Ed Money Watch

Examining Sensationalized Teacher Pay

Ben Miller — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:44:00 -0400

Most free newspapers in Washington, D.C. are full of drab political fare, but the sensationalist cover of last Monday's Examiner caught the attention of Ed Money Watch.

Featuring the image of a golden apple being handed from one person to another, the cover has an all-caps headline that reads: "LOCAL TEACHERS ARE CASHING IN." We were intrigued by the article's content. A scandal involving misappropriated funds? An overly large salary increase won by the teachers unions?

Not even close. It turns out the article, "Cashing in on the Classroom," is about the fewer than 300 teachers in local counties who have earned above $100,000 this year. Such figures are sure to fuel arguments made by conservative publications that teachers aren't underpaid, but in fact earn more than many other skilled professions.

But how are these high-paid teachers raking in such large salaries? As the article notes, "No one on most local salary schedules can make $100,000 without extended schedules." Instead, teachers take on substantial additional responsibilities, such as leading extra classes, mentoring, or administrative tasks. For example, the Examiner highlights the case of Susan Socha, a teacher with 40 years of experience who made over $100,000 this year. How did Socha do it? In addition to her general duties, she "teaches algebra online, leads continuing education classes for teachers and runs an online summer school math program."

Socha's story appears to be consistent with those of other high-earning teachers -- they all took on substantial additional work, for which they were compensated. It's no different than if they had taken on second positions as lab technicians, waiters, or other jobs -- a trend that appears to be growing nationally.

While the number of teachers in the area making substantial salaries may be increasing - something the Examiner asserts but doesn't substantiate -- percentage-wise, it's still a very small group. Just 1.26 percent of Montgomery County's 11,486 teachers cross the $100,000 mark, compared with no more than 1.18 percent of Prince George's County's 8,395 teachers. A small group of individuals with decades of experience making large salaries would be expected in any comparable profession, so why should the case of a few teachers be front page news?

If anything, the story here should be that high-performing teachers don't have more opportunities to earn large salaries without taking on substantial additional responsbilities. Enhancing the rewards for high-performing teachers is the idea behind plans such as Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama's Career Ladder Initiative and the Denver public school system's ProComp, a performance pay initiative that provides bonsues for effective teachers who also engage in certain professional development activities. But even under ProComp's salary calculator, a teacher with a doctorate and more than a decade of experience working in a high-need subject in a high-need school won't cross the $100,000 mark until the 2014-2015 school year.

Effective teachers do much more than put in 40 hours a week over the course of nine months. It's time to find ways to properly reward that hard work, rather than running sensationalized headlines decrying the few who receive the compensation they deserve.

Appropriations Process, Slowly But Surely

Jennifer Cohen — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:00:00 -0400

Last Friday we reported on the status of the House and Senate Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations bills for fiscal year 2009. Committees in both Chambers had agreed to a 302(b) suballocation of $153.1 billion, and sub-committees in both houses adopted approved bills and sent them on to the full Appropriations Committees.

The Senate Committee successfully passed their Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill on July 26th. But the House Committee hit a minor (read: politically challenging) road block. Representative Jerry Lewis (R-Calif.), the ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee, offered an amendment to strip the text from the Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill and replace it with the text from the appropriations bill for the U.S. Department of the Interior. Lewis and his Republican colleagues argued that passing the Interior bill would lessen the burden of rising gas prices before the July 4^th holiday weekend, but House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey (D-Wisc.) derided the move as a "political stunt." Stunt or not, Lewis' amendment effectively stalled the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations bill in its tracks, postponing action on the legislation until after the July 4^th Congressional recess-and potentially scuttling the Labor-HHS-Education bill's passage for much longer.

Neither the House nor the Senate Committees have made the text of their appropriations bills public. That means detailed information on funding levels for all federal education programs is not available. Despite this, proposed funding levels for several programs have found their way into the media. These figures should be viewed with a grain of salt, however, until actual bill text becomes available.

