Education Week - February 24, 2016 - 18

Courts Push Lawmakers to the Wall Over K-12 Funding
Kansas, Washington
face hard deadlines
By Daarel Burnette II
Again and again, state supreme
courts in Washington and Kansas
have deemed their states' school
funding formulas unconstitutional,
in various rulings spread over a
number of years.
In response, state legislatures-
in the view of the impatient justices-have either dragged their
feet, backpedaled, or come up with
inadequate solutions.
Both courts seem to be fed up.
A ruling by Kansas' high court
earlier this month would effectively
shut the entire school system down
if lawmakers fail to come up with a
formula the court finds equitable by
June 30. The justices are expected
to decide later this year if the state's
current block grant formula is adequate in terms of overall funding.
And in Washington, the state continues to pay $100,000 in fines into
a special account-totaling more
than $15 million so far-after the
state supreme court decided last
year the legislature wasn't moving
fast enough to respond to the court's
2012 order to come up with a new
formula and found the legislature in
contempt of court.
As of last week, both legislatures
were puzzling over ways to pump
millions more dollars into their
school districts' budgets.

BLOGS

In Kansas, legislators met with
school officials and financial analysts to discuss how to provide more
money. The House passed an overall
state budget that closed a $200 million budget deficit, resulting from a
slash in personal income-tax rates
in 2012 and 2013. But the budget
doesn't answer the supreme court's
demand that the legislature come
up with an extra $54 million for the
state's poor districts.

Legislative Rumbles
Some Kansas lawmakers and
state officials are making rumbles
about defying what they see as a
court overstepping its boundaries.
Washington's Senate last week
passed a so-called "plan for a plan"
that sets a deadline of the end of
the 2017 session to come up with a
new funding formula. Another bill
passed by the house would allow
districts to raise their local taxes.
While some legislators believe
the action will satisfy the court's
mandate in McCleary v. State of
Washington, others described it as
telling schools "the check is in the
mail."
Randy Dorn, the state's superintendent of instruction, said the
schools can't wait another year.
"This is not just a funding problem," he said, citing a teacher shortage in the rural parts of the state
and a yawning achievement gap
between students of color and white
students. "It's a civil rights issue."
Although it's rare, courts some-

times fine legislatures-as the
high court in Washington state has
done-or threaten to shut down
schools over funding formulas, said
Michael A. Rebell, a professor at
Teachers College, Columbia University, who tracks battles over school
funding formulas.
Courts in New Jersey, Ohio,
Texas, and West Virginia have
held legislatures in contempt
over school funding formulas they

districts by June 30 or we'll pull
out the atom bomb of all remedies.'
That's surely going to get the attention from legislators."
The most recent decision in Kansas stems from a 2010 lawsuit, Gannon v. State of Kansas, filed by the
Dodge City, Hutchinson, Kansas
City, and Wichita districts. They
contended that the funding formula
is both inequitable and inadequate
and violates the state constitution.

They said, 'Give the money to the poor
districts ... or we'll pull out the atom bomb
of all remedies.' "
MICHAEL A. REBELL
Teachers College, Columbia University

deemed unconstitutional, said
Rebell.
In 2005, the Kansas Supreme
Court said it would "consider" shutting down the schools if the legislature didn't craft a funding formula
the court deemed sufficient. But the
legislature called a special session
over that summer and devised a formula before school began.
"This time they're not saying
they're considering; they're saying,
'We'll do it,' " said Rebell of the latest decision by the Kansas justices.
"They said, 'We're not going to stand
for this. Give the money to the poor

The state supreme court, in 2014,
ruled in the districts' favor on the
equity part of the lawsuit. The legislature then added $140 million to
the funding formula and enacted a
two-year block grant formula.
Those districts sued again, arguing that the funding formula froze
funds, forcing them to increase
their local property taxes to provide
teachers with raises.
"There are essential things our
kids are doing without," said Shelly
Kiblinger, the superintendent of the
Hutchinson schools. Kiblinger said
the district increased class sizes,

laid off administrators, and last
summer raised property taxes to
provide teachers their first raise in
years. That cost, the high court decided this month, lies with the state,
not local taxpayers.
Soon after the latest decision was
handed down, some state leaders
said the court had overstepped its
boundaries and had attempted to
interrupt the budget process.
"Kansas has among the best
schools in the nation, and an activist
Kansas Supreme Court is threatening to shut them down," Gov. Sam
Brownback, a Republican, said in a
statement.
Some Kansas lawmakers said the
courts were meddling in legislative
affairs. And in a move that hinted
to some observers that the state will
defy the court's orders, the legislature earmarked $50,000 to pay for
a lawyer to represent it in future
school funding cases.
In the meantime, a bill has been
proposed to replace the temporary
block grant formula with a formula
based on class size.
And a consultant firm's study that
cost the legislature $2.6 million
suggests that by districts' spending down their rainy-day funds, the
state could save a potential $193
million over the next five years.
"The state impoverished itself by
drastically slashing its state income
tax," said John Robb, the lawyer who
represented the districts in the lawsuit. "Now, they claim they're broke
and they can't fund the schools. It's
a self-inflicted wound."

