State School Formula Is Out of Line

When I first heard the terms of the settlement of the L.A. School strike, I was flabbergasted. Where did Los Angeles find the money to give their teachers a 24% hike?

I wondered how the L.A. schools could possibly manage their money so much better than other districts.

Alas, I discovered that they don’t manage their money any better. In fact, they don’t have to.

The reason they don’t have to manage their money better is simple: The Los Angeles schools get a lot more money per student than any of the surrounding school districts.

While the state has pumped billions of new dollars into education in the last few years, these additional billions have been unequally distributed. Some districts receive far more to spend on their children than others do.

How did this unfair situation develop?

Basically, the large, powerful urban districts used their political muscle to rig the funding formulas to get an unfair share of education dollars. They channeled more of the education budget into their special-interest programs called “categoricals,” from which they take almost all the money. This leaves a smaller percentage of the education funding available for the basic education programs that are funded equally for all districts through the traditional “per student” mechanism.

While the categorical programs were established for noble purposes, taken as a whole they have terribly distorted the way education dollars are distributed. Some children are shortchanged while others have money heaped on them. As a result of this distortion, the amount spent per pupil is now even more unequal than when the court first ordered the state to equalize school funding more than a decade ago. Let’s look at some examples.

The Los Angeles schools get $1,045 per student in categorical funding while Glendale gets only $194 per pupil and Pomona gets only $484.

The figure in San Jose is $1,346, which amounts to $1,152 more per child than Glendale and $862 more per child then Pomona. Put another way, a high school with 2,000 students in San Jose receives about $2 million more than the same size high school in Glendale or Pomona.

The same is true for almost all the districts in the state. Los Angeles gets $581 more than the average district statewide. And San Jose gets $882 more.

But, you may ask, “Don’t Los Angeles and San Jose need more money because they have larger numbers of poor people, and don’t many of their students speak little or no English?” Sadly, the facts undercut this argument. Glendale has 5% more limited-English pupils than Los Angeles, yet gets $851 less per student in categorical funding. Pomona has even more poor families than Los Angeles and 14% more than San Jose, but Pomona received $561 less per pupil than Los Angeles and $862 less than San Jose.

This unfair distribution didn’t come about by accident.

The funding formulas have been manipulated in several ways to achieve this unfair distribution.

Arbitrary limits were placed on the allocations for some of the categorical programs so that districts that already have them get first call on the money. As a result, money allocated for these programs goes to districts that have previously received it and nothing is left over for any additional district whose students also meet the criteria.

The formulas for determining eligibility for some categorical programs are completely out of date. The districts that are already receiving the money have blocked attempts to update the formulas to reflect changes in student population. By doing this they have prevented districts with just as many needy children from getting the funds.

Some of the criteria were established in a totally arbitrary way. Programs with names that sound praiseworthy are really thinly disguised ways that districts with politically powerful legislators can direct extra money into their own districts.

Some formulas aren’t based on assessment of need at all, but are instead simply an additional percentage of the total district budget.

In other words, districts that are already getting more then their fair share get even more money, while the remainder are locked into receiving a smaller share. Many legislators are appalled at this unfairness and we have proposed a plan to close the gap in the amount spent per student.

We would fund all categorical programs at their present level, but instead of further aggravating the disparity in funding levels by adding a percentage increase on top of these unfair formulas, we would allocate $397 million to bring underfunded districts up toward the statewide average of spending per child on these programs.

Our proposal calls for substantial increases for all school districts, large and small. The large urban districts would still get the lion’s share of our education dollars, but for the first time we would be closer to spending equal dollars for each pupil.

Isn’t it time that we reject the use of political muscle to apportion the education budget, and instead give all students equal funding? Our kids certainly deserve it.