According to a press release from the Democratic majority, the Senate Committee bill would appropriate $14.5 billion for Title I Grants. That's $631 million, or about 4.5 percent, more for Title I than in fiscal year 2008 and about $200 million more than the President requested in his budget. The bill also would allocate $11.4 billion to IDEA special education state grants, about $477 million, or 4 percent more, than the 2008 level. Despite the President's request to restore Reading First grants to their $1 billion fiscal year 2007 funding level, after a $600 million cut last year, the Senate bill cuts funding for the program entirely. The press release also states that the bill sets the maximum Pell Grant for the 2009-2010 school year at the President's requested level of $4,310, up $69 from the 2008-2009 level.

Fewer details are available regarding the House bill, particularly because the House Committee has yet to adopt a final bill. Congress Daily reports that the bill would increase the maximum Pell Grant to $4,310 and Head Start Programs would get a total allocation of $7.1 billion, a $200 million increase over 2008 levels. Congressional Quarterly also reports that the House subcommittee mark-up would increase the Title I appropriation to $15.1 billion, higher than both the President's request and the Senate bill, and would increase IDEA state grant funding by $604 million above the fiscal year 2008 level of $10.9 billion.

So, what happens next? The Senate may bring its committee-approved appropriations bill to the floor for a vote sometime in the coming months. Historically, however, the Senate has been slow to adopt the bill, while the House has moved its version faster. But this year the House looks set for a drawn out process, too. And it might all be for naught. The Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bills making their way through both Chambers include more spending than the President requested in his budget, and veto threats have been issued. A final education funding bill may have to wait for a new President in January.

Federal Education Appropriations, Pending

Jason Delisle — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 16:35:00 -0400

It's appropriations time on Capitol Hill. This week, the House and Senate Appropriations Committees moved to adopt their respective versions of the fiscal year 2009 Labor-HHS-Education appropriations bill. This week's committee action begins the annual federal education funding process, but the spending bill still faces a number of procedural steps and political hurdles before it becomes law.

In February, the President released his budget proposal for the upcoming fiscal year, which outlined funding levels for all education programs, and established a recommended total appropriations spending level of $990.7 billion. Congress adopted its own total funding level of $1.012 trillion in May when it passed the fiscal year 2009 congressional budget resolution. (Last year Congress set the spending level at $953.1 billion).

As we explained in our federal budget primer earlier this year, the budget resolution funding ceiling (called a 302(a) allocation) does not specify funding levels for individual programs, only an aggregate total. So, anyone interested in federal education funding has had to wait until now to get a glimpse of the funding levels Congress is likely to adopt. The House and Senate Appropriations Committees took two key actions over the past weeks that gave some shape to education funding for the upcoming fiscal year.

First, the Appropriations Committees in each House divided up the 302(a) allocation of $1.012 trillion among 12 subcommittees. These suballocations, called 302(b) suballocations, limit the total spending that a subcommittee can divvy up among programs within its jurisdiction. For the Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations Subcommittee, the House set a spending level of $153.1 billion, and the Senate put it at $152.7 billion. The fiscal year 2008 enacted bill provides $145.1 billion. Then, yesterday, the Senate Appropriations Committee adopted its version of the fiscal year 2009 Labor-HHS-Education funding bill with the House expected to follow soon. We'll have a detailed analysis of those funding levels in the coming days.

There is still a lot more work to be done, and more hurdles to clear, before a final funding bill is signed into law. Consider that the House and Senate bills would spend nearly $8 billion more than the President recommended in his budget. He's threatening to veto any bill over his proposed spending levels. What's more, the bills have only cleared the committee level. They still need approval by the full House and Senate. Then, any differences in funding levels between the two Houses must be worked out... and there are bound to be many differences.

Given the election year politics, and a Democratically controlled Congress that would rather wait for a new President to sign its favored bill in January than concede to a lame duck, it's likely to be many months before fiscal year 2009 education funding levels are set in stone.

