Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools Tells New Congress: Fully Fund Title I and IDEA

In his new book, Educational Inequality and School Finance, the Rutgers University school finance expert Bruce Baker carefully refutes some long-running and persistent myths about the funding of public education—Eric Hanushek’s claim that money doesn’t really make any difference when it comes to raising student achievement, for example, and the contention that public schools’ expenditures have skyrocketed over the decades while achievement as measured by test scores has remained flat.

Assessing the overall impact of public investment in education, Baker concludes: “Rigorous, well-designed, and policy relevant empirical research finds that: Money matters for schools and in determining school quality and student outcomes. More specifically, substantive sustained, and targeted state school finance reforms can significantly boost short-term and long-run student outcomes and reduce gaps among low-income students and their more advantaged peers. Money matters in common sense ways. Increased funding provides for additional staff, including reduced class sizes, longer school days and years, and more competitive compensation. Cuts do cause harm. The equity of student outcomes is eroded by reducing the equity of real resources across children of varied economic backgrounds. (Educational Inequality and School Finance p. 101, emphasis in the original)

Early in the fall, in hopes that the 2018 midterm election might bring a more hopeful climate for adequately funding public education, the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS) published a major report, Confronting the Education Debt to define its members’ priorities for addressing decades of failure adequately to fund schools serving concentrations of poor children and children of color.  At the federal level full funding is an important goal for two long-underfunded programs:

• AROS’s report traces the history of Title I: “The 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) was a core component of then-President Johnson’s War on Poverty.  Title I of the ESEA targets federal dollars to schools with high concentrations of students living in poverty.  The authorization embedded in Title I—then and still today—allows Congress to provide an additional 40 percent above each state’s per pupil spending base, for each Title I-eligible child, to allow their schools to provide supplemental supports such as extra reading assistants and parent engagement specialists.  Having set that 40 percent authorization in the law, Congress immediately failed to fully fund it, not only in 1965 but in every year since.”  (emphasis in the original)
• AROS also addresses the second primary federal funding stream for public schools: “In 1975, a decade after passing the ESEA, Congress sought to address the educational needs of students with disabilities.  The individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) requires school districts to identify students with disabilities and to provide them the supports and services necessary to achieve academically.  In the law, Congress pledged that the federal government would pay up to 40 percent of that additional cost, with local and state funds covering the remaining amount.  Once again, having established the formula, Congress failed to invest in it.  Federal funding of IDEA has never approached the promised 40 percent mark.”

In Confronting the Education Debt, AROS tallies the difference in the 12 year period between 2005 and 2017—the length of time it takes for a student to move through 12 grades of primary and secondary education—between what Congress established as the 40 percent funding levels for Title I and IDEA and what Congress appropriated: a gap of $347 billion for Title I and $233 billion for IDEA.

The Alliance to Reclaim Our schools is clearly adopting an aggressive strategy to press the new Congress to address its priorities. Writing last week in The Hill, AROS co-directors Keron Blair and Jay Travis challenge Congress to address its long failure fully to fund Title I and the IDEA: “As the dust settles from last month’s midterm elections, parents, students, community members and educators of America are… preparing for the long fight ahead for the public schools that our students deserve.  We are working to remedy decades of fiscal austerity in our public schools.  Between 2005 and 2017, public schools in the US. were underfunded by $580 billion in federal dollars alone—money that was specifically targeted to support some of our most vulnerable students.  Recouping all those funds won’t be easy.  However, with new voices in Congress joining forces with longtime education champions like Rep. Bobby Scott (D-VA)—the incoming chairman of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce—and Rep. Rosa De Lauro (D-Conn.)—the incoming chairwoman of the House Appropriations subcommittee that writes the education budget—a lot can get done for America’s students and their public schools.  When it comes to public education, voters don’t want disinvestment and less regulation. They want more investment, smaller class-sizes, greater accountability for privately-operated charter schools, and school climates that are respectful and safe for students and staff.  Those demands were at the forefront when educators took to the streets… last spring.”

In addition to fully funding Title I and the IDEA, Blair and Travis name three other AROS priorities: invest in school infrastructure and technology, establish 25,000 Sustainable Community Schools by 2025 to support families coping with poverty, and end the teacher shortage by increasing wages for educators.

Clearly AROS’s priorities have already gained some traction among Democrats in Congress.  On December 4, Maryland Senator Chris Van Hollen introduced a Keep Our Promise Act to “put Congress on a fiscally responsible path to fully fund Title I and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) on a mandatory basis.”

The Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools is a coalition of 10 national organizations which support urgently needed investment in the schools of our nation’s poorest communities: Advancement Project, the Alliance for Educational Justice, the American Federation of Teachers, Center for Popular Democracy, Gamaliel Network, Journey 4 Justice Alliance, New York University Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools, the National Education Association, the National Opportunity to Learn Network, and the Service Employees International Union.

