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The school financing conundrum

Sunday, October 3, 2004
By Robert Keough

Tomorrow, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court will hear oral arguments in a case that has the potential to turn local schools — and the state budget — upside down.

In Hancock v. Driscoll, students in 19 low-income urban and rural school districts have argued that even after a decade of increases in state aid, their schools are still not providing an education that meets state constitutional standards. Last April, after taking testimony from 114 witnesses and examining more than 1,000 exhibits, Superior Court Judge Margot Botsford, appointed by the SJC to hear the matter, agreed. As a result, Botsford advised the SJC to order the state to determine the "actual cost" of an adequate education for all and of "provid[ing] meaningful improvement in the capacity" of local school districts to deliver it -- and then come up with a means of paying the bill.

When Botsford issued her report last spring, reaction on Beacon Hill was muted. The same won't be true if the SJC takes Botsford's advice. The high court could demand an infusion of funds akin to the increase in education aid in the `90s, which more than doubled state spending on local schools, from $1.4 billion in fiscal 1992 to a peak of $4.1 billion in 2002 and $3.9 billion today. In addition to the billions of dollars at stake, there is the question of what it will take in "capacity" to turn around failing schools, and whether that is all a matter of money.

The Education Reform Act of 1993, signed three days after the Supreme Judicial Court ruled that the financing of schools in Massachusetts was unconstitutional, steered state aid to poor schools and established a system of standards and accountability to ensure the education of all students. But the Hancock plaintiffs argued that the minimum funding, or "foundation budget," guaranteed by the state had proved inadequate to provide every child with the education required by the state's rigorous and wide-ranging curriculum frameworks, developed under the 1993 Act. As evidence, they cited low MCAS scores, high dropout rates, overcrowded classes, outdated textbooks, and teachers who were not certified in the subjects they were teaching.

In her report to the SJC, Botsford ruled that the state's foundation budget was indeed too low. But when it came to determining what an adequate level of funding would be, she rejected both of the methods put forward by the plaintiffs.

The estimate offered by a group of education experts, Botsford wrote, was "to some extent a wish list" -- one that not even the three affluent districts used for comparison (Brookline, Concord-Carlisle, and Wellesley) measured up to. As to the use of the "successful schools" as a yardstick, she noted that, of the 75 school districts identified statewide as "successful," two-thirds of them were spending less than was considered necessary according to the study's calculation.

Instead, Botsford relied on a third, distinctly more back-of-the-envelope method that compared actual spending to foundation budget in four plaintiff districts (Brockton, Lowell, Springfield, and Winchendon) and in higher-performing districts. In the 75 high-scoring districts schools spent on average 30 percent more than the state-required foundation budget, and in the three affluent comparison districts they spent 60 percent more. In the four plaintiff districts, however, spending averaged only 3 percent above foundation.

" These differences," Botsford declared, ". . .provide material support" for the plaintiffs' claim that "the foundation budgets in their districts are not adequate to provide the education that they are entitled to receive."

Botsford's findings might suggest that affluent districts are spending more money than high-poverty districts, but for the most part they are not.

As Robert Costrell, the state's chief economist, points out in the fall issue of CommonWealth magazine, the foundation budget is much higher in low-income districts than in affluent ones -- $8,300 per pupil in the poorest quarter of Massachusetts districts, versus $6,700 in the most affluent -- thanks to a formula that takes into account the extra cost of educating needy students. (Costrell's analysis, along with three other articles on the case from CommonWealth, are available online at www.massinc.org.) Even though they spend well above the state-mandated minimum, the more affluent districts still end up spending less, on average, than high-poverty districts -- $8,500 per pupil, as against the $8,700 average in poorer districts.

In fact, Botsford suggested that the foundation budget is inadequate in every school district in Massachusetts, including affluent ones. But the question is, by how much?

Botsford's own method for determining the true cost of meeting the state's education standards, Costrell says, lends itself to the same "wish list" budgeting she herself disdained. Botsford specified that a revised foundation budget "must" include adequate funding for all seven state curriculum frameworks, ranging from math and English Language Arts to health, arts, and foreign language. It must also comprise full funding of special education, school facilities, and, for the first time, universal public preschool. Additionally, she said, the state should "consider" adjusting its current premiums for low-income and bilingual students.

What all this would cost is impossible to know, but fearsome to contemplate. A brief filed by Attorney General Thomas Reilly, which objects that Botsford's plan would "require spending without appropriation," contends that universal free preschool alone would cost $1 billion. Though Botsford is careful not to propose this herself, raising the foundation budget to the average now spent by high-scoring districts -- an increase of 30 percent -- would mean a jump in state education aid of $2 billion, according to calculations by economist Edward Moscovitch, in the summer issue of CommonWealth.

Sums like these could send Beacon Hill into a tizzy. They could also distract attention from Botsford's equally consequential, but less dwelled upon, finding -- that money is not the only problem. The judge explicitly rejected the state's claim that its system of accountability and "targeted assistance" was sufficient to improve educational quality in "hundreds" of low-performing schools, especially with the Department of Education, which is responsible for these turnarounds, down to a staff of less than 400 (compared with 1,000 employees in 1980). Though her proposed order calls for a state effort to enhance "capacity" in school management and leadership, which could itself cost more money, Botsford's report gave the challenge of turning failed schools around none of the detailed attention she devoted to the resource question.

Tomorrow, this conundrum goes to the SJC, which will have to choose between imposing a vast expansion of state funding and intervention in local schools and ignoring the recommendations of its chosen magistrate. At stake is not only how much all of us could be forced to pay, but what steps we are really willing to take to make schools serve all children.

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