California Lags in Slice of U.S. Funds for Schools

California may be the country’s largest and most heavily represented state in Congress, but its students get the short end of a federal education budget that sends more dollars per pupil to 30 other states and territories, a Times study shows.

Overall, California ranked 31st--and last among the six most populous states--in per-capita share of nearly $17 billion in federal education spending for the 1998 fiscal year. The funds are awarded each year for programs that range from providing instruction for disabled children to putting computers into the classroom.

The news is even worse for the federal government’s most significant education program: Title I, which targets $7.3 billion annually to assist students living in poverty. California, the state with the greatest number of poor children, ranks near the bottom in Title I spending per pupil.

There is no reason why California should be denied its fair share of federal education funds, said Leon E. Panetta, former White House chief of staff and longtime Democratic congressman from the Monterey peninsula.

“I think that both our senators, as well as the entire delegation, have got to be a hell of a lot more aggressive about making sure that California is getting a bigger share of that pot,” said Panetta, who also served as President Clinton’s federal budget director.

Most recent public opinion polls have shown that Californians rank education as their No. 1 concern. And, at the height of an election season in which, a Field Poll found, voters are expected to overwhelmingly approve a $9.2-billion bond measure to rebuild and renovate aging schools, the plight of California’s classrooms has become a hot-button issue.

But the elected officials who have a hand in shaping the federal budget are quick to blame California’s lack of education funding on a web of circumstances--as well as one another. Indeed, members of the state’s congressional delegation offer the same justification today that they did a decade ago for their failure to wrest more money from Washington: Congress, they say, is tight-fisted when it comes to California.

The study’s findings run counter to the frequent boasting in recent months by state congressional leaders that they have used their collective clout to secure increased funding for California. While this may be true for transportation projects and disaster relief, education funding apparently has been left off the delegation’s priorities.

The state received an average of $347.85 for each student in federal education formula grants, placing 31st out of 52 states and territories for 1997-98. By comparison, Alaska received the most in per-student funding: $1,110.15, followed by Puerto Rico at $639.05 and Washington, D.C., at $590.72. The national average for all pupils was $371.45.

California’s disadvantage in federal funding holds up even in comparison to other populous states. Its per-pupil federal expenditures lagged behind the next five largest states: Texas ($365.80), New York ($471.53), Florida ($371.34), Pennsylvania ($377.25) and Illinois ($369.76).

“We don’t get our fair share,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), who ran for office in 1992 promising to bring more federal dollars home. “We pay much more in taxes than we get back in services. That is a continuing problem for California.”

In Sacramento, Republican Gov. Pete Wilson heaped blame on Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer for failing to use her position on the Senate Appropriations Committee to secure more federal education dollars for the state.

“The fact of the matter is that other states do better . . . because they are represented in the Senate by people who are infinitely more effective than Barbara Boxer,” said Wilson, who himself served eight years in the Senate during the 1980s when California endured similar funding shortages.

Boxer, who is fighting a tough reelection battle, pointed the finger right back at the governor for approving state school budgets that are among the stingiest in the nation.

“I’ve got to tell you something: If we’ve got to do right by our children, the state of California better step up to the plate and at least spend the national average,” she said. The more the state spends the more it gets from the federal government.

California ranks 37th in total classroom spending from all government sources: $5,584 per student, a number far below the national average of $6,495, according to the state Department of Education. The state is responsible for the public education of more than 5.5 million students--one of every eight American schoolchildren. It ranks last in the percentage of students who earn high school diplomas, and the state’s fourth-graders surpassed only Louisiana’s and Guam’s in national reading proficiency tests.

Disagreement Over Effects of Spending

Most experts say that there often is a direct correlation between the amount of money spent on local education programs and student performance. But critics of federal education spending point out that, in some cases, such as the District of Columbia, large expenditures do not translate into higher achieving students.

While the federal contribution amounts to only pennies on the education dollar for any state, even a slight increase from Washington would be “quite significant” for a state that ranks near the bottom in student performance, classroom size and the number of counselors per school, said state school Supt. Delaine Eastin.

“Twenty or 30 bucks [per pupil] will buy you a computer for a classroom,” Eastin said. “It might mean an extra textbook per child. It might mean we could fix the roof in a school . . . or teach the kids to read because we could afford an after-school program. And that’s what this money is used for.”

