Editor’s note: This op-ed is by Rep. Ann Manwaring, D-Wilmington. She is a member of the House Appropriations Committee.
From the recently released study done by Lawrence O. Picus and Associates, a study commissioned by the Legislature last spring, we know that how the money gets into the Education Fund is equitable across all Vermont towns and cities, that a penny on the tax rate does indeed raise the same amount of money in all towns. We also know that when money is distributed on an equalized per pupil basis that spending also has achieved equity.
But we do not know from the Picus study whether that equity of input of money to the Education Fund purchases equal educational opportunity for all Vermont’s children as required by the Supreme Court in “Brigham,” “that to fulfill its constitutional obligation the State must ensure substantial equality of educational opportunity throughout Vermont.”
To address that question, the towns of Dover and Wilmington, home of some of Vermont’s many, many small schools, believe from the many years of crafting their school budgets under the constraints of Act 60/68 that the equity of input to education funding does not buy equal education opportunity for its children. Therefore, the two towns commissioned a study by Northern Economic Consulting of Westford, Vt., to find out. That study was released on Jan. 16. Among its finding are that:
•While under Act 60/68 the same school tax rate will allow the same dollar spending per pupil across Vermont towns, the same school tax rate does not lead to equal education opportunities.
•It also found that since 1997-98 per pupil spending nationally rose 30 percent, but in Vermont it rose 60 percent.
•And, finally, it found that student performance did not improve during the years when Act 60/68 governed, when compared with like demographic in other states.
What both studies tell us is that outcomes for all Vermont children are not consistent with the amount of money we spend. What the studies do not tell us is why, for all the money we spend, we don’t provide a world-class education for all Vermont children.
What else don’t we know about our education funding system?
For one, where is accountability in this system for outcomes and how is it linked to how much has been and needs to be spent? Under Act 60/68 the state has taken over the financing of education, yet has failed to establish the link to accountability for outcomes. At the state level, we are reduced to “asking” school budgets to remain level without any idea of what that means to the education outcomes of our children.
Why have we not put in place a uniform code of accounts for all schools so that we might finally be able to establish how the $1.3 billion in the education fund is really being spent and how that relates to student achievement.
If we continue on the track we’ve been on where the economic principle of economy of scale drives decisions at the state level, which now holds the power of the purse, at the same time local schools nd their voters are driven by the commitment to the best education for their children, we will remain in the current status where there exists an abyss between the state and local school districts where the levers of accountability between spending and outcomes simply don’t exist.
No amount of moving the pieces of the system around, say fewer supervisory districts or having the commissioner of Education report to the governor or creating Regional Education Districts (REDs) or other such districts will solve that problem.
We simply have put in place a system of funding education, while equitable in raising the money that goes into the Education Fund, has not gone the next step of putting in place a system from the state on down to local schools of delivering education where there is direct accountability between the decision to raise and spend and the results for our children.
