A matter of money

This article was originally published in The Notebook. In August 2020, The Notebook became Chalkbeat Philadelphia.

Try telling Owen Tuleya that money doesn’t matter.

For the first weeks of school, the 8-year-old at Cook-Wissahickon Elementary in Roxborough was happy and thriving in 3rd grade. His teachers were great, he had many friends, and he got a lot of attention because there were fewer than 20 students in his class.

Then on Friday, Oct. 25, out of the blue, parents were notified that changes were coming. The following Monday, more than six weeks after school started, Owen was moved to a class with 24 4th graders and seven other 3rd graders – a “split class.”

His reaction, said his mom, Stefanie, was bewilderment. Why was this happening? He missed his 3rd-grade friends. He couldn’t even eat with them in the lunchroom. They took away his 3rd-grade books and gave him 4th-grade books. And there were 31 other students vying for the teacher’s attention.

While Owen did his best to adjust, “there was definitely some anxiety about being in a whole new class,” said his mom.

How do you explain a disruption caused by budget cuts to a 3rd grader?

Do you say that the School District had to find two teachers for another school because there were more students there than the grown-ups had expected? And that the District didn’t have enough money to hire more teachers for the other school, and so took away two of Cook-Wissahickon’s?

Sometimes students from different grades are put in the same classroom because it can be an effective learning strategy, but that wasn’t the situation here.

Superintendent William Hite acknowledged as much when Stefanie Tuleya sought answers from the School Reform Commission in November.

“This is being done out of necessity,” he said. “Without the training and support to have split classes, we have split classes.”

No agreement

The issue of whether money matters to educational attainment and school district success has long divided politicians, activists, policymakers, and researchers.

Some argue that there is a limited correlation between the amount of revenue a district has to spend and overall achievement, and so funding gaps between richer and poorer districts should not be a focus. Others counter that districts with many needs cannot be expected to improve if they lack the funds to deliver adequate services.

“Money is not the only thing needed to make a school great,” Lori Shorr, Mayor Nutter’s chief education adviser, told City Council at a November hearing. “But funding that is just enough so that it’s safe to open schools should be no one’s goal.”

Shorr was trying to explain to skeptical Council members that the District needed more revenue to adequately educate students. She spoke of 12th graders who couldn’t get transcripts to include in college applications because of the lack of counselors.

“When I read in the paper that a suburban school has a sushi chef on Wednesdays and I visit a school that has to deny its students access to new computers and books for lack of funding, I can’t but think there is a better way for the state to ensure fair and equitable funding for all its students,” said Shorr.

Matthew Stanski, the District’s chief financial officer, told Council flatly that the District didn’t have enough money to do its job.

Stanski said that the District was spending about $11,000 per pupil in the classroom. Despite having a student population that is more than 80 percent low income and enrolling about a quarter of the state’s English language learners, Philadelphia spends less than the state median per pupil.

“I cannot overstate the role of adequate funding in ensuring a quality education,” he said.

But the Council members present mostly were not buying it. Some said $11,000 per child was quite a bit of money, but that the District was still doing a poor job. They wondered about throwing good money after bad.

“I’ve been meeting with people, and they don’t see how the money is reflected in the classroom,” said Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell, noting the large numbers of students in her West Philadelphia district who graduate unable to read or do math proficiently – or don’t graduate at all. “How are we spending all this money and not educating our children?”

Blackwell said, “We’re asked to do the heavy lifting, to come up with the money needed when we don’t know how money impacts learning. We really would like more clarity on that issue.”

If only that were easy to demonstrate.

Money doesn’t follow need

While we debate whether money matters, there is no doubt that money plays a big part in education policy. Where a family can afford to live largely determines how much is spent on a student’s education. There are wealthier districts and poorer ones, and this disparity is accepted. Money matters to better-off families; when they can afford to, they generally move to better-off school districts.

As a result, money does not follow need.

Andreas Schleicher, an education adviser to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, said that one reason the United States doesn’t get more bang for its buck educationally is that it spends too much in wealthier areas and not enough in poor ones.

