SC Lawmakers Grapple With Education Funding
LEGISLATORS NAVIGATING A MASSIVE, IMPENETRABLE THICKET OF BUREAUCRACY-DRIVEN WASTE
FITSNews – July 23, 2008 – Several committees charged with examining South Carolina’s wasteful and convoluted education funding formulas could end up proposing sweeping changes to the way we pay for our children’s schooling.
According to several lawmakers engaged in the debate, the changes could pave the way for a simpler, more cost-effective method of disbursing education dollars – one that provides local schools with greatly-enhanced flexibility over their budgets.
“So far, our committee has just started to untangle the knot of education funding mechanisms,” State Rep. Jeff Duncan, a member of the House Education Finance Study Committee told us. “From what I’m hearing at all the committee meetings, we need a simpler funding mechanism that provides more flexibility to the districts.”
The State Senate and the State Department of Education are also looking at the issue with “study committees” of their own, although it is unclear if those efforts are nearing the same consensus as the House – which appears to be on the verge of adopting a long-overdue system where funding would follow the individual pupil, not bureaucratic programs.
“We’re leaning toward a system that funds each child, rather than specific programs,” Duncan said of the House Committee’s work. “But doing that is going to be daunting. We may get some resistance from the people who benefit from the programs that we currently fund.”
Funding that follows the child, also known as “backpacking” was the focus of a recent op-ed in the Greenville News by Randy Page, President of South Carolinians for Responsible Government.
From Page’s op-ed:
In South Carolina, public spending on K-12 education is a messy jumble of overlapping allocations that fund numerous programs and initiatives. Money goes to categories, not to students. The different ways in which the government collects money (sales tax, property tax, transfers, income tax, grants and bonds) tend to drive how the money is spent, never the other way around. While the sources of revenue are designed to be diverse, the funding model for actually delivering dollars to the classroom ought to be simple.
Nearly half of all annual spending on K-12 education in South Carolina is on programs. This means school districts get funding to administer programs designed by state and federal bureaucrats, and have no authority to use the money as they like. Each of these 70-plus programs has a code (or category) and most require their own accounting systems with precise rules on how the money can be used. This top-down approach stifles local planning and makes budgeting very unpredictable. The burden of managing the funds and accounting for their use draws valuable resources away from the classroom.
Rather than giving money to school districts via categories and programs, South Carolina should adopt one universal formula for all K-12 educational spending. A single weighted funding formula, specifically adjusted for the characteristics and situation of each child, offers built-in transparency and equity. It will free local educators to provide a more appropriate and responsive learning environment. This focused model of weighted per pupil allocation is commonly called “backpacking” or “smart funding.”
The basic argument is that a simplified funding stream tied to the individual child (and weighted for students with special needs or other mitigating circumstances) would a) eliminate excess bureaucracy, b) spread resources more evenly across the state (most of the South Carolina coast, for example, gets screwed under the current system) and c) push the primary responsibility for education into the hands of local decision-makers.
“People want three things,” said State Rep. Eric Bedingfield. “They want a system that is simple, equitable and flexible.”
Tom Davis, former Chief of Staff to Gov. Mark Sanford (and the Republican nominee for State Senate in historically under-funded Beaufort County), was one of the architects of the governor’s original streamlined education funding proposal in 2002. He also made fixing the state’s flawed formula a highlight of his successful Senate campaign last month.
“I was stunned to discover the extent to which the State Department of Education controls the allocation of our education dollars,” Davis told FITSNews. “Some dollars are sent to the districts, some are sent to schools, some are divided among schools, some are set aside for programs that may or may not be applicable to a school and so on. While the funding streams are as diverse as they are confusing, the one constant is the result they produce – a total lack of flexibility at the local level and a glaring absence of equity as it relates to individual school children.”
Davis also criticized the waste and duplication create at both the state and local level by the current “maze of archaic funding streams.”
“You’ve got a large corps of state bureaucrats which is employed to micro-manage this labyrinth of expenditures and formulas, while at the same time local school districts are forced to employ administrators of their own to comply with all the burdensome requirements those expenditures and formulas create,” Davis said. “Obviously, every dollar spent dealing with these unnecessary administrative mandates is a dollar that isn’t spent on our children.”
