Account for school funding

CALIFORNIA TEACHERS CAN PREEN a little over the latest standardized test scores, which moved solidly upward in most grades and subjects. But the state and many school districts have less to brag about because poor and minority students, though their scores improved, aren’t catching up to the rest. In some cases, they’re lagging more than they were last year.

That may have something to do with the chronic under-funding of schools in poor neighborhoods.

The state has long used a convoluted and now thoroughly outdated formula to fund schools, based on the realities of a quarter-century ago. Some districts get thousands more dollars per student than others, for reasons that have nothing to do with student needs. In fact, it’s often schools in the wealthiest areas that get extra state money.

Now a study by Education Trust West, an advocacy group for minority and disadvantaged students, reveals that once the state’s urban school districts -- including Los Angeles Unified -- get their money, they also often divide it unequally among schools. That’s because more-affluent schools tend to attract more experienced teachers, who under union pay scales make significantly more money.

Less teaching experience isn’t always a bad thing. Many newer teachers are among the most motivated and exciting classroom instructors, while some experienced teachers take part in worthless workshops to boost their salaries as they mark time until retirement. But schools in low-income areas often contain many teachers who lack even the most basic training or who are teaching outside their area of expertise. Worse yet, they contain classes taught for the entire school year by substitutes with no real qualifications.

California is faring poorly under the federal No Child Left Behind Act. That’s partly because the act has some badly crafted expectations, calling for a set number of children in every ethnic or financial subgroup to meet a high performance bar. That’s not the way children learn and improve.

State officials are in talks with U.S. Education Secretary Margaret Spellings about a more realistic model, based on gains among each group of students from year to year. Spellings has shown welcome flexibility on this, but she won’t -- and shouldn’t -- settle for rules that allow disadvantaged students to remain behind. Even under the system the state wants to use, many of its schools would be listed as failing.

It’s not easy to change the educational future of students who have long been struggling in school and dropping out in large numbers. But the least the state can do is insist on equal funding for all students, with the money following each student instead of being doled out according to arcane state and district formulas. If some schools have lower-paid teachers, the difference should be made up with classroom aides, tutors or other special help. And federal funds intended to provide extra help for impoverished children shouldn’t be used, as they often are now in California, to pay for a school’s basic operations.

A reasonable first step would be for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to sign SB 687, which requires schools to report their per-pupil expenditures each year.

Once the funding discrepancies are made transparent, they should reveal not only senseless funding decisions but districts that spend too much on administration while giving the classroom short shrift. It will be harder for those practices to survive under the eye of an informed and angry public.