The results are in. The Arizona Department of Education published a list of all the schools getting results-based funding for the 2017-18 school year. There aren’t any real surprises for those of us who have been paying attention since the bill passed during the last legislative session. As expected, the list is heavy with schools filled with students from well-to-do families.

But, as skewed as this year’s funding is toward more affluent Arizonans, this is likely be the most equitable spread of results-based money ever. Indications are, things will get far more inequitable starting next year. Hold that thought while I go through this year’s numbers.

Just under 300 schools will receive results-based funding—about 17 percent of the state’s district and charter schools. Between 35 and 40 percent of them have fewer than 30 percent of their students on free or reduced lunch even though only 18 percent of the state’s schools fit into that category. On the other end of the economic spectrum, about 10 percent of schools on the list have more than 80 percent of their students on free or reduced lunch, even though over 30 percent of the state’s schools fit into that category.

That means, if you’re in one of the schools in the highest rent districts, you’re far more likely to reap the benefits of results-based funding than if you’re in a school in the poorer parts of town. You’re also far more likely to be white and far less likely to be struggling with the English language or have learning disabilities.

That’s what things look like at the economic extremes. If we look at all the schools on the list, the story stays pretty much the same. A majority of the state’s schools—about 57 percent—have more than half their students on F/R lunch, yet they make up only about a third of the schools on the list. The other two-thirds are drawn from the 43 percent of schools with fewer low income students.

But wait ’til next year. As I said earlier, the numbers will only get more skewed toward the well-off and white.

Those are the basics for this year. Now, let’s look at what results-based funding means in dollars and cents, then why the funds will favor schools in high rent districts even more in following years.

Every school on the results-based funding list with fewer than 60 percent of students on F/R lunch receives $225 per student. Schools with more than 60 percent receive $400 per student. If we assume, conservatively, that the schools have a 25:1 teacher-to-student ratio (which is close to what you have in schools with about 30 students per classroom), schools with higher income students will get $5,625 per teacher, and schools with lower income students will get $10,000 per teacher. That’s big money for the schools, especially the ones with lower income students. They can give their teachers a $3,000 to $5,000 raise—actually, “bonus” is a better term, since the funding goes from year to year with no guarantee of renewal—and still have lots left over to purchase educational equipment and supplies.

It looks like the state is going out of its way to be generous to schools with students from lower income families by giving those schools close to twice what it gives schools with higher income families. In fact, that’s true, assuming those schools make it onto the list. This year they represent about a third of the schools getting the funding because of the way they schools are chosen. This year only, the money goes to schools in two groups: those with AzMERIT scores in the top 10 percent of all schools and those that score in the top 10 percent of schools with 60 percent or more students on F/R lunch. That guarantees that lots of schools with low income students will be funded. But that guarantee goes away next year—forever.

Starting with the 2018-19 school year, only schools with a state grade of A will get the funding. This year’s state grades are scheduled to be announced officially sometime next week, which will give us a good idea of how the results-based funding will be distributed in the future. Though the new state grading system has been tweaked to make it more possible for schools with lower AzMERIT scores to get higher state grades than with the earlier system, I have trouble imagining many schools in the lower half of the scoring scale for AzMERIT will get enough of a boost to be among the 17 percent of schools that make it into A territory. Due to the strong correlation between family income and AzMERIT scores, that means it’s unlikely we’re going to see anywhere near a third of the schools with the lowest income students making the cut as we do this year. [Note: The Tucson Unified grades were just released. Seven of the district’s schools got A’s, which is similar to the number of A’s the district has received in the past. If the district’s grades are the same next year, those will be the only schools getting results-based funding.]

Results-based funding is a wrong-headed notion at its core. The idea that you give schools filled with high achieving students more money to improve their educations while schools with lower achieving students don’t get any additional help stands the idea of educational equity on its head. We need lots more money in our K-12 education system, period, but if there’s a small pool of extra money lying around, it should be targeted to help schools with the greatest educational needs, not the schools with the best “results.” That would be true even if high achieving schools were spread evenly among students from low, middle and high income families. But a look at the schools receiving the funds and their AzMERIT scores reinforces what we already knew. Results-based funding increases Arizona’s education inequality, providing more money to schools filled with children from privileged families.

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This article appears in Sep 28 – Oct 4, 2017.

16 replies on “The Best Way To Get Results-Based Funding Is To Be Well-Off and White”

  2. Yes, this is a stupid way of allocating funding within a states public education system and next year it will become stupider. State legislatures have the power to tamper with public education policy in dangerous, inadvisable ways.

    So what now? I suppose your goal is to use the information presented here and elsewhere to get Democrats into the legislature and governorship.