A Good Opportunity (for Research)

Jennifer Cohen — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 17:00:00 -0400

The Department of Education recently released the second year impact evaluation of Washington, D.C.'s Opportunity Scholarship Program. This federally funded program--a fancy name for vouchers--provides randomly selected low-income students living in the District of Columbia a scholarship, or voucher, worth up to $7,500 to attend the private school of their choice. The report has generated response from national and local political figures on both sides of the voucher debate. D.C. Congressional Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton believes the program should be cut because of school accountability issues, while Council Member Marion Barry supports the program because he believes it increases educational opportunities for D.C.'s children. The fact that the D.C. Opportunity Scholarships Program is up for Congressional reauthorization further intensifies these debates. Beyond the political rigmarole, we at Ed Money Watch believe that the program, and the resulting study, should continue through the full five years to further inform the debate surrounding voucher programs and their impact on academic progress.

The study found no statistically significant difference in math or reading achievement between students who did and did not receive scholarships. While the main finding is not encouraging, the study did find improvements in reading achievement for three subgroups--those who did not attend a low-performing school when they applied for the program, those who had relatively higher pre-program academic performance, and those who applied in the first year of program implementation--that combine to represent 88 percent of participating students. These improvements--roughly a two to four month lead in reading ability over students who did not receive a scholarship--are nothing to scoff at. Additionally, parents whose children participated in the program were more satisfied with the quality and safety of their schools.

These findings are admittedly not particularly compelling. Non-significant findings are rarely a blessing for an experimental program like Opportunity Scholarships. As a result, some politicians, including Norton, are citing the findings as an argument for eliminating the program altogether. It's important to recognize, however, that these are impacts from only the second year of the program. Sea-changes in educational outcomes rarely, if ever, happen over a period of just two years. If all education reform efforts were held to such high standards, very few would make it past the first two years.

Additionally, there is something to be said for substantively significant differences versus statistically significant differences. Statistical significance means that researchers have 95% confidence that differences between outcomes for experimental and control groups are not due simply to chance. The aggregate impacts in this study don't meet that threshold. But while the researchers found no statistically significant gains for scholarship recipients overall, trends do seem to be in the positive direction, and the achievement gains for the three student subgroups described above are meaningful differences in performance.

Despite the study's inconclusive findings, the dispute over the Opportunity Scholarship Program is really about political and ideological controversy surrounding vouchers. Those who support the program believe that vouchers will improve education for all by increasing competition among schools. Those who oppose it take issue with the use of public funds for tuition at private institutions, particularly because private schools are not subject to the same public accountability requirements as public schools. Self interest also plays a role, particularly for the teachers' unions who sense a threat to their hold on the job market.

However, there is another important angle here worth considering. The D.C. Opportunity Scholarship program is a pilot program connected with a valuable and important evaluation strategy--randomized control trial. This strategy is both rigorous and rare (a political powder keg for the Upward Bound pilot). So, regardless of one's political or ideological stance on vouchers--or whatever you want to call them--stopping the Opportunity Scholarship Program in its tracks is not the answer. Ending the program will only slow the progress of rigorous, scientifically-based research in education.

Eliminating the Opportunity Scholarship program also poses pragmatic problems for D.C.'s public schools. Cutting the program would force an already highly mobile population to reshuffle back into District of Columbia public schools and further disrupt both the students' academic progress and DCPS' reform efforts. This would also be a major blow to families of scholarship recipients who are by and large happy with their chosen schools and believe their children are benefitting from the program.

People who are for vouchers should want to see this program continue to prove that "opportunity scholarships" work and are a valid option for D.C. residents and other districts across the nation. However, for people who are against vouchers, cutting this program short should be the last thing on their mind. What better evidence is there than a truly rigorous randomized control study to prove that this long contested idea is a no-go? In the ongoing debate over school choice and vouchers, it would be nice to have solid evidence to add to the pro or con pile based on a rigorous evaluation of a mature voucher program. As Congress considers these study results and the potential reauthorization of the Opportunity Scholarship Program, the need for solid evidence should prevail over political agendas.

