Posts Tagged ‘New Jersey’

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governance in New Jersey and California was eroded to the point where local control of education has been largely superseded by the state and its extension, county government.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.

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Does Mayoral Control Provide a Governance Structure that is well suited for our Schools?

Saturday, January 1st, 2011

Introduction

In terms school reform, accountability is not possible if a school district lacks the proper control model or governance structure for local control. Once the most appropriate control structure is in place, only then can a school district achieve the level of accountability necessary to improve student and school achievement. Educational quality and accountability, therefore, depend on a school system employing the control model that best suits its needs and priorities.

But what control model makes accountability possible? Mayoral control is one governance structure that is often promoted as a model of democratic accountability particularly for large urban school districts. Perhaps its most democratic aspect is that it concentrates all responsibility for a school district’s performance in one person, the mayor. When the mayor has control over the municipality’s school system, then the voters have one focal person whom they can hold directly accountable for their local school district’s performance.

Proponents of mayoral control contend that such a control model provides for greater accountability than does having an elected board of education run a school district. Because there is often a much greater voter turnout for mayoral elections as compared to board of education elections, they are touted as more reflective of the will of people. Still, it is not clear whether having an independently elected school board of education or even an elected school superintendent rather than having only an elected mayor in charge of the school system combined with holding elections in November rather than in April or May would result in comparable voter turnout.

According to the typical mayoral control model, the mayor appoints the board of education as well as the superintendent of schools. But in order for the mayor to have such power, often he/she must be granted the authority by the state government as well as the municipal legislature. Even Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, (Kroll, 2009) advocates such changes. Secretary Duncan (Kroll, 2009) favors the mayoral control model because he asserts that such a model establishes clear lines for accountability whereas pathways to accountability may be much less clear with a board of education governance structure.

The typical mayoral control model concentrates the authority to govern the municipality’s schools within the office of the mayor placing the mayor rather than the board of education at the top of the governance structure. Advocates believe this facilitates efficiencies and accountability. Viteritti (2009) echoes this position by arguing that mayoral control enables changes to the school system to occur sooner and more efficiently.

Alternatively, opponents of mayoral control argue that an elected board of education control model, within which the board appoints the superintendent of schools, is more democratic and provides for greater accountability. One of their main arguments is that the elected board of education control model grew as a good government response to the corruption, waste, and political patronage that were common place in school systems run by mayors especially in the early to mid twentieth century.

Proponents of mayoral control argue that it is their model that often enables large and particularly urban school districts to solve educational problems because the mayoral control model provides the governance and control structure that makes accountability more likely. Their primary rationale for supporting this model is that it makes one focal person, the mayor, responsible for holding all schools accountable to high standards. When the mayoral control model is applied they contend that there is no divided authority in the governance of schools because the mayor has all the decision making power necessary to affect change and establish reform. This model generates greater accountability especially in urban school districts because there is a clear and direct chain of command emanating from the mayor over all aspects of the city’s schools.

Mayoral control advocates cite that mayors rather than board of education members are more likely to have the experience and the political network necessary to lead a large municipal-wide enterprise. Because mayors are elected in citywide elections, they also may be more likely to have a broader understanding of the full range issues affecting all of the municipality’s schools than would board of education members elected by ward or some other political subdivision of the municipality.

In summarizing their findings concerning mayoral control, Harris and Rotherham (2007, p. 2) state that mayors “are the only officials accountable for the health of entire cities. They have experience delivering and monitoring a wide range of services to their constituents, and are able to mobilize their cities’ resources to create high quality educational options for youth. And, because voters hold them accountable for the quality of life in their city, mayors might as well truly be engaged with improving education.”

Strong Mayor – Weak Mayor

There are different forms of governance structures involving the mayor including the strong mayor and weak mayor forms. Which form mayoral control and authority take influences how the mayor can impact the school system. In this context, Cuban and Usdan (2003) argue that whether or not term limits apply to the mayor affects the extent to which mayoral control can be effective.