    Would a Democrat-controlled Arizona solve our problems with public ed or make education more equitable? Watch a TUSD Board meeting and ask yourself the question. Three of the five board members are or were Democrats. In last nights meeting, you can observe discussions of why the district seems to be moving in the direction of kicking Catalina High students off their campus and moving them to Rincon so University High School can have their site. The presenters on this topic were representatives of a committee composed primarily of a UHS faculty, parents, and alums. If I recall correctly, there were no representatives of Catalina High School on the committee, and representatives of Catalina High School were only notified at 1pm the day of this TUSD Board meeting that UHS would be presenting the recommendation to the TUSD Board that Catalina High School be kicked off of its site so UHS could have it.

    Equity in action in TUSD.

  3. Bottom line is you cant establish credibility as a supporter of EQUITY only by criticizing your political opponents policies. You have to prove that your political allies are capable of implementing equitable policies when they are calling the shots. Neither the policies and administrative actions promoted under the previous Democratic Board majority in TUSD Grijalva-Foster-Juarez (which included twice putting forward a patently inequitable Fruchthendler-Sabino pipeline plan) nor some of the actions contemplated by the current Board configuration (which include giving selective-admissions-University-High-School a separete site and removing its faculty and extracurricular programming resources from the Rincon High School campus where a non-selective neighborhood cohort currently shares them) can be understood to be making EQUITABLE access to excellent education a priority in district planning. If you listen to district reps explain the rationale behind their decisions, its not too hard to discern the pervasive, governing idea: Were desperate! Increase enrollment and suck more children into this operation by any means possible equity be damned if it interferes with us attracting more kids, especially when the kids we attract through inequitable programs we introduce can raise our test scores.

    Its an ugly spectacle. So again: why should a network which has this track record in TUSD ask the public for the legislature and governorship in the name of EQUITY?

    Get a handle on TUSD and turn it into something whose name is not a byword for self-serving mismanagement and injustice, and then come back and ask for control of the state, in the name of EQUITY.

  4. As a teacher at a school which will receive the results-based funding, I can tell you with confidence you are wrong about one aspect. Teachers will not receive one penny. The funds can only be spent on technology and professional development. At least that’s what we were told. Should our teachers be outraged?

  5. Actually simply being well off (i.e., being able to afford to live in a good school district) is sufficient. Looks like a life of working hard, taking risks, saving your pennies, and making good choices pays off for your kids. That’s a good thing!

  6. @Sabasas: if I recall correctly from your previous posts, you teach at University High School, which tests students for admission to its publicly funded programs and accepts only students with high GPAs and high score on tests of cognitive ability, I.e., you teach a cohort that is without question the easiest cohort in Tucson with which to obtain the high test scores that yield performance based funding. Because of the character of the student population of UHS, fully qualified, experienced teachers line up in droves to compete for any open position at UHS, and new hires often have years of documented history of success teaching AP courses at Catalina Foothills High School and elsewhere.

    Should teachers at UHS be outraged that their salaries are not increased with the performance based funding they receive? Depends on how you look at it. On the one hand, all teachers in this state are shamefully underpaid, including those at UHS. On the other hand, UHS has to compete for top students with institutions like Salpointe, which recently introduced a 1:1 laptop computer program and built a multi-million dollar STEM Center, and Catalina Foothills High School, which has much better supplementary funding for technology and other purposes through its foundation than UHS does. UHS already has no trouble attracting qualified faculty because of the selectiveness of its student population, so if they are going to apply the money in a way that increases their ability to compete for top students, there is no reason for them to increase salaries rather than to beef up technology, which they need to do to offer services more comparable to their rivals.

    Another point to consider when asking yourself if UHS faculty should be angry that their salaries are not being increased with performance based funding: from a supply-and-demand perspective and from an apply-the-money-where-it-will-go-furthest-in-increasing-quality-of-services-to-students perspective, when you look at the overall staffing situation in TUSD, it would make more sense for funding supplements to increase salaries to be applied in schools that have teaching positions they have been unable to fill with fully qualified teachers than to apply funding supplements to reward teachers of top students who are already rewarded by the relative ease of getting good test scores out of kind of students they teach. But the state legislature does not think that way, and it doesnt seem to occur to TUSD to apply its desegregation funding supplements that way, either, or at least not enough to fill the vacant positions in its schools serving low-SES, high minority schools 100% with qualified faculty.

    Mores the pity.

  7. Maybe we should institute reverse results based funding, and give schools with students who have lower test scores more money. We can call it the “silk purses initiative”. It would fail, obviously, just like Head Start and similar programs. But more left-leaning, unionized workers would get jobs. And ultimately, isn’t that the real purpose of the public education industry?

  8. Are kids attending schools that have classrooms staffed by a rotating cast of long term subs without teaching certification rather than by fully qualified, permanent teachers being given the best possible chance to get the highest test scores they are capable of? No. Every school that has not been able to secure qualified faculty for every teaching position should automatically be exempted from participating in this Hunger-Games-style competition for funding.

