Posts Tagged ‘home rule’

How State Dominated Educational Systems Level Down Accountability and Increase Costs

Monday, January 3rd, 2011

Introduction

The United States Constitution bestows plenary authority to govern education on the states rather than the federal government. Accordingly, in the American governmental system all the powers of local governments including county governments and school districts are derived from the state. Whatever authority the state grants to local governments, and, therefore, to local school districts, the state also can withdraw or modify.

Still, the tradition of local control is rooted in our democratic principles. It also symbolizes our democracy in action. Local control enables a local school system to be accountable to its constituents rather than being controlled remotely by a governmental entity that imposes its political agenda which is incongruent with local priorities and needs. Remote governing bodies, such as county or state governments, therefore, are not as accountable to the standards necessary to provide quality education as are local schools.

A top-down, state dominated educational system is contrary to our democratic principles and traditions especially when it comes to the governance of our schools. Increased control by the state through state politically appointed county departments of education, such as in New Jersey and California, means less local control because control is a zero sum game. As such, every increase in or recapture of state or county power can only result from a corresponding loss at the local level.

Special attention is given to the states of New Jersey and California because they embody the problems associated with state domination of local school systems as executed through the level of county government. During recent decades, the cherished home rule tradition of school governance in New Jersey and California was eroded to the point where local control of education has been largely superseded by the state and its extension, county government.

The rising power of the states of New Jersey and California (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 in California and Abbott v. Burke in New Jersey, establishing financial neutrality as the basis for school funding. The states tried to remedy the disparities among districts with the infusion of incremental state funds and regulation.

Subsequent rulings focused on adequacy which 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 went 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.

Legal challenges to subsequent state funding formulas such as law suits to address financial inequities and tax base disparities have caused states to greatly increase taxes so as to generate the necessary funds with which to offset the inequalities. Nowhere is this more predominant than in the New Jersey and California.

But greatly increased state taxes and spending have led to corresponding increases in state regulation of local school districts so as to enable states to better control the use of state educational aid. This, in turn, has led to exponential increases in state mandates for administrative regulation, program requirements, standards, and budgetary controls. Naturally, as state mandates and control over local schools increased, the size of state and county bureaucracies increased with a corresponding increase in the costs being passed on to local school districts.

The rise in the power of the state has paralleled the increase in the state’s control over public education finance. The transformation of the state’s educational finance system to a more centralized model has resulted in a corresponding loss of control by the local taxpayer over educational policy, programs, and services. More importantly, it has greatly decreased the ability of local citizens as well as the state government to hold schools accountable for educational performance.

County government (Fischel, 2009) is the entity through which states have traditionally executed their authority. But County government, as the implementation arm of the state, is too distant from the provision of education as well as the educational needs and priorities of local communities to be able to hold local schools accountable.

History

Historically, the American system for organizing school districts has employed two major models based on traditional political boundaries: counties and townships. Every state except Hawaii employs one of these models or a combination as the basis for organizing its schools. Hawaii is the only statewide school district in the nation and its public schools are 100% financed by the state.

The settlers of New England (Fischel, 2009) established the township as the political unit within which school districts were organized and this model spread westward. The Mid-Atlantic and Southern states, however, have generally used the county as the organizing structure for local schools. Indeed, schools in the states (Kenney and Schmidt, 1994, cited in Fischel, 2009) of Maryland, Florida, West Virginia and Louisiana are organized into consolidated countywide districts without individual school districts. For example, (Fischel, 2009, pp. 165-166) “the city of Baltimore is considered a county district in Maryland and is distinct from adjacent, suburban “Baltimore County”; each is a separate (county) school district.”

New Jersey

While such court decisions as Robinson v. Cahill and Abbott v. Burke fundamentally changed the state’s role in education in New Jersey, recreating the office of the Executive County Superintendent of Schools as well as the passage of S1701 into law were similarly profound in their far reaching impact on New Jersey’s school system. Because using property taxes as the primary basis for funding local school districts is inextricably linked to home rule, these actions transcended local taxpayers’ rights to determine the financial and human resources allocations of their local schools. More importantly, these court rulings and laws directly affected local taxpayers’ democratic rights.

Office of the Executive County Superintendent

When New Jersey Governor Corzine signed the CORE Act, CommUNITY Against Regionalization Efforts (2009), Assembly Bill A4 and Senate Bill S19, into law, he transformed the role of county superintendents of education from mere disseminators of state educational policies into powerful Executive County Superintendent of Schools. In so doing, the governor empowered each Executive County Superintendent to begin consolidating all schools into K to 12 districts and ultimately to consolidate all schools within one countywide organization. Indeed, passage of the pending New Jersey Senate bill (New Jersey Department of Education 2010), S450, would eliminate all local school administrators over the level of principal and establish the Executive County Superintendent as the official who will govern and operate all public schools within the consolidated countywide district.

The Executive County Superintendent is a political appointee whose contract calls for him/her to focus on maximizing the reduction of expenses in all of the schools within the county rather than on improving student and school achievement. These political appointees are empowered to veto local school district budgets despite their previous approval by their duly elected local board of education as well as any contracts for vendors or school personnel not covered by a collective bargaining agreement. Also, they have unilateral authority to scale down, postpone, or eliminate any non-mandate protected program or service.

New Jersey gave the Executive County Superintendent unprecedented powers over local school districts through the office of Executive County Superintendent of Schools. These county superintendents have the authority to put New Jersey well on its way to duplicating Maryland’s centralization of power over local school districts at the county level. Indeed, the Executive County Superintendents have the authority to consolidate all of New Jersey’s 600 plus school districts serving more than 1.3 million students statewide within one of 21 countywide districts.

By creating the office of Executive County Superintendent of Schools, New Jersey moved to the verge of replicating the state of Maryland’s county school system model. First, the state of Maryland eliminated all local school officials beyond the level of principal. It then consolidated all of its schools serving less than one million students statewide within one of the 24 countywide districts in each county under an Executive County Superintendent.

Although Maryland abolished all administrators above the level of principal from the local schools in the name of saving money, cutting administrative expenses, and cutting property taxes, these small one time savings were more than exceeded by the ongoing costs of the office of Executive County Superintendent of Schools with its ever increasing bureaucracy. For example, in Maryland, the Montgomery County Department of Education alone has an annual operating budget of approximately $2 billion with nearly 22,000 employees despite having a total student enrollment of less than 138,000. The office of Executive County Superintendent of Schools for Montgomery County, therefore, employs roughly one administrator for every six of its students!

The Executive County Superintendent, who is appointed by the governor, supervises, directs and manages the functions of the County Office of Education as a representative and subordinate of the New Jersey State Commissioner of Education. The Executive County Superintendent oversees all public school districts within his/her county. To accomplish these goals, each county superintendent is given a staff and a budget which are not subject to taxpayer input, approval or elections.

Contrary to core principles of democracy, the Executive County Superintendent has the authority to override a school district’s budget despite its prior approval by its duly elected board of education. He/she can do so without any prior consultation or notification of the elected board of education or the local district’s superintendent or business administrator. Indeed, the Executive County Superintendent’s exercise of a line item veto over non-instructional costs in a local school district’s budget would be contrary to the will of the locally elected board of education that represents the local taxpayers as demonstrated by their previous vote of approval for the vetoed items.

In addition, a board of education is prohibited from transferring funds into any line item that was vetoed by the Executive County Superintendent. The County Superintendent’s line item veto authority covers all non-instructional line items including administrative expenses. The appointed Executive County Superintendent, therefore, could eliminate administrative positions deemed necessary by the elected local board of education who would then lack sufficient recourse.

The Executive County Superintendent is empowered to review all district budgets within the county. He/she has the authority to veto a portion of the district’s budget and the district will have to deduct this portion prior to the budget’s posting on the ballot for the public vote in April. The district is then prohibited from transferring any funds into those line items or spending any funds toward the vetoed items for the fiscal year.

The Executive County Superintendent’s is responsible for ensuring that each school district budget includes sufficient funds to meet the requirements of the state’s Core Curriculum Content Standards (CCCS). The district’s administrative and support services per pupil costs are compared to the state median. The Executive County Superintendent can administer reductions in these areas if the district’s costs exceed the state guidelines.

The Executive County Superintendent is required to review, evaluate, and approve all employment contracts for administrators not covered by a collective bargaining agreement including but not limited to superintendents, assistant superintendents, and business administrators. He/she must also enforce the state mandated caps on accumulated unused vacation and sick days.

According to the School Funding Reform Act (New Jersey Department of Education, 2008), the Executive County Superintendent can withhold or recapture state aid if he/she discovers excessive spending, inefficiencies, or that the district has violated any state law or regulation. Another condition for receiving state aid stipulates that every district must refinance all outstanding debt for which a three percent net present value could be realized.

The Executive County Superintendent enforces the state mandated four percentage point cap on a local school district’s annual property tax levy. The tax levy is also reduced if the district’s budget is found to exceed the state’s calculated adequacy level for that particular district and if the district receives an increase in state aid exceeding the greater of two percent or the Consumer Price Index (CPI.)

