History of IDEA
Jeannie Oakes, Founder and Former Director
Youth Voice in School Finance
NEW REPORT: Los Angeles' road to A-G for all
Without Dollars and Sense Powerpoint
Past Educational Opportunity Reports
National education funding crisis worses
- 09-23-2009
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By UCLA/IDEA Staff
Themes in the News for the week of February 15-19, 2010
California Leads the Downward Spiral
California schools are in worse shape than most states, and funding to California districts is so unequal that a lawsuit is looming. Dire predictions first made years or decades ago have arrived, and yesterday’s worst case scenarios can be seen in today’s classrooms. A school reform agenda addressing the problems and/or solutions of accountability, standards, teacher unions, parent involvement, wasteful spending, charter schools, and so forth, will not succeed if schools can’t afford a full curriculum, can’t meet their payrolls, or can’t distribute learning opportunities fairly to all students.
States across the nation face combined shortfalls of $55.5 billion in fiscal 2011 and $68.8 billion in fiscal 2012 (The Wall Street Journal). Already, 25 to 30 states have cut education funding (The Wall Street Journal), leading to “more teacher layoffs, larger class sizes, smaller paychecks, fewer electives and extracurricular activities, and decimated summer school programs” (The Washington Post). Many states, including California, are expecting further cuts.
The federal stimulus funding distributed last year staved off some damage to schools, but critics say that the aid has worsened funding inequalities. “‘A lot of states used [stimulus funds] to make the distribution of money to their high-poverty districts worse,’ said David Sciarra,” the director of Education Law Center (Education Week). This happened because states parceled out the funds through existing, inequitable channels (Education Week), a situation that has undermined budget reform efforts (The Educated Guess). What’s more, the benefits that the stimulus package may have provided will soon evaporate as states use up the funds (The Washington Post).
California faces a $20 billion overall shortfall (The Wall Street Journal). Already down by 4 percent, per-pupil spending in the state would be cut by an additional 8 percent under Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s proposed budget for 2010-2011 (The Washington Post). Programs have been cut and class sizes increased (Press Democrat). The decreased expenditures have curtailed districts’ abilities to narrow racial and economic achievement gaps. “These cuts hurt some of our poorest and neediest kids,’” said San Francisco Unified Superintendent Carlos Garcia (The Washington Post).
Exacerbating inequalities are the district-level differences in capacity to raise local taxes. “Wealthier communities are filling school budget gaps with local tax increases and aggressive fundraising, but could worsen inequality and undermine the larger system for paying for public schools,” said IDEA director John Rogers (The Washington Post). The Los Angeles Unified School District is proposing a $100-per-land parcel tax that will be brought to voters in June. However, it is uncertain whether the measure will pass, given the history of parcel taxes succeeding in wealthier districts and failing in those with more poverty (Los Angeles Times).
The inequality in education funding is the central issue in a lawsuit likely to be filed this spring. (California Progress Report). The California School Boards Association (CSBA), along with other education groups, contends that the conditions set in the Williams v. California suit, settled six years ago, are not being met. The Williams case demanded that the state’s poor students and students of color have equal access to adequate school facilities and teachers. A CSBA memo says the state “‘has violated its constitutional duty to operate a functioning ‘system of common schools’” (California Progress Report).
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