How to Handle Bad News for Small Schools in Oregon

Lindsey Luebchow — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 17:00:00 -0400

Four years ago in Oregon, two foundations invested $25 million in a "small schools" initiative, the largest private investment ever in Oregon's K-12 schools. The initiative sought to improve student performance and retention by transforming large, under-performing high schools into small learning academies. The first results of the Oregon experiment are in, and unfortunately they aren't very positive. Graduation rates remain low, and attendance and test scores haven't improved much since the large high schools split apart.

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—the primary funder, along with the Oregon-based Meyer Memorial Trust—has pumped significant money into the creation of small high schools around the country. But improvements in student achievement and graduation rates have been elusive. Evaluations of the Gates initiative generally show that the redesigned small high schools produce similar results to their predecessor schools, and the Oregon findings are more bad news. The Gates Foundation deserves credit for reacting to these failures in the most productive way possible: continuing its investment in high school reforms, while also modifying that investment in response to research findings.

Oregon's First Small School Class

In 2004, the Gates Foundation teamed up with other education reformers in Oregon to start the $25 billion Oregon Small Schools Initiative. The initiative has produced 38 small schools in 12 districts across Oregon, either by restructuring large high schools into smaller units (32) or starting new small high schools (6). Grants from the initiative—around $1 million for the largest high schools—provide funds for reorganization planning, technical assistance, and professional and curriculum development, among other activities.

Three large high schools—Marshall and Roosevelt High Schools in Portland and Liberty High School in Hillsboro—started restructuring efforts right away in 2004. The first classes of students with four years in the small academies just graduated. But, as The Oregonian reports, the test scores, attendance, and graduation rates of these classes remained, for the most part, stuck at the same levels as those of previous classes.

Other Small School Efforts

Oregon is one of four states, including Maine, North Carolina, and Washington, with statewide small schools initiatives funded by the Gates Foundation. In addition, the Foundation awards restructuring grants to individual high-need school districts and also funds organizations that want to start new small high schools.

Evaluations of these grants, conducted by an independent contractor hired by the Gates Foundation, have found little improvement in student achievement resulting from the small schools. While some measures of student success, such as attendance and progression rates, have gone up for students in new small schools, students in redesigned small schools have also not shown progress in those areas. A recent evaluation of the federal Smaller Learning Communities Grant Program found similar results to the Gates initiatives, with "no significant trends" in achievement on state tests or college-entrance exams, but some improvement in student promotion, participation in extracurricular activities, and school violence.

Regroup, Rethink, and Reinvest

The Gates Foundation took a shot at a research-based, expensive school reform. The initiative has not yet produced solid results in its original form. But the Foundation is targeting some of the lowest-performing, highest-poverty schools in the country, and no one has yet to find a quick fix reform, particularly in high schools.

When a long-term investment doesn't produce meaningful returns, funders should not necessarily abandon it, but they should admit the need for modifications. And that's exactly what the Gates Foundation is doing. Instead of trying to save face, it is acknowledging setbacks, investigating why the initiative hasn't improved student achievement, and looking to fine-tune its investment. Specifically, the initiative is placing more emphasis on selecting grantees that have a track record of raising school achievement; spending more money on teacher recruitment, professional development, and retention; focusing more on effective curriculum and instructional resources; and favoring starting new schools to redesigning existing schools.

Vicki Phillips, the current director of the Gates Foundation's education initiatives, told The Oregonian, "We have learned that small by itself is not enough. Good curriculum and instruction don't just show up...We need to get more dramatic results." That's the right, ultimately most productive approach.

