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Glen Ridge: Creating an Autonomous Public School District

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

Whether to Secede?

Unfunded state and federal mandates are strangling the Glen Ridge Public Schools as well as traditional public school districts nationwide. Unfunded mandates drive school district budgetary deficits, property tax increases, operational restrictions, and educational program and service reductions. When the costs and consequences of these mandates are combined with a statewide 2.0% tax and expenditure limit (TEL) or cap, the Glen Ridge school district is compelled to consider whether (Read, 2010) “to effectively secede from New Jersey’s public school system.”

Glen Ridge along with the majority of New Jersey’s public school districts can no longer afford to pay for state and federal unfunded and under funded mandates because the district is forced to spend disproportionately more to meet the requirements of these mandates than it receives in total state and federal financial aid. This creates a budgetary deficit. Making up for this mandate-created deficit annually forces Glen Ridge to make extremely difficult choices. The challenges involved in the budgetary decision making process were exacerbated when the Glen Ridge school district along with dozens of others statewide lost all of its state financial aid. Moreover, the state of New Jersey’s imposition of a 2.0% TEL further constrains the district’s financial outlook.

While the state and federal governments force Glen Ridge to fully fund the unfunded portion of their mandates, Glen Ridge must make up for the mandate deficit and balance its budget annually. There are, however, only two kinds of programs and services offered by our public schools: those that are mandate protected and those that are not mandate protected. The Glen Ridge school district like public schools nationwide, therefore, must choose between cutting non-mandate protected programs and services or raising property taxes.

Unfunded Mandates Drive Budgetary Deficits

When a school district experiencing increases in mandate-driven uncontrollable expenses becomes limited by a 2.0% TEL, it must cut expenses even more severely to stay within the cap. There is no exemption for the ever increasing costs of the state’s special education mandates included within Governor Christie’s 2.0% TEL (Maxwell, 2010,) for example. Public school districts, therefore, must allocate scarce financial and human resources to pay for the unfunded portion of mandates and spend disproportionate administrative time on external reporting. A school district spends less time and money on core educational programs and services as a result.

Because traditional public school districts such as Glen Ridge are required to fund the unfunded portion of all state and federal mandates over which it has no control, state and federal mandates drive the overwhelming majority of the district’s expenditures and, hence, property tax levies. Cuts to state aid or especially the elimination of state educational aid as is the case for Glen Ridge may force a traditional public school district to increase class sizes so as to minimize its expenditures for teachers and aides. But this will lead to lower test scores and likely No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) operational and financial penalties.

Reduced or zero state aid particularly when combined with a 2.0% TEL, therefore, gives a school district only one course of action: hold property tax increases within the state imposed percentage point limit while simultaneously cutting non-mandate protected programs and services but fully funding the unfunded portion of all mandates. That is, cutting regular education. The ultimate irony is that property taxes could be slashed nationwide especially those funding our public schools and there would be no need for TELs, if the state and federal governments would just fully fund all of their mandates!

A Question of Autonomy

Trenton continues to blame school districts such as Glen Ridge for their property tax and expenditure increases rather than take responsibility for its role in forcing district budgets to increasingly higher levels. Instead of fully funding its mandates which drive up the cost of public education, Trenton focuses largely on constricting the funding, budgets, operations, and independence of local school districts. Given these state imposed burdens, costs, and constraints are most likely to become even more severe, what should a public school district do?

How could Glen Ridge restructure its educational system such that the district would not only enable its public schools to increase the property taxpayers’ return on their investment but also greatly improve the quality of education while holding their schools accountable to these standards? The question of how to achieve the proper level of autonomy, therefore, is the challenge confronting the Glen Ridge Public Schools.

What is autonomy? Autonomy, in its most fundamental form, means that a school district is free to develop, design, and implement its own budget. The budget is the financial representation of the district’s educational plan; therefore, the district must have full authority to acquire and allocate the financial and human resources necessary to providing those educational programs and services that fully meet the needs and priorities of the school district. Indeed, if something is not in a school district’s budget, it will not be in any classroom! This requires gaining control over all of a public school district’s financial, operational, pedagogical, curricular, and administrative functions so that the district is ultimately able to provide an academically rigorous learning environment that maximizes student achievement.

Options for Autonomy

To achieve the proper level of autonomy for its school district, Glen Ridge is considering a number of options including (Read, 2010) “converting some or all of the four schools in the 1,932 student district to charter or private schools.” The purpose of any conversion is to implement a new governance structure that will operate with much greater autonomy from state and federal mandates than the Glen Ridge school district currently enjoys. Whatever form this new governance structure may take; it should provide the basis for financial soundness, operational flexibility, educational innovation, student achievement, and maximizing the taxpayers’ return on their investment in their local public schools, all of which are currently constrained by state control.

Although (Read, 2010) “New Jersey will allow a public school to become a charter school if 51 percent of the teaching staff and parents sign a petition for it, according to the New Jersey School Boards Association. That has never happened.” The privatization concept is also being considered for which Dr. Bruce Baker, Associate Professor of Education at Rutgers University’s Graduate School of Education (Read, 2010,) stated that, “There are precedents in municipalities in Vermont and Maine. The towns raise tax dollars to send high school students to a private school.” Another alternative is to transform the district into a set of private schools operated either by a locally elected board of education or by a private for-profit firm.

Plank and Smith (2008) report that in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, “the Louisiana legislature created a Recovery School District” within which the “state intends to reopen most of New Orleans schools as charter schools, pioneering what stands to become the nation’s first all-chartered public school system.” New York City has expanded its Empowerment Schools program (Plank & Smith, 2008.) Chicago has implemented a more complex program (Plank & Smith, 2008) by “replacing up to 100 low performing schools” which can be operated as “district performance schools, charter schools or as contract schools.”

But would any of the aforementioned options provide the proper autonomy such that Glen Ridge would gain control over its operating budget and, thereby, have the ability to provide a top quality education that meets the needs and priorities of the district rather than objectives set remotely in Trenton? Glen Ridge should strive for the kind of governance structure that is worth the effort, if it is to confront the many challenges to achieving the proper kind of autonomy. How, then, should Glen Ridge restructure its educational system?

Autonomy and Self-Governance

To achieve the proper autonomy, Glen Ridge could reinvent itself by becoming an entirely unique version of a local public school district that is autonomous self-governing, self-funding, and as free as possible from state as well as federal mandates. As an autonomous school district, Glen Ridge would eliminate the excessive financial and administrative burdens imposed by state mandates. It would be much more cost effective and efficient for the district to provide educational programs and services without the administrative burden of state requirements. Self-governance would increase the financial resources available for the classroom because the funds that are currently used for compliance with state mandates could be redirected to improving student learning and achievement, which after all is the real mission of our schools.

Self-governance would empower the school district to improve the quality of education in ways more consistent with the priorities of the local community rather than state mandates. Finding ways to legally opt out of the state system perhaps through a state sanctioned voter approved referendum would restore full decision-making authority to the local level. Because decisions guiding the operations of Glen Ridge’s self-governing school district would no longer be made largely at the state level, parents, teachers, administrators, the board of education, and local taxpayers would be better able not only to shape the quality of education provided in the local schools but also to hold their local schools accountable for this outcome. In this context, the conversion could be considered as achieving (Plank & Smith, 2008) “autonomy for accountability.”

Becoming an Autonomous Self-Governing School District

An autonomous self-governing school district would be independent of the state system but would remain a public school district serving the same local community rather than a confederation of charter schools, private schools or schools run in full or in part by a private company. But in return for the ability to become autonomous and, therefore, free from state mandates, a self-governing school district would forgo all state aid! Self-governance would provide a public school district with the authority necessary to improve education consistent with the priorities of its local school community as well as the flexibility to innovate rather than be forced to march in lock-step to the state’s one size fits all mandates that fit no district. Opting out of the state system would restore full decision-making authority to the school district.

