Governor Ducey surprised me by proposing $114 million in new education funds for the upcoming state budget. That’s $90 million more than I expected. According to Senator Steve Farley (D-Tucson), most of that comes from highway funds. Meaning, to paraphrase It’s A Wonderful Life, every time a school bell rings, a roadway gets a pothole.
More than $100 million for education isn’t nothing. It’s not nearly enough (It moves us from 49th in per student spending all the way to . . . 49th), but it’s a significant amount of money. Unlike last year when Ducey called money covering the increase in the number of students and inflation “new money”—that was a lie—this time, it’s actually new money, above and beyond the required stay-even funding. We need to remember, however, this is only a proposed budget. The legislature passes the budget, not the governor. It’s going to take some gubernatorial arm twisting to get the anti-“government schools” crowd to vote for all that new money. Don’t be surprised if the final education budget comes in quite a bit lower. I hope no one is taking Ducey’s money to the bank yet.
Let’s take a look at how Ducey wants his proposed education funding to be spent.
His proposed teacher pay hike gets the most buzz, but it’s only $13.6 million, compared to almost three times as much—$38 million—for “results-based funding.” The pay raise comes to about a dollar a day, which is more of an insult to teachers than a pat on the back. It’s wealthy, Cold Stone Stone Cold Doug Ducey saying, “Here’s a crisp new dollar bill for each of you for the great work you’re doing!” I hope he doesn’t expect current teachers to go out of their way to thank him, or prospective new employees to flood school districts begging for one o’ them high payin’ teachin’ jobs. Saying “I raised teacher salaries” makes for a great campaign pitch come reelection time, but a dollar a day doesn’t put food on a teacher’s table.
That $38 million for “results-based funding,” on the other hand, is real money for those lucky schools that get a chunk of it. It’s a third of Ducey’s new money, and it will go to 10 percent of Arizona’s schools. That comes to an average of more than $350 per student for each of the recipients, which is more than the $325 per student schools received from the Prop 123 money. All his other proposals are small ball stuff, but this one can have some big league consequences. It’s enough for the schools to increase and improve their teaching supplies and technology and still have money left for significant teacher raises, all of which will make those schools more attractive to parents and teachers. And most of it will go to districts and charter schools educating the most privileged students. The main educational beneficiaries will be the current winners in the state’s income inequality wars. To the victors go the “results-based funding” spoils.
Gov. Jan Brewer proposed this idea back in 2013 together with disgraced Ed Supe John Huppenthal. They called it “performance funding.” That name didn’t go over very well, so in 2014, she changed the name to “student success funding.” Ducey’s wordsmiths concocted a third name change, the current “results-based funding.” But the idea is the same. Schools with high state test scores get more money.
If “results-based funding” becomes law, schools whose AzMERIT scores are in the top 10 percent will be rewarded with more money, under the false assumption that higher scores mean higher quality education. The lion’s share of that money will go to schools filled with privileged kids from families with high incomes and college educations. Those already-advantaged students perform well everywhere, regardless of whether the teaching and curriculum are first rate or mediocre. That’s true in Arizona, in every other state in the nation and every country in the world. A while back, I created a map of the greater Tucson area with the state grade of every district and charter school. With a few exceptions, the high rent areas have the highest scores and the low rent areas have the lowest scores. I created a similar map in the Phoenix area with identical results. Some critics of standardized tests say, sarcastically, we should stop wasting time giving the tests and just give state grades by zip code. That jibe isn’t far from the truth.
Ducey uses smoke and mirrors to hide the huge benefit his “results-based” will have for district and charter schools attended by students from the state’s wealthiest families. His plan gives more money to top 10 percent schools where more than 60 percent of their students qualify for free and reduced lunch—$400 per student at the lower income schools compared to $225 per student at the others—meaning his plan is significantly more generous to schools whose high test scores beat the odds. The problem is, damn few schools with low income students beat the odds enough to make it into AzMERIT’s top 10 percent.
Only one other item has a lot of money attached. Ducey plans to give $20 million to school districts and charters whose student population drops more than 2 percent below their projections. If I read this right, and I think I did, this isn’t new money at all. It’s compensation for a bad new law which says districts get money for the actual students they see during the current year instead of the projected enrollment from the year before. This creates a tremendous uncertainty for districts and charters. If they hire staff based on projections, they may be forced to let teachers go, possibly mid-year, if their student numbers are lower than expected, which would be tremendously disruptive. The $20 million is more a temporary correction to a punitive law than actual new money.
All the other items in Ducey’s proposed budget are hardly more than token amounts of money given to worthwhile programs. They’re nice, and they’ll help some teachers and some schools, but statewide, they don’t move the needle in any significant way.
This article appears in Jan 12-18, 2017.
