A Davidson County Chancellor ruled yesterday to dismiss the 18-year Small Schools lawsuit, as no issues related to the suit remain unresolved. This morning’s Commercial Appeal has the story.

Lewis Donelson, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, argued for keeping it open based upon intensive efforts by the state’s urban systems to change the formula so that they get more; the court responded that it does not deal with “what ifs,” but left open the option of re-opening the case if the BEP were repealed, or if substantial changes were made.

In this year’s annual BEP resolution, the Legislature again directed the BEP Review Committee to examine and make recommendations on moving to a system-level fiscal capacity model, which affects how the BEP funds are distributed based upon local governments’ ability to pay. Although such a recommendation was issued last year (see David v. Goliath), it failed to gain passage in the Legislature this year, probably because of the disparity in the winners and losers, along with the high cost of “holding harmless” those school systems that would lose significant funding.

I’m certain that it would be possible to develop a system-level fiscal capacity model that is fair, incorporating not only ability to pay, but also level of effort. The model proposed this year, developed by Harry Green of the Tennessee Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations (TACIR), incorporates variables like the value of taxable property, volume of taxable sales, state shared tax revenue, median household income, child poverty rate, and taxable real estate assessment. Nowhere in the formula will you find consideration of tax rate, nor the percentage of local taxes already devoted to education.

I could get into the details of the formula, but that’s another 3,000 words or so for another post.

Will the ruling to close the lawsuit — with the Chancellor’s caveat that is could be re-opened if significant changes are made — will cause the Legislature to rethink bowing to demands of the state’s largest cities for more funding at the expense of smaller systems?

Update:

An article in this morning’s Chattanooga Times-Free Press (or PDF here) quotes Jesse Register, Superintendent of Hamilton County Schools, as saying:

“I think it’s good the case has been dismissed, because that means it’s been settled,” Dr. Register said. “I’m hopeful now with the small systems lawsuit out of the way that other inequities in the funding formula that don’t treat the urban systems well will be addressed, too.”

The TFP article does not directly quote the Chancellor, whose remarks in the AP story linked at the top indicate that any major changes would be considered grounds for reopening the suit, and (attorney for the plaintiffs) Donelson’s argument against the dismissal specifically referenced the urban systems’ push for change.

Further down, it’s clear that Hamilton County Commissioners didn’t make that connection either:

Hamilton County Commission Chairman Larry Henry said he and several other members of the commission are prepared to enter a lawsuit to change the BEP formula, if need be.

“We’re nowhere near where we ought to be (in terms of funding), and that puts an unnecessary burden on the citizens of Hamilton County,” he said. “That would be a last resort, but if it’s what we have to do, it’s what we have to do.”

Seems we’ll have to wait a bit before drawing conclusions about whether it’s over or not.

Talk abounds lately of the anticipated surplus in state revenue, along with various proposals for how to use it. From today’s Tennessean:

Items that lawmakers want to use the extra money for include: an incentive for moviemakers to come to Tennessee to film hit movies; a boost for higher education; more money for hospital trauma centers; and relief for state taxpayers.

Higher Education would certainly be one good suggestion, since that area has been notably neglected in the last few years. The shortfall has been made up, of course, by steep tuition hikes and things like larger classes or fewer course offerings.

I haven’t seen published reports of anyone in Nashville suggesting some relief to the state’s public school systems, other than a slight increase in BEP funding for at-risk and ESL students that was proposed long before any talk of a budget surplus. It would certainly please me to see someone stand up in the Legislature and make the case for directing the money toward covering State mandates that now fall more heavily than ever on local government.

Even if it were in the form of one-time assistance rather than a change in recurring allocations, it would help. Anything that is required by the State but paid for, in whole or in part, by local government is undisputedly a burden on the taxpayer — and any assistance given by the state lightens that burden on the local taxpayer.

Perhaps the only reason no one’s talking about it is that it would be too hard for the Legislature to claim credit, and most ordinary folks would see it as the efficiency of their local government instead.

Yesterday, the US Department of Education selected Tennessee and North Carolina to test a new way of meeting NCLB standards: by measuring growth (thus, being able to predict future proficiency) rather than an absolute benchmark. The News-Sentinel and Tennessean both carried stories about it today.