Once the process leading to independence is approved by the state, a public school district could possibly become self-governing when a majority of the registered district voters who voted in a district-wide vote approved of the change. While these votes would comply with the laws governing ballot procedures, campaigns, and elections, they would be held in April so as to provide sufficient lead time to convert to self-governance by July 1, the beginning of the new fiscal year. Once the district community voted to authorize the school district to become self-governing, it would be governed solely by its board of education without oversight from the County Executive Superintendent, Board of School Estimate or municipal government. Board of education members would continue to be chosen from among the registered voters in the school district.

Local property tax levies rather than tuition would continue to be the primary source of funding for a self-governing public school district. An autonomous district would be eligible to receive appropriate state or federal grants. The annual operating budget would be decided by its board of education rather than be subject to district-wide public votes so as to be consistent with the annual budget approval process for municipal and county governments which are not subject to approval through a vote of their respective electorates. Alternatively, the annual operating budget would be subject to voter approval should municipal and county government budgets be similarly submitted for public votes.

Taxpayers can vote on their local school district budgets in all but a handful of towns but no taxpayer is able to vote on the budget of his/her municipal or county government despite the fact that these two levels of government are funded almost entirely by local property taxes. Because taxpayers can vote on school budgets, they can hold their school systems accountable but without a corresponding vote on municipal and particularly county government budgets taxpayers can not hold these levels of government accountable. This is one of the chief reasons why county government costs New Jersey’s taxpayers more than $6.1 billion annually!

Taxpayers choose the local public school district that best meets their needs and one that will contribute to their property values by exercising true Tieboutian choice (Tiebout, 1956) and voting with their feet. But taxpayers vote not only with their feet but also on school district operating budgets, capital projects, and board of education members. Through the exercise of these votes, taxpayers control the quality of education provided by their local schools as well as the level of property taxes levied. Their collective decisions lead to a Pareto efficient allocation of local public education.

Locality is crucial for accountability. Because state policy makers especially as compared to the local board of education are more distant from those most affected by the state’s mandates, students, teachers, and schools, the impact of their mandates is more adverse on a public school district’s finances and the quality of education it provides. Our public schools, therefore, must be given the choice of becoming autonomous, self-governing, self-funding local public school districts free from state mandates so that they can be liberated to provide a top quality education while held being accountable to this standard by those who are the most capable of doing so, the school district’s taxpayers.

Optional Compliance

Many states pass legislation known as (Fix & Kenyon, 1990) “optional compliance” to force state government to fund its mandates. Optional compliance provides public school districts and (Fix & Kenyon, 1990) “units of local government the right not to comply with state mandates” and “can place added pressure on the legislature to fund the cost of mandates if it wishes to ensure that all local governments comply. This right of optional compliance, in effect, can give the local governments” and local school districts “new leverage in dealing with the state legislature to ensure that they do get funding. If they do not, they are under no obligation to carry out the mandate.”

Still, states often find ways to provide much less than full funding for mandates by circumventing optional compliance laws. States regularly restrict their obligation to reimburse the unfunded portion of mandates by (Fix & Kenyon, 1990) having a “narrow definition of what constitutes a mandate.” States often enable (Fix & Kenyon, 1990) “the legislature to exempt the state from providing funding under certain circumstances.” In addition, states often manipulate the labeling of the source of funds to minimize their payouts. Fix and Kenyon (1990) demonstrate that “funds are provided simply by earmarking some portion of what is considered local aid or general revenue sharing. If a state merely earmarks funds that area coming from another source as opposed to providing new funds, then the state is really not accomplishing the objective of mandate reimbursement.”

States also manipulate the timing of when local school districts receive funding rather than pay local schools districts in advance of the mandate’s implementation. Fix and Kenyon (1990) use California’s experience to demonstrate, “In California, however, funding is provided on a reimbursement basis; funding can occur long after the mandate is implemented.” School districts and “local governments carry out mandates, submit claims, and hope to get paid. In the meantime, they must carry out the mandate; they have no option.” This forces California’s public school districts to either borrow or cut regular education programs to fund the unfunded portion of mandates while hoping for full state reimbursement which does not include the refunding of any incurred interest expense.

Unfunded Mandates Force Cuts to Regular Education

While the State of New Jersey is increasingly mandating programs and services to be provided by the state’s public schools, its level of financial aid and the portion of the mandates for which it provides funding are declining rapidly. But public school districts have no control over many of the major cost drivers resulting from under funded mandates such as the expenses associated with increases in enrollment, transportation, legal actions, and the number as well as the mixture of special education students. The range of state and federal under funded mandates includes but is not limited to No Child Left Behind (NCLB,) Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA,) Quality Single Accountability Continuum (QSAC,) Core Curriculum Content Standards (CCCS,) bilingual instruction, free and reduced price breakfasts and lunches, incremental state special education requirements, special education related law suits, biohazard training, radon testing, state and federal standardized testing as well as programs to prevent bullying, teasing, and taunting.

School districts are required by state and federal laws to provide the special education programs and services included in a student’s Individual Education Plan (IEP); therefore, special education budgets cannot be cut and the under-funded portion of special education’s costs must be made up from other budgetary sources. To offset the increased costs of under funded special education mandates, districts are increasingly forced to significantly reduce programs for regular education students because property tax increases have been limited largely through state legislation. Under funded state special education mandates not only have sharply increased the competition between regular and special education programs for funding within a school’s budget but also have created sharp divisions within a school’s community because they pit the parents of special and regular education students against each other in the fight for funding.

In 2005, New Jersey state aid covered less than one-third of state mandated special education programs and services while the federal IDEA is funded only at approximately five percent of its cost to local school districts nationwide. Since January 2008, special education financial aid has been further and significantly reduced for most districts statewide based on the new state funding formula that reduces a district’s special education aid calculation to the extent that its classification rate is above the state average. In addition, wealthy districts have been losing entitlement aid for at-risk children, particularly special education as these and other categorical financial aid funds are now subjected to the formula’s wealth-equalizing local share calculation.

All of this comes at a time when the costs for special education are skyrocketing. Increased costs for mandated preschool programs including intensive services for autistic students and lower special education student to teacher ratios are a major part of the problem. But more importantly there are also increasing numbers of costly out-of-district placements as well as parental lawsuits against public school districts for the purpose of obtaining private school placements for their children at the public’s expense.

New Jersey has the highest proportion of special education students in out-of-district placements as well as the fourth highest classification rate for special education eligibility in the country. Many of New Jersey’s school districts find that out-of-district placements can consume as much as 50% of the special education budget despite covering approximately ten percent of special education enrollment. The students placed in out-of-district schools tend to be the most expensive because they are usually the ones most in need of special education programs and services. Depending on the student’s disability, the annual cost of sending a student to an out-of-district private school can range from roughly $70,000 to over $250,000 especially for the most educationally and physically challenged students.

The legal costs arising from parental special education-based law suits are another major expense for schools. As parents have become more knowledgeable about what constitutes special education programs and services, they have increased their demands to have their children receive not only more intensive services as well as increasing their children’s classification but also more placements in private schools which have resulted in more parents suing school districts for these additional benefits.

New Jersey’s legal system operates according to a fee shifting principle in which a school district losing in an administrative court not only must pay all of the judgment costs but also all of the plaintiff’s legal costs including those for their attorneys and expert witnesses regardless of the length of the trial. Litigation for special education proceedings often takes longer than civil law suits; increasing both legal fees and court costs. There is the additional cost resulting from the amount of time required of teachers, child study teams, and administrators to appear in court rather than in school. While school districts do settle a number of cases rather than run the risk of potentially more expensive outcomes, these settlements fuel the cost of providing special education. Holding New Jersey school districts harmless from such law suits could be another way in which to enable school districts to allocate more of their scarce resources to student instruction.