The strong mayor or strong mayor – weak council form of government resembles the federal model in which the mayor serves as the chief executive while the council is the legislature. This form gives the mayor broad authority over all administrative and financial aspects of municipal government including developing, proposing, and administering the municipality’s budget as well as appointing, supervising, and replacing all departmental staff. Edelstein (2006) reports that this governance structure facilitates mayoral control of the school system as a function of the powers granted the mayor under this form of government.

The mayor operating under a strong mayor form of government typically appoints the municipal board of education and the superintendent. Proponents believe that this provides for much greater accountability because there is one person who can be held accountable for the quality of education citywide. Opponents disagree according to their belief that such a structure will lead to less accountability because voters can no longer vote for individual board of education members while the mayor’s four year term does not provide enough recourse.

Alternatively, the weak mayor or council – manager form of government more closely resembles that of a corporate governance structure. Under this governance structure, the council is the legislative body while the city manager operates with many of the executive powers granted the mayor when under the strong mayor form which makes the mayor “weak” in the sense that his/her role is largely ceremonial.

According to the weak mayor or council – manager form of government, the city manager wields authority over the administrative and financial aspects of government including developing, proposing, and administering the municipality’s budget as well as appointing, supervising, and replacing all departmental staff while the council appoints the city manager and approves the municipal budget. Because the city manager serves largely in the role of chief executive and the mayor’s authority is correspondingly limited, the mayor’s ability to impact the school system is similarly limited under this form of government.

Mayoral Control Rationale

Increasingly, many large urban school districts are looking to change their control structure and adopt the mayoral control model. Tired of the status quo, these districts seem to expect that the mayoral control model will address the two major shortcomings of their school systems. That is, they want their schools to benefit from having a mayor who is elected citywide and who, in turn, can be held directly responsible for the performance of their school system.

Large urban districts that adopt the mayoral control model do so with an expectation that their democratically elected mayor will hold their students and schools accountable for their performance. In this way, it is believed the mayor will provide the leadership and accountability necessary to overcome what is often perceived as a fragmented, dysfunctional, and less than fully accountable elected board of education governance model when it is replaced with the mayoral control model.

But many major urban school districts desperate for improved student and school performance look to adopt the mayoral control model to improve their district’s academic achievement and educational quality through its democratic accountability. But what if the change from an elected board of education with possibly a weak mayor or council – manager form to a governance structure of mayoral control involving perhaps the strong mayor form of mayoral governance should fail?

The benefits that taxpayers derive from their local school district quality and property taxes are capitalized in their property values. Because taxpayers strive to protect and improve their property values, they constantly evaluate the quality of their school district so as to maximize their property values. If their school district’s quality should deteriorate or is expected to decline, then these typical Tieboutian (Tiebout, 1956) 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 expect to control the quality of education provided by their local schools as well as the level of property taxes levied.

The collective decisions of taxpayers 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.” If an urban school district’s quality deteriorates or is expected to decline, therefore, the tax base supporting the local schools will decline correspondingly. This further supports the need for school districts especially urban ones to adopt the school governance model that is best suited to its needs such as an elected board of education.

The Mayoral Control Experience

While more of America’s larger and especially urban school districts are considering adopting the mayoral control model, more than a dozen already have some form of mayoral control including Boston in 1992, Chicago in 1995, Cleveland in 1998, Philadelphia in 2001, and New York City in 2002. A few other school districts are considering mayoral control if even for a second time such as Detroit in which it was established in 1999. But according to Levy (2004, p. 3) “it is difficult to link changes in governance to improvements in student achievement.”

To date, it seems as if the impact of mayoral control model on school and student achievement has been mixed. Levy (2004, p. 3) points out that Boston, Chicago, and Cleveland, “with the longest history of mayoral control, have improved test scores in both elementary and secondary schools, though their racial achievement gaps remain” while “Detroit’s scores have gone down.” Levy (2004, p. 3) continues by stating that “the lowest 20% of schools have improved, and have done so more rapidly that their school systems as a whole.”