To determine California’s share of the federal education budget during the 1998 fiscal year, which ended Oct. 1, The Times analyzed U.S. Department of Education spending for 23 formula block-grant programs that pump $16.9 billion into kindergarten-through-12th-grade instruction. The formula grant dollars were divided by the latest (1995) U.S. census figures for K-12 public school enrollment. The calculations did not include more than $1 billion in other grants that are awarded each year by competition and not federal funding formulas.

California elected officials, responsible for bringing home dollars from Capitol Hill, said that improving the state’s position is a formidable task that requires overcoming political reality and an institutional bias against California because of its size.

“It really, really does get complex,” said Rep. Howard P. “Buck” McKeon (R-Santa Clarita). “I have friends back home who say, ‘Hey, it shouldn’t be that difficult.’ But it is.”

McKeon and others said that nowhere has California’s struggle been more evident over the last few years than in its attempt to get additional money out of Title I, considered the most significant and influential of education grant programs.

Enacted in 1965 as a foundation for President Johnson’s Great Society, Title I accounts for more than 40% of all education grants, sending more than $7.3 billion annually to the nation’s public schools to boost the academic performance of poor students.

The program also has a ripple effect because Congress often uses it as a model for allocating money to other education grant programs.

At first glance, California receives by far the most of any state: $830 million, or more than 11% of the entire Title I program, according to the federal Education Department. But, when computed by ratio of dollars to poor students, California comes up very short--collecting less money per student than 49 states and territories.

The rub, experts said, lies in the arcane, highly political funding formula that has been a vicious congressional battleground, pitting Northeast states against Southern states and high-growth states against low-growth states.

The formula generally rewards states that spend the most on education. While this provision worked to California’s advantage during the 1960s, when it ranked fifth in total per-pupil state expenditures, it now works against the state, which is ranked 37th.

Boxer and other California Democrats blame the shortfall in federal dollars on the state’s funding shortage. As proof, they offer figures showing that if California increased its own spending by $911 a child, or up to the national average, it would reap an extra $52 million a year from Title I.

Counting Method Penalizes California

Of equal importance is a component of the formula based largely on a head count of impoverished children. Traditionally, the U.S. Education Department has relied on census numbers that are updated once a decade.

This approach is an advantage for smaller, slower-growth states, particularly those whose representatives have more seniority and control key legislative committees.

Yet, such lag time penalizes states like California, where growth has been so frantic that last year it added 148,000 students--equal to the entire public school enrollment of South Dakota.

Lawmakers from California and other high-growth states such as Texas and Florida were able to close ranks during the last reauthorization of Title I and persuade their colleagues to insert updated census data into the formula. The change was supposed to kick in this year, giving California an extra $42.3 million to keep pace with its 55% increase in poor children since 1990.

At the last minute, however, that spending victory was lost. Late in the congressional session last year, Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), the ranking minority member on the Senate Appropriations Committee, inserted a provision into a supplemental spending bill that froze Title I spending at previous levels, thus nullifying the effect of the new census numbers.

“Certainly, it was very clear that the new census data hurt poor and rural states, and there was some concern,” said Patrick Dorton, Harkin’s press secretary. “States like Louisiana and Mississippi were among those hardest hit.”

So too was Harkin’s home state of Iowa, which figures show would have lost $4.5 million, or nearly 9%, of its Title I total because of population shifts.

While some California advocates said they were caught off-guard by Harkin’s move--discovered by a congressional staff member a month after it became law--Boxer maintained that she was aware of it all along and was “very upset about it.”

Boxer said that she was helpless to do anything about it because she and other colleagues from high-growth states are outnumbered in the Senate, where each state gets two votes no matter how big it is. She said that senators from 41 other states backed Harkin because they would have lost money as well.

Still, others said that California’s problems obtaining money under Title I and other education programs go deeper than simple electoral math.

Eastin blamed part of the spending deficit on the makeup of the state’s fractious 52-member House delegation, which includes liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans, some of whom oppose any increased federal expenditures.

Keeping this group focused to fight for more education money, Eastin said, is like “herding cats.”

“That’s part of our problem. Some of our Congress people are very doctrinaire,” said Eastin, a Democrat. “They don’t try to compromise and they don’t get a lot of things for California.”