The State of New Jersey requires special education programs for children with educational disabilities ages three to five, particularly autistic children. While the only difference for preschool aged children is the state requirement to have a speech pathologist on the child study team, the same IEP, evaluation, eligibility, due process, and least restrictive environment requirements apply for all special education students regardless of age. These mandated pre-school programs put an additional expense burden on local school districts as long as the mandates continue to come without the requisite funding from the state.

The special education students to teacher ratios are set by the State of New Jersey and they are, necessarily, lower than the student to teacher ratios for regular students. These staffing ratios are based primarily on the student’s IEP, classification, and intensity of services required. The student to teacher ratio for a class for children with the lowest level of disabilities having one teacher has a maximum of eight while the maximum is twelve for a class with one teacher and one aid. Although ratios usually range from four to seven depending on the severity of the student’s disability, class sizes exceeding six students require two aids in addition to the teacher.

Classes for children with autism and other profound cognitive disabilities are limited to a ratio of three to one. While providing a good education for students with special needs, without the requisite state funding for these mandated levels, the higher costs of such low student to teacher ratios are often offset by higher student to teacher ratios for regular education. Because smaller class sizes have been shown to improve learning for all students, the under-funded state mandates for special education can have a deleterious effect on regular student education.

When the State of New Jersey requires its public schools to pay for an ever increasing proportion of special education costs through its under funded mandates, the state is not only forcing property taxes to increase but also pressuring districts to find the missing funds by reducing the regular education budget. Such forced cuts to the regular education budget may cause school districts to reduce the number of regular education teachers which would result in much larger class sizes for regular education students. Larger class sizes have been shown to lead to lower test scores which make it more difficult for students to achieve adequate yearly progress (AYP) as required by NCLB. As a result, school districts are much more likely to be subjected to many of NCLB’s more stringent financial penalties. This further reduces the financial resources available to support quality education.

Unless the people of New Jersey wish to have not only higher property taxes but also a downward spiral in the quality of their public education, then the State of New Jersey should pay the full costs of its mandated school programs and services particularly special education. If all of New Jersey’s special education mandates were fully funded, the quality of the education of all of New Jersey’s public school students, both regular and special, would be the greatest beneficiary.

Conclusion The consequences of centralizing most of the control over the allocation of a school district’s financial and human resources at the state level gives rise to many unintended obstacles for local school districts. Chief among them is the contradictory challenge of trying to hold local school districts accountable to standards made remotely at the state level that do not reflect and often conflict with unique local educational requirements and priorities. As a result, when the state imposes a one-size-fits-all approach to local school district resource allocation, funds tend not to be used as efficiently as they could be under local control. School systems are more accountable when decision making over financial and human resources is made at the district level.

A local school district can improve student and school performance best when the district is empowered to allocate its financial and human resources according to its educational plan rather than being required to follow state directives. The school district would have all the tools it would need to hold its schools and students accountable because it could make real time decisions based on specific measurable performance goals for each school and student. The school district is the most qualified to continually calibrate local performance goals because only the school district can combine a keen understanding of local educational necessities with the timely and specific assessment of individual school and student achievement. State control is too remote which causes not only inappropriate delays but also decisions that tend to be inconsistent with the district’s educational plan.

In response to the shortcomings of the state dominated school system, Glen Ridge needs to adopt a new model for the control structure of its local school system that is largely free of state domination. Because a local school district’s control structure affects how all of the school system’s stakeholders combine to produce a quality education, Glen Ridge needs the most appropriate control structure that will provide the highest level of accountability. As a result, Glen Ridge might consider adopting a control structure that provides for maximum autonomy and self-governance.

What matters most in terms of maximizing autonomy and self-governance is that Glen Ridge employs the control structure that fosters the greatest public support for the maximum public funding of its autonomous public schools. Glen Ridge would be able to operate more cost-effectively with lower property taxes and earn a higher rate of return on its educational investment if it became an autonomous self-governing school district by opting out of the state system.

References

Fix, M. & Kenyon, D. A., (1990). Coping with Mandates: What are the Alternatives? Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute Press.

Maxwell, L.A., (2010). N.J. Property Tax Cap Sparks Funding Concerns. Education Week, 29(36). Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/2010/07/12/.

Plank, D. N. & Smith, B., (2008). Autonomous Schools: Theory, Evidence and Policy in The Handbook of Research in Education Finance and Policy, Ladd, H. F., & Fiske, E. B., (Editors) (402-424). New York, New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.

Read, P., (2010, July 4). Glen Ridge Considers Big Change to Schools. The Star Ledger, pp. 1, 4.

Tiebout, C. M., (1956). A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures, The Journal of Political Economy, 64, 416-424.

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TELs take their Toll on Education

Tuesday, June 29th, 2010

Tax and Expenditure Limits (TEL)

The major question confronting New Jersey’s educational system is most likely whether the state should implement a 2.5% cap on local public school districts’ annual operating budgets which is otherwise known as a tax and expenditure limit (TEL.) This question seems to arise from the most compelling issue facing public office holders, legislators, and policy makers as well as taxpayers statewide which is how to limit the amount and growth rate of New Jersey’s taxes especially its property taxes. Governor Christie’s answer is to implement a 2.5% TEL on local property taxes and expenditures similar to Massachusetts’ Proposition 2.5 or California’s Proposition 13.

Why should taxpayers allow the passage of legislation that would enable the state of New Jersey to limit a local school district’s ability to determine the amount of property taxes it levies as well as its level of expenditures? Voters currently have more control over their local school district’s property taxes than they have over any other form of taxation whether the tax is levied by their municipal, county, state or federal government. Why then should the state be able to set an arbitrary one-size-fits-all limit on the amount of property taxes local school districts can levy when property taxes are set according to local needs and priorities? Such a one-size-fits-all cap will fit no district because districts are unique.

All Local School District Property Taxes are Invested in the Host Municipality

All of a local school district’s property taxes remain and are invested in the schools of the host municipality so that the taxpayers benefit fully from the property taxes levied. County property taxes differ sharply from those levied to fund our public schools because they are redistributed to support an unaccountable, wasteful, and duplicative layer of government. This leads many researchers, most notably O’Sullivan, Sexton, and Sheffrin (2007,) to conclude that “local governments” and public school districts “must have access to a revenue source that they can adjust to meet varying demands.”

Funding our public schools through local property taxes is essential because county government siphons away crucial local property taxes and state governmental financial aid is unreliable. O’Sullivan, Sexton, and Sheffrin (2007) demonstrate that “the property tax can be administered by local government” and public school districts “with relatively little fear of its tax base migrating to other jurisdictions, thus providing local governments with the needed fiscal autonomy. The property tax has been the source of economic independence of local units of government” and local public school districts for generations.

Unfunded State and Federal Mandates Cause TELs to Cut Regular Education

There are only two kinds of programs and services offered by our public schools: those that are mandate protected and those that are non-mandate protected. Because school districts are forced by the state and federal governments to fully fund the unfunded portion of their mandates, public school districts must choose between cutting non-mandate protected programs and services or raising property taxes. School districts have no control over many of their major cost drivers such as the costs resulting from increases in unfunded mandates, enrollment, utilities, transportation, health insurance, legal actions, and the number as well as the mix of special education students. When a school district that is limited by a 2.5% TEL experiences increases in these uncontrollable expenses, it must cut expenses in other areas to stay within the cap.

One major fallacy in the cap advocacy argument is that local school districts are required to fund the unfunded portion of all state and federal mandates over which local school districts have no control. State and federal mandates drive the overwhelming majority of local school district expenditures and, hence, property tax levies. Property taxes could be slashed nationwide especially those funding our public schools and there would be no need for TELs, if the state and federal governments would just fully fund all of their mandates!