Darling-Hammond (2009) reports some different results for the impact of mayoral control model on school and student achievement. Boston (Darling-Hammond, 2009, p. 3) had the “largest gains in student proficiency rates between 2003 and 2007 in fourth and eighth grade math and fourth grade reading.” However, “Boston was tied with San Diego for gains in fourth grade math and with Houston for gains in eighth grade math” while San Diego and Houston did not have mayoral control of their schools. Chicago which had many failing schools and a highly decentralized school system until Mayer Daley took over in 1995, recorded only “modest gains under mayoral control” according to Darling-Hammond (2009, p. 3) while “Austin, one of the highest achieving urban districts in all subjects during all of those years,” did so without a mayoral control governance structure.

New York City

But proponents contend that the mayoral control model is a governance structure that has led to turnarounds in student performance and accountability particularly in previously failing urban school systems. New York City is a prime example, they contend. Testifying in favor of mayoral control for New York City’s public schools, Thomas A. Dunne, Fordham’s vice president for government relations and urban affairs, stated (Howe, 2009, p. 1) “It was not long ago that our schools were a dismal failure and no one wanted to be held accountable. New York City public officials abdicated their responsibility and created 32 local school boards. No one person or authority took responsibility for our schools. There was political infighting, confusion, some school boards became patronage mills and as a result the children suffered. Education was no longer a priority.”

Joseph M. McShane, president of Fordham, summarized (Howe, 2009, p. 2) the benefits of mayoral control by testifying, “A key ingredient in improving school performance is accountability.” The mayoral control model provides one leader whom can held accountable for student and school performance.

Stern (2007) summarizes the factors that led to New York City’s second adoption of the mayoral control model and the replacement of its elected board of education governance model. “The old Board of Education offered a case study of the paralysis that sets in when fragmented political authority tries to direct a dysfunctional bureaucracy. New Yorkers arrived at a consensus that there was not much hope of lifting student achievement substantially under such a regime. The newly elected Bloomberg made an offer that they couldn’t refuse: Give me the authority to improve the schools, and then hold me accountable for the results” (Stern, 2007, p. 1).

New York City’s second adoption of the mayoral control model in 2002 resulted largely from the public’s reaction to the problems associated with the decentralization of the citywide school district into 32 independent school districts in 1969. Each local board of education governed its own district and was elected locally. While each local board of education was fully empowered to operate its district, there was no accountability for school and student achievement.

Segal (2005, p. 132) describes how New York City adopted the mayoral control model, “putting Mayor Michael Bloomberg at the helm of the school system. The idea was to introduce long-needed accountability into what had been one of the most unaccountable bureaucracies in the state.” Segal (2005, p. 132) continues “Bloomberg has repeatedly said he would stake his success on his ability to improve education, implicitly inviting New Yorkers to vote him out of office if he fails.”

New Jersey

New Jersey’s largest public school district, Newark, not only is one of the three districts taken over and operated by the state including Jersey City and Paterson but also has one of the highest per pupil spending rates in the state. As an Abbott District, Newark’s public schools also are funded almost entirely by the state of New Jersey. Despite such lavish spending and state funding, Newark’s schools’ and students’ performances as measured by standardized tests lag far behind the state averages in all subject areas.

Segal (2005, p. 29) goes further in reporting that “in New Jersey, corruption and gross mismanagement clearly correlate with poor student performance. The three school districts that the New Jersey state education department took over – Jersey City, Paterson, and Newark – had the highest rates of systemic corruption and among the lowest test scores and highest dropout rates in the state.” Perhaps either despite or because of these dire conditions, Newark Mayor Booker is advocating that the city change to a mayoral control model as the governance structure for its school system.

Oakland United School District

The Oakland United School District demonstrates what problems can occur within a weak mayor form of government in which the mayor shares power over the school system with an elected board of education. In the Oakland United School District, the mayor appoints some members of the board of education while other members are elected directly to those positions. In 2000, “Oakland voters (Wong and Shen, 2007, p. 742) approved a change in the city’s charter, allowing Mayor Brown to appoint three new school board members to an expanded ten member board.”

