This commentary is by William J. Mathis, who is the managing director of the National Education Policy Center, a former school superintendent and a member of the Vermont State Board of Education. He lives in Goshen. The views expressed are his own.
[F]olks campaigning on the property tax and school spending issues have a particularly hard problem — they have to come up with something better. The Picus report and a panel of prestigious national finance scholars opined that Vermont’s school funding formula is arguably the fairest and most equitable system in the nation. Unfortunately, most of the solutions bandied about end up making the problem worse. Clothed in appealing and reformy-sounding phrases, they shift the burden to middle and lower income families.
Most people would agree that Vermont has a property tax and a school cost problem. Most people would also agree that tax solutions should be based on greater progressivity and on a broader base — the tax burden should be greater on those most able to pay them and school quality should not depend on a town’s property wealth. On reducing expenses, a multitude of gimmicks have been floated but they do not show strong promise.
Vermont attention has focused on three reports:
The Campaign for Vermont report is not really a plan. Instead, the author presents a collection of simple comparisons that fail to find strong relationships between school spending, test scores, district size, and income. This negative finding is used to imply that money doesn’t matter in education (page 7). While ideological “reports” will sometimes claim otherwise, this question has been settled in the educational, economic and legal domains for decades – money does matter. So why did he come up with no relationships? When you look in the dark and don’t see anything, it doesn’t mean nothing is there. The data as well as the analytic techniques were too simplistic. When you mush together different test scores with inconsistent measures of spending (some districts included special education, some had facilities costs, some had deficits) you get exactly what the author found — nothing.
House candidate Heidi Spear complains that Vermont has not made “a careful determination of the cost to deliver on their educational commitment.” Actually, at least three of these adequacy studies have been conducted in Vermont since 2002 and they called for increases between 13 percent and 20 percent. However, today’s circumstances may be different. Recent thinking suggests that current funding for needy students is too small.
It is ironic that many legislators calling for belt tightening also voted for new, costly mandates. To be sure, dual enrollment, early education, bullying prevention, concussion protection, corrections education and a host of other items are worthy and necessary initiatives. At the same time, they cost money and stretch school capacities.
Spear also claims that “Outside experts have not awarded Vermont top honors for funding equity.” Actually, they have. The National Report Card rates Vermont between fourth and sixth, depending on the year. Education Week ranks Vermont sixth in Quality Counts 2014. However, Spear correctly points to our high spending, waxes eloquently on unfunded mandates, and says consolidation will not solve funding problems. While calling for a “complete overhaul” of the funding system, what is missing are specific plans or proposals.
Gubernatorial candidate Scott Milne presents a grand, yet gauzy, plan for universal pre-K through college. In rough terms, he would cut K-12 education by one-third and use that to pay for universal higher education. How schools would be able to make such drastic cuts is unaddressed and the reallocated money would fall well short of what it would take to provide universal college. Doubling state payments to preschools is a laudable goal but how this will be funded (particularly with the call for reducing expenditures) is not explained.
In terms of cutting costs, Milne proposes cutting the number of supervisory unions from about 60 to 15, granting these new regional units budgetary and taxing authority, simplifying the state aid system, and eliminating grants to small schools. It’s unlikely that the state or the locals will embrace a new level of government.
Under the topic “foster(ing) transparency,” there is an opaque reference to separating income and property tax revenue streams. It is not clear whether this means that the existing income sensitized protection of middle and low income Vermonters against high property taxes will be eliminated or modified in some way.
Lizzie Borden’s apocryphal defense, after ax murdering her parents, was that the jury should have mercy on her because she is an orphan. It is ironic that many legislators calling for belt tightening also voted for new, costly mandates. To be sure, dual enrollment, early education, bullying prevention, concussion protection, corrections education and a host of other items are worthy and necessary initiatives. At the same time, they cost money and stretch school capacities.
We are still recovering from a shortfall in broad-based state contributions to the Education Fund. This has happened in combination with the loss of federal stimulus money. As a result, the reliance on the property tax has increased from 61 percent to 68 percent. In these circumstances, there are two inescapable issues.
First, 80 percent of school budgets are driven by personnel costs. In the face of declining enrollments, any significant savings will require judicious and thoughtful re-examination of personnel policies. Trying to address the issue by budget gimmickry (caps, freezes, state review panels, etc.) or tweaking formula components is merely fiddling with the symptoms.
Second, if the objective is property tax relief, we are inexorably driven toward broad-based and progressive tax changes. The most expeditious way of accomplishing this is by enhancing and improving the income sensitivity protections in the formula.
