Riverside-Area School Officials Offer Funding Ideas (CA)

December 21, 2010

Two Inland school superintendents are advocating a major overhaul in how California funds its public schools, a proposal for which Inland business leaders said they would lobby legislators.

The plan, proposed by Riverside Unified School District Superintendent Rick Miller and Alvord Unified Superintendent Wendel Tucker, would base funding on how many students perform well on standardized tests, and not the current formula, which allocates money based on student attendance.

"The idea would be to blow up the system and start over," Tucker said.

But the proposal does not have universal support.

San Bernardino County Superintendent of Schools Gary Thomas said schools aren’t businesses and students aren’t a bottom line.

"It would be a lot more complicated to put together a model based on performance," Thomas said. Without being able to account for poor and minority students’ greater needs, a performance-based system would be unfair, he said.

Nevertheless, Miller and Tucker said that the state budget crisis demands some kind of action because Cali fornia isn’t likely to be able to give schools substantially more money for several years.

Miller said he wants to start statewide conversations about new funding methods.

Miller and Tucker recently took their ideas to the chamber of commerce and a group of community leaders who meet Monday mornings.

"I would argue at this point we have a diseased system," Miller said. He praised educators as dedicated individuals, but said the system that worked for previous generations needs to be overhauled.

"We need to say to the Legislature, ‘You need to fix this or get out of the way.’ The current system we have, by any definition, doesn’t work."

Cindy Roth, executive director of the Greater Riverside Chambers of Commerce, asked those who attend the Business Education Partnership to lobby Assemblyman Brian Nestande, R-Palm Desert, who was vice chairman of that body’s education committee. His district includes Riverside Unified School District.

Nestande said he has proposed similar reforms and wants to work with teachers unions to involve them in ways to change the education system. He has since become vice chairman of the governmental organization committee.

"These are good ideas," he said of Miller and Tucker’s proposals. "We have a lot of work to do with that area."

Community and school district leaders have pushed for more local control and continuing flexibility in how they spend state money for kindergarten through 12th grade. They also want more local flexibility in school employment law and to remove barriers to online education.
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Students in Riverside Virtual School work online and meet with teachers periodically instead of spending their days sitting in classrooms and thus generating state funds based on average daily attendance.

The Legislature gave school districts temporary flexibility in how to spend some previously restricted money, but that flexibility provision is set to expire in 2012-13. School officials have said the state budget crisis isn’t likely to improve substantially for a couple of years after that.

The superintendents also want relief from school employment laws, such as the March 15 deadline to send teachers preliminary layoff notices, several months before districts learn how much state money they will get.

Those steps would help patch a flawed system, Miller told the chamber.

BROKEN SYSTEM

Miller said the state budget crisis makes this the time for radical changes in the funding system for the new century.

"I understand it’s broken," he said. "We need to talk about the solutions."

California public schools get most of their money from the state based on average daily attendance, or how much time students spend in a classroom.

Prop. 98 allocates a minimum percentage of the state budget for schools, now less than $50 billion. However, the governor and Legislature have suspended those minimum funding guarantees some years, including 2010-11. The percentage also changes with the total state budget.

Miller proposes that schools instead should be funded based on st udents’ improvement or competency, as determined by outside testing similar to Advanced Placement tests or standardized state tests.

Algebra is a one-year course. Yet bright students who could master it in a semester are forced to sit through the class all year. Others may need more time, but they are labeled failures for not getting it in nine months, he said.

"We could teach you all calculus," Miller told the chamber group. Different people would take different amounts of time to learn calculus.

INEQUALITIES

Thomas said by phone that the ideas may be part of funding reform but said it could hurt poor or minority kids. Such issues as how much support students get from parents or a religious organization, whether their parents volunteer at school and the child’s motivation all affect student achievement.

Thomas said the state tries to compare test scores of schools with similar demographics, but he said school comparisons are more difficult than lawmakers and educators thought.

Miller acknowledges that disparities in student achievement often exist between schools in upper-middle class neighborhoods and low-income neighborhoods. Miller said a formula based on student improvement or academic growth could level out inequalities for elementary schools. Disadvantaged students often show greater percentages of improvement than students who start out ahead, he said.

At the high school level, Miller said his idea would probably fund schools based on students passing tests for each course. He said he hopes that students’ progress in the early grades would prepare them regardless of their socioecono mic backgrounds.

"I have more questions than answers, but we have to all start asking questions," he said. Miller said he hopes more educators will make their ideas public.

California’s current funding formulas date back to 1973, Tucker said. The per-pupil funds are not the same for similar or neighboring districts. Alvord, which covers parts of west Riverside and east Corona, gets less per student than any unified district in Riverside County, said Riverside Deputy Superintendent Mike Fine.

Although Tucker said he could fund programs that help students with the extra money other districts get, more money by itself won’t fix the problems.

They said local and state economies will suffer if changes aren’t made.

Paul Jessup, chairman of the Business Education Partnership and deputy superintendent at the Riverside County office of education, agreed with most of their ideas.

However, he said more money is needed too, using an analogy of high-performance and economy cars.

"We pay for quality performance," Jessup said.

California schools are near the bottom in national rankings of per-student funding and class sizes, Miller said.

"Any way you look at it, we’re way below the curve," he said.