Measuring growth is also known as “value-added,” where students are tracked individually, at the classroom level, school level, and system level to determine not only what a student knows at that moment in time, but how much they have learned since the previous year.

Isn’t that the point?

The reality is that human beings are different: some are born with more potential, some are born to families with more resources or whose parents place a high emphasis on learning. Those children are known to perform better on achievement tests, thus creating the impression that the school is meeting expectations.

But think for a moment about a classroom of children without those advantages — kids who may have only one parent, parent(s) without much education, who started out as much as a couple of years behind their more advantaged peers. Yet, a really good teacher can help these students catch up, often resulting in more than a year’s worth of achievement in a given year.

If in 4th grade, these children started out two years behind their more fortunate counterparts, but by the end of the year were only a half-year behind them, one would have to assume not only adequate yearly progress, but good progress, even though they had still not achieved the same level as the more advantaged group.

Under the current NCLB law, progress doesn’t matter — just whether every kid achieves a certain score, regardless of circumstances. The pilot project in Tennessee and North Carolina will make actual progress count, and will eliminate one of the sticking points that has frustrated the education community since the law’s enactment.

Several other states had applied to be part of the demonstration, but lacked the data collection and tracking that Tennessee has been using since 1992. Value-added analysis and student tracking is one of things Tennessee does best, and using individual student data to analyze areas of weakness is a powerful tool for ensuring that every child learns.

This is cause for celebration, and incentive to do the best for every child on an individual basis.

How appropriate that the sun is shining this morning, after a a stormy first half of the week.

Yesterday, HB1849/*SB0872, a bill allowing elected superintendents (at the discretion of County Commission) failed in the House Education Committee on a 6-9 vote. For that, I am thankful.

Superintendents (now called Directors of Schools, but old habits die hard) have a difficult job — one of managing large budgets, personnel, and implementing policy set by an elected board. It’s decidedly a job for a professional, and the type of expertise needed by a school system varies depending on its immediate and long-term goals.

The qualities needed to be elected to public office may or may not be consistent with the qualities needed in a professional director of schools. Worse, most school systems in this state would have a rather limited pool to choose from simply due to population limitations. When Oak Ridge chose a new Director of Schools several years ago, the Board conducted a national search with the assistance of the Tennessee School Boards Association for recruiting and screening.

The present system demands a largely cooperative relationship between the Director and the elected Board of Education, with the former being accountable to the latter. The Board is accountable to the electorate, with the front-line educators insulated from the politics of it all. As they should be.

Voting against HB1849 in committee yesterday were John Hood, Mark Maddox, Joe Towns, Ulysses Jones, Larry Turner, Tommie Brown, Gerald McCormick, Dolores Gresham, and Speaker Jimmy Naifeh — I’ll be writing each of them today to thank them.

Voting for the bill were Les Winningham, Harry Brooks, Richard Montgomery, Beth Harwell, John Mark Windle, and Eric Swafford. These are not bad people; indeed, at least two (that I know of) have served as school superintendents before. They were, however, pressured by their respective county commissions, and voted wrongly on this one.

* * * BEP/Fiscal Capacity
On Tuesday, the News Sentinel reported that House sponsors of an effort to change the BEP’s fiscal capacity formula to a flawed model favoring the four largest metro school systems abandoned the cause for this year, with plans going forward for a study this summer to achieve a consensus on funding changes.

Change is desperately needed, but not the kind where money is just moved around from one system to another. If we are to improve statewide, then the State must commit to pay for those things it requires, while giving local governments the option to provide more if they so choose.

I’ll take a temporary win over a permanent loss, but we have to make sure that cities like Oak Ridge, Kingsport, Athens, Cleveland, Tullahoma, Clinton, and Murfreesboro have a seat at the table when changes are discussed.

Having dogged this issue for almost two years now, I’ll say it again: we can’t give up until this proposal is dead, buried, with grass growing on top.

The Commercial Appeal reports that an education task force formed to study consolidation of the Memphis and Shelby County school systems has instead reported on three potential methods to change the way those school systems are funded, without consolidating.

