Cndi 2017 – Title I finance Affirmative

Plan + Solvency

Plan: The United States federal government should substantially increase its funding and regulation of elementary and secondary education through Title I by eliminating the state expenditure factor in the Title I formula, creating a separate provision of Title I to fund the School Improvement Program, requiring districts to ensure comparability among schools by calculating budgets based on actual costs, and implementing an interstate federal foundation program to oversee state funding distribution.

That solves – only targeted reforms at the federal level make funding effective.

Pasachoff 8 [Eloise Pasachoff (Professor of Law at Georgetown University, serves on the executive committee of the Education Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools, recipient of the Education Law Association's Steven S. Goldberg Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Education Law, M.P.A. from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School), “How the Federal Government Can Improve School Financing Systems”, The Brookings Institute, Center on Children & Families, January 2008, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/01_education_pasachoff.pdf]

Decades of interventions into school finance systems around the country have had some success in reducing inequity and increasing adequacy in the nation’s schools. However, more still needs to be done to ensure equal educational opportunity for all. The central premise of this working paper is that the federal government has an important role to play in this effort. In particular, federal education funding should be targeted to best promote equity and adequacy on a nationwide level. Moreover, especially in light of heightened federal expectations for state and local school systems, as called for by No Child Left Behind, it is appropriate for the federal government to take on a greater share of education financing. Accordingly, after reviewing the structure and recent history of American school financing, this working paper presents five recommendations for the federal government to improve school financing systems. The first three recommendations call for reconfiguring Title I to ensure that federal funding to support poor children is directed most sensibly state by state, district by district, and school by school. The fourth recommendation calls for increasing federal funding for special education programs so that the federal government provides 40 percent of the additional cost of educating children with disabilities, as has been the federal goal for decades. The final recommendation calls for an interstate federal foundation program to reduce disparities between states, as similar programs at the state level have reduced disparities between districts. Equality of educational opportunity is a widely held value in America, yet its existence in practice is all too lacking. Even after decades of intervention at the federal and state levels, the poverty of students and communities is still connected to lower educational achievement. Because educational achievement is strongly associated with success in later life, unequal educational opportunities play a significant role in the continuation of poverty from generation to generation.1 The issue of equal educational opportunity was part of the impetus for No Child Left Behind (NCLB), the 2001 reauthorization of the federal Elementary and Secondary Education Act. Discussion of the issue should feature both in NCLB’s upcoming reauthorization and in the 2008 presidential election campaign. In order to address the issue of equal educational opportunity, it is important to understand the problems and possibilities behind America’s school financing system – in particular, the role that the federal government has played in the past and can play in the future with respect to education funding. To that end, this working paper proceeds in two parts. The first part describes the system of school finance in the United States, examining our three-tiered structure of financing, the role of money in student achievement, and the history and results of 40 years of litigation to produce equity and adequacy in school finance. The second part presents five recommendations for restructuring the use of federal education dollars to improve equity and increase adequacy: Eliminate the state expenditure factor in the Title I formula and allocate Title I funds according to a state’s share of poor children, with a geographic cost adjustment. Fund the School Improvement Program under a separate provision of Title I instead of allowing states to transfer such funds from needy districts to less needy districts, and tie school improvement funds at least in part to the numbers of schools in need of improvement in each state. Require districts to ensure comparability among schools by calculating budgets based on the cost of actual teacher salaries and actual resources at each school before Title I funds are distributed. Increase funding for special education grants under Part B of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act such that the federal government provides the 40 percent of the additional costs of educating students with disabilities that has been its goal since 1975. Implement an interstate federal foundation program to lessen inequality in spending across states and to ensure adequate funding for states to reach the proficiency standards required by No Child Left Behind. The underlying premise of these recommendations is that so long as the federal government is spending in the education arena, it should use that spending to promote equity and adequacy insofar as it can, especially since only the federal government can ensure equity and adequacy on a national level. The last two recommendations additionally call for increased federal spending on the theory that it is appropriate for the federal government to take on a greater share of education financing in this time of increased federal expectations of state and local education systems. It is clear, of course, that simply throwing more money into the system is not itself an answer; how that money is spent matters greatly to student success. Decades of research are beginning to provide answers on which education investments provide better payoffs. An examination of particular education initiatives for the use of this money, however, lies beyond the scope of this paper on the structure of the financing system. Nor does this paper take the position that reforming school finance systems can alone solve the problem of unequal educational opportunity; disparities in access to and quality of health care, housing, and early care and education, as well as other factors, complicate the success of any solution in the sphere of education funding.2 Yet understanding each element of the problem is a necessary component of designing helpful interlocking solutions. As discussions about equal educational opportunity continue as part of both NCLB reauthorization and presidential campaigns, these five recommendations for the federal government to improve school financing systems are worth serious consideration.

Only enhanced federal funding can effectively finance education and solve interstate variation.

