ones in order to receive the money, and thus the program would serve as an incentive for states to take action.
Another option would be for Congress to require states to have progressive funding programs in order to receive federal dollars, or for Congress to allow more flexibility under the law in exchange for more equitable state funding systems. Whatever the case, all of these proposal would require states to target more of their funds to high-poverty schools.
Improving school funding isn't just about equity, though, and any fix to No Child Left Behind should also address how well schools spend their dollars. To improve educational productivity, Congress could make a simple change and allow states to use a portion of their federal dollars to fund support teams that would help districts build fiscal capacity.
As governor of Virginia, Mark Warner established a similar fiscal assistance program called " School Efficiency Reviews." The initiative posted some clear successes and the senator himself is pushing for a change to the law. "As governor, I was proud to establish a program that encouraged school systems to conduct efficiency reviews to identify how we could better allocate limited resources to get the maximum impact in the classroom," Warner says in an email. "This commonsense best practice should be available to school districts nationwide that are seeking more efficient ways to use existing resources."
When it comes to reforming the nation's education system, there are a lot of other things than matter beyond money or tests. But No Child Left Behind gives Congress an important opportunity to address some pressing fiscal issues and ensure that school funding is both productive, and progressive, for all students. No Child Left Behind Overhaul Needs to Fix Education Funding - US News:
School funding reform should be at the top of the national education agenda. In too many areas, there are deep fiscal inequities between the schooling haves and the schooling have-nots. In Illinois, for instance, a recent research report by the Education Trust found that wealthy districts land over $2,500 more per student.
Laura & John Arnold Foundation
Bloomberg Philanthropies
Carnegie Corporation of New York
The College Board
Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
The Joyce Foundation
W.K. Kellogg Foundation
The Kresge Foundation
Lumina Foundation
State Farm Companies Foundation
The Wallace Foundation
The Walton Family Foundation
One Size Does Not Fit All
The No Child Left Behind rewrite should take steps to ease the tensions between accountability and personalized learning
After years of stalled efforts to reauthorize the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Congress may have its best shot yet at rewriting the primary federal law governing K-12 education. A bipartisan reauthorization bill passed the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions with unanimous support earlier this month, and a survey of Washington insiders found that 60 percent believe the law will be reauthorized by the end of President Barack Obama's administration.
The current version of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, known as No Child Left Behind, has been the law of the land for nearly fourteen years. During that time, the education landscape has evolved dramatically, in ways no one imagined in 2001. States developed Common Core standards. The number of students enrolled in charter schools has risen more than fourfold. Pre-K programsexpanded dramatically. A major economic recession took a toll on education spending. Federal stimulus funds enacted in response spurred changes in state data systems and education policies. Technological innovation has also driven changes in education.
[READ: The Myth of 'Grade Level']
If history is any guide, both education and technology will experience even greater changes before the next Elementary and Secondary Education Act reauthorization rolls around. Yet current reauthorization proposals seem to be driven much more by reaction to the issues and debates of the past decade than a desire to equip schools to meet the challenges of the next one. Without a clear forward-looking vision, policymakers may inadvertently enact policies that will hamper, rather than support, promising education innovations.
Personalized learning offers a case in point. Increasing numbers of schools and districts are using technology and staffing in new ways to personalize learning to students' needs. These models, which fundamentally change how children engage with content and how teachers do their jobs, have the potential to significantly enhance student learning – but many are still in their infancy.
As Anne Hyslop and I explained in a recent paper, these personalized learning models are increasingly coming into conflict with state accountability systems and policies. Personalized learning is rooted in the expectation that students should progress through content based on demonstrated learning, not seat time. To facilitate this, personalized learning models differentiate content based on students' current skill level and provide multiple, real-time opportunities to demonstrate mastery of specific knowledge and skills. In contrast, standards-based accountability systems are rooted in the expectation that students should learn specific, grade-level content, and demonstrate their knowledge in a single, summative assessment, typically at the end of the school year. Although both personalized learning and standards-based accountability seek to enable all students to attain college and career readiness, differences in underlying assumptions can create tensions between the two in practice.
[READ: 'Opting Out' Into School Choice]
For example, most states evaluate schools based primarily on the percentage of students achieving proficiency on the state assessment. But the grade-level assessments that most states use to measure student achievement may not provide an accurate picture of how much students in personalized-learning contexts are learning – particularly those who start out far above or below grade level. Personalized learning enables children who lack the foundational skills to master grade-level content to go back and learn those foundational skills before progressing to grade-level lessons. Over the long