All three freeze the current school system boundaries, to avoid the conflict that inevitably arises when Memphis annexes property, and the residents don’t want to change from Shelby County to Memphis City Schools.

The differences fall in who gets taxed more, and whether those tax dollars stay in the resident’s school district or go predominantly toward the other. In all cases, taxing authority is removed from the City or County government, and placed in the hands of the school boards (and/or State Legislature).

Despite the fact that under the current system, for every dollar raised by Shelby County taxpayers for their own schools, $3 goes to the Memphis City Schools (due to the fact that the County system has three times as many students), the fact that Memphis teacher salaries are the highest in the state, and that Memphis spends more per student than any school system in Tennessee, Memphis school officials aren’t happy with the proposals:

“Every time the community, the powers-that-be, have a conversation about schools, I feel like Memphis city schools comes second,” Memphis school board member Wanda Halbert said. “That’s starting to weigh heavy on me.”

I think what would weigh heavy on me is spending that much money to produce the worst results in the state. I know that Memphis has a higher density of students that are more difficult — more expensive — to educate, but sooner or later, someone’s going to have to come up with a plan that correlates dollars with results.

That doesn’t mean that they have to produce the greatest number of National Merit Finalists, but there has to be a workable plan for improvement. Perhaps a good start would be to require that teachers show positive value-added scores for any pay increase (including cost-of-living); step increases should require documentation of extraordinary gains — perhaps measured by a combination of value-added test scores and other means.

Just paying the same teachers more — more than any others in the state — clearly isn’t getting the job done.

One of the drivers behind the move to a system-level fiscal capacity formula for determining levels of state education funding is the phenomenon of shared vs. unshared revenue. In short, counties must share all locally-derived education funds between all school systems in the county, where cities with municipal school systems may augment that funding from additional property or sales taxes, without sharing with the county.

Of course, this means that city residents are paying higher taxes in order to support funding their schools better; it also means that counties have no way to close the gap in per-pupil spending, since any increase on behalf of the county generates a proportional increase to any municipal system within the county as well.

SB888/HB1263 (McNally/Winningham) would provide a remedy to that problem, but one that is completely at the county commission’s discretion, by enabling counties to increase property taxes in areas outside municipal school districts, with the proceeds going only to the county school system. In short, it would give counties a source of unshared revenue just like cities have, enabling them to narrow or close the gap in local per-pupil funding.

Passage of this legislation would remove the purported justification for the mistreatment of municipal school systems in TACIR’s proposed system-level fiscal capacity formula, where higher taxes paid for education by city residents are counted as a measure of wealth (reducing state funding) rather than effort (which should increase state funding, but does not).

It would not fix the core problem, which is the State’s chronic underfunding of education generally. It would, however, provide local governments with a way to address the problem of disparity between city and county school funding at the local level. It would also cause TACIR to re-evaluate the formula for determining fiscal capacity, and eliminate the factors that penalize cities for doing what they should be doing — and what the State should encourage rather than punish.

It survived the Senate committee process last year, but never made it to a vote in the full Senate (although it’s still active, being the second year of a two-year session); this year, the House companion has been deferred twice in the State & Local Government Committee, now scheduled for a committee vote on April 4. Stay tuned.

Since it’s entirely permissive rather than mandatory, there’s no reason to oppose it.

Tennessee has a number of “special school districts,” which differ from any other school district only in that the tax rate for education operations is set by the Legislature, by private act, according to the school board’s request. The result is that the county commission (or other local government) doesn’t have control of school funding; the other side of the coin is that school board members may incur greater blame for raising taxes (albeit indirectly).

For some years now, no new special school districts have been allowed to form. Legislation was introduced last year (HB1982/SB2062) that would allow existing school districts to convert to a special school district.

In counties that have been starved for funding by their county commissions — given only the amount required by law, which is not less than the year before — this bill would give relief and enable the school boards to make necessary budget improvements.

I wouldn’t advocate that Oak Ridge do so, but we have a much better working relationship with our City Council than most. Still, it could help many struggling school systems.