A TEL may force a typical school district to increase class sizes so as to minimize its expenditures for teachers and aides. But this will lead to lower test scores and likely No Child Left Behind (NCLB) operational and financial penalties. A TEL, therefore, gives a school district only one course of action: hold property tax increases within the state imposed percentage point limit while simultaneously cutting non-mandate protected programs and services but fully funding the unfunded portion of all mandates. That is, cutting regular education.

There is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch

Governor Christie along with the proponents of TELs purport that school districts will be become more financially responsible because of the state imposed limit on their expenditures and tax levies. TEL proponents argue that if school districts are left to their own devices, they would continue to spend and tax at ever increasing rates while the TEL’s implementation will force school districts to hold down expenditures and property taxes. TEL proponents seem to expect units of local government and our public schools to provide the same level of public goods and services if not a higher quality of education but at a lower price.

TEL proponents and policy makers disaffected by the seemingly ever increasing size and cost of public education assert that the TEL will lower property taxes and, therefore, make the provision of public education more efficient rather than cutting essential educational programs and services. Although most people realize there is no such thing as a “free lunch,” TEL advocates claim that school systems could provide at least the same quantity of education without lowering the quality of education because the TEL would compel districts to eliminate waste. But no TEL can guarantee that any school district will not cut non-mandate protected programs and services or regular education before eliminating any waste or inefficiency.

The passage of the major TEL’s, Proposition 2.5 in 1980 in Massachusetts and Proposition 13 in 1978 in California, shows how voters frustrated with state governmental inefficiency, waste, and overspending resorted to a cap which they perceived as the only means available to remedy their situation. Voters in both states believed prior to the vote that the imposition of the TEL would substantially eliminate inefficiency, waste, and overspending but it would do so without lowering the quality or quantity of public goods and services such as education. But once the TELs were imposed in Massachusetts and California, however, taxpayers acted “consistent with the (O’Sullivan, 2001) regret theory of tax limits” or buyers’ remorse.

The history of TELs, budgetary caps or even the wage and price controls imposed under former President Nixon demonstrates that placing arbitrary limits on revenues and expenditures results in a corresponding reduction in the quantity and quality of the public programs and services such as education provided by the TEL affected entity. Indeed, Downes and Figlio (2008) describe the TEL proponents who assert that “constitutional constraints like Proposition 13 could reduce the size of local governments and, at the same time, have little or no effect on the quality of public services provided” as seeking a “free lunch.”

Apples versus Oranges: Massachusetts’ Proposition 2.5 versus Governor Christie’s 2.5% Cap

Contrary to Governor Christie’s 2.5% cap proposal, Massachusetts imposed its 2.5% TEL during an economic boom and provided significant amounts of incremental state aid to school districts to make up for the loss of local property tax revenue. But New Jersey is mired in a deep recession with seemingly ever increasing state budget deficits which have already resulted in severe cuts to state educational aid. Because state aid is declining and no additional state financial aid is forthcoming to offset lost property tax revenues, school districts would be forced to cut non-mandate protected educational programs and services much more deeply than was experienced in Massachusetts.

State aid is unreliable. Massachusetts educational aid fluctuates while California has not complied with Proposition 98’s constitutional guarantees to provide state aid to local school districts to make up for the property tax revenues lost under Proposition 13. As a result of Proposition 13, California’s per pupil spending fell precipitously to an average of approximately $7,500 per pupil as compared to an average of $47,000 per inmate at its state penal institutions while its average class sizes became the second highest in the nation. Also, Massachusetts imposed its 2.5% cap during a period of declining student enrollment while New Jersey’s enrollment levels continue to increase. Hence, Massachusetts’ lower school district expenditures were largely offset by a much lower level of student enrollment which helped to greatly minimize the cuts to educational programs and services which would not be the case in New Jersey.

Taxpayers’ Expectations for TELs

New Jersey taxpayers generally seem to believe that much greater accountability, efficiency, and transparency at all levels of government will lead to lower spending and, hence, lower taxes. But voters do not want fewer public goods and services; just a much lower price for the public goods and services that they enjoy today. Government at all levels tends to overtax, taxpayers contend, because governments waste financial resources and are inefficient. Governor Christie’s 2.5% TEL, therefore, seems to be a tempting way to accomplish these goals.

In addition, Governor Christie’s 2.5% TEL lacks the flexibility for state and local governments as well as our public schools to respond appropriately to unforeseen circumstances or a declining economy. For instance, public schools tend to experience an increase of students transferring from private schools when the economy declines and parents are more challenged to find ways to pay for tuition in addition to property taxes. Governor Christie’s 2.5% cap proposal, therefore, can not guarantee that any level of government will operate at peak efficiency before cutting the public goods and services including education that they provide.

Governor Christie’s 2.5% cap proposal would enable the state to determine the budgetary and property tax policies of local governments and school districts through its state imposed limitations. If enacted, the 2.5% cap would lead, therefore, to increased centralization of educational funding along with its concomitant increased control over local school districts’ operations. The 2.5% TEL would lead to limitations on local school district expenditures and property tax levies which in turn would lower the quality of public education.

TELs’ Impact on Education and Student Achievement

TELs not only limit the amount of property tax revenue available to school districts but also and more importantly adversely impact how a typical school district provides educational programs and services. Downes and Figlio’s (1999a) findings explain how “the imposition of tax and expenditure limits results in the long-run reductions in the performance of public school students.” Students attending schools in TEL affected districts (Figlio, 1997; Downes, Dye, & McGuire, 1998; Downes & Figlio, 1999b) not only experienced much larger class sizes but also scored significantly lower on mathematics, language arts, and social studies standardized tests. When it comes to education, therefore, TELs lead to a reduction in the quantity as well as the quality of education, an increase in class sizes, and a leveling down of student achievement.

TELs seem to adversely impact student achievement disproportionately to the amount of property tax revenues lost or expenditures cut. Downes and Figlio (2008) conclude that TELs “lead to reductions in student outcomes that are far larger than might be expected given the changes in spending.” Possible explanations for this result include disproportionate cuts in instructional rather than administrative expenditures, higher student-teacher ratios, and a shift especially of the more talented students to private K to 12 schools. Because teacher salaries and benefits generally account for more than approximately 70% of a typical school district’s budget, it stands to reason that these expenses would be cut more severely. Reductions of teachers under the constraints of a TEL often lead to larger class sizes which when combined with the loss of regular educational programs and services tends to result in the transfer of many students especially the more gifted ones to private schools (Downes & Figlio, 2008.)

Conclusion

While Governor Christie aims to limit local public school districts’ property tax revenues and expenditures to no more than a 2.5% annual increase, this cap will most likely lead to a leveling-down of the quality of public education. Indeed, our nation’s two major TELs, California’s Proposition 13 and particularly Massachusetts’ Proposition 2.5 on which Governor Christie’s proposal is modeled, demonstrate the downside of such caps. These TELs (Fishel, 2001) destroyed the connection among local control, property taxes, school district budgets, educational quality, and taxpayer support because taxpayers essentially lost their ability to hold local school districts accountable to their goal of maximizing their property values.

The fundamental problem with trying to hold all of New Jersey’s public school districts’ property tax revenues and expenditures to annual increases not exceeding 2.5% is that it leads to a one-size-fits-all approach for education but one that fits no district. Baker, Green and Richards (2008) explain, “The local property tax empowers local voters to express what they want for their local public schools.” But when the artificial budgetary constraints of a TEL are imposed by the state, as Baker, Green and Richards (2008) conclude, “the political advantages of empowering local citizens and promoting competition and sorting among jurisdictions is lost.” Thus, the TEL leads to school district budgets that are incongruous with the needs and priorities of local school districts.