The Oakland United School District’s “mixed” board of education did not function effectively (Wong and Shen, 2007, p. 742). The board’s worsening financial position eventually led to its bankruptcy and being taken over by the state of California in 2003. In 2009, however, the State Superintendent of Public Instruction restored full control and authority over the Oakland United School District to a fully elected rather than “mixed” board of education effectively removing the mayor from having influence over the school system.

Detroit

But the mayoral control model is not necessarily a panacea as the failure of the Detroit school system attests. Detroit’s public schools and students consistently have been among the worst performing in the nation. Kirst and Bulkley (2001) believe that Detroit’s weak mayor governance structure may have contributed to the citywide school system’s problems. Indeed, James (2002, cited in Wong and Shen, 2007, p. 743) reports these findings “Detroit’s experience with mayoral control between 1999 and 2004 was politically contentious with teachers unions and the National Association of Colored People on the opposing side and the business and the urban league on the supporting side.”

Indeed, continuous objections to widespread corruption, waste, financial mismanagement, and patronage in Detroit’s school systems caused Detroit to reconsider mayoral control. Moreover, the reliance on the patronage system to make personnel decisions compounded its adverse impact on schools. In 2004, (Wong and Shen, 2007, p. 743) voters disaffected with the continuing poor performance of their school system, rejected Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s attempt to gain their approval of “Proposition E, which would have enabled him to appoint a strong chief executive as well as the entire board.” As a result, Detroit changed from mayoral control to an elected citywide board of education control model.

While test scores and enrollment continue to decline, Detroit has closed more than 145 schools since 2004 (Saulny, 2010). To help overcome the problems plaguing the district including a projected budget deficit of approximately $320 million, Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm appointed Robert Bobb as the district’s emergency manager in 2009 (Saulny, 2010). Nonetheless, Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, (Kroll, 2009) advocates Detroit’s returning to the mayoral control model to provide for more continuity, stability, and accountability in the school system.

Chicago

Tired of widespread corruption, waste, financial mismanagement, and patronage mills in its school system as well as poor student and school performance, Chicago adopted the mayoral control model in 1995. Although Chicago’s mayors have historically enjoyed significant influence over the city school system including some appointive authority (Carl, 2009), the passage of the Chicago School Reform Act officially empowered the mayor to appoint the entire board of education and the superintendent of schools.

In passing the Chicago School Reform Act, Chicago’s residents sought to link electoral accountability and the city’s educational performance accountability by holding a singular elected official, the mayor, accountable for improving its student and school achievement. Establishing complete mayoral control in 1995 was actually more of a return to a strong mayor governance structure over the city’s schools because (Carl, 2009) the mayor’s appointive authority over the board of education had been largely transferred to a citywide commission in 1988.

Kirst and Bulkley (2001) studied the history of mayoral control in Chicago. They concluded that the improvement in the Chicago’s school system since 1995 may be linked to the city’s adoption of a strong mayor governance structure. But the track record of Chicago’s school system before full mayoral control was established in 1995 shows that it did not generally lead to gains in school and student achievement. Mayors regularly used their influence over Chicago’s school system to achieve their personal and political agendas prior to the passage of the Chicago School Reform Act.

Carl (2009, p. 305) concludes that Chicago’s mayors regularly used their office to build “coalitions that met their own political interests; with one possible exception, these political interests did not necessarily coincide with higher quality urban schools. All of the mayors embraced educational positions that were as much about marshalling votes and winning the support of corporate Chicago as they were about improving the schools.”

Still, despite a history of mixed results, advocates of the mayoral control model regularly cite the problems associated with having elected boards of education govern large urban school districts. These proponents assert that having the mayor appoint the entire board of education and the superintendent of schools is perhaps the best way for a large urban district to improve school and student achievement.

Yet, Hess (2008) seems to disagree with the mayoral control model in his analysis of the performance history of Chicago’s school system which has been largely under some degree of mayoral control. Hess (2008) takes issue with a board of education that is appointed either in full or in large part by the mayor.

