Equitable Community Control: A Missing Link in Our Still Separate and Unequal Schools
Amid the ceaseless reform efforts to restore the promise of public education, we have turned away from the most important stakeholder in solving educational disparities: communities. Specifically, we have failed to empower those who are most likely to be oppressed in the public school system and are least likely to access higher education, but who naturally best understand the obstacles they face. The student and family voices of those affected by the leading factors contributing to educational disparities lack the opportunity to meaningfully participate in the educational decision making process. Said factors are poverty, inadequate health care, racial bias, trauma (at times generational), the “school-to-prison” pipeline, racially biased curriculum, and inadequate school funding, among others. Regardless of what reform efforts take place, as long as reforms fail to be accountable to the most disadvantaged students, families, and communities, our public school system will continue to fail these communities and, thereby, continue providing them with fewer opportunities than their more affluent counterparts.
Still, the public education system in America remains inherently racist. It is evident the groups mostly affected by educational inequity exist among racial lines, with whites having access to more educational opportunities than students of color.[1] Despite the ample evidence proving school desegregation works,[2] however, American schools today are more segregated than they were in the 1960s.[3] As the Supreme Court obliterated the potential of mandatory desegregation, education equity advocates were left with a weakened legal toolset that requires supplementing it with creative alternatives consisting of racially neutral proxies. At some point, though, the varied efforts advocates exert to dismantle institutional racism in the public school system eventually encounter inevitable limitations. Amongst these, for example, advocates “ask students to change their belief system without changing the situation around them.”[4]
District Funding, by Racial Composition and Poverty Level
We have failed to identify a missing link in educational reform — equitable community control. That is, a public school paradigm and accountability shift that is accountable to the most affected populations and, thus, empowers these communities in the public education decision-making process. Although not yet formally recognized within education policy, equitable community control ultimately has the potential to enable community-organizing within these communities by empowering them directly and not solely through representatives working within the education system.
I. Reclaiming local control to expand “equitable community control”
A. Traditional views on local control focus on local governance
Recently, local control has received a negative reputation, eliciting social justice advocates to cringe at the sound of it. But like any complex idea, these approaches contain considerable levels of nuance as to be dismissed entirely. In education, local control refers to:
“(1) the governing and management of public schools by elected or appointed representatives serving on governing bodies, such as school boards or school committees, that are located in the communities served by the schools, and (2) the degree to which local leaders, institutions, and governing bodies can make independent or autonomous decisions about the governance and operation of public schools.”[5]
The focus of local control is not about how public education is funded, rather it pertains to local decision-making by school boards and school districts. Generally, local control supporters believe local government is much easier to run and control and creates more flexibility for school districts to provide tailored solutions to their individual community needs. While local control can certainly take varied forms of implementation, several supporters of local control do not advocate for public education to rely solely on local control. Many local control supporters believe the state should retain some oversight over school districts, especially in regards to making sure everyone throughout the state is receiving quality education. After all, state oversight is one of the only tools available to see if students who live in different zip codes are receiving a similar quality of educational opportunities and achieving similar educational outcomes.
B. Local control is mischaracterized in order to privatize education
However, the current rhetoric surrounding local control under the Trump administration distances the most marginalized students and families from attaining a meaningful opportunity to participate in school-wide and district-wide decisions. Overall, the connotations Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education under the Trump administration, gives to local control are a mischaracterization about what local control is really about. In practice, DeVos approaches local control as a strategy to defund federal monies from public education[6] and leaving it to the states to provide the lost federal education funding.