Ladd & Hansen 99 [Helen F. Ladd (Susan B. King Professor of Public Policy Studies and professor of economics at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy) and Janet S. Hansen, “Making Money Matter: Financing America's Schools”, National Academies Press, November 1999, p. 261]

A second argument for a greater funding role for the federal government emerges directly from analyses of funding inequities (Chapter 3). In their examination of 16,000 school districts, Evans et al. (1997) found that while within-state inequality fell slightly between 1982 and 1992, between-state inequality rose sharply. State government policies that are designed to improve intrastate inequality are not likely to improve interstate spending inequality. Only if education finance reform in states that is intended to reduce intrastate variation also raises the state average spending level and if the states pursuing such policies are those with relatively low per-pupil spending levels, would state-specific reform efforts reduce interstate differences. But these conditions are not always satisfied. Serious proposals to correct interstate inequality are most likely to require an increased federal role in financing education. Thus, this second rationale leads to an alternative policy option for a larger federal role, namely ensuring that all states can adequately fund their schools. The federal government will face the same challenges (described in Chapter 4) in determining an adequate level of per-pupil revenues for a district or school with the typical mix of students. Nevertheless, there are proxy measures that could be used in the meantime. Odden and Busch (1998), for example, suggest the national median level of basic education revenues per pupil. Although whatever measure is used at this point would be imprecise, it would represent an acknowledgement that only an enhanced federal role can address interstate funding inadequacies. Especially in an era when the nationwide education goal is to teach students in all states to high standards, the time may have come to consider a new federal role in education on the basis of educational adequacy. Such an approach would call for a new federal foundation program. An adequacy rationale at the state level leads to a foundation type of school finance structure; the state ensures that each district has an adequate level of education revenues so a district can educate an average student to specified performance standards and then would adjust this foundation amount by a factor that accounts for the higher costs of both students with special educational needs and geographic price differences for the educational inputs purchased. Each district would need to contribute financially to such a foundation base by making a required minimum tax effort. Districts that could not generate an adequate level of resources with the required tax effort would receive state aid to subsidize the difference. A new federal role could be similar. First, federal policy makers would have to define a federal foundation level of spending that would be adequate for the state or district with the typical student. They would then need to adjust this base level by a factor that accounted for differences in pupil needs as well as in educational input prices across states. The federal government could ensure that each state could generate the foundation level of funding by giving each state federal aid equal to the difference between the foundation level and the revenue that the state would generate based on a minimum tax effort. Provisions would also be needed to ensure that states distributed revenues to districts and schools so that they too had an adequate amount of revenues per pupil. To be sure, considerable analysis would be needed to determine nationwide, costand price-adjusted revenue per-pupil amount for each state and district and how the minimum tax effort would be defined. Nonetheless, the basic approach should be clear. Either of these policy options would require a substantial increase in federal revenues. Because of the existence of large federal surpluses at the current time, these ideas might have arrived at a fortunate time. Nevertheless, the politics for funding such new initiatives can be expected to be contentious.

Removing the SIP set-aside and increasing funding preserves equity.

Pasachoff 8 [Eloise Pasachoff (Professor of Law at Georgetown University, serves on the executive committee of the Education Law Section of the Association of American Law Schools, recipient of the Education Law Association's Steven S. Goldberg Award for Distinguished Scholarship in Education Law, M.P.A. from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and J.D. magna cum laude from Harvard Law School), “How the Federal Government Can Improve School Financing Systems”, The Brookings Institute, Center on Children & Families, January 2008, https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/01_education_pasachoff.pdf]

The 4 percent set-aside should be repealed. Instead, a different school improvement program that has been authorized but never fully implemented should be funded. This separate School Improvement Program envisions that states will apply for funds to distribute to districts as grants of between $50,000 and $500,000, renewable for up to two years.243 While the original authorization for this provision was $500 million for fiscal year 2002 and “such sums as may be necessary for each of the 5 succeeding fiscal years,” no moneys were actually appropriated for the first six years of the program’s existence.244 The first funding under this provision came in the continuing resolution for fiscal year 2007 at $125 million.245 Continuing this positive trend, the president’s fiscal year 2008 request includes $500 million under this provision, which both the House and Senate Appropriations Committees have approved.246 While providing funding under this program is an important step forward, the level proposed is not sufficient. At the $125 million of the fiscal year 2007 continuing resolution, the program could fund 2,500 schools with $50,000 grants or only 250 schools with $500,000 grants. At the $500 million on the table for fiscal year 2008, the program could fund 10,000 schools with $50,000 grants or only 1,000 schools with $500,000 grants. Yet in 2004-2005, the number of schools designated as in need of improvement was 11,000.247 Funding 11,000 schools with the $50,000 minimum grant envisioned by the program would require $550 million, and funding this number of schools at the $500,000 maximum grant envisioned would require $5.5 billion. Moreover, the calculation that 11,000 schools were in need of improvement was almost double the number of such schools two years earlier, and that figure is now three years out of date.248 To be sure, the current funding proposals assume that the separate school improvement fund will complement the 4 percent set-aside. Yet for the reasons discussed above, that set-aside is problematic, resulting in the neediest districts giving up the most money and not necessarily getting all of it back. The growing attention to funding the School Improvement Program is praiseworthy, then, but not yet sufficient. In addition, NCLB stipulates that funding for school improvement will be allotted in proportion with each state’s Title I money, without regard for the number of schools identified within each state as being in need of improvement.249 Yet as demonstrated by the comparison between Georgia, with increasing school improvement funds and decreasing numbers of schools in need of improvement, and Minnesota, in which just the opposite is true, this allocation is not wisely targeting school improvement funds according to need. Because of this disparity, state officials interviewed for the Center for American Progress study suggested that school improvement funds be allocated at least in part with respect to the numbers of schools in need of improvement.250 Of course, any plan to change the allocation of school improvement funds along these lines will need to consider a variety of issues, including the way that different states’ varying standards of accountability might impact the numbers of schools designated in need of improvement in each state, as well as the extent to which providing greater federal funds to states with increasing numbers of schools designated as being in need of improvement might create a harmful incentive structure.251 Such empirical questions need analysis; it is important not to design a system that rewards either low standards or failure. Yet the current system of allocating school improvement funds in proportion to each state’s share of Title I funds is itself problematic, given the great imbalance in funds available in each state compared with the numbers of schools in need of improvement in each state. At the very least, tying the allocation of state-by-state school improvement funds in some way to the numbers of schools in need of improvement in each state is an issue for future study.