Chicago Summary

According to Hess (2008), there is a risk for any major urban school district including Chicago’s when its board of education is composed of all mayoral appointments that it could lose the transparency necessary for accountability. “Appointed officials, buffered from political and constituent considerations, are more likely to leave significant distributional or value-laden issues unaddressed” continues Hess (2003, cited in Hess, 2008, p. 233). As a result of this avoidance of complex challenges, an appointed board of education may not necessarily represent the wide range of educational views and priorities of the city’s various constituent groups.

In his review of Chicago as well as other major urban school districts, Hess (2008, p. 234) concludes that “mayors can get caught up politicizing school boards in self-serving ways or that, rather than embracing municipal attention to schooling, making education part of a mayor’s portfolio might leave it vulnerable to shifts in mayoral focus.” The inherent risk with the mayoral control model, therefore, may be that education ceases being a major stand alone municipal enterprise with its own duly elected set of officials and stakeholders and becomes perhaps just another city function competing for scarce financial and human resources.

Wong and Shen (2007) assess the impact of mayoral control model on Chicago’s school and student achievement more favorably. Wong and Shen (2007) argue that since its adoption in 1995, the mayoral control model has improved accountability by integrating authority throughout the school system and reversed the trend to fragmentation as well as decentralization.

Also, Wong and Shen (2007) cite how Chicago’s school system was able to correct its flawed financial management under the of mayoral control model. Wong and Shen (2007, p. 740) conclude that under the guidance of the mayor, the administration of Chicago’s school system “improved its capital funding, balanced the budget, and secured labor stability through a four year contract with the teachers’ union.”

Wong and Shen (2007) go further in describing the benefits gained by the Chicago school system by having mayoral control. Wong and Shen (2007, p. 740) report that “The school board launched its first capital improvement plan in decades to address the deterioration of the schools’ physical plant. The administration also improved management efficiency by waging a public battle against waste and corruption, downsizing the central office, and contracting out several operations.”

Boston

Student and school performance had deteriorated to such an extent that by 1992, Boston became the first large urban school district to adopt the mayoral control model. The elected board of education was replaced with one appointed by the mayor (Levy, 2004).

Mayoral control is largely credited with turning around Boston’s school system which had suffered through years of corruption, financial mismanagement, and patronage (Hess, 2008). Proponents contend that by finally having one person, the mayor, to hold accountable for the school system rather than a fragmented elected board of education, Boston was able to turnaround a school system with failing student and school performance.

The Boston school system seemed to benefit from the accountability afforded by the mayoral control model. Portz (Portz, 2003, cited in Hess, 2008, p. 222) assessed the impact of this governance structure, “A more consensual, elite dialogue has replaced the contentious debate, racial divisions, and constituent services. In contrast to long meetings and divided votes, the typical meeting of the appointed committee is both shorter and less contentious.” In addition to providing for greatly increased stability in the school system leadership, mayoral control seemed to provide Boston with the accountability necessary for greatly improved school and student performance. Hess (2008, p. 222) supports this conclusion by listing several accomplishments including but not limited to how Boston:

“Outperformed other Massachusetts districts with similar low-income populations in elementary, middle, and high school.”
“Demonstrated greater improvement by African-American students than did similar Massachusetts districts.”
“Increased fourth and eighth grade reading and math scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) at a faster rate than the average of other large American cities, as well as faster than the national average.”

In Boston, the change to mayoral control seemed to provide the kind of leadership necessary for school system-wide accountability. In turn, the increased accountability improved the way the school system operated and performed.

Los Angeles

The Los Angeles school district is the nation’s second largest school district. It includes the school systems of 26 other cities besides Los Angeles, over 1,100 schools, and slightly less than one million students. Because it is composed of the school systems of 26 other proximate cities, Los Angeles is often referred to as a large unified school district or the L.A.U.S.D. The L.A.U.S.D. exemplifies a large urban school district with a mixed governance structure that is plagued by a fragmented power sharing arrangement among 26 mayors rather than centralized control under the command of one mayor or locally elected board of education. As such the L.A.U.S.D. suffers from the penalties or diseconomies of scale that afflict large urban districts. It also lacks the benefits of having one just one person or group, one mayor or board of education, which the voters can hold accountable for the school system’s performance.

