Governor Brewer’s school performance funding proposal, SB1444, passed the Senate Education and Appropriation Committees and is awaiting Senate Committee of the Whole action. According to Capitol insiders it will be held in the Senate and left for budget discussions.
The bill, intended to reward performance through the “achievement funding;” and “improvement funding.”
Many are saying that the plan falls into the trap of behaving as if more money will improve education when the reality is that how money is spent is often a more important variable for student success than the total amount spent.
An analysis done by the Arizona Education Association finds, in a comparison of four school districts ranked A, B, C and D:
A district like Chandler Unified that is currently ranked “A” stands to gain money under this proposal, whereas a large Title 1 population school district like Cartwright which is “B” will have to grow an impressive 5 points to get the initial funding that Chandler will receive right up front for being an “A” district. A “C” ranked district like Phoenix Union will have a much harder climb for new money and even lose funding if they gain a point in the first year. A “D” district like Gila Bend loses money under the proposal until they gain three points, and that financial gain is only an additional $3.74 per student. Lastly, if you are an “A” or “B” district, you can go down points and still gain new dollars. If a “C” or “D” district under the same scenario goes down points, they lose money immediately.
TUSD’s superintendent, John Pedicone told the Arizona Republic that poorer students don’t do as well and as a result his district would take a large financial hit. “It’s not an excuse when those students don’t perform well,” said Pedicone. “But it is a reality that people need to understand. It takes resources and a different kind of effort to work with students in that situation.”
However, districts like TUSD have perpetuated failure through social promotion. Social promotion allows students to move through systems, in some cases, without developing any academic skills while still collecting monies for those neglected students.
The Arizona Ready Education Council, the governor’s advisory group on school reform, recommended the performance funding due to their frustration with failing districts. Dale Frost, Brewer’s education-policy adviser, told the Republic, “For far too long, the incentives have not been based on learning. They’ve been based on putting kids in seats. Any kind of performance pay plan where everybody wins isn’t much of an incentive.”
Public school activists who support reforms say the incentive program will hurt poor districts without ensuring that the district will change their failed policies.
They say that the notion of rewarding districts for better student performance is not new; it has been tried in different places at different times.They note that the results never seem to match the stated desire to “force” districts to improve or lose funding. Districts that have systemic problems almost never improve enough to enjoy extra “performance funding.” The results always seem to reward those districts that are wealthier to begin with.
There are a very limited number of ways to get those districts that serve poorer students to perform better, and history does not show performance based incentives to be one of them. If the legislature wants to move more districts from being C or D districts to being A or B districts a better approach might be requiring districts with lower student achievement to spend a significantly higher percentage of their total revenue in the classroom; where the extra money will actually help improve student learning, and less on administration; where the money has little or no impact on how much students learn.
The result would be fewer administrators and more student achievement, which nearly everyone believes is a desirable outcome.