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State senators pressed members of the State Board of Education on Wednesday to tell them whether dollars spent for schools under a new system of local control are being spent effectively.
“Are we getting our money’s worth and how do we know?” Sen. Marty Block, D-San Diego, asked during a Senate Education Committee hearing.
He and other senators didn’t get a simple or fully satisfying response from State Board President Michael Kirst and board member Sue Burr. They told the committee, in an otherwise upbeat assessment of landmark changes the state is going through, that it’s too soon to know.
In the past three years, Block said, school districts have received $13 billion in new funding. Funding per student varies by district under the Local Control Funding Formula, or LCFF, in which revenue is distributed partly according to enrollment of low-income children and English language learners. So it’s been a big increase for some districts, yet barely enough to bring spending back to pre-recession levels for others with few high-needs students.
Districts are required to account for spending in a Local Control and Accountability Plan, in which they set three-year goals and priorities and then update annually. County offices of education must review and approve each LCAP, but Kirst acknowledged that the state is not compiling and studying data on how districts are spending money under the funding formula.
That troubled Sen. Richard Pan, D-Sacramento, who said that legislators want to know how the state is spending overall education dollars. “That data is out there. Shouldn’t we be gathering it to know about impact?”
Kirst noted the challenge of striking a balance between flexibility and accountability under the new law. The Legislature, in passing LCFF, did away with dozens of categorical programs that dictated district spending. At the same time, the general accounting categories required by the state are too broad for useful comparisons, he said. They won’t differentiate between spending for counselors, lowering class sizes or hiring new English teachers.
Then that’s a problem, Pan said, and it extends to tracking spending at the school level, too. “There need to be some standardized definitions for parents to have a better handle on how districts are allocating resources. We always say, ‘Budgets indicate priorities.’”
Burr said that parents must examine spending in the LCAP and then the annual updates to see how the money was actually used. But critics have pointed out the LCAP is vague on requiring itemized expenditures for the supplemental dollars that districts receive for low-income students and English learners. Money for those students that is not spent at the end of the year is not earmarked for the following year.
Kirst said that the challenge is not to make the LCAP more complicated than it already is by adding details that will turn off parents and community members from reading it. But he also acknowledged that he is “not satisfied with where we are now.”
Common criticisms he has heard, he said, are that the LCAPs are too long, complex and hard to understand, that there is a lack of connection between LCAP priorities and a district’s overall budget, and that there is not enough information on how money is being used to improve or increase services for students targeted for extra money.
The state board is considering amending the LCAP template and will discuss ideas at its May meeting, with a plan to adopt changes in the fall.
Along with rolling out a new funding system, the state has adopted new standardized tests for the Common Core standards, and the state board is developing a new system to measure student achievement; it will be adopted this fall.
Accountability remains a work in progress, complicating an ability to measure immediate results. Burr pointed to high school graduation rates, which have increased for all students and dramatically for some low-performing subgroups of students. The state has one-year results on the Smarter Balanced tests, measuring performance in English language arts and math based on Common Core standards, with a second year out next summer. The state will be using a handful of other metrics, beyond test scores, as well, Kirst said, although they have not yet been chosen.
But he and Burr said that statewide metrics are only one piece of performance. Districts also set their own priorities in their LCAPs, and those goals must be measured as well.
Oakland Unified, said Kirst, is spending substantially on career pathway programs, and so a key metric should be how well it is implementing them.
Rick Miller, executive director of CORE, the California Office to Reform Education, reiterated that view. The six districts in CORE, which include three of the four largest in the state – Los Angeles, Long Beach and Fresno – have created their own School Quality Improvement Index with metrics on school climate and middle school readiness that the state doesn’t currently require and probably won’t in the future.
All accountability systems should not look alike, Miller said during the hearing. The state should not impose a single system but should “allow districts to improve with local innovation.”
Wednesday was an informational hearing, with legislators expected to take up their own ideas for accountability through the budget or legislation in coming months.