Governor Christie’s proposed reduction in local school district control over the levying of property taxes and determining the operating budget decreases local school district accountability and adversely affects public school quality. Because reductions of property tax revenues through the 2.5% TEL will reduce the level of local investment in the school district; the stake held by local taxpayers is similarly reduced. Fischel (2001) explains this using the motives of taxpayers without children in the public schools, “At the local level, they are willing to support, or at least not oppose, high levels of spending because better schools add to the value of their homes.” Through the imposition of a TEL, “At the state level, voters without children do not perceive such an offsetting benefit to their taxes.” Having a lowered sense of ownership in their schools, taxpayers become more complacent without local control over their school district’s property taxes. This causes a corresponding reduction in the level of accountability required by the stakeholders and, therefore, the quality of their public schools’ education declines.

But a TEL, such as Governor Christie’s 2.5% cap proposal, would destroy the Tieboutian equilibrium (Tiebout, 1956) enjoyed by local public school districts. It would do so by artificially limiting budgets below the levels congruent with the needs and priorities of local school districts. Because the quality of a taxpayer’s local public schools as well as his/her property taxes are capitalized in the value of their home, the consequence of Governor Christie’s 2.5% TEL would be to lower educational quality and, therefore, property values.

References

Baker, B. D., Green, P., & Richards, C. E., (2008). Financing Education Systems, Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Pearson Education, Inc.

Downes, T. A. & Figlio, D. N., (1999a). Do Tax and Expenditure Limits Provide a Free Lunch? Evidence on the Link Between Limits and Public Sector Service Quality. National Tax Journal, 52, 113-128.

Downes, T. A. & Figlio, D. N., (1999b). Economic Inequality and the Provision of Schooling, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Economic Policy Review, 5, 99-110.

Downes, T. A. & Figlio, D. N., (2008). Tax and Expenditure Limits, School Finance and School Quality in The Handbook of Research in Education Finance and Policy, Ladd, H. F., & Fiske, E. B., (Editors) (373-388). New York, New York: Routledge Taylor & Francis Group.

Downes, T. A., Dye, R. F., & McGuire, T. J., (1998). Do Limits Matter? Evidence on the Effects of Tax Limitations on Student Performance, The Journal of Urban Economics, 43, 401-417.

Figlio, D. N., (1997). Did the “Tax Revolt” Reduce School Performance?, The Journal of Public Economics, 65, 245-269.

Fischel, W., (2001). The Homevoter Hypothesis: How Home Values Influence Local Government Taxation, School Finance, and Land-Use Policies, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

O’Sullivan, A., (2001). Limits on Local Property Taxation: The United States Experience in Property Taxation and Local Government Finance, Oates, W. E., (Editor) (177-200). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy.

O’Sullivan, A., Sexton, T. A., & Sheffrin, S. M., (2007). Property Taxes and Tax Revolts: The Legacy of Proposition 13. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Cambridge University Press.

Tiebout, C. M., (1956). A Pure Theory of Local Expenditures, The Journal of Political Economy, 64, 416-424.

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Posted in academic performance, accountability, autonomy of schools, bigger is not better, board of education, Capitalization of property taxes, Capitalization of school district quality, Charles Tiebout, class size, county government, County Property taxes, decision making, education, Eliminate County Government, enrollment, home rule, home values, homeownership, leveling down, Local Education Authority (LEA), local property taxes, local schools, mandates, New Jersey, New Jersey Property taxes, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, No Child Left Behind Act, non-mandate protected programs, per pupil spending, property taxes, property values, public education, public finance, school finance, school funding, school governance, school performance, state financial aid, state mandates, student performance, student teacher ratios, Wallace Oates, William Fischel | No Comments »

School Vouchers: Choosing to Level Down Education

Sunday, May 23rd, 2010

The Opportunity Scholarship Act otherwise known as New Jersey Senate bill S1872 would create a statewide voucher program for certain public, private and religious school students. Should this bill become law, its vouchers would weaken New Jersey’s already financially troubled educational system by diverting scarce state financial resources from our public schools to private and religious schools.

The voucher plan contained in S1872 is advertised as providing perhaps the best way to improve educational quality by creating a competitive model especially for urban school districts. But a voucher plan is merely an alternative funding vehicle for schools rather than a means for improving schools. A voucher by itself does not contribute to helping our schools and students achieve because it provides no operational, curricular, programmatic, or facility improvement.

The Opportunity Scholarship Act would establish a five year pilot program. The pilot program would provide scholarship donation tax credits that would be used to fund school vouchers for tuition assistance. This taxpayer funded voucher plan would enable children from low-income families to transfer from underperforming public schools to the public, private or religious school of their choice.

The voucher plan would allow corporations to contribute to state run scholarship organizations or funds. These state run scholarship organizations or funds would then distribute the monies to private and religious schools or to out-of-district public schools in certain cases. The state treasury, however, would refund each corporate donor’s contribution in the form of dollar for dollar tax credits which would result in the taxpayer subsidizing 100% of the voucher program.

S1872 significantly increases the number of eligible students and the kinds of schools eligible for vouchers. It is estimated that this bill would enable more than 280,000 students to qualify for vouchers especially after its first few years. Students, however, would qualify for vouchers if they were merely residing in a school district with a chronically failing school and not just attending a failing school. Furthermore, students who are currently attending charter, private, and religious schools are also eligible for vouchers.

To finance the vouchers, S1872 would transfer $360 million of state funds to the pilot program that could otherwise have been allocated to public schools statewide. These funds would shift from our state’s public schools to many private and religious schools. S1872 would allocate $90 million of the scholarship’s funds strictly to students who are already attending private and religious schools. Moreover, this amount can increase by the amount of the $270 million allocated for current public school students residing in a school district with at least one failing school that goes unused.

The major adverse impact of the voucher plan is the caps it places on the annual amount for which the state or the voucher student’s parents could be compelled to pay to the voucher student’s chosen public, private or religious school. These caps are $6,000 for kindergarten through eighth grade students and $9,000 for high school students. This would result in voucher payments not only falling short of average tuition charges at the overwhelming majority of public, private and religious schools as well as much further below average per pupil costs but also forcing many participating public, private and religious schools to close.

Many Catholic schools are already financially distressed while some are failing due to their challenges in making revenues meet or exceed expenses despite rather Spartan budgets. Moreover, the amount by which the per pupil cost exceeds the cap would be transferred to the local taxpayers in the host public school district who would be forced to make up the difference by paying higher property taxes! The urban school districts from which most voucher students are expected to transfer would also suffer because they would lose state enrollment-based aid as well as experience a possible degradation of test scores which would lead to No Child Left Behind penalties.

Vouchers will create overcrowding, congestion, and financial burdens for those school districts receiving voucher students if these districts are unable to refuse voucher students especially for capacity reasons. These burdens will deteriorate the quality of education and the level of student achievement in receiving districts which could easily result in many host district taxpayers leaving the host community.

S1872 does not address what discretion if any host school districts might have in being able to determine whether or not to accept voucher students. If a host school district is unable to prevent voucher students from enrolling even if it lacked the capacity then it could be forced to expand, acquire or construct additional facilities to accommodate the voucher students. Even if some of these facility additions were temporary such as acquiring trailers or redesigning cafeterias into classrooms, the host district would be bear the full expense! Furthermore, because the state will make voucher students essentially the “free agents” of the statewide school system, these free agents could depart before the beginning of the following school year leaving the host district with significant unused or under utilized facilities along with the incremental expense!

There is no guarantee that enrollment increases due to voucher pupils would be equally distributed among schools or by grade level within a receiving school or district. Expensive intra-district busing may be a likely outcome. Also, as a result of potential state requirements for the host district to provide inter-district as well as intra-district transportation, vouchers would impose significant transportation costs on districts which do not own or operate a fleet of buses.