Moreover, this approach reallocates educational resources to fund private alternatives to education through private school vouchers[7] — what DeVos cunningly hails as expanding school choice. When education privatization is pushed under the veil of school choice, such as in the current administration’s initiatives, school choice is devoid of local control, but school choice does not have to be that way.[8] Overall, though, private school vouchers in practice could exacerbate racial and socio-economic school segregation by: (1) disproportionately serving patterns of “white flight” and “wealthy flight” from public schools and (2) not providing full tuition and transportation costs for low-income students seeking to integrate into private schools, making it practically impossible for these students to make use of the voucher system.[9]
Ironically, the Trump administration’s version of local control expands federal power by unilaterally attempting to repeal certain initiatives that were largely adopted state-by-state and not through federal mandates.[10] Under this camouflaged presentation of privatization as local control, well-intentioned citizens who seek promoting quality education in underserved communities turn away from local control initiatives that truly have the potential of empowering the communities they seek to serve. With this, opponents of educational equity shatter the promise of public education by simultaneously achieving two outcomes: (1) Transferring federal funds to private schools and (2) disempowering even more the most oppressed communities.
C. Community empowerment calls for more than local control
The limitations of traditional local control approaches lie within how all decision-making authority is usually placed on school boards and superintendents and not necessarily on community members. Although school board members are elected, they decide the extent to which community members are included in critical district-wide decisions. Sometimes, though, community members are able to participate in district-wide committees but are only able to offer recommendations that way. Many times these committees will have one or a handful, at best, of parents participating in the committee. There is also no guarantee these parents represent community interests that do not align with their own. Moreover, it is almost unheard of that students participate in these committees, much less participate in all-student committees. School-district officials may or may not have district-wide policies requiring them to implement the recommendations of the committee. And even if they do, there is no guarantee these committees have any influence over how school monies are spent. Thus, community members rely solely on their relationship with these gatekeepers as the only leverage they hold to influence district-wide or school-wide policies or initiatives.
The students and parents who are probably more likely to influence decision makers are also not likely to be students or parents of color. According to the U.S. Department of Education, “while students of color are expected to make up 56 percent of the student population by 2024, the elementary and secondary educator workforce is still overwhelmingly white.”[11] So even if some parents and students are able to influence their school board or superintendent, it remains unlikely that the most marginalized populations are able to access district-wide decision-making opportunities without concerted community-outreach efforts by the school district.
But what if communities had more ownership over shaping schools? What if we could incorporate structures or procedures that enable community organizing? What if “neighborhood” schools were truly community schools? For one, some policy models already exist where more influence is placed on some of the most disadvantaged communities, such as California’s Local Control Funding Formula, which is discussed in part II of this piece. Ideally, though, equitable community control would primarily include students and then the adults — the parents, the teachers, and the administrators. Under equitable community control, stakeholders would have more flexibility to decide how to approach myriad education issues in ways that are tailored to the specific needs of their community, whether it regards school discipline, curriculum, teacher preparation, or other issues. And yet, equitable community control could only work if it focused on the most marginalized groups while differentiating instruction for all students.
II. Creating equitable accountability to communities through school funding
A. California’s Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) and Local Control Accountability Plans (LCAP)
California’s school funding law widely supports local control through a formula that simplifies how state funding is provided to local educational agencies.[12] The law provides more autonomy to local districts by giving them greater flexibility over how they choose to spend state funding. “Under the old funding system, each school district was funded based on a unique revenue limit, multiplied by its average daily attendance (ADA).”[13] In the old system, districts received restricted funding in different categorical programs,[14] which meant school districts could only use the restricted funds for specific programs, regardless of whether schools had other urgent needs. Under the LCFF, most state categorical programs have been eliminated.[15] Furthermore, the LCFF also aims to fully fund education by the year 2021 through phased-in funding increments.[16]