South Carolina currently spends an average of $11,570 per child through at least seventy different funding categories, although recent studies have shown that as little as 44 cents actually makes it into the classroom.
Many of these funding categories are fairly new, which is why it’s no surprise that the number of program administrators making $50,000 or more at the State Department of Education doubled from 1998-2006 under former Superintendent of Education Inez Tenenbaum.
Stay tuned for more from FITSNews as the education funding fight continues …
Comments
By smart Kid Grant on July 23rd, 2008 at 7:08 pm
I only wish that I could say something to this… sadly I know it all to be true. There needs to be some sort of great overhaul for the whole educational system in this state because right now, there is no consistency in the way money is distributed, and education levels at each school very from the top (Dutch Fork) where almost all will go to college to the Corridor of Shame where they are lucky to learn how to write a simple sentence. This is something that we must change very soon before all of our children will lose all of their opportunities that other places readily provide.
By jennifer on July 24th, 2008 at 12:24 am
Anyone who really wants to get into this issue should check out this study by the SC Policy Council, done by top experts in the country on funding the student. http://www.scpolicycouncil.com/publications_article.aspx?category_id=11&publication_id=66
This study outlines exactly how to fix this problem. It rolls up all the categories into a formula with a few weights, including for poverty and gifted and talented. There are some excellent recommendations in here on how to address specific problems. This study should serve as a model for legislators who really want substantive change. Good for Jeff Duncan and others who are taking on this complex issue….
By Not Only That on July 24th, 2008 at 9:32 am
The Department of Education didn’t create the bottomless pit of programs it is required to administer — the General Assembly and Congress did that. The Department does what the law requires and spends money the way the law dictates, so it’s not “bureaucracy-driven waste,” it’s Legislature-driven waste.
Rolling up the funding and having it follow the child won’t accomplish anything unless the General Assembly also eliminates the programs they require districts to offer and the Department to administer.
By baker on July 24th, 2008 at 9:47 am
A few thoughts:
– Any efforts to simplify education funding would make sense. The local officials. I spoke to a few years ago like Gov. Sanford’s ideas about streamlining the funding system so they’d have more flexibility.
– I’m not an expert on school funding. It’s really complicated. But my understanding is that at least some of the complexity has to do with all the various specific mandates from the state legislature. This isn’t to say that the state DOE doesn’t find way to muddle things further, but I don’t think it would be accurate to place the blame entirely on the DOE (much as the GOP likes to slam Jim Rex and Inez Tenenbaum).
– It’s interesting to note that Randy Page and others are touting flexibility for local school administrators. Don’t the SCRG and other folks usually derisively call those people “educrats”? My guess is that any attention Page is giving to funding mechanisms — especially the idea of a per-pupil “back-packing” — is ultimately aimed at putting that per-pupil tax allotment toward private school choice.
– Here we go again with the oft-cited claim that less than 50% of the money makes it to the classroom. Will uses it this time. As I and others have pointed out, the Policy Council’s claim is awfully shaky….The “study” they released a few years ago counted guidance counselors (required by law) and librarians (required by law, and obviously important as educators) against the public schools.
They also counted one-time building projects that were in some cases paid for by the state legislature. In other words, the GOP-majority legislature was helping schools put money toward improving their facilities, but then the Policy Council characterized this spending as waste on the part of public school — and then GOP legislators began citing the Policy Council’s report. Strange. So, technically, sure, they pointed to non-classroom spending. But if you looked at the whole picture, it was pretty shoddy work on the Policy Council’s part.
By Not Only That on July 24th, 2008 at 11:30 am
Something else readers of this website may not know. A few years ago, the Education Oversight Committee (the legislature, not the Department of Education) concluded that to fully fund all of the things the General Assembly requires schools to do, we’d have to add nearly $600 million to the state education budget. If we wanted to actually reach the standards we’ve set for student learning, we’d have to add $442 million. And to reach the national median, we’d have to add over a billion.
By Rob W. on July 24th, 2008 at 11:41 am
I can never understand why people think local control of schools will make things magically better. There are people who spend a lot of time studying how kids learn and how schools should be run. Why would we take decision-making power away from our most highly qualified administrators and educators and put it into the hands of less experienced, less educated, and more politically motivated school board members?
Also, I second Baker’s comments.
Trackbacks