Disclosure: EdMoneyWatch.Org is funded by a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Federal Education Budget Project Launch

Jennifer Cohen — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 23:12:00 -0400

Ed Money Watch is proud to announce the launch of New America’s new Federal Education Budget Project, a non-partisan, authoritative source of information on federal education funding for policymakers, state and local officials, the media, non-profit organizations, and the general public. Ed Money Watch is just one of a host of Federal Education Budget Project resources available to answer your questions regarding, and keep you up-to-date with developments in, the world of education finance, and particularly federal funding for education.

On the FEBP website, you’ll find information on spending, demographics, achievement, and federal program funding for every state and school district in the country—including the earliest available estimates of district Title I allocations under the President’s budget proposal and Congressional appropriations legislation. Easy-to-use web tools enable you to compare states or school districts based on funding, achievement, or demographic characteristics, and you can also download district-level datasets by state to conduct your own research or analyses. The FEBP website is also home to a continually growing body of independent research and analysis by FEBP policy staff on all facets of federal education finance, including the federal budget process, student financial aid, NCLB, IDEA, and the National School Lunch Program.

If you have already checked out the new FEBP website, thank you for your helpful comments – we look forward to continuously improving our website and expanding the array of resources available based on your comments and the needs of policymakers, researchers and the public. If you haven’t had a chance to check it out yet, please do so here. We know you’ll find the resources, information, and data helpful in making the federal education budget process more transparent and accessible.

And if you’re in the Washington, D.C., area, please join us on June 12 for a forum introducing FEBP to policymakers, the media, and key stakeholders. The forum will include a virtual tour of the FEBP website, and a panel of distinguished guests will discuss the federal education budget process and the outlook for education funding this year and under a new administration and Congress in 2009. Panelists include:

Bob Greenstein, Executive Director, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, will discuss the role of think tanks in the budget process and current and long-term budget projections for low-income families;
Ellen Murray, Staff Director, U.S. Senate Subcommittee on Labor-HHS-Education Appropriations, will comment on the role of Congress in the budget process;
David Rowe, Director, Education Division, Office of Management and Budget, will comment on the political process of developing and communicating the President's budget; and
Tom Skelly, Director, Budget Service, U.S. Department of Education, will discuss the education budget in administration transition years.

For readers outside the Washington, D.C., area, a full video of the forum will be available here and on the FEBP website shortly after the event.

For more information and to register for the event, please go here.

Chancellor Rhee Tackles Teacher Seniority

Lindsey Luebchow — Thu, 29 May 2008 16:30:00 -0400

The Washington Post reports that D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee is taking steps to end teacher seniority preferences in the District's teachers union contract, as part of ongoing contract negotiations with the Washington Teachers' Union. This is an important, and contentious, teacher pay reform that holds promise for reversing inequitable teacher distribution patterns between low- and high-poverty schools in the district.

Within-District Teacher Disparities

Seniority preferences allow teachers with the most experience to transfer to any open teaching position in a district, which means the most experienced teachers tend to gravitate to the lowest-poverty schools and those with with the most ideal teaching conditions. This leaves the highest poverty schools, with the neediest students, with teaching staffs composed largely of rookie teachers .

Within-district teacher quality disparities perpetuate the achievement gap, particularly in large districts like Washington, D.C., which as a heterogeneous mix of schools and students. Higher-income, high-performing schools in the affluent Northwest neighborhoods and Capitol Hill attract the most experienced teachers away from lower-income, low-performing schools in the Northeast.

In addition, these teacher distribution patterns lead to significant spending disparities between schools in the same district. Most teacher contracts determine district-wide salary levels based on teacher experience and education credentials. Thus if one school has ten teachers who have been teaching for 20 years, while another school has ten first-year teachers, the first school is going to receive more money from the district for teacher salaries. That school—likely with higher-income, less challenging students—will have a higher per-pupil expenditure.

"Comparability" provisions in the NCLB law governing federal education funding are supposed to force districts to spend the same amount at their low- and high-poverty schools. However, the provision contains a major loophole that allows districts to disregard inequitable spending on teacher salaries resulting from teacher experience. Last year, Congress discussed closing this loophole and strengthening the comparability provision in the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind. If this were to happen, many districts would have no choice but to follow Rhee's example and figure out how to alter current teacher distribution and spending patterns.