“The U.S. is one of the few [countries] that invests in a regressive way. Children who need [public funding] the most get the least of it,” Schleicher said in the report.

State aid to schools is meant to offset disparities in local wealth.

But the state aid rarely makes up the whole difference, and how it should be raised and distributed is the subject of fierce political debate. More than 40 states, including Pennsylvania, have faced lawsuits challenging both the equity of how education dollars are spread among districts and whether poorer districts have adequate resources to meet their students’ needs.

In Pennsylvania, however, these lawsuits have gone nowhere. The courts here have ruled that education funding is a legislative, not a judicial, matter. Since poor, rural districts lost their case two decades ago, disparities in spending among districts in Pennsylvania have grown.

“The defining feature of public education in Southeastern Pennsylvania is a tremendous disparity in educational resources and outcomes,” said David Sciarra of the Education Law Center in New Jersey. Pennsylvania “has to put in place a stable, predictable, adequate means of funding public education. Otherwise, districts are in a constant state of crisis.”

Sciarra is behind similar lawsuits filed in New Jersey, where the outcome has been starkly different. There, the Supreme Court has been very specific in ordering the legislature to fully fund schools and to make sure that 31 of the state’s poorest districts receive more money – recognizing that they have greater needs. The court ordered preschool for all 3- and 4-year-olds.

Pennsylvania made an attempt to address funding adequacy and put in place a predictable formula in 2008, during the administration of former Gov. Ed Rendell. A costing-out study commissioned by the Pennsylvania legislature determined that Philadelphia needed $5,000 more per student than it then had to adequately educate its students – or nearly $1 billion more a year. Statewide, the gap between what was needed and what was provided was upwards of $4 billion.

Rendell went about trying to increase the state’s share of education expenses to 50 percent – about the national average – and set a goal of reaching the adequacy level over a seven-year period. State aid increases to districts were doled out according to a formula that took into account several factors related to need, including special education, poverty, and learning English.

At a City Hall protest in September, activists called for the restoration of the 2011 statewide education budget cuts and a predictable school funding formula based on need. (Photo: Harvey Finkle) Spending policy reversed

When Gov. Corbett took office, however, the formula and the goal of increasing the state share were abandoned. The total state and federal dollars flowing to districts declined by nearly $1 billion, and the state share of total spending is now down to about one-third. Philadelphia bore the brunt of this cut, losing nearly $300 million in state appropriations.

Instead of using a predictable school funding formula based on need, the legislature makes ad hoc decisions every budget cycle. This year, it increased the basic education formula by $90 million and then distributed another $30 million to 21 selected districts that had real needs, but were chosen largely because they were represented by influential legislators.

“Without an accurate, fair, and transparent state education funding formula, Pennsylvania will go through a harrowing budget process every year, not knowing what money is coming from Harrisburg or where it’s going because the funding allocations are arbitrary and capricious,” said Rhonda Brownstein, executive director of the Education Law Center in Philadelphia.

As a result, Philadelphia is not the only district that has been struggling with rising property taxes and declining services.

In Delaware County, for instance, an analysis by Public Citizens for Children and Youth (PCCY) found that all 15 districts raised property taxes in the last three years, by amounts as high as 13 percent (see p. 22). Even better-off districts saw steep increases in property taxes.

“The state has already done the work to know what districts need, and it knows how to implement a formula which will address the varying costs facing districts with high numbers of students in poverty, high numbers in special education, and high numbers of English learners,” said Michael Churchill of the Public Interest Law Center of Philadelphia (PILCOP). “What we need is for the legislature to restore the formula … and get on with the job of providing sufficient funding to all children – no matter where they live.”

But the Corbett administration, and many legislators, see the issue very differently.

The case for reforms first

“I wouldn’t say that money doesn’t matter,” said State Budget Secretary Charles Zogby, a former secretary of education. But he points to continued substandard achievement in Philadelphia as a reason to believe that more money will not make a difference unless other changes are also made.

