Education Week - July 8, 2015 - 18

Amid Scattered Fireworks, Lawmakers Tackled K-12 Issues
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trying to get increases [compared to
the] past year? It seems like it's the
latter," said Daniel Thatcher, a senior policy specialist at the National
Conference of State Legislatures who
studies K-12 finance.
Two states seeking to revamp how
they pay for schools have taken two
different approaches.
Instead of adopting a new formula
wholesale, Nevada is trying out categorical funding for low-income students and English-language learners
to inform how the state ultimately
retools its K-12 finance system.
"It allows us to calculate actual
costs and not just draw on other
states' experience," said state schools

Superintendent Dale Erquiaga.
For the 2013-15 biennial budget,
the state created a $50 million program (known as "Zoom Schools") to
target schools with high shares of
ells. That program will now receive
$100 million for the 2015-17 budget.
It will also serve as the model for a
new $50 million program for low-income students, called Victory Schools,
for the 20 poorest zip codes in the
state, from Las Vegas to schools on
Native American reservations.
Pennsylvania took a different approach, when a panel of state legislators proposed a new basic-educationfunding formula that would direct
additional aid to students from lowincome backgrounds and those living
in districts with high concentrations

of poverty. Students attending charter and rural schools would also receive additional money.
Pennsylvania's K-12 finance has
relied heavily on local property taxes,
and lawmakers have distributed state
funding for years without a codified
formula. The Republican lawmakers
sent Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, a
budget that included the new formula
and made it effective immediately. But
Gov. Wolf vetoed that budget, leaving
the status of K-12 funding in the state
up in the air as of late last week.

Keeping an Eye on the Courts
And then there are the education
funding battles tinged with legal
drama.

States Wrestle With How to Make Sure
All Schools Have Qualified Educators
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funding for disadvantaged students,
for example-if a state didn't take
the department's feedback to heart or
didn't follow through on implementation of its plan.
Raymonde Charles, a spokeswoman for the department, said
taking back federal funds isn't completely off the table, but it's far from
the department's first choice. "We
believe that the best way to ensure
quick and effective remedies for students is to work to support states on
their plans," she said.

Limitations
Thirty-one states elected to have
their plans reviewed by external experts through a review spearheaded
by the Equitable Access Support
Network, an initiative of the Education Department, prior to submitting
their plans to the department by
June 1. And another handful of states
were given a slight extension. The
department has posted some plans
on its website, and is reviewing all of
the plans, as it will continue to do so
throughout the summer.
Education Week examined more
than a dozen of the state plans that
were on the department's site by the
end of June, looking for common elements and standout strategies.
In developing their plans, the
department asked states to take a
close look at their teacher-distribution data and identify "root" causes
of inequities.
For instance, Missouri flagged a
high percentage of out-of-field teachers working in high-poverty schools
at the secondary level. In high-poverty and rural secondary schools, for
example, between 10.3 and 10.6 percent of teachers are leading classes
in a subject they're not certified in.
That's 4 percent higher than in lowerpoverty secondary schools.
The state's partial answer to the
disparity: Provide some sort of enticement to attract better-prepared

teachers to hard-to-staff schools. The
state will spend the fall identifying
such incentives and officially roll out
the initiative next spring.
Massachusetts concluded that its
teacher-distribution problems are visible even within individual schools.
Veteran teachers may be "indulged"
by being given the "easiest" crop of
students, while teachers who are
good at managing behavior might get
the rowdiest classes, the state wrote.
To help schools begin to cope with
this problem, the Bay State has created school-level reports to show how
much exposure students in a particular school have had with teachers
who were given a low effectiveness
rating, have high rates of absenteeism, have been teaching for less than
three years, or aren't highly qualified.

Existing Strategies
But, in many cases, states didn't
necessarily cook up new strategies
for addressing teacher inequity, instead electing to provide a detailed
account of programs that were already in the works.
For example, Montana noted that,
since 2011, its has used federal
school turnaround money to place
additional staff members at lowperforming schools, including on
American Indian reservations or in
isolated rural areas, and to increase
professional development.
Others states promised to double
down-or do better outreach-on work
they're already doing. Michigan, for instance, pledged, among other steps, to
increase awareness of federal teacher
loan-forgiveness programs offered to
prospective educators willing to commit to working in high-poverty schools.
There also are a lot of issues effecting
teacher distribution that states don't
have control over, including collective
bargaining agreements, a reality that
some states hammered home in materials submitted to the department.
Montana, for instance, noted that
it is firmly committed to making
improvements when it comes to

18 | EDUCATION WEEK | July 8, 2015 | www.edweek.org

teacher distribution, but that state
officials don't have free rein in some
crucial areas.
"The state does not control the hiring and placement of teachers in our
schools," wrote Denise Juneau, Montana's superintendent, in a May 29
letter accompanying the state's plan.
"These decisions are made by locally
elected boards of trustees, not the
state."