Although it passed the full Senate on May 11 of last year, it was amended as follows:

… any LEA in a county containing more than one (1) LEA with a total average daily membership (ADM) combined population that exceeds one hundred thousand (100,000), may convert to a special school district.

The only county in Tennessee with more than 100,000 students (average daily membership) is Shelby County. And they just happen to have two LEA’s (local education authorities, or school systems). Memphis City is already a special school district, so this bill was amended to apply only to Shelby County Schools. Who, incidentally, are not among the chronically underfunded.

The House version has not yet been amended, and is scheduled for subcommittee hearing tomorrow. I hope that they decline to amend it, and that the amendment can be dropped in conference committee.

I’ve long despised our Legislature’s practice of crafting generalized legislation then amending it to fit only a few; it’s always done is such a way that one has to look up population data to figure out who gets the benefit or the shaft. This case exemplifies the reason for my distrust.

HB3180 (McCormick) has been withdrawn, meaning that the only bill which specified a change to the BEP, mandating conversion to the TACIR prototype system-level fiscal capacity model is now dead for the year.

It’s always possible, I suppose, that existing pieces of budget legislation might be amended to do the same thing, so those of us concerned about the prospect of harming some school systems to help others will need to remain vigilant.

We need to support reforming the way Tennessee funds education, but we need to do so in a way that helps all school systems and harms none. I am proud to live in a community where the residents value education both with their checkbooks (via property taxes) and with their votes for like-minded City Council members, but I do feel sorry for educators and school boards in communities that are not as supportive.

Which comes first — support because a school system is high performing, or support to enable that higher level of performance? In the case of Oak Ridge, it’s hard to say. The school system was set up by the Manhattan Project (military) leadership during WWII, and well-funded specifically because the scientists and engineers that were needed for that effort were concerned that their children’s education be first-rate. As the City privatized, citizens chose to continue that to which they had come to expect.

Similarly, Kingsport has higher expectations due to the presence of Eastman Chemical (and the highly-educated parents who value education). But what about Greeneville — third on the list of cities who contribute the most per pupil from the City General Fund (and with the third highest ACT scores in the state)?

It’s not just genetics, and it’s not just money. It’s a combination of community and parent expectations of students, of teachers, and of themselves — with a will to invest both time and money for someone else’s immediate benefit.

But for today, I’ll celebrate this one small victory.

While Leadership classes in Knoxville and Chattanooga were in Nashville yesterday, they heard from the Governor that an overhaul in the way Tennessee funds education could come in a year or two. The News-Sentinel notes that there is not universal agreement on changes proposed to date:

The issue has become controversial in the Legislature. Proposed changes backed by Knox, Hamilton and other more urban counties are opposed by officials in areas that stand to lose state money if the changes occur. Oak Ridge is among the latter.

Controversy also stirred over a recent letter sent to 36,000 student households, urging parents to contact the Governor in support of the proposed BEP funding change. The letter compares Knox County’s BEP funding to that of Williamson County (Williamson County gets $328 more per student), deriving from that that Knox County is shortchanged by more than $17 million.

Bill Nolan, lobbyist for the City of Oak Ridge (and father of a talented ORHS student) accurately pointed out that if Knox County compared its funding with Hancock County, it would appear that they’re overfunded by $10 million.

The neighbor-against-neighbor fighting is unfortunate, because it’s almost certain we could agree on the basic, underlying issues:

1. State funding for education is not adequate. (adequacy defined)
2. If state funding were adequate, we wouldn’t have all these discussions (and lawsuits) about equity.
3. We would ALL benefit, economically and in quality of life, from raising the standard of education statewide. But that takes money, and we have to be willing to pay for it.

The big, bad, hairy monster in the closet is that the few communities in Tennessee that ARE ALREADY putting a priority on education are those with high local property tax rates. That’s where the money comes from. Municipal systems in particular benefit from city governments that agree on that priority and fund it, despite the fact that neighboring areas tout their lower tax rates to lure businesses and residents.

You can’t have it both ways.

PostScript:
James W. Guthrie, director of the Peabody Center for Education Policy, has an excellent editorial in Tuesday’s Commercial Appeal.