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Don't Forsake Poor Schoolchildren, Even in a Pandemic

Don't Forsake Poor Schoolchildren, Even in a Pandemic

(Bloomberg Opinion) -- The New York State budget recently signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo delivered a one-two punch to public schools. It wiped out the benefits of $716.9 million in federal stimulus aid and hit poor school districts hardest.

New York’s double-whammy could be replayed in states nationwide as the coronavirus pandemic devastates state and local finances. In Massachusetts, business groups are recommending that the state delay meeting the obligations of last year’s ground-breaking school-funding law, which called for $1.5 billion in extra spending over seven years, much of it for poor districts. And this week, when California is expected to release a revised version of the state budget, schools could see as much as 15 percent, or $1,700 per student, slashed in 2020-2021 — more than the worst year of the Great Recession.

It might seem unreasonable to focus on school-financing inequities in the middle of the pandemic, which is crushing economic activity across the board and pulverizing government budgets. However, lessons from the 2008 recession suggest that unless states start planning soon both for extra education funding and a more equal distribution of the money, the damage to poor districts will be long-lasting.

That’s why states should resist the temptation to follow New York’s lead. Cuomo’s cuts shredded the part of the budget that provides extra funding to districts with comparatively low tax bases. Thus, poor New York districts will receive, on average, $230 less per student than they would have gotten under January’s budget proposal, compared to $30 less per student in affluent districts — even taking into account the federal stimulus — according to an analysis for Chalkbeat by Drew Atchison, an education economist.

Instead, states should lessen the damage to the poorest districts, which suffered the brunt of Great Recession cuts. In 2008, high-poverty districts lost more than three times the $500-per-pupil funding loss of affluent districts. Test scores and graduation rates suffered. Although school funding increased after recent nationwide teacher protests, at least a dozen states still fund schools well below pre-2008 levels.

With state and local tax revenues, which account for most education spending, expected to fall sharply, the federal government will have to play a much larger role in supplementing education budgets. That means that Education Secretary Betsy Devos should shelve her plan to finance pet programs of dubious value, like vouchers and virtual schools, with the $13.5 billion school-aid package passed by Congress in the wake of the pandemic.

Future federal aid should require states to protect funding for the poorest districts, which can make a huge difference to disadvantaged students.

That’s one key lesson of Massachusetts’ historic 1993 education reform law, which provided over $1 billion in extra education funding — mostly for poor communities — and helped the state achieve top scores on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, the nation’s report card. By 2000, the test-score gap between black and white students had actually narrowed before tax cuts and the 2008 recession eroded school spending and widened inequality.

School-equity advocates are hoping for help from the courts, which over the last four decades have tended to rule for litigants seeking redress for unequal or inadequate school financing. These cases also serve as a reminder of an American commitment to education rights that stretches back to the founding fathers and was “reborn” following the Civil War, according to Derek Black, a legal scholar and author of Schoolhouse Burning.

Last month, a federal court found a constitutional right to a basic education in a controversial case that argued that Michigan had deprived Detroit students of “access to literacy” by neglecting their educational needs.

Another class-action suit seeking to make education a constitutional right accuses Rhode Island of failing to provide disadvantaged students with skills needed to participate effectively in a democracy. A ruling on that case is expected any day.

And the conservative U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit recently gave a green light to a lawsuit arguing that Mississippi violated the Reconstruction-era terms of its readmission to the union following the Civil War by failing to enforce its own constitution’s guarantee of “a uniform system of free public schools.”

There’s a long distance between the Michigan and Mississippi rulings and a broad recognition of schooling as a fundamental right, and the financing requirements that would follow. However, politics could prove a powerful lever, especially in purple states like Michigan, where Governor Gretchen Whitmer, a progressive Democrat, won election by a landslide in 2018, promising, among other things, increased education spending.

Years of funding cuts have created bipartisan support for public education even in fiscally conservative districts in Indiana and Wisconsin, where voters recently approved ballot measures that would increase taxes to fund schools. That’s a lesson worth heeding, especially in an election year.

This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.

Andrea Gabor, a former editor at Business Week and U.S. News & World Report, is the Bloomberg chair of business journalism at Baruch College of the City University of New York and the author of "After the Education Wars: How Smart Schools Upend the Business of Reform."

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