Rhee's Teacher Contract Proposal

Rhee has decided to address teacher quality disparities head on, without waiting for a federal mandate. She first offered the possibility of differentiated pay reforms for teachers in D.C., but the response to modifying the traditional teacher salary schedule has not been positive, and one union member told the Washington Post that the compensation issue is "not on the table" now.

So Rhee is testing another tack with the union—ending teacher seniority transfers. The objective of such a reform should be to get the best teachers into classrooms with the students who need them the most. Under the plan, Rhee could assign teachers to schools based on factors such as teacher skills and student needs, instead of automatically having to honor the transfer request of an experienced teacher. This isn't going to be an easy sell for the Washington Teacher's Union. Seniority preferences protect the interests of union members and have been enshrined in teacher's contracts for a long, long time. Simply putting the issue on the table is an audacious move.

Rhee has been concentrating on bringing in young talent to D.C. schools, which is a fine objective as long as she implements an effective process for identifying and nurturing that talent. More importantly, she should focus on getting the most developed talent—which often means more experienced teachers—to low-performing schools. Achieving this goal will likely require a portfolio of reforms, including financial inventives to attract skilled teachers to high-poverty schools, and improved working conditions in those schools. But ending seniority transfer preferences is one important step toward achieving that goal.

Subsidizing School Construction in Massachusetts

Lindsey Luebchow — Tue, 27 May 2008 15:33:00 -0400

Reports that some affluent Massachusetts school districts spend exorbitant amounts of money to build top-of-the-line school facilities have drawn media criticism and seized the attention of state officials. The prime example is a proposed $197 million high school in Newton—the most expensive high school in Massachusetts history—that has already gone over its original $141 million budget. Other projects, such as a $159 million high school in Wellesley, are also forecasting high and escalating costs. Last week state Treasurer Timothy P. Cahill warned that the state will not subsidize excessive school construction spending by districts that do not keep construction costs under control, or for building features, such as planetariums or swimming pools, that are not essential to schools' academic purpose.

Cahill chairs the Massachusetts School Building Authority (MSBA), which the state legislature created in 2004 to take over a poorly-managed school building assistance program. After three years of working to clean up financial problems and get funding to previously approved projects, the MSBA started accepting applications for new projects on July 1, 2007. The legislature capped the annual state contribution at $500 million in fiscal year 2008, and the cap will increase annually by 4.5 percent.

MSBA assistance is well-structured to target state aid to the neediest schools and districts, in terms of both facility needs and financial hardship. MSBA reimburses school districts for between 40 and 80 percent of eligible school construction or renovation project costs, depending on district wealth (per capita income and equalized property valuation) and poverty (proportion of low-income students. MSBA also prioritizes school building projects that are necessary for safety, health, or over-crowding concerns. In the first round of new applications last year, the MSBA selected 83 schools to receive funding, out of 423 requests.

MSBA has engaged with these construction projects from the beginning, conducting feasibility studies to determinine new construction is needed, and working with districts to ensure that project designs are sensible, cost-effective, and stay on course. MSBA tried to offer cost-cutting suggestions to Newton, but the city rejected them. MSBA capped its contribution to Newton at $46.5 million--regardless of the project’s final cost.

Because Massachusetts has limited funding available to support school facilities projects, it needs to ensure those funds are focused on the neediest communities and schools, such as Southbridge High School, which had to shut down its library and media center because of structural damage. When local school districts cannot raise enough of their own money from property taxes to fix neglected school buildings, the result is that nothing gets done, and the health and safety of students—and in turn their academic performance—is jeopardized. School districts, like Newton, that can raise sufficient local funding to support elaborate buildings, do not have the same need for state funding.