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Stunning New Report: How Can Our Society Repay A Long Education Debt to Our Poorest Communities?

How can our society overcome nearly a quarter century of catastrophic public education policy designed by neocons, supply side economists, billionaire privatizers, and the American Legislative Exchange Council?  A new report, released yesterday by the Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools, outlines three steps by which we can recommit ourselves to a public school system prepared to serve and nurture all of America’s children.

1. Congress must fund fully two federal programs designed to help school districts serving concentrations of children in poverty and children with special needs: Title I and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA);
2. Together the federal government, states and local school districts must, by 2025, launch 25,000 sustainable, wraparound Community Schools to ensure that children and families in our poorest communities have access to supports that will enable the children to achieve at school; and
3. The U.S. Department of Education must recommit itself to its primary purpose: ensuring equity across America’s over 90,000 public schools.

The report challenges federal and state governments together to address today’s reality: “Districts serving white and more affluent students spend thousands to tens of thousands of dollars more, per-pupil, than high poverty school districts and those serving majorities of Black and Brown students. The challenges faced by these schools—larger class size, fewer experienced teachers, the lack of libraries, science equipment, technology and counselors—all reflect a lack of resources. By failing to provide adequate funding, we deny these children the chance to fulfill their potential.”

School finance is a three part bargain, with each school district taxing itself (currently roughly 45 percent of school funding); states providing revenue (currently about 47 percent) and creating a state distribution formula to overcome disparities in local capacity; and the federal government providing a relatively smaller amount (currently roughly 8 percent) to support students with particular needs and to oversee civil rights. The Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools outlines five policy mistakes which have compounded a fiscal crisis over time for public schools in poor communities and areas without sufficient capacity to raise funding locally:

1. Congress has failed to fund Title I and the IDEA at the levels promised when these programs were enacted.
2. Local funding in the poorest communities is inadequate even when the citizens make a significant tax effort; and the states have failed to distribute their funds to eradicate inequity across local school districts.
3. Current tax policies at the federal level and in many states have become regressive in the extreme, with tax policy benefiting corporations and the very wealthy, and services for the rest of us—public schools, for example—suffering.
4. States have increased spending for incarceration and reduced education budgets at the same time school districts have increasingly replaced counselors and social workers with what are called School Resource Officers (guards).
5. Privatization—investments in privately operated charter schools and private school tuition vouchers—at federal, state, and local levels has deliberately devastated traditional public schools when funds are extracted to pay for charters and vouchers out of fixed or declining public school budgets.

When Congress established Title I in the original 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the intent was to provide significant extra dollars to assist school districts where child poverty is concentrated—an overwhelming challenge for any school district: “Not only did lawmakers recognize the need for additional resources—they attempted to quantify it.  Embedded in the law is the authorization… to provide school districts an additional 40 percent for each Title I-eligible child so that their schools could offer supplemental supports such as reading specialists and smaller class sizes. Having established that 40 percent target in the law, Congress immediately failed to fully fund it, not only in 1965 but in every year since.” In graphic form, the report demonstrates that Title I funding declined between 2005 between 2017: from 18 percent of the original 40 percent Congressional commitment in 2005 to only 12 percent today.

The report concludes: “The impact of those under-funded appropriations is wrenchingly clear. If Title I was fully funded by Congress, the nation’s high-poverty schools could provide: health and mental health services for every student…; and a full-time nurse in every Title I school; and a full-time librarian for every Title I school; and a full-time additional counselor for every Title I school; OR a full-time teaching assistant in every Title I classroom across the country.”

The story is similar with what was promised in 1975, when Congress enacted the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.  But there is one difference: In the IDEA, Congress mandated specific services schools must provide for disabled students. “The financial assumption underlying IDEA is that on average, the cost of educating a child with disabilities is twice the cost of educating a non-disabled student. IDEA made providing these additional services mandatory and Congress pledged that the federal government would pay up to 40 percent of the cost.”  Again, the report graphically presents the underfunding of the 40 percent promise. In 2005, Congress funded 18 percent of he cost of IDEA’s mandated services, and the percentage has declined since then to 15 percent today.  When funding support is lacking from the federal government for mandatory IDEA services, school districts must cover the rest of the cost with general fund dollars—meaning larger classes for the general student population, fewer counselors, no librarian, no school nurse.

Please read the report (executive summary) for a more detailed picture of where our society has gone terribly wrong and what we need to do to make it right.

The Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools represents parents, youths, teachers, and community and labor organizations: Advancement Project, Alliance for Educational Justice, the American Federation of Teachers, Center for Popular Democracy, Gamaliel, Journey for Justice Alliance, NYU Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools, the National Education Association, the National Opportunity to Learn Network, and the Service Employees International Union.