The implication behind the creation of the office of Executive County Superintendent of Schools was that it would somehow save the taxpayers’ money and enable the state to have lower property taxes. The experience of such a control model in the state of Maryland contradicts such assumptions as does the New Jersey’s county control model. New Jersey’s 21 counties combine to spend over $6.3 billion annually in property taxes and hold more than $5 billion in outstanding debt. County government places a tremendous burden on New Jersey’s taxpayers especially as compared to those in Connecticut where county government was eliminated in 1960.

While economies of scale apply in the private sector especially in manufacturing, they do not apply as well to the education sector with its value added services. In the education arena it usually takes a defined number of people per capita to provide a defined level of service. Larger school systems such as regional or consolidated countywide school districts, therefore, are more expensive to operate than smaller, local school districts because of their “penalties of scale” (Coffin, 2010, p. 1).

Decentralization rather than centralization brings decision makers closer to the taxpayers and local priorities. Taxpayers have more of a stake in the success of their local school rather than county districts. Indeed, separating the taxpayer from his/her ability to control and influence the operating budget and educational plan of his/her local school district cuts neither costs nor property taxes.

S1701

When New Jersey Governor James McGreevey signed S1701 into law on July 1, 2004, as Chapter 73, Public Laws of New Jersey 2004 (New Jersey Department of Education, 2005), the state took a major step in its continued erosion of local control over school districts especially in terms of a district’s surplus, budget flexibility, administrative spending limits, and spending growth limitation adjustments. While this legislation accelerated the loss of local autonomy for school districts the state did not apply it to county and municipal governments even though these levels of government also are funded primarily by local property taxes.

S1701 reduced the maximum allowable district surplus to no more than three percent in the 2004-05 fiscal year and two percent in the 2005-06 fiscal year and beyond. Prior to the passage of S1701, the state prohibited non-Abbott districts from having a surplus of less than six percent. Because a district’s surplus serves as insurance against unforeseen expenses, S1701 forces a district to either cut non-mandate protected educational programs and services such as regular education or increase property taxes.

S1701 required that any surplus in excess of the percentage limitations must be used for property tax relief. But the property tax relief would be implemented by limiting the amount of property taxes a district could levy in the upcoming fiscal year rather than as a direct refund to taxpayers, furthering constraining local autonomy.

S1701 (New Jersey Department of Education, 2005) limited a district’s budgetary flexibility by restricting the growth in the base budget to the higher of two and half percent or the Consumer Price Index (CPI). It also limited Spending Growth Limitation Adjustments (SGLA) that enable districts to meet unbudgeted increases in expenses for such items as hazardous route transportation, courtesy busing, insurance, utilities, or legal services. Once routine budgetary transfers such as line item transfers exceeding ten percent as well as transfers of surplus and unbudgeted revenue now require county approval.

According to the New Jersey School Boards Association (2004), S1701 further eroded local taxpayer control by limiting a district’s use of second ballot questions, often referred to as second questions. By casting votes on second questions, citizens exert control over the authorization of funds for specific educational programs and services that are in addition to the base operating budget. Through the exercise of second questions (New Jersey School Boards Association, 2004, p. 3), “the community determines if it is willing and able to raise the money to fund the expenditure over cap for programs ranging from full-day Kindergarten and after-school enrichment programs to extra-curricular activities.”

S1701 further eroded the ability of local school districts to develop, approve, and implement their operating budgets. Decision making authority over many budgetary items such as the acquisition and allocation of a school district’s financial and human resources were largely transferred to the county level of government as the state’s execution arm. Indeed, (New Jersey School Boards Association, 2004, p. 2) S1701 “lessened a community’s ability to determine school finance matters and related educational policy.”

Upon taking office in January, 2010, New Jersey Governor Christie announced he would withhold $475 million in promised state aid to school districts statewide as part of his effort to close the state fiscal year budget deficit of approximately $2 billion. What makes the governor’s plan significant is that he requires districts to make up for cuts in state aid by using their surplus and reserve account funds.

Governor Christie’s plan requires districts to use all of their excess surplus plus 25% of the reserve accounts for capital, maintenance, emergencies and excess. This means that most non-Abbott districts will lose most if not all of their state aid for the balance of the fiscal year that ends on June 30. Because the state already required districts to roll over any surplus exceeding the two percent level as property tax relief according to S1701, this reduction in surplus will lead most likely to deeper cuts to non-mandate protected educational programs and property tax increases in districts statewide.

California

While the California Department of Education has the overall responsibility to administer education throughout the state, it does so primarily through California’s 58 counties. Each county department of education oversees the school districts within its boundaries. While the counties collect property taxes on behalf of the state and the mill rate is established in the state constitution, it is the state that determines how much funding including revenue from property taxes each district receives and how those funds are allocated.

But California had enjoyed a long tradition of local control of school district budgets, capital projects, human resources as well as the provision of educational programs and services according to local needs and priorities. The role of the state and county governments in governing and funding local school districts was severely limited. While the state provided a minimal funding level, local school districts levied property taxes to generate the overwhelming majority of their revenues. Taxpayers’ votes determined district budgets as well as the members of their local boards of education. A district’s financial and human resources allocations were based on the district’s educational plan as approved by the duly elected local board of education.

The state ended this tradition by constantly eroding local control through the strings it attached to the funding it provided and the policies it mandated for local school districts. Once the state gained the majority control over school finance, the state was then in a position to also control educational policy in all of the nearly 1,000 school districts.

Today, local school districts depend almost entirely on the state for their revenues and largely lack the authority to raise revenues that only they can control. Because state funds come with powerful strings attached, the state leverages its funding to determine how a district allocates its budget and human resources. Districts have almost no discretion over their use of the majority of state funds.

The strings attached to California’s state aid result in the majority of a district’s funds being restricted only for use according to the state’s mandates. Most of the unrestricted state funding finances the salaries and benefits for a district’s employees. A district’s financial and human resources allocation is overwhelmingly determined by the state according to its one size fits all approach which does not account for differences in local educational needs, priorities, and cost drivers. By controlling school finance and making policy decisions that once were the province of local school districts, California consolidated and centralized the control of education at the state level.

The current recession has adversely impacted the state’s budget over the last few years especially education which is the largest component of California’s expenditures. This has caused the state to pass along revenue cuts, deferrals, and allocation formula adjustments to local school districts despite promises and legislative guarantees to the contrary. Because legislation has forced local school districts to become overwhelmingly dependent on state revenues, districts were forced to depend on unreliable state aid and, therefore, have been disproportionately affected.

But the seeds of California’s fiscal calamity were sown well before the current recession could impact its budget. The roots of the financial crisis are found in California’s history of creating unsustainable state budgets especially during periods of economic growth while simultaneously forcing local school districts to become overly dependent on unreliable state revenue sources. There are three fundamental causes of the fiscal crisis which continue to plague California’s local school districts. These include a major court ruling, state constitutional amendments, and voter passed initiatives.

The first causal factor was the 1971 California Supreme Court’s Serrano v. Priest ruling in which the court declared the system of funding local school districts based on primarily on local property taxes to be unconstitutional if differences in ratables (Fischel, 2001, p. 99) “led to disparities in educational opportunities, which the court apparently took to mean spending per pupil.” This decision not only effectively ended the tradition of local control over school budgets, property tax levies, and capital projects but also led to the centralization of control over school finance at the state level.

But the resultant centralization of school finance at the state level lowered the quality of education generally throughout the state because it separated local taxpayers from their connection or stake in their local schools. This stake derives from the payment of local property taxes for local schools. This demonstrated Fischel’s (2001) homevoter hypothesis because the benefits local taxpayers derived from the quality of the education provided in their local schools funded by their local property taxes were no longer capitalized in their property values. Fischel (2001, p. 129) concludes, “voters are aware of this connection, and that statewide funding especially alienates the majority of the population who have no children in the public school system.”

Fischel (2001) demonstrates how the Serrano v. Priest decision resulted in the passage of Proposition 13 with its dramatic end to local control over the then main source of revenues, local property taxes. According to Fischel (2001,) the Serrano v. Priest decision led to the passage of a state constitutional amendment called Proposition 13 which was the second major cause. The enactment of this legislation in 1978 severely cut the amount of local property tax revenue available to local school districts as well as the amount under local control. The legislation enabled the state to collect and then redistribute local property taxes based on the state’s funding formula rather than according to local needs and priorities.

The third major factor in the reshaping of California’s school finance system was the passage of Proposition 98 in 1988. When voters approved this ballot initiative, the state of California was compelled to guarantee a minimal level of funding for all local school districts throughout the state.

Prior to the Serrano v. Priest ruling, local school districts controlled their budgets including the levying of property taxes to fund school operations. But post Serrano, the state imposed revenue limits on school districts and narrowed the gap in general purpose funding by capping the wealthier districts while providing larger subsidies to low income districts. The (Perry, 2004) ceiling placed on wealthier districts combined with the sliding scale of increases for lower income districts helped the state achieve the equalization standard expressed in the Serrano v. Priest ruling.