He said that when Philadelphia was getting increased state dollars under Rendell, majorities of African American and Latino 11th graders were still basic or below basic on state tests in reading and math. “I look at those numbers and say that after a decade of increased spending, we still have 7 out of 10 African American kids who can’t read or compute at a proficient level or above,” he said. “So is that really a money issue?”

Zogby said it all depends on how the money is spent. He thinks that there have to be major changes in teachers’ contracts to stop giving raises for accumulating more degrees and years on the job and to base compensation more on performance.

Zogby was instrumental in the decision by state leaders to withhold $45 million in appropriated state funds from Philadelphia pending “operational, financial and educational” reforms, including concessions in the teachers’ contract.

There has been no labor agreement, but the governor released the money in October after complaints about personnel shortages in the schools mounted – and after national attention was focused on the asthma-related death of a student whose school lacked a full-time nurse.

As for increasing the state share of education funding as a means to reduce inequities among rich and poor districts, Zogby said he doesn’t view that as a simple matter. Local districts, he said, often agree to generous labor contracts that the state should not have to help pay for. Nor can the state stop wealthy local districts from spending more, he said.

There’s plenty that can be done before waiting for more money to materialize, he said.

“At some point, money becomes an excuse for people,” Zogby said. “Look at what some of the charter schools are doing in some of the same neighborhoods with some of the same kids while the adult excuse factory says kids can’t learn or can’t be taught.” He cited KIPP, Esperanza and Mastery. “They’re educating these young people, in the same neighborhoods, the same kids that the traditional system failed.”

There are other ways to interpret the data, some advocates argue. While it is nearly impossible to draw a strict cause-and-effect conclusion, during the Rendell era when more money was flowing to schools, Pennsylvania was the only state with eight straight years of growth in proficiency rates on state tests at all grade levels in both reading and math, according to studies by the Center for Education Policy. Since Corbett took office, proficiency levels on the tests have declined.

In New Jersey, where poor districts spend as much as or more than wealthier ones, there are positive signs, Sciarra said.

Early returns show that students who attended the mandated preschool had better outcomes through 4th and 5th grades, including lower rates of special education. Low-income New Jersey students ranked high in math and reading on the National Assessment of Educational Progress exam. And New Jersey ranks 10th among the states in graduation rates for African American students, behind states, for the most part, with very small numbers of them.

The impact of poverty

Shorr, the mayor’s chief education officer, told Council that recognizing the impact of poverty on achievement is not the same as making excuses for it.

“Philadelphia has the highest level of poverty of any city in the country,” Shorr said. “Students arrive not ready to learn to read. We’re not talking about lowering expectations. But to take kids who are far below [readiness] to where they need to be takes tremendous resources. You can’t just plug them into a class and expect them to rise up. Most times, they cannot catch up in a class with 33 students.”

PILCOP and the Education Law Center, among others, are preparing for another possible lawsuit challenging the state’s education funding system, especially now that the state has approved the new Common Core standards and will be requiring students to pass new Keystone exams to graduate from high school starting in 2017.

Some advocates applauded the requirements, saying that it was unfair to students to give them diplomas when they don’t meet basic standards.

Pennsylvania Partnerships for Children issued a statement that letting students graduate who don’t show proficiency in standardized tests is “cheating those kids … their families [and] taxpayers.”

But putting in the requirement without looking at the resource question is unfair and unwise, said PCCY executive director Donna Cooper.

“We’re really putting districts in a very difficult position of saying every kid needs to do really well — which everybody should agree with — but taking the resources away that make it possible to happen,” she said.

Keystone exams are a long way off for Owen Tuleya, but his mom is still seeking answers. District officials said they would meet with her and other Cook-Wissahickon parents to talk about the split class.

But she worries. Will the disruption ever go away? Can she and other parents count on some stability in the system any time soon?

For now, though, she is hoping to get answers to more immediate questions, such as what will happen this year for her son and his classmates.

“I don’t know how they can be meeting all the needs of the different levels of students in that class,” said Tuleya. “I’m hoping to get more answers about that.”