    In answer to Nathan K: No, giving more left-leaning, unionized workers jobs is not the point. The point is giving all our young people the best possible opportunity we can give them to develop proficiency in the subject areas taught in school. If youd like to re-do the US Constitution, you can remove fully educating every citizen as a goal that should be achieved by our education system. Otherwise, youve got to keep trying to get the job done, in spite of the obstacles poverty presents. This is what underfunding the public education system and / or providing extra funding only for portions of it that produce certain test scores does: it actively undermines our ability to get the entire citizenry properly educated and to have a democracy that functions properly.

  9. I have an open mind. Despite hundreds of documented attempts and likely thousands of actual attempts, results-based funding has never worked anywhere in the world. However, our letter grade system now has some unique characteristics to it. It incorporates not just the gain from last years test scores, same student to same student not average to average, but also the two-year gains from the year prior to that. This new aspect increases the very small sample sizes associated with gain calculations and also makes it more difficult to game.

    Not only those changes but they also introduced the measurement of gain for low SES students as a separate component. Think about that. How many schools can keep 20 low SES students for two years and provide them with above average gains? Many currently A-rated schools aren’t even competitive in this category because they cant’ muster that 20. It will be interesting to see how many well-branded schools end up as “Bs” and as to whether the state board will grade inflate next year.

    This pressure overwhelmed the board in 2014. Brace yourself for the next assault.

    Disentangling the outcome of results-based funding will be a researchers case study par excellence – separating the wheat from the chaf. Arizona is already sporting the highest academic gains in the nation before this “innovation.” And, we’ve had major policy makers waxing poetic about chaf following that outcome.

    They key will be to follow the other letter grade states. I would assume that they will be falling in national rank as a result of the deleterious effects of letter grading. But, maybe not. Many of them are also doing multiple policy initiatives.

  10. sabasabas, the law specifies that half or more of the results-based money will be allocated for teacher-related uses. Ducey has said frequently that half of that funding is earmarked for teacher raises. https://azgovernor.gov/FY18budget

    If your school tells you something else, you should ask what “teacher-related uses” half the funds are going to be used for.

  11. To mystery education policy man – I am sorry for being pedantic, but the U.S. constitution does not mandate the existence of the public schooling industry. It requires that schooling, like all other public benefits, to be provided in accordance with the equal protection guarantees of the 14th amendment, but it doesn’t require that any state provide public schooling in the first place.

  12. Nathan K:

    The US Constitution and its amendments create a governmental structure within which leaders in the executive and legislative branches of the federal government are elected and there is a universal franchise. Having a fully educated citizenry, and thus a universal system of education which does not discriminate by economic means seems a good idea when there is a universal franchise. Some will opt out of the publicly funded education system for various reasons, but if there is a universal franchise, a universal publicly funded system to educate citizens should be there for those who choose not to opt out.

    What alternative do you propose to ensure the citizenry is competent to make the electoral choices the Constitution and its amendments determine they will have the ability to make? Does it seem appropriate (or functional, from a political / electoral perspective) that some schools in the system dont have the basic supplies or staffing necessary to get the job they are charged to do done?

    http://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/laurieroberts/2017/09/26/arizona-teachers-quit-school-year/706419001/

  13. Of course the well off get the last Long end of the stick. This is how the world works. Grow up.

  14. Mystery – I’m not saying there shouldn’t be public education. As you point out, there are lots of good reasons for it. I’m just clarifying that there is no legal requirement for it under the Constitution. Sorry to sidetrack the discussion; this detour is totally irrelevant.

  15. @ Sabasabas & David Safier:

    They will no doubt claim they are applying the “teacher” component of the funding in professional development. And the professional development will no doubt relate to training the teachers to milk the student population for higher AP scores. It’s University High School, after all. They have to compete with Basis and maintain their all-important US News & World Report rankings. (Gaming the media’s inane rankings system and testing companies’ standardized, multiple-choice “accountability” systems to make TUSD look better than it actually is — NOT student benefit and NOT proper college preparatory education — is UHS’s reason for being. And now UHS/TUSD, after bulking the UHS curriculum up with more forced AP enrollment over the past few years, is preparing to kick a neighborhood cohort which includes a large number of recently arrived refugees out of its high school so they can shove UHS into that neighborhood’s high school, increase UHS’s enrollment capacity, and suck as many more hapless victims into this high stakes multiple-choice testing machine as possible. All to compensate for ongoing declines in enrollment brought about by the TUSD governing board’s decades-long history of acute district-wide mismanagement. This is what could be gleaned from watching the October 3 TUSD Board meeting. What a great public school district, so worthy of our support and respect.)

  16. You call it public education, but what proof do you have? How do you approach that question philosophically unless you know the maximum human potential of your students? How do you know, maybe you are only at 5%?

    Can you call 5% education?

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