The LCFF aims to improve outcomes by providing more resources to meet the education needs of low-income students, English language learners and foster youth. The LCFF creates base allocation funding for all students and then provides additional “supplemental” and “concentration” funding for low-income, foster youth, and English language learner students (“high-needs students”).[17] Thus, depending on the percentage of students a school district has of these populations, school districts with higher concentrations will receive more funding than a district of the same size that serves fewer students within the aforementioned populations.[18]
What is unique and most promising about LCFF is what school districts must do in exchange of greater flexibility. “School districts must provide greater transparency to local communities on how the money will be spent by producing a 3-year spending and academic plan called the Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP).”[19] Under LCAPs, school districts are required to report certain progress indicators identified by the state and “must explain in its local spending plan how its use of supplemental and concentration funds will ‘increase or improve services’ for high-need students ‘in proportion to the increase in’ supplemental and concentration funds it receives.”[20]
B. Legal background on school funding in Washington
While school funding is not exclusively the answer to solving educational disparities,[21] it is by no means a reason to not fully fund public education and not provide supplemental funding to the populations needing more from our public education system.[22] In Washington, the state is currently not fully funding the K-12 system, and school districts’ over reliance on property levies has created a system that delivers unequal quality of education. Article IX, Sections 1 and 2 of the state Constitution declares that: (1) it is the paramount duty of the state to make ample provision for the education of the state’s children; and (2) the Legislature is required to provide for a general and uniform system of public schools.[23]
Beginning with Seattle School District №1 v. State,[24] the Washington Supreme Court held that the state constitution creates a state duty to define and fully fund a program of basic education, and creates a corresponding right in the state’s children to receive educational opportunities. In January of 2012, the court issued its ruling in McCleary v. State[25] where it held the state had failed to meet its Article IX duty to fully fund the cost of its basic education program. The court explained the State must amply provide for the education of all children as the state’s highest priority before any other state programs. The funding must be ample, providing more funding than just adequate. The court also explained basic education must provide the basic knowledge and skills needed to compete in today’s economy and democracy. Furthermore, the court held the state could not over rely on local tax levies to properly fund education and retained jurisdiction over the case. However, this mandate has not yet been fulfilled.
C. Washington’s Prototypical School Funding Formula
State funding for the Instructional Program of Basic Education in Washington is allocated through a funding formula based on assumed class size and the administrative, instructional, and classified staff needed for a prototypical elementary, middle, or high school of a particular size.[26] Generally, this is a distribution formula and there are few restrictions to how school districts use basic education instructional funds to implement particular instructional approaches or services. On March 2014, the prototypical school funding formula was changed to reflect Washington’s class size reduction measure (Initiative Measure №1351).[27]
School districts receive supplemental funding for categorical programs such as the Learning Assistance Program (LAP), the Transitional Bilingual Instructional Program (TBIP), and the Highly Capable Program, which is expressed as a per-student allocation.[28] School districts cannot use categorical supplemental funding for students outside of the student subgroups that generate these funds.[29] Funding for Special Education is through an excess cost allocation, which is a specified percent of the Basic Education allocation.[30]
In the 2013–2014 school year, on a statewide basis, school districts spent $10,642 per student.[31] The prototypical school funding formula generated the following approximate state funding per-student:
Although Washington provides state equitable school funding, there remains an overreliance on local property tax levies to fund public education in certain Washingtonian communities — perpetuating Washington’s separate and unequal schools. Current law allows for some school districts to raise more money in property tax levies than others. The Levy Lid Act allows school districts to raise up to 28% of their school district budgets through property tax levies,[37] but 90 school districts have been grandfathered into a levy lid between 28% and 38%.[38]
D. Recommendations for Washington State
Before equitable community control can become a reality in Washington, the state must fully fund public education, eliminate any opportunity to fund public education through tax levies, and require school districts to provide greater transparency and accountability to marginalized student populations. School districts with more low-income students are unable to acquire as much money through property levies as wealthier communities. Certain school districts are also unable to raise the minimum 28% levy lid allowed by law. As a result, school districts should not be allowed to raise any percentage of their budget through property tax levies.