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A Handful of Education Secretaries
Have Served as Classroom Teachers
| POLITICS K-12 | Newly minted acting U.S. Secretary
of Education John B. King Jr. , who has been officially
nominated to head up the Department of Education, loves
to weave his background as a social studies teacher into his
speeches. It turns out King is the first former principal to
serve as education secretary-or acting secretary. That got
us wondering: How many other former classroom teachers
have been at the helm of the department? How many had
other sorts of teaching backgrounds?
It seems that just four out of the 11 of the officials who
have led the department as secretary or acting secretary
since its inception in 1980 were full-time K-12 teachers at
one point in their careers, according to our research team.
Others, though, had done work in K-12 schools (like serving
as a big city superintendent, as did King's predecessor, Arne
Duncan), taught at the university level, or had other K-12
education policy or higher education experience.
Here's a list of those with actual K-12 classroom
experience, put together with the help of Education Week
Library Interns Rachel Edelstein and Connor Smith:
* Terrel H. Bell (served under President Ronald Reagan):
Taught high school chemistry, physics, and athletics in
Eden, Idaho. Plus, he served as the superintendent of a
bunch of school districts in the West, including Salt Lake
City. And he was the Utah state chief.
* Ted Sanders (served as acting secretary under President
George H.W. Bush): Taught in Mountain Home, Idaho, and
for the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Plus, he was the state
chief in Nevada and Illinois (also Ohio after his stint in the
cabinet).
* Rod Paige (served under President George W. Bush,):
Taught health and physical education, plus was a coach.

18 | EDUCATION WEEK | February 24, 2016 | www.edweek.org

Later, he became the superintendent of schools in Houston,
where he won national superintendent of the year.
* John B. King Jr. (serving as acting secretary under
President Barack Obama): Taught high school social
studies in Boston and Puerto Rico and co-founded
a charter school in Roxbury, Mass. He was also a
managing director with the nonprofit Uncommon
Schools. And he later served as state chief in New York.
-ALYSON KLEIN

2015 Saw Big State-Level Turnover
In Educational Leadership Ranks
STATE EDWATCH | An unprecedented turnover in statelevel educational leadership occurred last year, according
to a new report from Achieve, an education advocacy group
focused on state-level policy.
In 2015-a year in which 14 new governors and a new
District of Columbia mayor took office-31 states got new
education chiefs. In addition, there were 95 new state
school board members in 33 states, a turnover of almost a
fifth of all the country's state school board members. In all,
only seven of the 50 states saw no changes in educational
leadership.
And it may not be over. In 2016 alone, there are set to be
at least six new governors and two new education chiefs,
and many board members' terms will come to an end this
year, the report says.
As Education Week's Andrew Ujifusa wrote last year
in describing the turnover in state superintendents,
the change in leadership could be attributed to several
things. Among them: Southern states such as Kentucky
and Tennessee flipping from majority Republican to
majority Democratic; education becoming more of a
political lightning rod; and education leaders' jobs

becoming more complicated and under increased
pressure to implement federal education statutes and
regulations.
-DAAREL BURNETTE II

Could $1 Billion in Federal Grants
Make Teaching World's Best Job?
| TEACHER BEAT | Could $1 billion make teaching the best
job in the world? Well, the U.S. Department of Education is
banking that it can at least help make a dent in the
perception of teaching as underpaid and not prestigious,
anyway: It's pitching a $1 billion program toward that end
as part of its fiscal 2017 budget request.
Under its proposal, districts would use the funds
to improve teacher salaries, working conditions, and
professional development. Overall, the initiative also
aims to help improve the distribution of teacher talent,
something the agency has struggled to get states to do.
The federal program, called RESPECT: The Best
Job In the World (the acronym stands for "Recognizing
Educational Success, Professional Excellence, and
Collaborative Teaching"), would give out competitive grants
of $50 million to $250 million to states, which would then
offer subgrants to school districts.
Does this all sound a little familiar? Well, as it happens,
the department proposed a $1 billion teaching program
last year, too (and a $5 billion one several years before
that), none of which got any traction in Congress. The new
program's emphasis does seem somewhat different, perhaps
because Education Department officials say that it builds
on educator feedback from its Teach to Lead project.
Even though this is envisioned as a one-time, mandatoryspending program, funding prospects for it probably aren't
any better than in the past, given Congress' tepid reaction
to the overall budget request.
-STEPHEN SAWCHUK

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Education Week - February 24, 2016

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