S1872 provides no deadline by which voucher students must enroll in the new school of their choice whether public, private or religious. Without a deadline by which voucher students must register with their new school or district, it will become absurdly difficult for a school business administrator to determine the true enrollment level, especially the number of special education pupils, upon which the budget is built. In addition, the Opportunity Scholarship Act provides no requirement for voucher students to remain in their new school or district for any length of time. Because voucher students could leave for another school or district at any time during the school year, this will add significant complexity to the proper management of a school or district’s finances and operations.

A major unanswered question is whether the parents of voucher students would be able to vote on the operating budget and in the election for the board of education members of the host public school district once their children attend its public schools. Would the parents of voucher students also be able to serve on the board of education of the host public school district once their children attend its public schools? The extent to which the parents of voucher students can participate in the democratic process of the host district remains an open question.

Our state and federal governments have consistently under funded but over mandated education especially special education and Title 1 while increasing accountability standards on public schools. Limited state and federal funds should be invested, therefore, in public schools rather than private and religious schools that are not subject to the same accountability standards. Furthermore, the school voucher proposal contradicts the “thorough and efficient” education provision of our state constitution protecting all of New Jersey’s children. S1872 would violate the “thorough and efficient” clause because it will undermine many urban schools and overcrowd many suburban schools while forcing many participating private, religious as well as public schools to lose money on each voucher because the voucher does not cover the per pupil cost for these schools.

Our public schools are already reeling from approximately $1.5 billion in state aid reductions plus the under funding of the most recent state funding formulas, the Comprehensive Education Improvement and Financing Act of 1996 (CEIFA) and the New Jersey School Funding Reform Act (SFRA) of 2008. Although the state’s flawed approach to education funding is exemplified by the new funding formula contained in SFRA, it is manifested in its predecessor, CEIFA. Dr. Reock studied the financial impact on school districts of the state’s failure not only to not fully enact CEIFA but also to freeze most CEIFA funding beginning with the 2002-03 school year (Reock, 2007.) Based on his study (Sciarra, 2008), Dr. Reock found that “the state aid freeze caused massive under-funding of many school districts throughout the state, especially poor non-Abbott districts, and contributed to the property tax problem in the state.”

Instead of fully funding CEIFA’s school funding formula as required by law, the state froze financial aid to schools at their 2001-02 school year levels regardless of any increases in enrollment, rising costs as well as state and federal under funded mandates. The shortfall was hardest on those non-Abbott districts that were most dependent upon state aid. During the 2005-06 school year the statewide shortfall amounted to $846 million which translated into per pupil shortfalls of $1,627 in non-Abbott DFG A and B districts, $758 in DFG C through H districts, $386 DFG I and J districts, and $188 in Abbott districts.

The CEIFA funding shortfall caused serious imbalances between local school districts. During the 2005-06 school year, Abbott districts received approximately 58% of all state financial aid while educating only 23% of New Jersey’s K to 12 student enrollment. This meant non-Abbott districts were educating 77% of New Jersey’s K to 12 students with only 42% of state aid. This imbalance has continued to widen under SFRA with Abbott aid increasing to approximately 60% of all state aid or $4.64 billion.

As part of his statement in support of the plaintiffs’ opposition to SFRA, Dr. Reock concluded (Sciarra, 2008) that “the State’s failure to fund CEIFA for the past six years directly resulted in an enormous shortfall of funding in districts across New Jersey.” He went further to state, “By 2007-08, the sixth year of the CEIFA “freeze,” the total under-funding of state aid had reached $1.326 billion annually, despite the introduction of several new, smaller aid programs.” The result was a state-driven increase in local property taxes within non-Abbott districts to make up for the shortfall.

Our public schools were founded just as was our nation on the separation of church and state. The school voucher proposal would violate the provision of the United States Constitution which prohibits legislation that favors one or more religions or religious groups. In addition, private schools might possibly accept voucher students selectively such as through arbitrary methods. Moreover, private schools unlike their public cousins can fail students. What would be the process for dealing with those voucher students who flunked out or were otherwise dismissed from private schools? The built in advantages enjoyed by private over public schools are perhaps best summarized by Larry Cuban (2004,) our public “schools are unable to control the quality of their raw material, they are dependent upon the vagaries of politics for a reliable revenue stream, and they are constantly mauled by a howling hoard of disparate, competing customer groups that would send the best CEO screaming into the night.”

The benefits taxpayers derive from their local school district quality and property taxes are capitalized in their property values. The greater is the quality of the local school district, the greater is the taxpayer’s property value because the demand for quality education leads to a higher market price. As a result, taxpayers strive to protect and improve their property values by constantly evaluating the quality of their school district so as to maximize their property values and avoid the risks inherent with vouchers.

Vouchers create burdens for those school districts receiving voucher students which will level down the quality of education. When a school district’s quality deteriorates or is expected to decline, taxpayers will usually vote with their feet. By voting with their feet, taxpayers in districts receiving voucher students are quite likely to choose another public school district that best meets their needs and one that will contribute to their property values rather than one subject to the incremental burdens of voucher students.

Contrary to a voucher plan’s assertion that it will somehow create a “true” competitive model, a taxpayer’s choice of municipalities and, therefore, school districts, already reflects a home owner’s optimal asset allocation decision. Thus, the current model of school choice for the provision of education through taxpayers’ selection of their local public school districts that does not involve vouchers results in a competitive marketplace that aligns taxpayer preferences with the quality of public education better than a voucher plan could ever hope to accomplish.

The provision of education through local public school districts in which all of students who live within the district attend its local public schools enables community members to get to know and understand one another. The public benefit of having children attend their local schools rather than schools in remote districts accrues, therefore, to students and parents alike. This “network of acquaintances” is defined by Fischel (2002) as “community-specific social capital.”

Community-specific social capital (Fischel, 2002) “facilitates collective action” and builds public support for the public funding of public education which “reduces the transaction costs of the provision of true local public goods such as education.” But vouchers would disperse students from their home towns and thereby reduce the communal capital of the local school district.

Parents of school children cease to be true stakeholders in their children’s education when a system of state funded school vouchers replaces traditional local property taxes as the primary method of funding public education. Because when parents are responsible for paying for the majority of their children’s education whether it is in a public, private or religious school, they are more involved with their children’s schools. Parental involvement is also one of the major factors leading to improved student achievement and learning. Moreover, parents are much more likely to hold the school system accountable for how it acquires and allocates its financial and human resources as well as for the quality of education it provides when they rather than the state are paying for their children’s education.

If the question is how to improve the quality of education statewide, then the answer is not found within the Opportunity Scholarship Act. We should oppose the passage of S1872 because it will adversely impact our students and schools statewide while exposing homeowners to the risks associated with vouchers. Taxpayers resemble investors because they want their major asset, their home, to appreciate in value. Home owners have a vested interest in the success of their local schools because they strive to offset risks such as those posed by vouchers to their property’s value which can not be easily diversified.

References

Cuban, L. (2004). The Blackboard and the Bottom Line: Why Schools Can’t Be Businesses, Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: Harvard University Press.

Fischel, W. A., (2002). An Economic Case against Vouchers: Why Local Public Schools Are a Local Public Good, Dartmouth Economics Department Working Paper: Dartmouth College.

Reock, E. C. Jr., (2007) Paper, Estimated Financial Impact of the ‘Freeze’ of State Aid on New Jersey School Districts, 2002-03 to 2005-06, Institute on Education Law and Policy, Rutgers University, Newark, http:// ielp.rutgers.edu/docs/CEIFA_Reock_Final.pdf.