But the adoption of Proposition 13 went beyond the Serrano v. Priest ruling in changing the state’s role in school finance by severely limiting a district’s ability to levy and benefit directly from local property taxes. Proposition 13 amended the California State Constitution with its main provisions including:

No property should be taxed at more than one percent of 1975 fair market value; municipalities may impose “special taxes” by a two-thirds vote of the electors; assessments may not grow more than two percent annually from 1975-76 levels, to which they were rolled back, except for property sold after 1975-76; and no increase in state taxes may be enacted without a two-thirds vote of each legislature. (Yudof, Kirp, Levin, & Moran, 2002, p. 798)

Following the passage of Proposition 13, the state was empowered to establish a statewide mill rate, limit millage increases, and, more importantly, prevent local school districts from levying, collecting, and benefiting directly from local property taxes. This overturned the Separation of Sources Act (Barbour, 2007 as cited in Perry & Edwards, 2009) which had granted exclusive control over determining and levying property taxes to local governmental entities including school districts in 1910.

Because of the resultant drastic reduction in the control over and receipt of local property tax revenues, the state was forced to (Yudof et al., 2002, p. 798) “bail them out by using $2.2 billion of the $3 billion state surplus to make up the difference.” While the state gained control over the allocation of locally levied property taxes, the inequities in funding among school districts were then a function of the state’s school funding formula rather than ones caused by disparities in property values and ratables.

Because Proposition 13 and the Serrano v. Priest ruling combined to both severely limit the ability of local school districts to raise their own revenue to fully fund their budgets and centralize the control over school district funding at the state level, the voters amended the constitution by approving Proposition 98 in 1988. Proposition 98 guaranteed that the state would use the local property taxes that it now controlled plus other state tax revenues to fund a minimum level or floor of all local school district budgets.

According to the requirements of Proposition 98, the state guarantees that at least 40% of its general fund resources will be dedicated to funding public education. This guaranteed funding floor is established by modifying the amount a district received in the preceding fiscal year (Edwards & Leichty, 2010) for enrollment, attendance, and statewide income levels.

In 1990, Proposition 111 modified Proposition 98 to the extent that if the state’s General Fund revenues decline, then the growth rate of the guaranteed funding level will be lowered correspondingly. As a constitutional amendment, Proposition 111 enables the state to make “fair share” reductions to the guaranteed funding level during economic downturns (Edwards & Leichty, 2010, p. 5).

The risk to local school district budgets of depending on unreliable revenue from the state’s unsustainable budgets materialized in major way during economic crisis following Governor Schwarzenneger’s election. To alleviate the state’s budget deficit, Governor Schwarzenegger (Picus as cited in Fusarelli & Cooper, 2009) negotiated a one year suspension of Proposition 98. Although the governor guaranteed that the funds would be repaid (Picus as cited in Fusarelli & Cooper, 2009, p. 14) he “did not include them in his annual budget” for the following fiscal year.

Nationwide the soaring cost of under funded state mandates and regulation has forced local school districts to raise property taxes or cut non-mandate protected regular education programs and services resulting in a leveling down of educational quality. California is no exception as Greenhut (2005, p. 1) reports that according to Proposition 4, which was approved in 1979, the state is required “to reimburse local school districts for the mandates it imposes on them. California owes districts more than $3.6 billion.” These deferred payments have caused severe cash flow problems for local school districts.

As the state’s fiscal crisis deepened and with Proposition 98’s guaranteed educational funding being the largest state expenditure (Edwards & Leichty, 2010), the state cut educational funding to the bare minimum. In this way the state not only reduced spending in the current fiscal year (Edwards & Leichty, 2010) but also minimized its obligations going forward. These funding reductions caused districts to cut non-mandate protected regular education programs and services and exacerbated their cash flow problems.

But Proposition 111’s amendments compel the state to accrue a maintenance factor for any shortcomings owed districts resulting from a suspension of or changes in the minimum funding guaranteed in Proposition 98. The maintenance factor (Edwards & Leichty, 2010, p. 5) is the “difference between the actual spending level and what would have been spent under normal growth.” By the second quarter of 2009 the state’s cumulative maintenance factor debt obligation reached $11.2 billion which further highlighted the funding shortfalls for local school districts.

The Serrano v. Priest ruling combined with Propositions 13 and 98 resulted in the state controlling school finance and policy for all of its nearly 1,000 school districts. The state determines how its various educational resources are allocated among the school districts and largely how they will be used.

The state establishes revenue limits for each district. But only through the passage of legislation can the state, rather than the local school district, adjust a district’s revenue limit. When the local property taxes controlled by the state increase, the majority of schools do not benefit because any incremental property tax revenue is applied to the limit and the state’s component is lowered proportionately.

Conclusion

The states of New Jersey and California exemplify the problems associated with state domination of local school systems particularly as executed through the level of county government. State centralized funding leads to a one-size-fits-all approach for education but one that fits no district.

The specific needs of individual school districts vary to such a large degree that they render uniform state funding and policy formulas inadequate. Instead, public school districts need a mass customization of educational funding, control, and policy that can only derive from local control. Oates (1972) supports the notion that public education should be provided at the lowest level. Kenny (1982) also argues for the provision of public education by local school districts.

Baker, Green, and Richards (2008, p. 66) explain how “the local property tax empowers local voters to express what they want for their local public schools.” The consequence according to Baker, Green, and Richards (2008, p. 66) is that “when property taxes become statewide taxes, the political advantages of empowering local citizens and promoting competition and sorting among jurisdictions is lost.” This mass standardization of school finance and policy leads to state funding guidelines that are incongruous with the needs and priorities of local school districts.

It is difficult for state run school systems to be accountable to the taxpayer. California demonstrates its lack of accountability by withholding or deferring funds which it is legally obligated to send to local school districts. As a result, California has “fallen from its position a leader in per-student spending in the 1970’s to now spending well below the national average (Jacobson, 2007, p. 2). As Jacobson (2007, p. 3) explains, because the state has centralized control over local school finance and policy, the state’s “financial resources are distributed in such an irrational way that schools serving similar student populations in similar locations receive different funding.”

California regularly withholds funds that it is required to allocate spend on its public schools but uses these funds to help offset state budget deficits. California has withheld nearly $15 billion of aid for its schools. California owes local school districts more than $3.6 billion in reimbursement for under funded state mandates in violation of Proposition 4 requirements. Moreover, the state’s owes local school districts $11.2 billion in Proposition 111 maintenance factor obligations.

New Jersey is similarly expanding state control and authority through its counties at the expense of local control, autonomy, and accountability. The state increased its bureaucracy and administrative expenses through the greatly expanded Office of The Executive County Superintendent. This appointed official can override decisions made by duly elected boards of education through the exercise of the line item veto.

The authority of the Executive County Superintendent supersedes that of locally elected boards of education effectively rendering local boards of education as no longer the trustees of a district’s financial and human resources whom the taxpayer can hold accountable. Taxpayers have great difficulty holding the state accountable. Examples of this include the state’s recapturing surplus and reserve funds governed by S1701, the failure of the School Construction Corporation, and the continued lack of student and school achievement in the Abbott districts.

Any reduction in local school district control over the levying and allocating of property taxes decreases accountability and adversely affects public school quality. Taxpayers are more involved in, have a much greater stake in their local school districts, and act to hold these school districts accountable when they pay local property taxes directly to their local schools rather than have their local property taxes controlled by the state and redistributed as if they were statewide revenues according to a state funding formula.

Fischel (2001, p. 152) explains the consequences of statewide property tax redistribution using voters 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. 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 as the proportion of state funding increases. This causes a corresponding reduction in the level of accountability required by the stakeholders and the quality of their public schools’ education declines as a result.

State control over schools interrupts the connection taxpayers’ make between their property values and property taxes. As Sonstelie, Brunner, and Ardon explain (Sonstelie, Brunner, & Ardon, 2000, p. 102 as cited in , 2001, p. 136) the “reason that local control produces better schools is that the local property tax system channels the revenues of nonresidential property into public education.” The greater is the proportion of non-residential properties in a district’s mix of ratables, the lower is the tax burden on residential properties. This lowers their “tax price” (Fischel, 2001, p. 136) making their local schools relatively less expensive and as a result, taxpayers are “induced to spend more on education.”

Typical taxpayers resemble investors because they want their major asset, their home, to appreciate in value. As Fischel (2001, p. 136) explains how “voters tolerate property taxes only when the public services financed by them are capitalized in home values.” Home owners have a vested interest in the success of their local schools because the credit rating of a school district’s host municipality is largely dependent on the financial soundness and credit worthiness of its schools. The higher is a municipality’s or a school district’s credit rating; the lower is its debt service expense.

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. They evaluate the quality of their school district so as to maximize their property values. But if their school district’s quality deteriorates or is expected to decline, typical Tieboutian taxpayers will vote with their feet.

By voting with their feet, taxpayers choose the local school district that best meets their needs and one that will contribute to their property values. 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. In this context, Baker, Green, and Richards (2008, p. 21) state that the “Tiebout model represents the most basic form of school choice.”

Tiebout (1956) argues that because crowding and congestion affect the provision of public goods and services, it is inefficient to provide public education at a centralized level and public education is more efficiently provided at the local level. Fischel (2001) supports this conclusion with his assessment of California’s centralized school finance system in which taxpayers lost control over local schools and property taxes. This led to reduced levels of taxpayer involvement in and support for public education.