The Los Angeles school district seems to be a district, therefore, that could readily benefit from disaggregating into several smaller local districts of no more than 3,500 students and unifying control under a locally elected board of education within each of these smaller districts. Each of these districts would be empowered to allocate its financial and human resources according to local needs and priorities. Implementing this arrangement would empower each local district to levy their own local property taxes to fund their schools according to local needs and priorities. This also would require the repeal of California’s Proposition 13 that banned local districts from levying their own local property taxes.

Once a newly disaggregated school district becomes free of the excessive bureaucratic burdens imposed by its former fragmented unmanageably large school district, unified under the control of a locally elected board of education, free of its state’s governmental strings attached to funding, and regains the ability to levy their own property taxes, each small local district would be much better equipped to generate the necessary public support for the public funding of its local public schools. The disaggregation process, therefore, not only could be applied successfully to school districts nationwide with enrollments exceeding 3,500 but also would greatly improve accountability and enable the disaggregated school districts to realize the benefits of economies of scale.

Conclusion

Because mayoral control provides for the mayor to be held accountable for the city’s school and student achievement, quality education can become more of a priority. Still, either mayoral control or an elected board of education can provide the governance structure that makes the accountability necessary for improved school system performance possible. The direct lines of authority under mayoral control or a superintendent under the control of an elected board of education can make for more effective decision making.

But the mayoral control model is neither a panacea nor a cure for all that ails a large urban school district. The chronic failure of the Detroit school system demonstrates how not to operate a school district even with mayoral control. Also, there is no compelling evidence that mayoral control leads to improved performance for all students and schools within a district (Kremer, 2010).

Objections to a history of widespread corruption, waste, financial mismanagement, and patronage in urban school systems has caused more than a dozen large cities to change or to begin the change process from an elected citywide board of education control model to a mayoral control model since 1995. Moreover, the reliance on a patronage system to make personnel decisions compounded the typical elected citywide board of education’s adverse impact on schools. As a result of patronage, the hiring and allocating of school personnel tended to be based less on merit and more on political considerations which caused many well qualified educators and administrators to be excluded from the schools.

In order for the mayoral control model to succeed, therefore, a large urban school district needs to have the right kind of leader who is dedicated to not only improving education and increasing accountability but also to eliminating corruption and imbedded patronage systems. While there may be no perfect control model for large urban school districts, mayoral control can provide perhaps an appropriate platform for achieving accountability for improved school and student achievement.

Large urban school districts seem to benefit from the clear lines of authority and centralized decision making process that accompany mayoral control. While cities should pay close attention to avoiding penalties or diseconomies of scale due to their size, it is possible that mayoral control can overcome many of the problems associated with a dysfunctional large urban district.

Hess (2008, p. 239) summarizes “replacing an elected board with one named by a strong, active, and accountable mayor is a promising way to jump-start coherent and sustained school improvement” especially for large urban school districts. New York City, Boston, and Chicago exemplify large urban school district mayoral control success stories. Hess (2008, p. 240) concludes that “In the case of dysfunctional urban districts, mayoral control seems to offer clear advantage in terms of coherence, political leadership, and accountability.”

References:

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

Carl, J. (2009). “Good politics is good government:” The Troubling History of Mayoral Control of the Public Schools in Twentieth-Century Chicago. American Journal of Education, 115, 305-336.

Cuban, L. & Usdan, M. D. (2003). Powerful Reforms with Shallow Roots. New York City: Teachers College Press.

Darling-Hammond, L. (2009). Response. National Journal Online – Education Experts, Retrieved from http://www.education.nationaljournal.com.

Edelstein, F. (2006). Mayoral Leadership and Involvement in Education: An Action Guide for Success. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Harris, D. & Rotherham, A. J. (2007). Get Mayors in the Schooling Game. Progressive Policy Institute. Retrieved from http://www.ppionline.org.

