This post was first published on the National Journal's Education Experts blog in response to these questions about Title I of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act:
What is an appropriate way to regulate equitable funding for schools? Is this an area that requires federal involvement? Should school districts be allowed some leeway (like the current 10 percent variation) in resource levels for different schools? Or should the funding be absolutely equal? What should be included or excluded in comparisons between school resource levels?
My response:
Current comparability requirements – put into place to ensure that Title I dollars enhanced funding, not supplanted funding, for the most needy students and schools – do nothing to prohibit the uneven distribution of teachers between Title I and non-Title I schools because school districts are allowed to show comparability through student-to-staff ratios or teacher salary schedules, not expenditures like actual salaries.
Particularly troubling, the regulations for calculating student-to-staff ratios include both teachers and paraprofessionals. This means there could be, for instance, a Title I elementary school with 40 staff members, but almost half of them are paraprofessionals, compared to a non-Title I school with 40 staff members, nearly all of whom are certified teachers. Under federal law these two schools would be “comparable.”
Another scenario: A Title I school’s teaching staff may be predominantly comprised of first- or second-year teachers, whereas the non-Title I school has experienced teachers. There’s nothing equitable about either situation. We know that teacher effectiveness matters, and experience certainly plays a role in effectiveness. We also know that experienced teachers prefer lower-poverty schools for a number of reasons – among them perceived better general working conditions. So why wouldn’t policymakers establish federal equitable funding requirements that help to ensure that students in low-income schools have the same access to equitable resources as their peers in higher-income schools? Helping to ensure an equitable education for all children is a role for the federal government.
There are currently some options on the table for making comparability more meaningful. My colleague, Jennifer Cohen, from the Federal Education Budget Project at the New America Foundation has written a great deal on the comparability requirement in Title I. Most recently she wrote on the changes proposed in the latest draft of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. She writes that under the new draft:
Closing the loophole is a critical piece to helping ensure that low-income schools receive sufficient funds to either compensate more experienced teachers or implement other programs to support student learning and improve achievement.
Particularly troubling, the regulations for calculating student-to-staff ratios include both teachers and paraprofessionals. This means there could be, for instance, a Title I elementary school with 40 staff members, but almost half of them are paraprofessionals, compared to a non-Title I school with 40 staff members, nearly all of whom are certified teachers. Under federal law these two schools would be “comparable.”
Another scenario: A Title I school’s teaching staff may be predominantly comprised of first- or second-year teachers, whereas the non-Title I school has experienced teachers. There’s nothing equitable about either situation. We know that teacher effectiveness matters, and experience certainly plays a role in effectiveness. We also know that experienced teachers prefer lower-poverty schools for a number of reasons – among them perceived better general working conditions. So why wouldn’t policymakers establish federal equitable funding requirements that help to ensure that students in low-income schools have the same access to equitable resources as their peers in higher-income schools? Helping to ensure an equitable education for all children is a role for the federal government.
There are currently some options on the table for making comparability more meaningful. My colleague, Jennifer Cohen, from the Federal Education Budget Project at the New America Foundation has written a great deal on the comparability requirement in Title I. Most recently she wrote on the changes proposed in the latest draft of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. She writes that under the new draft:
Comparability would truly become a measure of funds spent, rather than a comparison of easy to document but hard-to-quantify resources. Second, [the proposal] requires that expenditures in low- and high-income schools be equivalent – not within 10 percent. This would give districts far less leeway in variations in funding for their schools. While a 10 percent difference may seem small, it can mean the difference between several teaching positions in some schools or a faculty of less experienced teachers. But most importantly, the Harkin bill closes what has come to be called the ‘comparability loophole’ that allows districts to ignore variations in teacher compensation due to years of experience in their per pupil expenditure calculations for Title I and non-Title I schools.
Closing the loophole is a critical piece to helping ensure that low-income schools receive sufficient funds to either compensate more experienced teachers or implement other programs to support student learning and improve achievement.
0 comments:
Post a Comment