Cahill and MSBA should continue to "hold the line" on funding. The purpose of state building funds like the MSBA should be to give a helping hand to low-income schools with run-down facilities in need of replacement or repair. The Massachusetts legislature crafted the MSBA with the correct priorities in mind; now the MSBA must ensure that its financial support is put to the best use.

Layers of Inequity

Jennifer Cohen — Thu, 22 May 2008 20:04:00 -0400

Poor states, communities, and children persistently get the short end of the stick in school funding. Education spending policies at all levels-federal, state, and local-layer on inequities that disproportionately benefit high-wealth school districts and lead to large funding disparities between high- and low-poverty communities. A new report from Education Sector and the Center on Reinventing Public Education seeks to quantify the cumulative impacts of these inequities on local schools. The results are striking. Addressing these inequities should be a key priority for federal and state policymakers.

The Education Sector/Center on Reinventing Public Education report examines two elementary schools in neighboring states that serve similar populations but receive very different levels of federal, state, and local funding. Cameron Elementary in Fairfax County, Va., receives more than twice the per pupil funding Ponderosa Elementary in Cumberland County, N.C., receives even though both schools serve predominantly low-income populations in poorer sections of their respective counties. These funding disparities are the result of funding distribution structures that disproportionately benefit wealthier states, districts, and schools over poorer states, districts, and schools.

The federal government distributes Title I funds to states based on the number of poor children in each state to improve the quality of the services they receive. However, the specific amount allotted per student depends on how much money a state and its localities spend on education. Because state and local spending is more a function of the wealth of the state and locality than a function of the cost of providing that education, wealthy states like Virginia receive more Title I funds per poor child than poorer states like North Carolina.

While federal funding disparities are significant, 90 percent of the funding schools receive comes from state and local sources. State policies determine both the amount and distribution of these funds, and are a major source of inequities. In Virginia, state funds provide a minimum foundation for education funding-40 percent-that each locality must match out of local funds. Localities can also choose to supplement school funding with additional local tax revenues. North Carolina, in contrast, uses a district funding formula based on student enrollment and cost of hiring teachers and staff that benefits wealthier districts and has no local matching requirement. As a result, local funding constitutes 31 percent of education funding in North Carolina and more than 53 percent in Virginia. Less flush districts like Cumberland County, N.C., are unable to supplement education spending as much as wealthier districts like Fairfax County, Va., and have no incentive to do so.

Finally, district-level funding distribution practices benefit wealthier, easier to staff schools over schools with poorer, more challenging populations. Seniority staffing rules and experience-based salary schedules mean that higher poverty schools are generally staffed by cheaper, less experienced teachers.

We've written previously about how the No Child Left Behind Act's funding comparability requirements contribute to this problem, by allowing districts to overlook these experience-based salary differences when determining whether teacher salary funds are allocated equitably between Title I (read: more poor) and non-Title I (read: more affluent) schools. As a result, poorer schools spend less money on teacher salaries and therefore have fewer resources overall.

The impact of these differences is striking: Despite its high poverty population, Cameron is succeeding at retaining qualified and experienced teachers, while Ponderosa has a constantly cycling staff of inexperienced teachers. As a result, the average teacher at Cameron makes $62,533, compared to $35,610 for the average Ponderosa teacher. Whatever Cameron is doing right to maintain its teachers is worth thousands in increased spending on teacher salaries at the school.

The ES/CRPE report provides a series of policy recommendations to mend the funding disparities at the federal, state and district level. Among these is eliminating the section of the federal comparability requirement which allows districts to ignore experienced-based salary differences when determining whether funding is equal across schools. This change would force districts to recognize the mal-distribution of experienced teachers in their schools and act accordingly to fix it.