Hess, F. M. (2003). “The Voice of the People,” American School Board Journal, 190, (4) 36-39. Cited in Hess, F. M. (2008). Looking for Leadership: Assessing the Case for Mayoral Control of Urban School Systems, (p. 233). American Journal of Education, 114, 219-245.

Hess, F. M. (2008). Looking for Leadership: Assessing the Case for Mayoral Control of Urban School Systems, American Journal of Education, 114, 219-245.

Howe, Bob. (2009). Fordham Advocates Mayoral Control of City Public Schools. Fordham University Website, Retrieved from http://www.fordham.edu.

James, S. (2002, January 22). Schools chief put to the test. Detroit Free Press.

Kirst, M. W. & Bulkley, K. E. (2001). Mayoral Takeover: The Different Directions taken in Different Cities. Report, Consortium for Policy Research in Education, Washington, D.C.: National Institute on Educational Governance, Finance, Policymaking, and Management, U.S. Department of Education.

Kremer, T. G. (2010, February 14). Mayor Should Support District, Not Take it Over. The Post-Standard, p. E 1.

Kroll, A. (2009). Mayoral Control isn’t the answer for Detroit Schools. The Detroit News, Retrieved from http://www.andykroll.com/american-politics/det-news.

Levy, M. (2004). Mayoral Control of Public Schools: Lessons From Other Cities. Public Education Reform Project, Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs, Retrieved from http://www.dcpswatch.com.

Portz, J. (2003). “Boston: Agenda Setting and School Reform in a Mayor-centric System.” In Henig, J. R. & Wilbur, C. R. (Editors), Mayors in the Middle: Politics, Race, and Mayoral Control of Urban Schools. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press, Cited in Hess, F. M. (2008). Looking for Leadership: Assessing the Case for Mayoral Control of Urban School Systems, (p. 222). American Journal of Education, 114, 219-245.

Saulny, S. (2010, March 18). Detroit Plan Would Close 45 Schools, The New York Times, March 18, 2010. p. A 19.

Segal, L. G. (2005). Battling Corruption in America’s Public Schools. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.

Stern, S. (2007). Grading Mayoral Control. Manhattan Institute for Policy Research. Retrieved from http://www.manhattan-institute.org.

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

Viteritti, J. (2009). (Editor). When Mayors Take Charge: School Governance in the City. Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press.

Wong, K. K. & Shen, F. X. (2007). Mayoral Leadership Matters: Lessons Learned from Mayoral Control of Large Urban School Systems, Peabody Journal of Education, 82 (4), 737-768.

Tags:accountability, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, elected board of education, L.A.U.S.D., Los Angeles, mayoral control, mayoral control of schools, NAEP, New Jersey, New York City, Newark, Oakland, Proposition 13, strong mayor, weak mayor
Posted in accountability, autonomy of schools, board of education, California, governance structure for our schools, home rule, local schools, National Assessment of Education Progress (NAEP), New Jersey | 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

Under-funded Preschool Mandate Drives Up Costs

Sunday, December 28th, 2008

While Trenton’s preschool mandate may seem well intended, it is another under funded mandate whose costly compliance will drive up property taxes and force cuts to regular education programs. It is rather difficult to fathom how the state can continue to mandate under funded requirements that unnecessarily increase the cost of providing educational services and programs especially considering how our schools likely will be forced to build new classroom capacity. But this is exactly what the state is doing with the (McNichol, 2008) “state’s biggest expansion of preschool for low-income students since the state Supreme Court’s Abbott v. Burke rulings, which ordered universal pre-kindergarten” in all 31 Abbott districts. Moreover, the Court’s Abbott preschool decision was by itself a major expansion of the State of New Jersey’s thorough and efficient education clause because the State Constitution only pertains to students five to eighteen years old.