Sciarra, D. G., (2008) Certification of Dr. Ernest C. Reock, Jr. for the Supreme Court of New Jersey in support of the Plaintiffs’ opposition to the School Funding Reform Act of 2008, Education Law Center, Newark New Jersey, http://www.edlawcenter.org/ELCPublic/elcnews_080521_ReockCertification.pdf

Tags:Blog, chool choice blog, New Jersey Senate, New Jersey Senate Bill S1872, Opportunity Scholarship Act, Opportunity Scholarship Act Blog, S1872 blog, School Choice, School Finance Blog, school vouchers, school vouchers blog, state funding of private and relgious schools, tuition tax credits, voucher blog, Vouchers
Posted in autonomy of schools, board of education, Capitalization of property taxes, Capitalization of school district quality, charter schools, Community Specific Social Capital, contract, dumbing down, education, enrollment, home rule, homeownership, independent schools, learning, leveling down, local property taxes, local schools, mandates, New Jersey, New Jersey Property taxes, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, No Child Left Behind Act, non-mandate protected programs, Opportunity Scholarship Act, per pupil budget, per pupil spending, property taxes, property values, public education, public finance, regular education, S1872, Scholarship donation tax credits, School Choice, school finance, school funding, school governance, school reform, special education, state financial aid, state mandates, tuition, Vouchers, William Fischel | No Comments »

Accountability: An Argument for Local School Districts

Sunday, January 24th, 2010

During the past 40 years, the locus of school district control has gradually shifted from a tradition of home rule or local control to state control. Control over the decisions governing such areas as funding, budgeting, human resources, standards, capital projects, operations, curriculum and assessment that were once the sole province of local boards of education has been superseded largely by the state. Increased state control has reversed the traditional operating philosophy of school systems that was based on limiting the power of any centralized remote governmental entity could exert over local school districts. Historically, Americans wanted school decision making to be as close as possible to those citizens who were most affected. School district residents realized that by being able to control what and how their children were taught as well as how and who administered and governed their schools plus how their taxes were used that they were able to enjoy the maximum of democratic accountability.

The rising power of the state (Fusarelli and Cooper, 2009) grew from the states’ increasing domination of school finance and, therefore, policy making because of the strings the states attached to funding. Legal challenges to funding inequities and disparities led to court decisions such as Serrano v. Priest establishing financial neutrality as the basis for school funding. States remedied the disparities among districts with the infusion of incremental state funds and regulation. Subsequent rulings focused on adequacy and required state governments to provide resources to disadvantaged districts such that the provision of education adequately met their constitutional requirements. New Jersey’s state constitution was deemed to go even further because of its provisions guaranteeing a thorough and efficient education or a “T&E” education as it became known and manifested in the Abbott v. Burke court decision.

The No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) accelerated the trend toward adequacy with its national educational standards. Under NCLB, the federal government holds states and school districts accountable for improving performance. As a result, states are forced to define an adequate level of student and school achievement as well as the level of financial resources that would be constitutionally adequate. NCLB, therefore, marked a pronounced policy making shift to an accountability model within which the allocation of school district financial and human resources was made largely at the state rather than the local level largely according to federal guidelines.

But the consequences of centralizing most of the control over the allocation of a school district’s financial and human resources at the state level gave rise to many unintended obstacles to improving accountability. Chief among them was the contradictory challenge of trying to hold local school districts accountable to standards made remotely at the state level that did not reflect and often conflicted with unique local educational requirements and priorities. As a result, when states imposed a one-size-fits-all approach to local school district resource allocation, state funds were not used as efficiently as they could have been. School systems would be more accountable if decision making over financial and human resources was made at the local district level.

A local school district can improve student and school performance best when the district is empowered to allocate its financial and human resources according to its educational plan rather than being required to follow one-size-fits-all state directives. The local school district would have all the tools it would need to hold schools and students accountable because it could make real time decisions based on specific measurable performance goals for each school and student. The local school district is the most qualified to continually calibrate local performance goals because only the local school district can combine a keen understanding of local educational necessities with the timely and specific assessment of individual school and student achievement. State control is too remote which causes not only inappropriate delays but also decisions that tend to be inconsistent with the district’s unique educational plan.

State control especially over a district’s financial and human resource use creates barriers for achieving accountability. When a local school district is limited by the state’s one-size-fits-all approach, it is prevented from developing more innovative approaches to accountability. In order for local school districts to innovate, they must be empowered to deploy more effective approaches for increasing accountability that are best suited to local needs. Improving accountability, therefore, requires the adaptation of new models for the control structure of local public schools that are largely free of state control.

In response to the shortcomings of state dominated local school systems, communities need greater local control over their schools so that they can benefit from increased accountability. Because a local school district’s control structure affects how all of the school system’s stakeholders combine to produce a quality education, school districts nationwide are searching for the most appropriate local control structure model that will provide the highest level of accountability. As a result, local school districts are increasingly adapting a local control structure that provides the maximum accountability possible according to their unique characteristics. What matters most in terms of maximizing accountability is that a school district employs the model that fosters the greatest public support for the maximum public funding of its public schools.

References:

Fusarelli, B. C., & Cooper, B. S., Editors. (2009). The Rising State: How State Power is Transforming our Nation’s Schools, first edition, SUNY Press.

Tags:Abbott v. Burke, accountability, Add new tag, local control, local school districts, NCLB, school finance, state control of education, thorough and efficient clause
Posted in accountability, autonomy of schools, bigger is not better, Bruce Cooper, Capitalization of property taxes, Capitalization of school district quality, Charles Tiebout, county run school districts, deregulation of schools, education, educational leadership, home rule, local schools, mandates, New Jersey, New Jersey Property taxes, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, No Child Left Behind Act, property taxes, property values, public education, public finance, school finance, school funding, school governance, school reform, state financial aid, state mandates | No Comments »

Data: The DNA of Education-based Decision Making

Thursday, March 12th, 2009

Policy makers, administrators and educators at all levels need sound data with which to make decisions. Quality data enable decisions to be made with greater accuracy. But the growing need for student achievement in the current standards-based environment has placed increasing demands on all of those involved with K to 12 education to obtain sound data with which not only to more fully understand their school systems but also to improve the quality of education.

While there seems to be no lack of school-based data, what seems to be missing is data that are generally agreed upon to be sound or of good quality. But discussions of data quality and their use with models usually brings to mind the adage of “garbage-in, garbage-out” because the quality of decisions made, the outcomes, is directly related to the quality of data used, the inputs. According to Kowalski, Lasley, and Mahoney (2008) “unless those entering the data use exactly the same metrics, measures, or procedures, the realities of one school can be quite different from the realities of another, even though the data may look similar. Because all fifty states use different tests, measures, and approaches, a real absence of common metrics exists and that void makes it difficult for educators, even psychometrically astute ones, to make good judgments based on published data.”

The key to school improvement is improved data-relevance. Therefore, it is crucial to understand how data are collected, aggregated, analyzed, reported and used. But this may sound easier than it is because data come in many forms, at many levels, and is often unconnected or is connected from the individual district, school, classroom, teacher and student. There are also different methods for data collection, aggregation, analysis and reporting.

DNA is defined as the location where your body’s cells store coded information and the pairing of the DNA bases in the middle of the two strands or helices helps to keep the coded “data” intact. Because data, like DNA, are so intertwined in the formulation of educational policy such as decision-making for funding formulas, the double helix that forms the structure of DNA might be the best way to depict our five-level model. The DNA diagram below depicts how its coded “data” or information flows vertically, up and down its two congruent helices, as well as horizontally, across the base pairs.

In our model the vertical dimension relate each level to the one above and below it. The vertical dimension represents the ways in which the data bubble up and down between and among the various levels. Using DNA’s double helix to exemplify our model, individual student test score data move up from the student in the classroom for collection at the school level before being aggregated at the district level and reported to the state Department of Education where the data are analyzed and transmitted to the federal level for nation-wide use. The federal data, in turn, are disseminated back to the individual states for their use and, in turn, the states provide the information to their school districts for policy making purposes among other things. The districts share the information with the schools within the district so that improved curriculum, operational and program student-centric decisions can be made.