Panetta, who represented Carmel Valley for 16 years in Congress, agreed that the ideological split is “costing California money.” But he also blamed the fact that, with a few notable exceptions, fighting for education money has not been atop the legislative list for delegation members.

“If they got their act together as well as they do when it comes to distributing highway money, then you’d see a difference,” he said.

Easier said than done, argued Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles), a member of the House Ways and Means Committee. He maintained that there is still residual institutional resentment against California, induced by the sheer size of the state.

State Perceived as a ‘Sponge’

Tim Ransdell, executive director of the California Institute, a nonprofit group formed to help the congressional delegation focus on spending issues, said California has been a donor state--paying more in taxes than it gets back in programs--for more than a decade.

“But the attitude that California is a sponge of federal funds lingers in the minds of the members of Congress from the other 49 states,” he said.

Boxer, however, said the “ABC” attitude (“Anywhere but California”) no longer exists in Washington, as evidenced by the way Congress loosened its purse-strings for disaster assistance in the wake of the 1994 Northridge earthquake.

The delegation’s latest push to do the same for education has achieved mixed results. Despite a letter signed by many of the state’s representatives, Congress retained Harkin’s clause in the Title I formula for 1999, once again trumping the new census numbers.

But as consolation, Harkin asked that the new appropriation bill include an extra $300 million in Title I funds for fast-growing states like California, which is expected to get $20 million to $60 million of the amount. President Clinton signed the measure into law Wednesday.

Ransdell said any gains in Title I are welcome in a program that is otherwise “badly skewed against California” and has created a pattern that leads to the state’s relative shortfall in federal funds.

Case in point: The new federal budget, which features $1.2 billion in new class-size reduction funds to hire more teachers for first through third grades.

The money is to be distributed, in part, on the Title I formula, which will mean California will receive about $130 million, or 11%, of the dollars while it struggles to educate nearly 14% of the nation’s schoolchildren targeted by the effort, said Ransdell.

“We spend the rest of our efforts . . . trying to make up for the shortage in Title I dollars,” Ransdell said. “We begin the inning with two outs.”

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The Rankings

California ranks 31st out of the 50 states, Puerto Rico and the District of Columbia in federal education dollars distributed for each student. The totals for Education Department kindergarten-through-12th-grade grant programs ($16.9 billion) in fiscal year 1998 were divided by the latest U.S. census figures available for public school enrollment.

Federal dollars per pupil 1. Alaska: $1,110.15

2. Puerto Rico: 639.05

3. Washington, D.C.: 590.72

4. New Mexico: 587.94

5. Montana: 543.48

6. North Dakota: 528.70

7. Wyoming: 514.43

8. South Dakota: 502.79

9. Arizona: 489.04

10. New York: 471.53

11. Mississippi: 458.46

12. West Virginia: 455.69

13. Rhode Island: 452.49

14. Delaware: 448.26

15. Louisiana: 443.48

16. Vermont: 429.13

17. Hawaii: 414.58

18. Kentucky: 410.39

19: Michigan: 392.12

20. Massachusetts: 380.56

21. Maine: 380.56

22. Pennsylvania: 377.45

U.S. average: 371.34

23. Florida: 371.34

24. Illinois: 369.76

25. Oklahoma: 367.91

26. Alabama: 366.23

27. Texas: 365.90

28. Arkansas: 357. 98

29. New Jersey: 357.98

30. South Carolina: 349.30

31. CALIFORNIA: 347.85

32. Ohio: 347.02

33. Connecticut: 345.04

34. Missouri: 343.04

35. Oregon: 343.40

36. Wisconsin: 339.77

37. Nebraska: 339.64

38. Tennessee: 335.59

39. Kansas: 333.86

40. Georgia: 324.29

41. Washington: 320.30

42. Virginia: 311.66

43. North Carolina: 311.14

44. Maryland: 308. 30

45. Indiana: 306.76

46. Idaho: 296. 47

47. New Hampshire: 290. 15

48. Minnesota: 218.98

49. Colorado: 281.98

50. Iowa: 296.45

51. Nevada: 263.03

52. Utah: 243.04

Source: Times analysis of U.S. Department of Education data.

Note: Figures do not include discretionary grants.