Education Week - May 8, 2019 - 16

Limited Impact So Far From ESSA's School-Spending Data
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tion officials to better publicize the
school spending amounts and urging journalists and local advocacy
groups to do their own detailed reporting on the newly available data.
"We know that inequities in funding occurs at both levels, within districts and across districts," said Ary
Amerikaner, the vice president for
P-12 policy, practice, and research for
the Education Trust, a civil rights
advocacy group. "Communities need
to see if they're getting shortchanged
relative to their schools in a district.
That's a conversation they need
to have with board members, and
that's a conversation they need to
have with state legislatures."

States are required to have schoolspending numbers published by
June 2020. Pending guidance, which
closed for public comments last
week,would let states combine state
and local dollars in reporting how
much they spend, rather than parse
them out, something many states
said early on was a technically difficult thing to do. And the proposed
guidance doesn't urge states to necessarily make school spending numbers comparable between districts,
something Amerikaner critiqued as
defeating the purpose of the law.
Marguerite Roza, a school finance
expert who is working with states
through a Financial Transparency
Working Group associated with
Georgetown University's Edunomics, a school finance think tank, said
during a recent webinar that most
states seem to be on track to meet
ESSA's requirements in that area by
next year. Meanwhile, she pointed
out, several states are still struggling to comply with some components of the law.
When ESSA was passed in December 2015, the fiscal reporting
provision got little notice and drew
little debate. Republicans saw it as
a way to push for more fiscal transparency and accountability of public
school spending. Democrats saw it
as a way to highlight how they think
state and local officials spend public
resources in an unfair way between
minority student groups.
But as state superintendents and
administration-association groups
started explaining the new requirement to district officials, there was
widespread alarm by district chief
financial officers and superintendents that the reporting of school
spending would wreak political
havoc. While the legal and political
fight over school funding disparities
has historically pitted urban, suburban, and rural districts against each
other, school funding experts argue
that there are striking-and littleknown-differences in spending
from school to school within districts
themselves.

Reviewing the Data
School-by-school spending numbers reported in a number of states
so far bears that out.

Getty

Federal Mandates

STATE ESSA REPORT CARDS AT A GLANCE
School-by-school spending is only one of many requirements data and disclosure mandates on states' annual Every Student Succeeds Act report cards. Among
other things, they must include data by school and by district on:
q Where each ranks on the state's accountability

system, along with the methodology.

q The number of inexperienced, ineffective, and out-

q The number and percentage of students enrolled

of-field principals and teachers.

q Students' standardized test scores and a

cross-tabulation of student data broken down by
type of student (including racial and economic
subgroups, English-learners, those with
disabilities, those in military families, and foster
children).

in preschool programs, Advanced Placement
courses, and International Baccalaureate courses.

q High school graduation rate.
q
q Disciplinary data, including student arrest rates,

out-of-school and in-school suspensions, and
instances of violence.

Per-pupil spending, with a breakdown of
"personnel" versus "non-personnel" costs and
how much of that money came from the local,
state, and federal government.

SOURCE: Council of Chief State School Officers

Communities need
to see if they're
getting shortchanged
relative to their
schools in a district.
That's a conversation
they need to have
with board
members, and that's
a conversation they
need to have with
state legislatures."
ARY AMERIKANER
Education Trust

16 | EDUCATION WEEK | May 8, 2019 | www.edweek.org

A recent Education Week analysis of school spending in Rhode
Island, one of the 13 states that
have released their school spending numbers, showed that the
state spent an average of $16,000
to educate each of its students in
the 2015-16 school year. But in the
Cumberland school district, for example, Ashton Elementary School
spent $15,000 per student, while
Garvin Memorial Elementary in
the same district spent $10,000
per student.
In addition to political sensitivity,
figuring out school spending numbers and a way to display them to
the public can be technically difficult.
There's often no clear-cut definition of what a "school" cost is versus what an "overhead" cost is. And
states have had a difficult time
figuring out how to divvy up costs
such as transportation and school
lunch between schools.
A review of the state report cards
that have been published in the
past two months shows that some
states, such as Rhode Island and
Washington, report details like
how much schools spend on teaching, textbooks, and curriculum
while others, such as Delaware and
Massachusetts only report overall
spending numbers. Louisiana displays PDF files of school spending

numbers and Georgia displays the
spending numbers on an Excel
spreadsheet.
Many states, such as Colorado
and Wyoming, have created separate websites for school spending
numbers.
But districts often have different, and sometimes outdated, systems to track school funding. Many
states, including Illinois and South
Carolina, had to buy new school
finance software in order for districts to report school spending
numbers (they have yet to report
their numbers).

Slow-Building Impact
In places where some of the
newly detailed data have been reported and publicized by the states'
department of education, the numbers have begun to gain some traction with local media.
In April, Newsday looked at New
York's figures and found that administrative spending by districts
in the state will top more than
$1 billion this school year, and
amounted to 10 percent of overall
school spending costs, a figure that
enraged local anti-tax advocates.
North Carolina's education
department last week put out
a press release pointing out its
own conclusions after analyzing

school spending numbers. Among
its findings: The state spends,
on average, $42 on textbooks for
each student, and teachers make
$3,000 more than the average median household income across the
state. Teachers this month plan to
protest in the state capital over
low pay.
"You can now see how money
is spent statewide and in your
county," said state schools Superintendent Mark Johnson. "This
is a powerful way to gain insight
into North Carolina's public school
funding, and we are happy to bring
it to you."
As states and districts grapple
with ways to collect and display
school spending data, advocates
are urging the public to get more
engaged with the process.
"I hope that the numbers will be
used to drive conversations about
inequities and the way we resource
and fund our schools," said Amerikaner of the Education Trust,
which analyzed New York's school
spending numbers last year after
the state made the numbers publicly available. "For that to happen,
the data needs to be reported in a
way that's understandable, usable,
and widely distributed."
Librarian Maya Riser-Kositsky
contributed to this article.

http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - May 8, 2019

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