Fischel (2001, p. 161) concludes “the apparent quality of public education has declined nationwide as the states’ share of funding for it has risen.” It is essential that taxpayers rather than states or counties have control over their local schools so they will be motivated to properly fund, support and improve public education.

References:

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

Barbour, E. (2007). State-Local Fiscal Conflicts in California: From Proposition 13 to Proposition 1A. Public Policy Institute of California, http://www.ppic.org/content/pubs/op/OP_1207EBOP.

Coffin, S. (2010, December 26). Penalties of Scale: Why Large School Districts Need to Disaggregate. Retrieved from Coffin’s Education Center, http://www.coffinseducationcenter.com.

CommUNITY Against Regionalization Efforts (2009). Core Act, C.A.R.E. Retrieved from http://www.saveoursmallschools.com/legislation.

Edwards, B., M., & Leichty, J. (2010). School Finance 2009-10: Budget Cataclysm and its Aftermath. Mountain View, California: EdSource.

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

Fischel, W. A. (2009). Making the Grade: The Economic Evolution of American School Districts. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

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

Greenhut, S. (2005). State meddling hamstrings schools. The Orange County Register, Retrieved from http://www.ocregister.com

Jacobson, L. (2007). California’s Schooling is “Broken”: Studies Call for Overhaul of Finance, Governance. Education Week, 26(28) Retrieved from http://www.edweek.org/ew/toc/2007/03/21/index.html

Kenny, L. W. (1982). Economies of scale in schooling. Economics of Education Review, (2) 1-24.

Kenny, L. W., & Schmidt, A. B. (1994). The Decline in the Number of School Districts in the United States 1950 – 1980. The Public Choice, (79) 1-18.

New Jersey Department of Education (2005). S1701 Regulations. Retrieved from http://www.state.nj.us/education/finance.

New Jersey Department of Education (2008). School Funding Reform Act. Retrieved from http://www.state.nj.us/education.

New Jersey Department of Education (2010). S450. Retrieved from http://www.state.nj.us/education.

New Jersey School Boards Association (2004). S1701 Signed Into Law. Retrieved from http://www.njsba.org/S1701-Update.

Oates, W. E. (1972). Fiscal Federalism. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Perry, M. (2004). Rethinking How California Funds its Schools. Mountain View, California: EdSource.

Perry, M., & Edwards, B. (2009). Local Revenues for Schools: Limits and Options in California. Mountain View, California: EdSource.

Picus, L. O., (2009). California. In Fusarelli, B. C., & Cooper, B. S., (Editors), The Rising State: How State Power is Transforming our Nation’s Schools, (pp. 9-26). New York, New York: SUNY Press.

Sonstelie, J., Brunner, E., & Ardon, K. (2000). For Better or for Worse? School Finance Reform in California. San Francisco: Public Policy Institute of California.

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

Yudof, M. G., Kirp, D. L., Levin, B., & Moran, R. F. (2002). Educational Policy and the Law. Belmont, California: Wadsworth Group/Thomson Learning.

Tags:accountability, Bruce Baker, Bruce Cooper, California Department of Education, Charles Tiebout, Coffins Education Center, CORE Act, Core Curr, county government, County Run School Systems, diseconomies of scale, EdSource, education, education mandates, educational policies, executive county superintendent, executive county superintendent of schools, Governor Christie, Governor Corzine, home rule, Homevoter Hypothesis, leveling down education and accountability, leveling down the quality of education, local control, local control of schools, Local Education Authority, local school district, Making the Grade by William Fischel, mandate, Maryland Model for schools, Maryland School System, Maryland State-Run School System, Montgomery County Maryland, neighborhood schools, New Jersey, New Jersey Department of Education, New Jersey School Boards Association, Penalties of scale, plenary authority, property taxes, Proposition 111, Proposition 13, Proposition 4, Proposition 98, public school, S1701, school finance, School Funding Reform Act of 2008, school reform, SFRA, SFRA of 2008, state aid, State Dominated School systems, state education restrictions, Wallace Oates, William Fischel
Posted in Abbott v. Burke, accountability, agglomeration, appointed board of education, assessment of property, autonomy of schools, bigger is not better, board of education, Bruce Cooper, Capitalization of property taxes, Capitalization of school district quality, Charles Tiebout, county government, County Property taxes, county run school districts, County Run School Systems, county wide school districts, curriculum, diseconomies of scale, dumbing down, economies of scale, education, educational leadership, elected board of education, Eliminate County Government, enrollment, executive county superintendent, Fischel, governance structure for our schools, home rule, home values, homeownership, Local Education Authority (LEA), local property taxes, local schools, lowest common denominator, Maryland county run school districts model, New Jersey, New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards (CCCS), New Jersey Department of Education, New Jersey Property taxes, non-mandate protected programs, Penalties of scale, per pupil spending, property taxes, property values, public education, public finance, regional schools, S1701, school finance, school funding, school governance, school reform, self-funding school districts, self-governance, Serrano v. Priest, State Board of Education, State Dominated School systems, state financial aid, state mandates, tax base, Wallace Oates, William Fischel | No Comments »

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

Tags:Blog, budgets, California, Caps, centralization of funding, education, home rule, local control, locality, mandates, Massachusetts Proposition 2.5, Property Tax Levy, property taxes, property taxes blog, property values, Proposition 13, Proposition 98, public school districts, School Finance Blog, school reform and restructuring, state control, student performance, tax and expenditure limit blog, tax cap blog, TEL blog, TELs, unfunded state and federal mandates
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 »

How New Jersey Senate bill S450 will Increase Administrative Costs and Property Taxes Statewide

Monday, March 15th, 2010

Passage of the pending New Jersey Senate bill, S450, would eliminate all local school administrators over the level of principal and establish the Executive County Superintendent as the official who will govern and operate all local public schools within each of the proposed consolidated countywide school districts. When former Governor Corzine signed the CORE Act (Assembly Bill A4 and Senate Bill S19) into law, he transformed the role of county superintendents of education from mere disseminators of state educational policies into powerful Executive County Superintendents of Schools. In so doing, the governor empowered each Executive County Superintendent to begin consolidating all schools into K to 12 districts and ultimately to consolidate all schools within one countywide organization.

By creating the office of Executive County Superintendent of Schools, New Jersey is moving to replicate the state of Maryland’s consolidated county school system model. First, the state of Maryland eliminated all local school officials beyond the level of principal. It then consolidated all of its local schools serving less than one million students statewide within one of the 24 countywide school districts in each county under an Executive County Superintendent.

Although Maryland abolished all school administrators above the level of principal from its local schools in the name of saving money, cutting administrative expenses and cutting property taxes, these small savings were overwhelmed by the ongoing costs of the office of the Executive County Superintendent of Schools with its ever increasing bureaucracy. The reason Maryland’s total statewide administrative costs increased rather than decreased as promised following the implementation of the consolidated county wide school district is that the Executive County Superintendent is not accountable to the voters and this enables him/her to increase staff largely without taxpayer input.

In New Jersey, the Executive County Superintendent also is appointed by the governor. He/she supervises, directs and manages the functions of the County Office of Education as a representative and subordinate of the New Jersey State Commissioner of Education. The Executive County Superintendent oversees all public school districts within his/her county. To accomplish these goals, each county superintendent is given a staff and a budget which are not subject to taxpayer input, approval or elections.

In Maryland, for example, the Montgomery County Department of Education by itself has an annual operating budget of approximately $2 billion with nearly 22,000 employees despite having a total student enrollment of less than 138,000. The office of the Executive County Superintendent of Schools for Montgomery County, therefore, employs roughly one administrator for every six of its students! Furthermore, the Montgomery County consolidated school district has more than three times the number of administrators per student than it does teachers! Contrary to what S450 purports, it will not provide for a more cost effective educational system rather it will increase costs especially administrative expenses. Indeed, states that have adopted this model or a similar model such as California have increased costs.

The implication behind Senate bill, S450, is that it would somehow save the taxpayers’ money and enable the state to have lower property taxes by eliminating administrators over the level of principal. Proponents even a suggest savings of $553 million. But Maryland’s total statewide administrative costs increased rather than decreased as promised following the implementation of its consolidated county wide school district. Indeed, the experience of such a control model in the state of Maryland contradicts the assumptions inherent in S450 based on its consolidated county school district control model for New Jersey.

Rather than add another bureaucracy, the most effective way to cut property taxes in New Jersey is to eliminate the tax burden imposed by county government. County government places a tremendous burden on New Jersey’s taxpayers especially as compared to those in Connecticut where county government was eliminated in 1960. New Jersey’s 21 counties combine to spend over $6.1 billion annually in property taxes, hold more than $5 billion in outstanding debt and have more than 44,000 employees. Indeed, just the three New Jersey counties of Union, Essex and Bergen together levy approximately $1.6 billion in annual property taxes.

The question facing New Jersey’s taxpayers is whether more money would be saved by eliminating county government or by adopting a consolidated county school district model as advocated by S450. The answer is rather straight forward. Saving $6.1 billion annually in property taxes by eliminating county government would be the best way to ease New Jersey’s tax burden rather than implementing S450 and hoping its unsubstantiated savings of approximately $553 million materialize.

