Education Week - May 10, 2017 - 23

ESSA, School Choice, Funding Fire Up State Legislatures
Rep. Dan Huberty, the
Republican chairman of
the education committee
in the Texas House of
Representatives,
leans back at his desk
on the house floor in
Austin. The Texas House
passed a bill that would
overhaul that state's
K-12 funding formula,
a hot topic in many state
legislatures in their
2017 sessions.

them control of Kentucky's legislature and governorship, that state's
Republicans upended its entire
school governance model and accountability system, and then made
Kentucky the 44th state to allow
for charter schools. And, in a dramatic expansion, Arizona opened its
education savings accounts, or ESA,
program to all students in the state.
But in West Virginia, North Dakota, and Oklahoma, legislators
facing severe revenue shortfalls are
being forced to weigh tough decisions over their school spending
habits.
And spats this year broke out in
the GOP-controlled legislatures
in North Carolina, Wisconsin, and
Indiana over the powers of state
superintendents and state school
board members and who would have
the upper hand on education policy.
Many lawmakers entered the
2017 legislative session bent on
making wholesale changes to their
state's education landscape. That
momentum was buoyed in states
like Michigan and Wisconsin that
last fall held town hall-style meetings under ESSA's stakeholder engagement process, where officials
heard complaints from parents and
teachers about the quality of their
local schools.
"Legislators are asking, 'How do
we completely rethink our education
system?" said Michelle Exstrom, the
education program director for the
National Conference of State Legislators "The budget situation in a
number of states has really forced
conversations around how education
is funded and what impacts that
has on the structure of education."

Feeling Squeezed
States are at least eight years
out of the Great Recession, and unemployment is at historic lows nationally. So, last year, when passing
their budgets, legislators had "rosy
outlooks" on fiscal conditions, estimating that they'd be able to boost
spending back to prerecession levels, said John Hicks, the executive
director of the National Association
of School Business Officers.
But income- and sales-tax rev-

Eric Gay/AP

CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1

enue-two areas on which states
and their public school systems are
heavily dependent-flattened and,
in some instances, dipped, causing
29 states to miss their revenue forecasts. That prompted midyear K-12
cuts in some states and forced many
others to re-examine their education
spending.
"We've got revenue growth on
the order of 2 percent at best," said
Hicks, pointing out that many states
for their 2018 fiscal year are either
spending much more conservatively
or looking for new revenue sources.
Based on governors' budget proposals, however, Hicks expects that
education spending in most states
will escape cuts, with the vast majority of states, such as New York
and Georgia, contributing toward
their K-12 budgets at least the
minimum amount required by their
state law.
In some instances, revenue dips
were more dramatic and school
spending, inevitably, was hit. Connecticut faces a $1.4 billion deficit
this year, and Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy proposed several cuts
to the state's wealthiest school districts. Delaware faced a $395 million budget deficit, which dampened

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hopes for an update to that state's
funding formula, which many have
described as insufficient to help the
state's neediest students.
States heavily dependent on energy and commodity prices had to
make particularly dramatic cuts
to their budgets. Alaska's Senate,
for example, has proposed reducing
that state's education spending by
5.7 percent, which would lead to increased class sizes and teacher layoffs. West Virginia, North Dakota,
and Oklahoma-all of them dealing with the oil and coal revenue
squeeze-are also eyeing cuts climbing to hundreds of millions of dollars
unless they institute new taxes.

Tackling the Formulas
Responding to the revenue shortfalls and other factors, an unusually high number of state legislatures this year attempted dramatic
changes to their school funding
formulas.
The Texas House of Representatives passed a major overhaul of its
funding formula that would give
more money to schools serving poor
students and dismantle its so-called
"Robin Hood" formula by allowing
wealthy districts to keep a larger
portion of their locally generated
revenue. The Senate is considering
a similar bill.
Other states' legislatures were
under court order to revise their
funding formulas.
Years of threats from state supreme courts in Kansas and Washington have brought those states'
perennial school funding battles to
a head this year.
Washington's high court in 2012
ruled the state's funding formula unconstitutional for relying too heavily
on local tax dollars to pay for public
schools. The legislature responded
by increasing funding for all-day
kindergarten, smaller class sizes,
and transportation. But it has yet to
come up with a way to boost teacher
salaries, estimated to cost the state
$3.5 billion every two years.

Kansas' problems are a little more
complicated. Because the state has
operated on a block grant funding
formula that's set to expire this
year, legislators must come up with
an entirely new funding formula.
That state's supreme court said
earlier this year that the funding
formula is inadequate, but acknowledged that how the legislature distributes any new funding matters
as much as the amount they distribute. That set off a debate over how
the state wants to bring more than
a quarter of Kansas' students up to
basic learning standards.
President Donald Trump's rhetorical embrace of school choice options, along with the appointment
of U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy
DeVos, a long-time school choice
advocate, have brought plenty of
national attention to the debate
over vouchers, ESAs, and charter
schools. There's been an uptick
this year in ESA legislation, in
particular, said Josh Cunningham,
an education manager for NCSL.
(ESAs set aside money for parents
to spend on private schools, special
education services, and other approved services). There has been a
decline, however, in efforts to dramatically expand or start brand
new voucher or charter school programs.
"I think a lot of the states that
have the right political conditions
to pass these bills have already
passed them," Cunningham said of
the voucher and charter school bills.
"States that are still lingering are
the states you saw really grappling
this year with what their choice legislation should look like."
Texas' House members, for example, have so far blocked an attempt
from that state's Senate to allow for
the use of vouchers this year.
Virginia's Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a
Democrat, vetoed a bill that would
have provided public school students with a voucher to be spent on
private school tuition.
The New Hampshire and Missouri Senates have both passed

bills that would expand ESAs to the
entire state. Neither of the House
chambers in those states had approved the bills as of deadline.

Gearing for ESSA
Legislators in numerous states
reasserted their authority over
key education policy decisions. In
the wake of the battles in recent
years over the Common Core State
Standards, legislatures made attempts to dictate what goes into
their state ESSA plans, which
state education departments must
submit to the federal government.
Indiana passed a law that
makes its state superintendent
appointed by the governor rather
than elected. The North Carolina
House, after attempting to strip
its state board of many of its powers (the board sued in response),
passed a bill that bans its education department from turning in
an ESSA plan until September. It
awaits Senate action.
And Wisconsin's Republican
legislature threatened to sue its
state's left-leaning superintendent
for not including their input in a
draft of the state's ESSA plan.
In Maryland, lawmakers passed
a bill that limited testing and dictated elements of the state's accountability system. Maryland's
Republican Gov. Larry Hogan vetoed it, but the Democratically-controlled legislature overrode the veto.
"Accountability and assessments
is a huge issue this year, and that's
more than likely being driven by
new approaches allowed under
ESSA," said Exstrom of NCSL.
Only 15 states and the District
of Columbia had turned in their
ESSA plans as of last week; the
rest will turn in their plans this
September.
"States are figuring out that this
is hard work, and they're getting
a lot of input and feedback from
stakeholders, and they want to
synthesize all that feedback into
their plan," said Exstrom.

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