The report also suggests that districts give schools a standard amount of funding per student for paying teacher salaries rather than basing funding on the salaries of the actual teachers each school hires. This way schools will be able to prioritize between hiring many inexperienced teachers or a few experienced teachers and consider offering incentives to highly desirable teachers. Both of these changes would be important steps toward improving the equity of school funding and would give poorer schools a real chance to attract and retain qualified and experienced teachers. Other policy recommendations include:

Basing Title I funding on national average per student funding (adjusted for both state wealth and actual cost of education in that state), rather than state and local funding;
Encouraging states to provide minimum floors and maximum ceilings for state and local education funding contributions; and
Distributing state education funding in inverse proportion to district wealth, in order to mitigate disparities in spending due to differences in the amount of property tax revenue districts can raise.

Each of these proposals is likely to face political opposition-especially those that seek to lessen the role of property taxes, and therefore local control, in education funding. However, they would be significant strides towards equalizing both inter- and intra-state education funding disparities across the country and giving low-income students the education they need and deserve.

Teacher Support for Differentiated Pay

Lindsey Luebchow — Mon, 19 May 2008 16:00:00 -0400

Differentiated teacher pay is gaining in popularity among education reformers and policymakers. Currently, most teachers are paid under single salary schedules that take into account only two teacher attributes: years of experience and education credentials. Differentiated pay reforms give teachers more money based a wider variety of factors, such as teaching assignments, skills, or performance. Some teachers and teachers unions, however, are reluctant to embrace non-traditional financial incentives. This opposition is often viewed as an insurmountable obstacle to teacher reform.

But it's simply not true that teachers monolithically oppose all types of differentiated pay. While tying pay to student test scores remains unpopular with teachers, many support other types of financial incentives. And according to a recent teacher survey from Education Sector, teacher attitudes about differentiated pay reforms have become more positive in recent years, particularly among younger teachers.

The survey asked teachers about five different types of differentiated pay, and compared their answers to a previous survey by Public Agenda in 2003 that asked similar questions. Teachers were most likely (by far) to support additional pay for "teachers who work in tough neighborhoods with low-performing schools." In the Education Sector survey, 80 percent of teachers "strongly" or "somewhat" favored giving these type of financial incentives—an increase from 70 percent of teachers in the 2003 Public Agenda survey.

The other categories of differentiated pay—in descending popularity—were increased compensation for teachers who: receive accreditation from the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS --64 percent of teachers favor this incentive); consistently receive outstanding evaluations by their principals (58 percent favor); specialize in hard-to-fill subjects such as science or mathematics (53 percent favor). Teachers with fewer than five years of experience were more positive about all of the incentives than teachers with more than 20 years of experience.

Least popular with teachers was pay based on student performance. Only 34 percent of teachers favored incentives for teachers "whose students routinely score higher than similar students on standardized tests," down from 38 percent in 2003. When the question was broadened to include "improved reading levels, teacher evaluations, and classroom tests," still only 44 percent of teachers favored offering financial incentives.

Some reformers who support performance-based teacher pay may find these numbers disheartening. But teachers have legitimate concerns about merit pay, mostly related to whether standardized tests can be fair and objective measures of teacher skills. In addition, teachers are worried about the effect that individual performance-based pay and the associated competitive impulses would have on the collaborative school environment.

Here at Ed Money Watch, we actually think the news from this survey is positive. When teachers can evaluate a salary incentive based on objective indicators, they generally are supportive. Teachers know how much more difficult it is to teach in low-performing schools, and thus they understand paying more for the extra effort required at those jobs. Teachers know how much work it takes to become NBPTS-certified.

The time is ripe to embrace these types of financial incentives. This survey shows that many teachers, particularly newcomers, are open to renegotiating traditional salary schedules based solely on experience and credentials. School administrators need this teacher buy-in and support during the development process in order to make the incentives successful. Well-designed incentive systems can help reduce teacher quality disparities both between and within school districts.

Some more controversial forms of differentiated pay still have significant obstacles to overcome, but teachers appear to be growing more receptive—if they view the foundation for financial incentives as legitimate. Modifying teacher salary schedules will be a long-term, step-by-step process, and this survey indicates several good starting points.