Decentralization rather than centralization brings decision makers closer to the taxpayers and local priorities. Taxpayers have more of a stake in the success of their local school district rather than county districts. Indeed, separating the taxpayer from his/her ability to control and influence the operating budget and educational plan of his/her local school district cuts neither costs nor property taxes.

In these challenging economic times, every home owner wants to make sure their property taxes are as low as possible and are put to use where they can do the most good. Nowhere is this more necessary than in New Jersey, where it is imperative that all levels of government do not waste our scarce financial resources and cut taxes particularly property taxes. To accomplish this goal, it is imperative that New Jersey does not add another unaccountable bureaucracy which will increase administrative expenses and property taxes statewide as would result under S450 should it become law.

Tags:Add new tag, consolidated county school districts, CORE Act, county government, countywide school districts, executive county superintendent, home rule, local control over schools, locality, Maryland's county school districts, New Jersey Property taxes, New Jersey Senate Bill S450, property taxes, S450
Posted in autonomy of schools, bigger is not better, board of education, Capitalization of property taxes, Capitalization of school district quality, county government, County Property taxes, county run school districts, county wide school districts, deregulation of schools, dumbing down, education, executive county superintendent, home rule, home values, homeownership, Local Education Authority (LEA), local property taxes, local schools, Maryland county run school districts model, New Jersey, New Jersey Commissioner of Education, New Jersey Property taxes, property taxes, property values, public education, public finance, regional schools, regionalization of schools, S450, school district consolidations, school district mergers, school finance, school funding, school governance, school performance, school reform, self-funding school districts, self-governance, tax base | No Comments »

Accountability Requires Local Control of Public Schools

Tuesday, September 15th, 2009

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:accountability, Add new tag, autonomous school districts, home rule, local control, Local Education Authority, self-governing school districts
Posted in academic outcomes, academic performance, accountability, autonomy of schools, bigger is not better, board of education, charter, deregulation of schools, education, educational leadership, home rule, Local Education Authority (LEA), local schools, mandates, school funding, school governance, school reform, State Board of Education, state mandates | No Comments »

Local School Districts mean Better Education

Tuesday, April 7th, 2009

Is bigger really better? This is the crucial question facing New Jersey’s schools as the state moves toward a consolidated county-wide school district framework. The proposed consolidation would eliminate local school district administrative personnel and centralize the operation of each of the county’s schools within one county-wide district such as the model used in Maryland (Enlighten-New Jersey, 2006). As a result, all decisions concerning local school functions would be made at the county level with little local recourse.

While consolidation may sound tempting, because it is based on a presumption of economies-of-scale leading to assumed lower operating costs as well as improved administrative efficiencies which, in turn, are expected to result in lower property taxes plus greater parental engagement, the reality is much different, however. It has been shown that county-wide districts often result in increased costs, increased bureaucracy, students being so remote that parents are less engaged, and increased special interest group control of the agenda, curriculum as well as the distribution of funds (Wenders, 2005).

County-wide school districts tend to expand the county departments of education into unwieldy bureaucracies (Wenders, 2005). These bureaucracies often become so large that their administrative costs exceed the combined cost of the local administrative personnel, including but not limited to superintendents, business administrators and directors of special education, they are supposed to replace. Moreover, because these county departments of education are staffed largely by political appointees, they tend to operate without the essential public feedback that is the backbone of local boards of education.

At the outset, New Jersey’s legislators used Maryland’s experience (School Board Notes, 2006) as a benchmark for the expected savings and efficiencies for New Jersey’s consolidation. However, during her testimony to a panel of New Jersey state senators, Ms. Marie S. Bilik (2008), Executive Director of the New Jersey School Boards Association, demonstrated that the total state-wide administrative costs of the Maryland school system exceed those of New Jersey’s. While testifying in front of the New Jersey Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee on March 20, 2008, Ms. Bilik referenced an U.S. Department of Education report (2006), “A recent report by the U.S. Department of Education ranks New Jersey 38^th among the states and District of Columbia in the percentage of current expenditures devoted to administration. That means 37 other states – including Maryland and Pennsylvania – spend more on administration than New Jersey.” In addition, enrollment in New Jersey’s public schools was over fifty percent greater than that of Maryland during the same period and continues to exceed Maryland’s enrollment by similar margins. Thus, rather than removing administrative costs, the Maryland model has actually added costs and administrative overhead (Bilik, 2008).

While New Jersey has not yet moved to a complete county-wide model, its recent school consolidation legislation has significantly increased the power of the politically appointed Executive County Superintendent. Among these expanded powers is the ability to compel the creation or expansion of regional school districts with the ultimate goal of consolidating the regionalized districts into one county-wide school district in every county. New Jersey’s county-wide school districts would be run by Executive County Superintendents, political appointees, who would not be accountable to the voters but rather would serve at the discretion of partisan political forces.

But consolidation of local school districts into county level districts also tends to result in more of a traditional military-type command-and-control decision making process rather than a process controlled by local school districts with the active participation of local constituencies most notably local parents. In a command-and-control model, while the state and federal policy makers develop the overall strategy for policy implementation (Fusarelli and Cooper, 2009), it is the county-wide school districts that combine these policies with their political directives to determine the curriculum, priorities and budget for each school. However, because the county level is too distant from where education actually takes place and is more easily influenced by special interest groups, the result is often less parental engagement.

Concentrating the school system at the local district level rather than at the county level will not only enable more resources to be focused on those most affected by education, the students, but also enable those most intimately involved in providing education, the teachers, to provide better instruction. But the rise of county departments of education will also cause the local school districts to spend less time on students as well as parents because more time will be required to be spent on bureaucratic obligations thereby decreasing parental engagement which is a key component in improving student performance. It is the local districts that not only are closest to the students but also have the necessary local expertise to most effectively decide how to provide a quality education.

Indeed, it seems as if the reason for preventing or eliminating county-wide school districts is embodied in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education case. In Brown v. Board of Education, the Supreme Court not only ruled against school racial segregation by striking down the practice of separate but equal but also established the right of all students to attend their neighborhood school. Consistent with this ruling, it is essential that every child be able to attend their neighborhood school within a local school district free from the burden of county level bureaucracies so that the schools are better able to concentrate on improving every student’s performance.

Consolidating local school districts into larger county-wide districts removes decision making authority from those most affected by educational policy decisions: the individual student as well as his/her parents, school and district. It also concentrates policy formulation and decision making at a centralized level where special interest groups have greater leverage on the policy makers and, as a result, greater control of the policy outcomes including local school budgets. Moreover, consolidation of local school districts into county level districts while fewer in number tends to result in higher state-wide total administrative costs due to the lack of accountability, more political patronage and reduced local parental input.

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References

Bilik, M. S. (2008). Testimony: FY09 State Budget, Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee, Senate Annex, Committee Room 4, Trenton, New Jersey, March 20, 2008.

Enlighten-New Jersey, (2006). Is School Consolidation The Answer To New Jersey’s Property Tax Crisis? August 9, 2006, Retrieved from http://www.enlightennj.com.

Fusarelli, B. C. and Cooper, B. S., (2009). The Rising State: How State Power Is Transforming Our Nation’s Schools, State University of New York Press, Albany.

School Board Notes, (2006) New Jersey vs. Maryland: The Facts, September 14, 2006, Retrieved from http://www.njsba.org Trenton, New Jersey: New Jersey School Boards Association.

U. S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (2006). Common Core of Data, August, 2006.

Wenders, J. T., (2005) Deconsolidate Oregon’s School Districts March 21, 2005, Retrieved from http://www.cascadepolicyinstitute.org.

Tags:Add new tag, Brown v. Board of Education, county government, county wide school districts, education, education mandates, educational policies, executive county superintendent, home rule, local school district, Marie S. Bilik, Maryland county school district model, neighborhood school, neighborhood schools, New Jersey, Oregon, Pennsylvania, property taxes, regional school districts, school administrative costs, school consolidation, school district consolidation, school district merger, school finance, school racial segregation, walk to school
Posted in bigger is not better, county government, county run school districts, county wide school districts, education, enrollment, executive county superintendent, home rule, independent schools, Local Education Authority (LEA), local schools, mandates, Maryland county run school districts model, New Jersey, Pennsylvania schools, property taxes, regional schools, regionalization of schools, school district consolidations, school district mergers, school finance, school funding, school governance, school law, school reform, small is beautiful, special education, state mandates | No Comments »

Creating Self-Governing Independent Public Schools

Sunday, January 11th, 2009

Our public schools must be given the choice of becoming self-governing so that they can be free to provide a top quality educational system. A self-governing public school district is free of state control as well as federal intervention. Therefore, it would be independent of the state system but remain a public school district serving the same local community rather than a charter school or a private school or a school run in full or in part by a private company. While public school districts could elect to stay within the state system and continue to abide by all mandates, all districts should be given the opportunity to legally opt out. The ability to opt for self-governance would be supported by legislation.