Just as the “base pairs” of DNA intersect the two “sugar phosphate backbones” or its two helices, our model’s horizontal dimensions form the important intersections with its two helices or data flow “backbones.” Our model’s horizontal dimensions include the relationships, comparisons and uses within a level such as:

Federal level: Comparisons of the American educational system with those of other nations.
State level: Comparisons of school systems between and among states.
District level: Comparisons of local education authorities (LEA) or school districts with one another especially ones that share similar characteristics.
School level: Comparisons of different schools either within a state or across a number of states.
Student level: Comparisons of students according to various factors such as socio-economic status, race, gender, subject matter, and grade level.

The dimensions and intersections of our model resemble those of DNA as data flow vertically, up and down the two congruent helices, as well as horizontally, across the levels as shown below for our model:

School

Student

State

District

Federal

This study poses a five-level model for data building and data use that is intended not only to help gather the right types and “levels” of information but also to put the information where it is needed most and best used. It examines the five key levels of education-based decisions as highlighted above, identifying the availability and limitations of data at those levels as well as how the data analysis might affect education at that level and throughout the system. While decision-making depends on data, it is important to explain the limitations at each level and what might be done (for good or for bad) by creating more information at that level.

Level 1: Federal Data and Decision Making:

The United States is beginning to create a national system of schools, with national accountability and nationally as well as internationally comparative data. This is further necessitating more national standards, alignment of curriculum across the states, and new reliable data on how America’s schools are performing. All nations of the world have information on their schools and many provide comparative studies.

Federal level data are actually an aggregation of state level data such as data collected according to the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, the National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP) often referred to as “The Nation’s Report Card” and other state-level achievement tests. “The Nation’s Report Card” is an aggregation and an analysis of the NAEP test results and the NCLB Act requires the NAEP testing of all students nation-wide in the near future. NAEP provides a measure of how students in grades 4, 8 and 12 nation-wide are performing in mathematics, science, and language arts.

The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) holds a wealth of information on schools and student performance nation-wide particularly student demographic data and school district financial data. The NCES also provides analyses of its data in such publications as the Education Statistics Quarterly, the annual Conditions of Education report, the Nation’s Report Card, the Digest of Education Statistics, and reports on selected current educational issues.

Level 2: State Data and Decision Making:

States, through their departments of education, collect, aggregate and report data to the federal level as well as other levels through measures such as the NCLB, NAEP, and in New Jersey, the New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge (NJASK.) The NJASK is a state assessment of public school student achievement in grades three to seven which is administered by the New Jersey Department of Education. The NJASK is defined by the New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards (CCCS) in language arts, mathematics and science that was implemented to help meet the requirements of NCLB. The NJASK test is given for up to two hours per day covering a three to five day time frame. The questions are either multiple choice or ones requiring a written response.

The New Jersey CCCS provide local school districts with benchmarks for student achievement of the skills the State of New Jersey expects its public school students to acquire during their K to 12 education in nine content areas. These benchmarks set the levels which students should attain in the following areas:

Visual and performing arts
Health and physical education
Language arts literacy
Mathematics
Science
Social studies
World languages
Technology
Career education, consumer, family, and life skills

The CCCS are “outcome statements” that form the basis of “strands” and “Cumulative Progress Indicators” (CPI). Strands are defined as tools to help teachers identify content and skills. Each strand is composed of a number of CPIs. The CPIs provide the specific content and skills to be taught at the appropriate grade levels.

Level 3: District Data and Decision Making:

In all states except Hawaii, the Local Education Authority (LEA) or school district is the major decision-making setting. The overwhelming majority of districts elect boards of education who in turn hire the superintendent as well as other staff and operate the school system within the LEA or district. Hence, data gathered, analyzed and acted upon at the district level are critical to the system of control and accountability.

Districts play a central role in collecting data as well as in using data to improve student achievement. While nearly all districts nation-wide generate some sort of district “Report Card,” districts in New Jersey are key to the process of collecting, aggregating, reporting and using data through such measures as the:

Grade Eight Proficiency Assessment (GEPA)
High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA)
Advanced Placement (AP) program and tests
New Jersey Quality Single Accountability Continuum (NJQSAC)

A variety of tests are used to assess public school student achievement as well as to help improve public education through data collection in New Jersey school districts. The GEPA is a standardized test administered to all New Jersey eighth graders on several subjects and is very similar to the HSPA. As such, the GEPA is often referred to as the “preparation test” for the HSPA. The HSPA is a standardized test administered during a four day period to all New Jersey high school students in their eleventh grade or junior year on language arts literacy and mathematics. Public school students must pass the HSPA exams to graduate from high school in New Jersey. The Advanced Placement (AP) program provides high school students with a way in which to earn college level credit depending how well they perform on the subject matter exams given for the AP level courses they attend.

The system for monitoring and evaluating New Jersey’s public school districts is the New Jersey Quality Single Accountability Continuum (NJQSAC) which is often referred to as the “QSAC.” QSAC replaced the Quality Annual Assurance Report (QAAR) beginning with the 2006-07 school year. As a result it shifted the focus from primarily compliance to district, individual school and student improvement. The QSAC combines a wide range of state monitoring requirements with those of the federal government into a “single” system of monitoring and evaluating school districts. All New Jersey school districts must perform an annual self-assessment according to five key components:

Instruction
Personnel
Financial management
Operations
Governance

The QSAC addressed the problem of a large number of significantly different and often conflicting state and federal monitoring and evaluating requirements. The QSAC simplified the monitoring of district performance by forging one set of standards for all school districts as well as enabling districts to make their own adjustments more readily. It also enables more informed school district comparisons through the use of a “continuum” on which all districts are rated.

Level 4: School Data and Decision Making:

The school is the primary working unit for education and as such it is also the primary decision-making unit. Many educators, central office staff and policy makers tend to believe that those closest to the classroom because of their daily access to students and their performance have a more in depth understanding of school-centric and student-centric data. Therefore, those at the school level may be better positioned to make more informed decisions concerning educational programs and services than those at other levels especially at the state and federal Departments of Education. Examples of school level measures include school “Report Cards” and Annual Yearly Progress (AYP).

Level 5: Student Data and Decision Making:

Ultimately, the level of decision-making and analysis is the student: the child is taught, supported, tested and reviewed in many ways. Data are collected on students according to many factors including but not limited to subject matter, grade level, socio-economic status, race, gender, Limited English Proficiency (LEP), Advanced Placement as well as special education and Individual Education Plans (IEP).

_______________________________

References

Kowaski, T. J., Lasley II, T. J., & Mahoney, J. W. (2008), Data-Driven Decisions and School Leadership: Best Practices for School Improvement, Boston: Allyn & Bacon.

State of New Jersey, Department of Education, web site. United States Library of Medicine, DNA Double Helix diagram.

Tags:Add new tag, Advanced Placement, Annual Yearly Progress, AYP, data, data-based decision making, GEPA, Grade Eight Proficiency Assessment, HSPA, IDEA, IEP, Individual Education Plans, information, LEA, LEP, Limited English Proficiency, Local Education Authority, NAEP, Nation's Report Card, National Assessment of Education Progress, National Center for Education Statistics, NCES, NCLB, New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards, New Jersey Quality Single Accountability Continuum, NJASK, NJGEPA, NJHSPA, NJQSAC, QAAR, Quality Annual Assurance Report, report cards, school data-based decision making, Student data, test scores, test scors
Posted in Advanced Placement (AP), Annual Yearly Progress (AYP), data-based decision making, decision making, Grade Eight Proficiency Assessment (GEPA), High School Proficiency Assessment (HSPA), LEA, Local Education Authority (LEA), National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), National Center for Education Statistics, New Jersey Assessment of Skills and Knowledge (NJASK), New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards (CCCS), New Jersey Quality Single Accountability Continuum (NJQSAC), NJQSAC, No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act | No Comments »

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