Quality vs. Effectiveness
And at least one state noted another potential shortcoming in the
department's initiative-the definition of highly qualified teacher.
Under the department's guidelines,
the states' plans must address the distribution of highly qualified teachers
as defined under the nclb law (meaning those who have a bachelor's degree
and state certification). But in its plan,
New Jersey concluded that, while it
has already made a lot of progress in
ensuring high-minority schools have
access to teachers that are considered "highly qualified," that designation "lacks a measure of skills to adequately deliver content knowledge."
Instead, New Jersey, like most
other states, is moving toward a new
evaluation system that takes effectiveness into account.
New Jersey did not, however, look
at whether students in high-poverty
schools have access to just as many
effective teachers as their more privileged peers. The state argued that the
year-old system is too new to provide
that kind of school level data-and
that just publishing "raw numbers"
could be harmful to educators and
students.
In general, states are in "very different places" when it comes to their
ability to actually capture teachereffectiveness data, said Ms. Brookins
Santelises of the Education Trust.
Given the transition to new standards in most places "it's going to
take some time to get that data so
that it more accurately represents
where teachers are."

Last week, after weeks of special
legislative sessions, Washington state
adopted a biennial 2015-17 budget
that increased education spending
by $1.3 billion for reductions in class
sizes in K-3, an expansion of full-day
kindergarten in the state, and other
school services. But it's unclear if that
amount will pass muster with the
state Supreme Court.
The court justices last year found
the state in contempt for failing to
adequately respond to its 2012 McCleary v. Washington ruling, which
found the state to be underfunding
public schools. The court agreed,
however, to hold off on imposing any
punishment until it could examine
the state's 2015-17 budget.
Proposals from Democrats and

state Superintendent Randy Dorn
would have provided bigger increases
in K-12 spending.
Earlier this year, Kansas adopted a
budget that replaced the state's previous funding formula with a block grant
for districts. (See Education Week,
March 25, 2015.) Several large districts
sued the state, however, contending
that the switch to block grants would
hurt poor and minority students.
A county district court panel sided
with the districts in a ruling last
month, although the state Supreme
Court stayed the lower court's ruling
until it heard the case.
A separate case, Gannon v. Kansas, which deals with the overall adequacy of education funding, is still
making its way through the courts.

SHARING THE TALENT
The U.S. Department of Education has asked states to update their
plans for ensuring that highly qualified teachers are equitably spread
across high- and low-poverty schools. The department is reviewing the
plans and is slated to post them on its website throughout the summer.
Here's a sampling of some typical-or particularly striking-ideas
taken from some plans published on the department's
website by late June:
FLORIDA: Said it will identify and convene the state's
most effective teachers so that they can help communicate
best practices to others.
IDAHO: Cited strategies already underway, such as leadership
bonuses for teachers. Pledged to explore the feasibility and
impact of other ideas, including state-funded loan forgiveness,
support for paraprofessionals who want to become teachers,
and teacher signing bonuses.
INDIANA: Identified working conditions as one factor
affecting equitable teacher distribution. Promised to survey
first-, second-, and third-year teachers and principals to get a
sense of how educator preparation can be improved.

KANSAS: Touted a plan, already in the works, to bolster
mentorship opportunities for the newest teachers. Cited a
component of its educator evaluation system to identify teachers'
individual professional learning needs.
MASSACHUSETTS: Said it is seeking to publish data on
the proportion of students who are taught by inexperienced,
consistently absent, or ineffective teachers within schools to
help improve teacher distribution at the school building level, not
just the state or district level.

MISSOURI: Said it will work with community members to
pinpoint strategies for helping educators navigate the challenge
of urban settings. Plans to develop exit surveys to help figure out
why teachers leave urban, rural, and/or high-poverty schools.

NEBRASKA: Promised to increase access to high-quality
educators through distance learning programs. Said it will require
its lowest-performing schools to address professional development.

NEW JERSEY: Pledged to help address teacher
turnover by supporting novice teachers through intensive
mentoring.
NEW YORK: Pledged to continue providing
technical support and training to districts
implementing states evaluation system. Said it will work on
bolstering teacher preparation in part by continuing to support
programs with a rich clinical component.

TEXAS: Said it will develop guidance and tools for local districts
to create their own plans for teacher distribution. Plans to explore
strategies to recognize and reward high-performing teachers.
SOURCES: U.S. Department of Education, state plans

http://www.edweek.org

Education Week - July 8, 2015

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