Self-governance would provide public schools with the authority to improve education consistent with the priorities of their local school communities 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. Public schools choosing to opt out would be independent public schools free of all state mandates except for perhaps reporting test results but they would also forgo all state aid. Opting out of the state system would restore decision-making to the local school district level. Because decisions guiding the operations of self-governing schools would no longer be made largely at the county or state level, parents, teachers, school administrators, boards of education, and local taxpayers would be better able to shape the quality of education which their students receive in their local schools.

A public school district would become self-governing when a simple 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. Board of education members would be chosen from among the registered voters in the school district. Municipal, county, state and federal governments would no longer play any role in the governance or management of self-governing school districts. Therefore, boards of school estimate would no longer have any role vis-à-vis appointed boards of education.

Local property tax levies rather than tuition would continue to be the primary source of funding for self-governing public school districts. Still, these districts would be eligible to receive appropriate state or federal grants. The annual operating budget and debt authorizations for a self-governing public school district would be decided by its board of education rather than be subject to district-wide public votes. Indeed, this would be consistent with the fact that the annual operating budgets of municipal, county, state and federal governments are not subject to approval through a vote of their respective electorates.

Becoming self-governing would enable a school district to operate more efficiently and cost-effectively through the exercise of many new choices. A self-governing school district would be free to choose whether to have unions. If it chooses to be union-free, it would be no longer subject to such legislative restrictions as the New Jersey Employer-Employee Relations Act which is commonly referred to as the “PERC law” (Strassman, Vogt and Wary, 1991.) If the district elected not to have unions, then all union contracts such as those with its teachers would be dissolved and renegotiated once the district became self-governing.

Free of outside governmental intrusion such as the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act, the district also would be free to determine its teacher licensing requirements including training, education and experience. Because the district would no longer be subject to the New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards (CCCS,) it would be free to develop and determine its own curriculum. The district also would be free to determine whether or not to offer special education because the Individuals with Disabilities in Education Act (IDEA) and state special education requirements would no longer apply. If the district chooses to provide special education, then it would have sole discretion over what level and kinds of special education it offered.

A self-governing public school district would be held harmless from frivolous lawsuits through its enabling legislation. This would help to greatly minimize escalating legal expenses. Law suits filed against the district would be heard first by one of several newly created arbitration panels. Arbitration panel members would be appointed by a newly created state-wide association of self-governing public school districts.

By changing to self-governance, a school district would be able to cut unnecessary expenses through the elimination of special education-based lawsuits with the ever increasing costs arising from such litigation. 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, however, 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 which increase legal fees and court costs. In addition, there is the 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 would be another way in which to enable school districts to allocate more of their scarce resources to student instruction.

The ever increasing cost of unfunded and under funded mandates is not only forcing school districts to cut regular education programs and, therefore, leveling down student achievement but also increasing property taxes. But New Jersey’s public school districts can no longer afford to pay for these unfunded and under funded mandates because most school districts are forced to spend disproportionately more to meet the requirements of these mandates than these districts receive in total state and federal financial aid. If local school districts opted for self-governance, therefore, they would eliminate the excessive financial and administrative burdens imposed by the county, state and federal governments.

Opting for self-governance would increase the financial resources available for the classroom because it would be much more cost effective for local school districts to provide educational programs and services without the administrative burden of state requirements. The funds that are currently used for regulatory compliance with state mandates could be redirected to improving student learning and achievement, which after all is the real mission of our schools. Changing our state’s educational system in this way would not only improve the quality of education but also increase property taxpayers’ return on investment. But Trenton continues to blame school districts for property tax increases rather than take responsibility for their role in keeping property taxes high. Instead of fully funding their mandates to reduce the property tax burden which drives up the cost of public education, Trenton focuses largely on constricting school district funding, budgets, operations and the independence of local school districts.

The state’s flawed approach is demonstrated in the new funding formula as contained in the New Jersey School Funding Reform Act (SFRA) of 2008 as well as its predecessor the Comprehensive Education Improvement and Financing Act of 1996 (CEIFA,) which caused higher property taxes and cuts in regular education. Dr. Reock, Rutgers University Professor Emeritus, 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 and reached a profound conclusion (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 the CEIFA 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 unfunded mandates. The shortfall was hardest on those 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 impact of the CEIFA funding shortfall was minimized on the Abbott districts largely due to their “parity-plus” court mandated protection. State law forbids the budget of an Abbott district from falling below its level of the prior school year (Hu, 2006.) Furthermore, under state law, if an Abbott district increases local property taxes without a state directive to do so, it will lose a similar amount of state aid.

The CEIFA funding shortfall also 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 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. State aid reductions and the ever increasing unfunded state mandates force non-Abbott districts to balance their budgets by raising property taxes, increasing class sizes as well as cutting regular education programs and services.

As part of his statement of New Jersey Supreme Court certification in support of the Plaintiffs’ opposition to the School Funding Reform Act (SFRA) of 2008, 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.

Creating state-wide self-governing public school districts free of state control is the solution that will lead to a top quality, cost-effective educational system while Trenton continues to force local school districts to pay for its under-funded and unfunded mandates that unnecessarily increase the cost of providing education and drive up property taxes. By forcing school districts to divert necessary resources to paying for the escalating costs of the State of New Jersey’s mandates rather than investing these scarce resources in the classroom where they are needed most, the State of New Jersey harms the quality of education. Local school districts, therefore, would be able to operate more cost-effectively with lower property taxes and earn a higher rate of return on their educational investment if they became self-governing by opting out of the state system.

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References

Hu, W., (2008) In New Jersey, System to help Poorest Schools Faces Criticism, New York Times, October 30, 2006.

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

Strassman, E. R., Vogt, K. R., and Wary, C. S., (1991). The Public Employment Relations Law, Trenton, New Jersey: New Jersey School Boards Association.

Tags:county government, education, education mandates, executive county superintendent, home rule, IDEA, independent public schools, local school district, municipal government, NCLB, neighborhood schools, New Jersey, No Child Left Behind Act, property taxes, public school, scapegoating our schools, school consolidation, school finance, school funding formula, school governance, school mergers, school reform, special education, state a, state aid, state education restrictions, state mandates, tax base, Trenton
Posted in assessment of property, county government, education, executive county superintendent, home rule, IDEA, independent schools, mandates, New Jersey, No Child Left Behind Act, property taxes, S1701, school finance, school funding, school governance, school law, school reform, special education, state mandates, tax base | 1 Comment »

More Schools Face NCLB Penalties due to NCLB’s Variable Standards

Wednesday, December 31st, 2008

The article below explaining how more schools nationwide are facing No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) sanctions, underscores the problem of allowing different states to have different standards for NCLB. Because NCLB allows states to add their own incremental standards, the test results can be extremely misleading and easily misinterpreted. For example, New Jersey applies some of the most stringent incremental state standards to NCLB requirements which help to further challenge our students to achieve higher benchmarks. However, New Jersey continues to be among the leaders in terms of schools failing NCLB and facing NCLB penalties as a result. In fact, (Mooney, 2008) 106 New Jersey public schools mostly in urban areas are facing some of the most severe NLCB penalties for having missed federal benchmarks for at least six consecutive years.

However, when the basis of comparison is the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT) 1 which has the same standards nationwide, the result is radically different especially in terms of student achievement. For example, as Summit Public Schools’ Assistant Superintendent, Ms. Julie Glazer, discussed during her December 18, 2008, Board of Education presentation of the Summit Public Schools Assessment Report 2007-2008, Summit students’ mean SAT 1 verbal, math and writing test scores overwhelmingly out perform not only the national mean test scores but also the state mean verbal, math and writing test scores. Moreover, this achievement was demonstrated for every year during the 2001 to 2008 timeframe.

It is important to note that NLCB is not only one of the most under funded mandates ever and, therefore, one of our nation’s largest tax increases but also it lacks funds to reward school districts for improving student achievement while providing financial and operational penalties for failing its standards. Perhaps if our nation focused more of the energy currently diverted to NCLB on improving rather penalizing needy schools and districts, our educational system especially in urban areas would become the transformational process it should be.

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References

Glazer, J., (2008) Summit Public Schools Assessment Report 2007-2008, December 18, 2008.

Mooney, J., (2008) 106 Schools Get Mandate to Restructure, Star Ledger, December 20, 2008.

Published Online: December 19, 2008

More Schools Facing Sanctions Under NCLB

Data on adequate yearly progress show that 1 in 5 public schools are in some stage of penalties under the federal law.

By David J. Hoff

Half those schools missed their achievement goals for two or more years, putting almost one in five of the nation’s public schools in some stage of a federally mandated process designed to improve student achievement. The number facing sanctions represents a 13 percent increase for states with comparable data over the 2006-07 school year.

Of those falling short of their academic-achievement goals, 3,559 schools—4 percent of all schools rated based on their progress—are facing the law’s more serious interventions in the current school year. That’s double the number that were in that category one year ago.

States have been releasing data on the number of schools that failed to make adequate yearly progress, or AYP, since last spring. But the Editorial Projects in Education Research Center, part of the nonprofit corporation that publishes Education Week, is the first research organization to verify AYP results for the 2007-08 school year, and Education Week is the first entity to publish the results.

The research includes AYP data from 47 states and the District of Columbia. Indiana, Nebraska, and New York have not released their final AYP determinations for the 2007-08 school year.