“More than $100 million for education isn’t nothing.”
One of my second grade teachers taught me that if it is not nothing, it is something.
I would think it is.
You failed to acknowledge that there will be a greater funding weight for low income/high performing schools. There is a path for increased funding and it’s up to the school leaders to make the choices to expand, replicate or improve. The majority of the low income/high performing schools are in Southern Arizona.
But we are robbing Peter to pay Paul. The Highway Trust Fund was established as a “trust fund” to prevent raids like this. Taking money from the already under-funded highway system will just assure continued deterioration of our State highways, especially the rural parts of the State. While I strongly support our public schools and have personally given tens of thousands of dollars to public school classrooms through http://www.adoptaclassroom.org, I cannot support robbing our road money. Remember, the annual fiscal crisis at the legislature has been brought on by over two decades of irresponsible tax cuts by a succession of administrations. Time to reverse course, methinks.
The thing is, he is still robbing Peter (Hurf, road funds) to pay Paul (schools). On top of that, a legislator is finally proposing added tax to fix roads (http://tucson.com/news/local/lawmaker-is-seeking–cent-hike-in-arizona-s-gas/article_d0745c84-d084-5000-a4eb-b3d043e7eace.html). But until the state gets back to honoring its line item funding/expense I don’t see how any of this does any good. Voters specifically voted for school tax money which went elsewhere (remember the $300M?) and other things I have probably forgotten, but Ducey is not managing that way and legislators seem to follow him at this point.
Great, more potholes! Thanks for literally driving the state into the ditch Mr. Ducey!
Carlos Ruiz:
David Safier did acknowledge that there will be a greater funding weight for low income / high performing schools. Here is what he wrote:
“His plan gives more money to top 10 percent schools where more than 60 percent of their students qualify for free and reduced lunch$400 per student at the lower income schools compared to $225 per student at the othersmeaning his plan is significantly more generous to schools whose high test scores beat the odds.”
As for your assertion that “it’s up to the school leaders to make the choices to expand, replicate or improve.” This seems to assume that whether or not to “excel” is a CHOICE leaders of schools serving low-SES populations can make and whether or not they make it into the top 10% is somehow a test of their will and character. Those who make these kinds of arguments tend to like free market mechanisms. Consider this aspect of the free market: the wage rates in the teaching profession are so low in Arizona and the conditions in many schools are so poor (due in part to the brutal elimination of the kinds of social service programs that make it possible for families working for low wages to provide the right kind of support for their children outside of school) that Arizona has one of the worst teacher shortages in the nation. Our certified teachers are refusing to work in the profession for which they have been educated by the thousands and many of our classrooms are filled with unqualified or unqualified long term substitutes. In most cases schools serving low income families have higher rates of classrooms filled with uncertified, insufficiently qualified teachers than schools serving high income families. This is not a level playing field on which to “compete” for the “prize” of funding supplements which, however the distribution of scores shake out in any particular year, will only go to the top 10% and will always exclude 90%.
I don’t often agree with David Safier, but I do agree with him on this point: this is BULLSHIT education policy, so certifiably insane when looked at from the perspective of anyone who knows education and the conditions in our public schools that you wonder if we have finally fallen off the edge of the known world, or down the rabbit hole with Alice into some weird pseudo-reality. Are we characters in a bizarre farce someone is writing? It would seem so. (And we wonder why our children are attracted to literature like the “Hunger Games” series. It’s because it’s a heightened version of the reality they are actually living out in the institutions most of them utilize for their “education”: a sick Darwinian rigged game of survival of the fittest.)
An aside to David Safier: I think you probably know, David, that part of the perception that drives the people behind “independent schools,” schools which operate privately and separately from the public district and charter system is that they don’t want to be forced to adopt government policies about how to educate their students and they don’t want to utilize government-mandated standardized testing. They feel that the structure of public schooling, where policy is determined by politicians and not by professionals in the field of education, ends up forcing inhumane policies on students and insupportable conditions on teachers. When it comes to education in Arizona, it is clear that they are right, and this is one reason among many why we cannot eliminate education choice policies before we gain enough control of the public district system that we can prevent “Hunger Games” structures like this from being forced on our schools. Given what Arizona is and has been for the past couple of decades, locking kids into a system that has been allowed to deteriorate to this extent is not ethical, and, contra the overly simplistic, self-serving, and reductive Democratic party agenda, increasing funding will not by itself solve all the problems a malfunctioning public system has developed during the past 20 years of misguided education policy in this state.
There are no potholes in Phoenix. What gives?
…and let’s not forget that public schools with high test scores not only serve students who have more support of various kinds in their homes, they serve students whose families invest hundreds of thousands and sometimes millions of dollars in their schools, both privately donated funds, through foundations and 501c3s supporting public schools, and, in Arizona, “tax credits.” The schools serving the most affluent already have plenty of supplementary funding to apply, and their students don’t have as many unmet needs, e.g. most have access to plenty of technology in their homes.