Although every school district is required to ultimately enroll at least 90% of their eligible children by the 2013-2014 school year, the state is setting aside only $350 million to cover the costs of the educating another 30,000 preschool students statewide (Brody, 2008) over the next five years. But the Corzine administration is already laying the groundwork for a deferral of the $50 million set aside for the mandate’s first year if not the entire $350 million through its suggestions of spending reductions it may have to make in order to close projected budget deficits of $1.2 billion in the current fiscal year and $5 billion in the upcoming 2009 fiscal year. Neither Governor Corzine nor Department of Education Commissioner Davy has said a word, however, about deferring the mandate’s costly requirements which will be paid for by local school districts.

The New Jersey School Funding Reform Act (SFRA) of 2008, which is more commonly referred to as the new state school funding formula, included a preschool mandate requiring (Wojcik, 2008) all eligible “at-risk three and four-year-old children be offered high quality preschool program beginning at age three” in every school district statewide. Eligible children include all those who are eligible for (Brody, 2008) “a free or reduced-price lunch.” Each school district must begin by enrolling at least 20% of their district’s eligible student population by the 2009-2010 school year and increasing annually to 35% in 2010-2011, 50% in 2011-2012, 65% in 2012-2013, and 90% in 2013-2014.

The mandate requires full day instruction and limits each preschool student class size to no more than 15. Because these are mandate-protected classes, if a school lacks sufficient classroom capacity it will be forced to consolidate classes or increase class sizes for other grades to make room for the preschoolers in September. But if a school district builds, acquires or leases additional classroom facilities to accommodate the preschoolers, none of these costs will be funded by the State of New Jersey.

Each class must be taught by a preschool certified Master teacher and one Master teacher’s aide. In addition, each school district is required to have a Master teacher without any other teaching responsibilities plus a preschool intervention and referral team, a child advisory council as well as a community and parental involvement specialist. However, only as much as 20% of the Master teacher’s compensation will be considered as outside of the state’s administrative cap and as part of the Special Revenue Fund rather than the General Fund. Therefore, the mandated additional salaries and benefits not only will be paid for by local school districts rather than the state but also virtually all of these expenses will be included within the cap forcing other non-mandate protected programs to be cut.

Making matters even more difficult is the prospect of forced intra-district busing. Because of New Jersey’s two mile rule, if preschoolers live beyond the two mile radius or if there are too many preschoolers for the available space in their local school, then the school district will be required by New Jersey law not only to provide bus services for these preschoolers but also for all of its other students within the district. However, the cost of busing students will not be funded by the state.

With the ever increasing number, scope and cost of state under funded mandates, it begs the question of what costly programs will Trenton require next? Given the mandate for full day preschool classes, can state mandated full day kindergarten be far off? This preschool mandate seems to lay the foundation for mandated full day kindergarten because it is difficult to believe that Trenton would mandate full day preschool as well as first grade but allow kindergarten to remain as only a half day program.

However, many districts in New Jersey provide only half day kindergarten as a way of saving on facility and faculty costs because one teacher can teach twice as many students. Because it seems as if the state is reluctant to commit the necessary resources to fully fund its preschool mandate, it seems likely that the state would also under fund a full day kindergarten mandate. Given Trenton’s track record, it seems reasonable to expect that not only will state education mandates continue to be under funded but also that they will continue to drive up property taxes as a result.

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References

Brody, L., (2008) The Big Picture: Districts grappling with preschool mandate, The Record, September 21, 2008.

McNichol, D., (2008) Budget troubles endanger $350M preschool plan, The Star Ledger, October 30, 2008.

Wojcik, S., (2008) Full-day preschool program in the works at Alpha School, The Express-Times, September 24, 2008.

Tags:education, mandate, New Jersey, preschool, property taxes, public school, Trenton
Posted in assessment of property, executive county superintendent, home rule, mandates, New Jersey, property taxes, school finance, school funding, school governance, school law, school reform, state mandates | 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.

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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.

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 ‘New Jersey’

How State Dominated Educational Systems Level Down Accountability and Increase Costs

Does Mayoral Control Provide a Governance Structure that is well suited for our Schools?

Local School Districts mean Better Education

Creating Self-Governing Independent Public Schools

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

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.

Failure Inevitable?

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Turning Schools Around

Under-funded Preschool Mandate Drives Up Costs

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

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