Failure Inevitable?

The rising number of schools failing to make AYP under the law is inevitable, its critics say, because of what they see as the law’s unrealistic requirement that student achievement rise on a pace so that all students are proficient in reading and math by the end of the 2013-14 school year.

Adequate Yearly Progress and Improvement Status Under NCLB

SOURCE: EPE Research Center, 2008.

President George W. Bush and Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings have been steadfast defenders of the proficiency goal, but President-elect Barack Obama and Congress may revise or extend the goal as they work on renewing the NCLB law, as they’re scheduled to do in the upcoming congressional session.

“The system is going to systemically make sure that every school fails,” said William J. Mathis, the superintendent of the Rutland Northeast Supervisory Union, an administrative unit for 11 local school boards in Vermont.

“The increases that are demanded by No Child Left Behind are way larger than anything we’ve ever seen in the past or that you see in other countries,” said Robert L. Linn, a professor emeritus of education at University of Colorado at Boulder, who has argued that all U.S. schools will fail to make their achievement goals between now and the target date.

But supporters of the NCLB law say that the numbers suggest that the law has spurred many schools to take steps to improve.

The relatively modest increase in schools subjected to the NCLB law’s sanctions by missing their achievement goals for two or more years suggests that educators are taking action to address the problems in such schools, said Gary M. Huggins, the director of the Commission on No Child Left Behind of the Aspen Institute, a Washington-based think tank. The panel of educators and advocates released a high-profile report in 2007 proposing ideas to refine the federal law.

“When the problems are a matter of focus, schools seem to be agile in dealing with them,” Mr. Huggins said. “I wonder if anything would have changed in these schools absent” the pressures from the law, he said.

The law’s accountability measures probably have spurred some school officials to address problems that otherwise may have been neglected and could have become worse over time, another of the law’s supporters said.

“The sooner they’re identified, the sooner they can take remedial action,” Dianne M. Piché, the executive director of the Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights, said of low-performing schools.

Federal Goals

President Bush and other champions of the No Child Left Behind law were planning to celebrate the seventh anniversary of its signing by Mr. Bush on Jan. 8, 2002. The law, which the president made one of the top domestic priorities of his administration, is an overhaul of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act first passed by Congress in 1965.

Under the NCLB law, the most important factors in determining whether a school makes AYP are scores on reading and mathematics tests, given annually in grades 3-8 and once in high school.

To make AYP, a school must meet achievement targets for its student population as a whole and for each several demographic “subgroups,” such as racial and ethnic minorities, students with disabilities, and those who are eligible for services as English-language learners.

Schools’ AYP goals are set by their states based on meeting the law’s overall goal that all students be proficient in reading and math by the end of the 2013-14 school year.

States’ Choices

While the national data suggest a steady increase in the number of schools failing to make their achievement goals, state-by-state results show that states’ policy decisions can skew the results.

In South Carolina, for example, 80 percent of public schools failed to make AYP in the 2007-08 school year, the highest proportion of any state. Part of the increase can be attributed to the addition of new schools being rated for AYP.

“It was an exceptionally big jump this year,” said Jim Rex, the state superintendent.

The high rate is partially the result of the state’s decision to set standards that are more challenging than those of most other states. Researchers have identified South Carolina and Massachusetts as having the most challenging standards, typically by comparing the results of their state tests with their students’ results on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the federally sponsored tests of a sampling of students.

“If you’ve got high standards, you’re going to hit a ceiling effect [when increasing student achievement is difficult] sooner,” said Mr. Mathis of Vermont, whose has published several articles critical of the NCLB law.

Twenty-three states’ decisions to set low achievement targets in the early years under the law also contributed to sharp increases in the number of schools failing to reach AYP in the 2007-08 school year. Those states assumed that they would be able to ramp up student achievement by the 2007-08, but the AYP results don’t reflect that.

California, one of those states, had a dramatic increase in the percentage of schools failing to make AYP, from 34 percent in the 2006-07 school year to 48 percent in 2007-08.

Other states have designed a path to universal proficiency with periodic increases in their achievement targets. Every three years, the target for student proficiency makes a big jump, creating a graph that looks like a staircase. (“Steep Climb to NCLB Goal for 23 States,” June 4, 2008.)

Mr. Mathis said that’s probably the main reason the proportion of Vermont schools failing to make AYP slightly more than tripled, from 12 percent in 2006-07 to 37 percent in the 2007-08.

In and Out

The process of identifying schools for improvement and the terminology around it are complex.

When a schools fails to meet its AYP goal for two straight years, it is labeled “in need of improvement.”

If it fails to make AYP for a third consecutive year, the school is required to offer students the chance to transfer to a different public school, the first in an annual series of steps designed to improve student performance.

In subsequent years, schools must spend money from the NCLB law’s Title I program of aid for disadvantaged students to pay for tutoring and then take steps to improve themselves.

If schools still haven’t made AYP after five years “in need of improvement,” their districts must make major changes, such as replacing the schools’ staffs or turning the schools into charter schools.

“If they’re in Year Five of improvement,” said Ms. Piché of the Citizens’ Commission on Civil Rights, “something is seriously wrong, and it’s almost never the students.”

To have 4 percent of schools at that stage seven years after the law’s enactment is a relatively small number, Ms. Piché said.

But state and district officials need to make a concerted effort to help struggling schools before they reach the fifth year of the school improvement process, she said.

“The longer schools are in need of improvement, the less likely they are to get out,” she said.

Turning Schools Around

Trying to fix the schools at that stage is currently the focal point of states’ work, several state officials said.

In South Carolina, where 80 schools are in the fifth year of the improvement process, state officials working closely with district leaders and higher education officials focused on improving such schools.

In working with school board members and district superintendents, the state is concentrating on recruiting effective principals and teachers to work in those schools, said Mr. Rex, the South Carolina schools chief.

“We’re doing what they’ve never been able or willing to do in intervening in schools,” he said of local district leaders.

Because the state is putting so much effort into improving those schools, it’s unable to do all it could to help the schools that are having trouble making AYP in one or two categories of students.

“We’re, in effect, ignoring a large group of schools,” Mr. Rex said.

In Maryland, where the largest portion of the state’s 93 schools in the fifth year of improvement are in Baltimore, the state is working closely with the district leadership to take aggressive action to close schools that are failing and reopen them with new staff members, said Nancy S. Grasmick, the state superintendent.

The state board of education must approve the improvement plans of schools that reach that stage.

“There’s an energy of not accepting chronically low-performing schools as business as usual,” Ms. Grasmick said. “We’re trying to ferret out the critical mass of effort needed to turn around those schools. No one has the answer. It’s like finding the cure for cancer.”

Vol. 28, Issue 16

December 19, 2008 |Receive RSS

Our Schools are not Factories

Monday, December 29th, 2008

Public schools are not businesses. Furthermore, no business could succeed let alone survive if it had to abide by the same rules and restrictions that apply to our schools especially in New Jersey. The successful processes by which schools educate students and factories manufacture products are as different as they can be. Because students and schools can vary widely across every dimension, it is harmful to apply business principles that assume the efficiency of a one size fits all mold. Still, this does not seem to stop those reformers who promote a simple business-based remedy for what they believe are the shortcomings of our schools.

It seems, however, as though our schools are in the middle of a period during which the chorus from the business community and policymakers is calling for reform. In their view, the educational system is not producing what they believe to be the desired product or outcome. Not surprisingly, the remedy offered by these reformers is consistent with business models that have worked well in the private sector such as for increasing manufacturing output, but ignores the complexities of improving public education.

The business model proposed for improving education as well as reducing its cost is the application of standard business principles and processes to our schools including mass standardization, assembly line manufacturing methods, cost-benefit analysis, return on investment (ROI), and a for-profit orientation. It seems as if those who advocate this business model for schools believe that the mission of education is to prepare students for the world of work in ways similar to those required for manufacturing a product ready to be sold in the marketplace. In this view, the students are the inputs who are manufactured by the teachers, who are supervised in turn by the school administrators according to the rules and regulations as legislated by the county, state and federal governments.

While the use of this kind of business model may have a profitable history of manufacturing production, it falls short when it comes to educating students to become fully functioning members of society. Therefore, it is essential to understand not only why our schools are not the same as factories but also why business-based remedies will not ultimately lead to the improved performance of our schools. Once this is understood, perhaps policymakers, legislators, and governmental administrators alike will be better able to make decisions using the proper framework.

In a demonstration of not only why schools can not be businesses but also why attempts to treat them as if they were seem to result in a leveling-down of education, Cuban (2004) concludes that the application of an industrial model would be counterproductive. Cuban examines the viewpoints of many of those who advocate for trying to transform schools into manufacturing facilities to prove his argument. He provides some pertinent examples of the industrial model rationale including a quote by Cubberley (1916), “Our schools are in a sense, factories in which the raw products (children) are to be shaped and fashioned into products to meet the various demands of life” (p. 338). He also quotes a former Secretary of Education (Paige, 2003), “Henry Ford created a world-class company, a leader in its industry. More important, Ford would not have survived the competition had it not been for an emphasis on results. We must view education the same way. Good schools do operate like a business. They care about outcomes, routinely assess quality, and measure the needs of the children they serve” (p. 12).