Private foundations supporting affluent public districts in Southern Arizona:
http://cfsdfoundation.org
http://tvseef.org
Beginning on p. 14 of this TUSD manual,
http://www.tusd1.org/sdm/documents/handbook.pdf
there are charts reporting tax credit contributions at various district schools. UHS, a selective TUSD high school with high test scores that serves a population more affluent than most TUSD schools’ populations, had over $300K in tax credit funds to apply in the last school year reported. In the same year, many schools serving low-SES students had less than $10K to apply.
Way to go, Ducey. Coals to Newcastle: what brilliant public policy.
Ducey didn’t sign legislation allowing tax credits for public schools. Liberals added that to the private school credit, which was approved for parents that were being forced to pay twice for education, when they were not using public ed. But I thought public credits could only be used for extra curricular activities as band or art.
If UHS received $300,000 is it reflected in the balance sheet as income to them? So then what is the real cost of a HS education at UHS when the 300K is added to all the other funding sources received?
Given that total funding of Arizona’s schools amounts to over $18 billion, $100 million in new funding is a grand 0.5% increase: that’s pretty close to nothing — a rounding error away from nothing, actually.
The point is that Douchey will get a lot more rhetorical mileage from that money than Arizona’s schools will get in teacher pay, new programs and materials, or any significant bump in per pupil spending. Douchey is basically giving homeopathic levels of new funding to a school system that is starving to death and talking like he’s making a heroic effort to save the patient.
Conservatives want the taxpayers to pay for three school systems. The real public schools, the unregulated charter school profit industry, and unregulated private religious schools. They are perfectly happy to “throw money at the problem” as long as they benefit directly, like your Senate President. Put it to a Statewide vote in plain language, like they are constantly whining about for public school bonds and overrides, Do you approve of your taxpayer money going to unregulated, for profit charter schools, and unregulated private religious schools, Yes or No. Betsy DeVos tried it in Michigan and hoped her bank roll could convince the voters in that State. They voted overwhelmingly against it.
There are two problem with your argument, “Frances.”
1. You assume “unregulated charter schools” and “unregulated private religious schools” can be contrasted with “regulated public district schools.” The fact of the matter is that there are regulations on the books that are supposed to govern public district schools, but many of them, including many of the regulations relating to financial transparency, proper bidding practices, etc., are not enforced. About the only thing in Arizona education that is uniform and reliable is lack of proper oversight, and that applies to all three sectors: charter, private, and public district. It’s the Wild West, across the board.
2. Conservatives don’t want three systems funded, as though this costs 3x as much as funding one system. They want the per pupil funding which is allocated once per pupil to be transportable. If it is not applied in the public system, they want parents to have the option of applying it (or part of it) in alternative schools. It’s a zero sum game: when the per pupil funding leaves the public system, so does the cost of educating that child. No one is “stealing” money that belongs to public schools. The money belongs with the child, to support their education. When the child goes, the money goes, too, and that is as it should be.
I know it’s hard for monopolists to give up their death-grip on the commodity and market share they’ve been accustomed to controlling utterly. Their rage at the interruption of their inappropriate and counter-productive privilege is a lot of what we hear in the constant, dishonest “anti-privatization” rants in Safier’s blog, in these comment streams, and elsewhere. But perhaps it is time to face the truth: if districts like TUSD had actually provided high quality services and served the best interests of their former students, they wouldn’t be having the problems with declining enrollment they’ve been having now for more than a decade.
Concerned Mom is only concerned for herself and maybe, possibly, her own children. She’s definitely not concerned with the well being of anybody else or their children.
While I was Superintendent, Arizona had the highest academic gains in the nation, the highest combined math and reading score gains on NAEP, the gold standard of measurement.
Our African American 8th graders rose from 6th in math to number one, our Hispanics rose from 35th to 11th and our white students rose from 20th to 6th.
And, it wasn’t an accident. School choice, a completely different approach to performance pay for teachers and a completely different approach to the Race to the Top mess. Despite having one of the lowest budgets in the nation, we put on more training than any other state department in the nation – over 350 webinars, podcasts and seminars – voluntary training focused on empowering teachers, not telling them what to do.
If that’s a disgrace, Education could use a lot more of it.
The disgrace: teacher compensation rates, the worst teacher shortage in the nation. Elementary school kids who have an alternating cast of long term subs manning their classrooms throughout the school year. Middle school “math” teachers with no teaching certification. Facilities that are deteriorating to the point of becoming hazardous. All this is what is “accomplished” by a toxic combination of underfunding and failures of oversight and regulation.
Congrats.