A grassroots campaign recalled two members of the Orange Unified School District in an election that cost more than half a million dollars.
Legislation that would remove one of the last tests teachers are required to take to earn a credential in California passed the Senate Education Committee.
Part-time instructors, many who work for decades off the tenure track and at a lower pay rate, have been called “apprentices to nowhere.”
A bill to mandate use of the method will not advance in the Legislature this year in the face of teachers union opposition.
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Tom 8 years ago8 years ago
Would recommend to Senator Pan that our Legislature keep a sharp eye on how much LCFF funding increases are going to salary increases for the adults instead of smaller class sizes, more instructors, more counselors et cetera which arguably will have a greater positive affect on the kids. After all, the primary goal of the LCAP program is to increase academic achievement. Paying the adults more without demanding and demonstrating greater academic achievement, … Read More
Would recommend to Senator Pan that our Legislature keep a sharp eye on how much LCFF funding increases are going to salary increases for the adults instead of smaller class sizes, more instructors, more counselors et cetera which arguably will have a greater positive affect on the kids. After all, the primary goal of the LCAP program is to increase academic achievement. Paying the adults more without demanding and demonstrating greater academic achievement, graduation rates, mental health does not serve the kids.
Replies
Gary Ravani 8 years ago8 years ago
What you suggest is accurate. CA schools need smaller classes, more varied instructors for a greater variety of classes, more counselors, more librarians, more psychologists, and more administrators. Every category identified by you (and some you did not) requires more...adults. To attract more adults takes reasonable compensation, benefits, and working conditions. Every category identified by you to need improvement means more dollars are needed to be allocated to attract, and keep, those adults. In a … Read More
What you suggest is accurate. CA schools need smaller classes, more varied instructors for a greater variety of classes, more counselors, more librarians, more psychologists, and more administrators. Every category identified by you (and some you did not) requires more…adults. To attract more adults takes reasonable compensation, benefits, and working conditions. Every category identified by you to need improvement means more dollars are needed to be allocated to attract, and keep, those adults. In a time of teacher shortages the enhancement of compensation and working conditions should be an obvious goal. There is so much information available on the difficulties and pitfalls of identifying “greater academic achievement,” let alone making it “greater” that I wont’t bother to detail it here.
navigio 8 years ago8 years ago
Districts are going to have to decide whether they want to add new money to existing positions or add new positions to support additional or better-staffed programs. They likely won’t be able to do both. And which they choose is likely to determine to what extent their efforts will appear to the public to align with with the spirit of LCFF.
Chris Reed 8 years ago8 years ago
It is just mind-boggling to read stories like this that never point out the obvious narrative. LCFF was pushed through to get more money to urban school districts, starting with LA Unified, to provide for teacher raises. The nominal rationale of getting more money to districts with more English-language learners to help with their education was a ruse. In this L.A. Daily News story ... http://www.dailynews.com/article/20140806/NEWS/140809652 ... UTLA openly cites extra LCFF dollars as being available … Read More
It is just mind-boggling to read stories like this that never point out the obvious narrative. LCFF was pushed through to get more money to urban school districts, starting with LA Unified, to provide for teacher raises. The nominal rationale of getting more money to districts with more English-language learners to help with their education was a ruse. In this L.A. Daily News story …
http://www.dailynews.com/article/20140806/NEWS/140809652
… UTLA openly cites extra LCFF dollars as being available to fund teacher raises.
It is shameful that Jerry Brown went along with this. It is bizarre that so much of the media never point this out.
Using struggling students as a political prop to reward the CTA and CFT is a story, don’t you think?
Replies
Gary Ravani 8 years ago8 years ago
See above.
Ann 8 years ago8 years ago
Get ready for the other shoe to drop…lawsuits about LCAP spending on salaries and benefits openly sanctioned and supported by Torlakson. http://www.cabinetreport.com/budget-finance/navigating-the-legal-threats-posed-by-lcaps