The concept of lean manufacturing is also being increasingly promoted for use by public schools. McClung argues that such an application is neither cost effective nor sound because of the extreme heterogeneity of students in terms of nearly every characteristic. According to McClung (2008), “Lean manufacturing concentrates on reducing costs by standardizing processes and raw materials. This minimizes waste, including wasted time. Any variation in raw materials or processing requires adjustments to achieve the same output at a consistent cost.” But “lean manufacturing has little tolerance for variation in any aspect of the process, whether it is the skill of workers, the schedule, the tools, or (especially) the raw materials. In fact, the principles of lean manufacturing call for strong controls over the raw materials that are accepted into the process. If variations in raw materials are tightly controlled, then the manufacturing processes can be easily optimized to provide consistently high quality outputs—at a price much below the cost of less efficient manufacturing methods. If we look at raw materials as student background, process as teaching methods, and output as graduates, the analogy would be that every variation in student background or teaching methodology requires adjustments in cost in order to produce consistent graduates” (p. 2).

Many business-based reformers also advocate for the use of cost-benefit analysis despite what seem to be some inherent contradictions. Viadero (2008) summarizes the challenges associated with applying cost-benefit analysis to education and concludes, “What can make cost-benefit analyses controversial is deciding which costs and benefits to account for and what estimates to use. The scholars contend their estimates are not out of the ordinary, but concede that no hard-and-fast rules exist in education for determining when an expense is or is not reasonable” (p. 5).

To be sure, not everyone in the private sector argues in favor of treating schools as if they were businesses and some of those who do find themselves switching their stand. One such example is reflected in the “epiphany” (Cuban, 2004) experienced by former CEO, Jamie Vollmer (2002), who had sought business-type reforms for schools but changed his mindset during a speech to a group of educators.

“If I ran my business the way you people operate your schools, I wouldn’t be in business very long!” I stood before an audience filled with outraged teachers who were becoming angrier by the minute. My speech had entirely consumed their precious 90 minutes of in-service training. Their initial icy glares had turned to restless agitation. You could cut the hostility with a knife.

I represented a group of business people dedicated to improving public schools. I was an executive at an ice cream company that became famous in the 1980’s when People magazine chose its blueberry flavor as the “Best Ice Cream in America.”

I was convinced of two things. First, public schools needed to change; they were archaic selecting and sorting mechanisms designed for the Industrial Age and out of step with the needs of our emerging “knowledge society.” Second, educators were a major part of the problem: they resisted change, hunkered down in their feathered nests, protected by tenure and shielded by a bureaucratic monopoly. They needed to look to business. We knew how to produce quality. Zero defects! Total quality management! Continuous improvement!

In retrospect, the speech was perfectly balanced—equal parts ignorance and arrogance. As soon as I finished, a woman’s hand shot up … She began quietly. “We are told sir, that you manage a company that makes good ice cream.” I smugly replied, “Best ice cream in America, ma’am.” “How nice,” she said. “Is it rich and smooth?” “Sixteen percent butterfat,” I crowed. “Premium ingredients?” she inquired. “Super premium! Nothing but triple-A.” I was on a roll. I never saw the next line coming.

“Mr. Vollmer,” she said, leaning forward with a wicked eyebrow raised to the sky, “when you are standing on your receiving dock and you see an inferior shipment of blueberries arrive, what do you do?” In the silence of that room, I could hear the trap snap. I knew I was dead meat, but I wasn’t going to lie. “I send them back.”

“That’s right!” she barked, “and we can never send back our blueberries. We take them big, small, rich, poor, gifted, exceptional, abused, frightened, confident, homeless, rude, and brilliant. We take them with attention deficit disorder, junior rheumatoid arthritis, and English as their second language. We take them all! Every one! And that, Mr. Vollmer, is why it’s not a business, it’s a school!” In an explosion, all 290 teachers, principals, bus drivers, aids, custodians, and secretaries jumped to their feet and yelled, “Yeah! Blueberries! Blueberries!”

And so began my long transformation. Since then, I have learned that a school is not a business. 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 horde of disparate, completing customer groups that would send the best CEO screaming into the night” (p. 42).

Policymakers and legislators who seek to apply business principles and practices to schools and then analyze school as well as student performance on the basis of how well business-type goals are achieved, do not understand the complexities of the factors that combine to form a quality education. In addition, there are a number of important variables for improving school and student performance. For example, improving Annual Yearly Progress (AYP) involves many of the factors that are essential to quality education including but not limited to differentiated instruction, aligning curriculum with standards, student skill deficiency-based professional development, quality teachers, small class sizes, and engaged parents.

Moreover, a school system’s ability to respond to ever changing conditions and to solve new problems as they arise should be also taken into account when assessing its quality. Education transforms those who attend our schools so that they are better able to contribute meaningfully to society. Therefore, in order for policymakers, legislators, and administrators to develop policies that will establish the proper framework for school-based decision making, it is essential to share an understanding of the unique nature of our public schools and why a school should not be treated as another business entity.

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References

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

Cubberly, E. P. (1916). Public School Administration. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

McClung, K. (2008). Lean Education. Teacher Magazine, http://www.TeacherMagazine.org April 9, 2008.

Paige, R. (2003) Letter to the editor, New Yorker, October 6, 2003.

Viadero, D. (2008). New Center Applies Cost-Benefit Analysis to Education Policies. Education Week, http://www.Edweek.org April 8, 2008.

Vollmer, J. R. (2002). “The Blueberry Story,” Education Week, March 6, 2002.

Tags:home rule, lean manufacturing, property taxes, school governance, school reform
Posted in home rule, lean manufacturing, New Jersey, property taxes, school finance, school funding, school governance, school law, school reform, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Local School Districts mean Better Education: Why county-wide school consolidations increase costs and special interest group control

Sunday, December 28th, 2008

Is bigger really better? This is the crucial question facing New Jersey’s schools as the state moves toward a consolidated county-wide school district framework. The proposed consolidation would eliminate local school district administrative personnel and centralize the operation of each of the county’s schools within one county-wide district such as the model used in Maryland. As a result, all decisions concerning local school functions would be made at the county level with little local recourse.

County-wide school districts tend to expand the county departments of education into unwieldy bureaucracies. These bureaucracies often become so large that their administrative costs exceed the combined cost of the local administrative personnel, including but not limited to superintendents, business administrators and directors of special education, they are supposed to replace. Moreover, because these county departments of education are staffed largely by political appointees, they tend to operate without the essential public feedback that is the backbone of local boards of education.

At the outset, New Jersey’s legislators used Maryland’s experience as a benchmark for the expected savings and efficiencies for New Jersey’s consolidation. However, during her testimony to a panel of New Jersey state senators, Ms. Marie S. Bilik, Executive Director of the New Jersey School Boards Association, demonstrated that the total state-wide administrative costs of the Maryland school system exceed those of New Jersey’s. While testifying in front of the New Jersey Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee on March 20, 2008, Ms. Bilik referenced an U.S. Department of Education report (2006), “A recent report by the U.S. Department of Education ranks New Jersey 38^th among the states and District of Columbia in the percentage of current expenditures devoted to administration. That means 37 other states – including Maryland and Pennsylvania – spend more on administration than New Jersey.” In addition, enrollment in New Jersey’s public schools was over fifty percent greater than that of Maryland during the same period and continues to exceed Maryland’s enrollment by similar margins. Thus, rather than removing administrative costs, the Maryland model has actually added costs and administrative overhead.

But consolidation of local school districts into county level districts also tends to result in more of a traditional military-type command-and-control decision making process rather than a process controlled by local school districts with the active participation of local constituencies most notably local parents. In a command-and-control model, while the federal and state policy makers develop the overall strategy for policy implementation, it is the county-wide school districts that combine these policies with their political directives to determine the curriculum, priorities and budget for each school. However, because the county level is too distant from where education actually takes place and is more easily influenced by special interest groups, the result is often less parental engagement.

_______________________________

References

Bilik, M. S. (2008). Testimony: FY09 State Budget, Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee, Senate Annex, Committee Room 4, Trenton, New Jersey, March 20, 2008.

U. S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics (2006). Common Core of Data, August, 2006.

Tags:county superintendent, home rule, local school district, neighborhood schools, New Jersey, public schools, school consolidation, school mergers
Posted in county government, executive county superintendent, home rule, mandates, New Jersey, property taxes, S1701, school finance, school funding, school governance, school law, school reform, state mandates | No Comments »

Coffins Education Center

Posts Tagged ‘home rule’

How State Dominated Educational Systems Level Down Accountability and Increase Costs

TELs take their Toll on Education

How New Jersey Senate bill S450 will Increase Administrative Costs and Property Taxes Statewide

Accountability Requires Local Control of Public Schools

Local School Districts mean Better Education

Creating Self-Governing Independent Public Schools

More Schools Face NCLB Penalties due to NCLB’s Variable Standards

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Data on adequate yearly progress show that 1 in 5 public schools are in some stage of penalties under the federal law.

Failure Inevitable?

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Local School Districts mean Better Education: Why county-wide school consolidations increase costs and special interest group control

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