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AFT steps up efforts against '65 percent solution'
Misleading idea would squeeze vital support services
for students
| DAMAGE BY THE NUMBERS
The Kansas City (Mo.) school district spends 54 percent of its budget on instruction, as defined by the National Center for Education Statistics. If the district were to reconfigure its spending to meet the 65 percent level, that 11 percent shift in spending toward the classroom would mean a 24 percent drop in other categories. The AFT research department looked at the district budget to see what this might mean in different support service areas. Here are just some of the areas that would be cut, listed in full-time staff: • Maintenance •Attendance/ • Guidance/ • Health/ • Curriculum development • Staff training—from 24 to 18 • Educational • Community and adult services • Other support services— Combined with reductions in other areas, as well as building-level administration, it adds up to a cut of 424 positions and $32 million. (Some services, such as transportation, are not listed because they already are contracted out by the Kansas City district.) |
When something sounds too good to be true, it usually is. That’s certainly the case with the so-called “65 percent solution,” the latest silver-bullet-type reform for public education being pushed by conservatives around the country. The proposal asks states to require all of their school districts to direct at least 65 cents of every dollar they spend on education to classroom instruction. While appealing at first glance, the “solution” could end up squeezing vital services from schools and shortchanging the students who need those services the most.
Currently, schools nationally spend about 61.5 percent of their budgets in the classroom, as defined by the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). (The 65 percent proposals incorporate the NCES definition.) It’s important to note how NCES defines classroom instruction. Some expenses are obvious—teacher and instructional assistant salaries, instructional supplies, and activities such as music and arts. On the other side, some of the “outside the classroom” expenses are the very things that help children succeed in the classroom: professional development for teachers and other staff, library and media services, counselors, nurses, social workers, food service and transportation.
So far, 65 percent solution proposals have been adopted in only four states: Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana and Texas. But its supporters are gearing up to push it through many more state legislatures, or to place initiatives on the ballot in a number of states this fall. The main group behind the 65 percent proposal calls itself First Class Education. Prominent backers, such as columnist George Will and anti-government activist Grover Norquist, have long records of also supporting policies such as private school vouchers and tax-cut initiatives that would drain resources from public schools. Recently, however, conservative support for the proposal has been splintering, with noted voucher supporter Jay Greene and the conservative Washington Times newspaper both expressing criticism.
The AFT executive council was alarmed enough about the rapid rise of the 65 percent solution movement that it passed a resolution at its meeting in February opposing the idea. AFT vice president Lorretta Johnson, who heads the union’s paraprofessional and school-related personnel division, describes the dangers this way: “This misguided scheme to shift education dollars around is a direct attack on the important support services provided to students—inside and outside of the classroom—by our members. It will put all children at risk by cutting into the services, like transportation, nutrition, security, libraries and health programs, that enhance student achievement.” (The AFL-CIO passed a similar resolution at its February meeting.)
What’s more, there is no evidence that setting classroom spending at the 65 percent level leads to higher achievement. School Matters, the nonpartisan school analysis unit of Standard & Poor’s, recently examined district spending and student achievement in 34 states. The report concluded that “mandating a specific spending allocation is not likely to provide a ‘silver bullet’ solution to raising student achievement.”
The better approach is an overall commitment to sufficient spending both in the classroom and also to support the range of services that help students achieve.
One response along those lines has come from the Texas Federation of Teachers and its “100 percent solution.” The goal is to adequately fund professional development, after-school and extended-year programs, early childhood education, libraries, school nurses and alternative education programs. The plan can be found at www.tft.org.
Indiana local's political action pays off in school board elections
Former union head is now president of the town's
school board
Members of the Anderson (Ind.) Federation of Teachers are hitting the pavement on behalf of four union-endorsed school board candidates, hoping to replicate the union’s May 2004 election success.
That’s when a majority of the union-backed candidates won seats on the Anderson Community Schools board, which led to the election of retired teacher Keith Millikan as school board president.
With Millikan, a past president of the Anderson local, at the helm, the long-running standoff between the board and the union effectively ended, and a contract agreement retroactive to January 2003 was reached.
The May 2004 election victory would not have happened without an aggressive political action program—and union member involvement in it, says the local’s current president, Rick Muir.
On May 2 of this year the local hopes to increase its majority once again, using the same political action formula that brought it results in 2004.
Four of the seven board seats are up for election. Eleven candidates are running altogether, and two of the union-backed candidates—Philip Morgan and Bill Riffe—are retired members of the local and active in the local’s retiree chapter.
The local’s political advocacy includes union-sponsored canvassing on behalf of its endorsed candidates, and personalized postcards from union members to friends, relatives and neighbors asking for their votes for the local’s candidates.
“We will walk [neighborhoods] right up to Election Day,” says Muir, who also is president of the state federation, the Indiana Federation of Teachers.
Anderson members will be working the polls Election Day too, Muir adds, noting that school employee support for candidates for the school board sends a powerful message to voters.
“We were very successful in the last school board election,” says Muir. The working relationship between the board and the 800-plus member union has markedly improved. “We still have a lot of needs here,” Muir observes. “But we are working together for the first time in years.”
Latest report shows $900-per-student shortfall nationally
The figures in the report do not take into consideration the widely used calculation that it costs up to 40 percent more to do a good job of educating low-income students, the report says. Once that adjustment is made, 38 states show funding gaps.
“In far too many states, we see once again that the children who need the most from our schools receive the least,” says Ross Wiener, the Education Trust’s policy director. “The fact that we are still talking about funding gaps shows a lack of political will to do what’s right.” The funding gaps have remained essentially
unchanged over the six years that the organization has been doing the report, which focuses on state and local but not federal funding.
The authors single out Illinois and New York as two states that have done an especially inadequate job of closing the funding gaps between their rich and poor districts. While the gap in those states is more than $2,000 per student, the authors point out that even a much smaller gap can add up to big inequalities. Colorado, for example, has a gap of $101 between its highest-poverty and lowest-poverty district. In a low-income high school of 1,500 students, that means a shortfall of more than $150,000.
On the other side of the spectrum, the report praises Massachusetts, Minnesota and New Jersey as three states in which funding for high-poverty districts exceeds that for the wealthiest districts by more than $1,000 per student.
The report ends with four recommendations to make funding more equitable. It calls on states to:
■ spend an adequate amount on education overall;
■ shoulder a greater share of the education-funding burden;
■ target their investments; and
■ ensure that budgeting and resource allocation policies within school districts are fair.
The full report, “The Funding Gap 2005: Low-Income and Minority Students Shortchanged by Most States,” is available at www2.edtrust.org.