While Washington does provide equitable school funding, there is wide disproportionality within it and more needs to be done to empower marginalized communities. Despite Washington providing funding in more categories of student subgroups than California, it does not include homeless students and foster youth. Meanwhile, the state provides more funds for special education students — a program that is strictly regulated by federal laws — providing further proof that certain student subgroups need more funding to achieve a basic education. Analogous to California’s LCFF, Washington should provide additional “concentration” funds for school districts with higher populations of underserved student subgroups. The use of supplemental funds should provide school districts flexibility to tailor services to specific community needs. Beyond also developing accountability mechanisms analogous to California’s Local Control Accountability Plans (LCAP), Washington must require equitable community participation and feedback implementation before the plans and school district budgets are approved. This would, in turn, incentivize local community organizing efforts.
Conclusion
The lack of equitable community control and adequate school funding is at the crux of dismantling racism in K-12 education. It has now been over 38 years since Washingtonians have been waiting for the state to fulfill its paramount duty — i.e., fully fund basic education. According to the Washington Supreme Court, paramount duty means the State must fund education as the first and highest priority before any other state program.[39] Ample funding means more than just adequate funding.[40] The state must fund a basic education that prepares all students to compete in today’s economy and meaningfully participate in our state’s democracy.[41] In order to fulfill this vision, though, underserved student populations will require more funding than more affluent student subgroups. To secure their success, local school districts must be accountable to these populations. For this, our children can wait no longer.
[1] See, e.g., Gillian B. White, The Data Are Damning: How Race Influences School Funding, The Atlantic (Sept. 30, 201), https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/public-school-funding-and-the-role-of-race/408085 (“Research shows that in Pennsylvania’s public schools skin color, not economics, determines how much money districts get.”); See also infra chart “District Funding, by Racial Composition and Poverty Level.”
[2] See, e.g., David Card & Jesse Rothstein, Racial Segregation and The Black-White Test Score Gap, National Bureau of Economic Research (March 2006), http://www.nber.org/papers/w12078 (finding that the black-white test score gap is higher in more segregated cities)
[3] See, e.g., Lindsey Cook, U.S. Education: Still Separate and Unequal, U.S. News & World Report (Jan. 28, 2015), https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2015/01/28/us-education-still-separate-and-unequal.
[4] See, e.g., Aisha Sultan, The Limitations of Teaching ‘Grit’ in the Classroom, The Atlantic (Dec. 2, 2015) https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2015/12/when-grit-isnt-enough/418269/.
[5]See, e.g., The Glossary of Education Reform for Journalists, Parents, and Community Members, The Great Schools Partnership (Feb. 18, 2016), http://edglossary.org/local-control/.
[6] See, e.g., David Lauter, Education: Trump Wants More Money for Vouchers, Cuts Elsewhere, Los Angeles Times (Mar. 16, 2017), http://www.latimes.com/politics/washington/la-na-essential-washington-updates-education-trump-wants-more-money-for-1489667030-htmlstory.html (“The Trump administration wants to spend $1.4 billion to expand vouchers, including for private schools, and would pay for it with deep cuts to federal aid to public schools, according to budget documents released Thursday….The $1.4 billion in the budget for the fiscal year that begins Oct. 1 would be the down payment on a program that would be ‘ramping up to an annual total of $20 billion,’ the budget says.”); Emma Brown, What a Trump presidency means for America’s public schools, The Washington Post (Nov. 10, 2016), https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/education/wp/2016/11/10/what-a-trump-presidency-means-for-americas-public-schools/?utm_term=.e8d6680432bb (“The nation currently spends about $15 billion on Title I, the federal program meant for the education of poor children, and analysts attempting to understand the impact of Trump’s proposal have assumed that these are the dollars that would be redirected to vouchers.”).
[7] See id.; see also Louis Freedberg, Trump choice for secretary of education calls for ‘local control’ of schools, EdSource (Dec. 12, 2016), https://edsource.org/2016/trump-choice-for-secretary-of-education-calls-for-local-control-of-schools/574155 (“DeVos, who has spent decades promoting the idea of “school choice,” which includes expanding access to charter schools and taxpayer-supported vouchers for private schools, did not spell out what she meant by local control. It is therefore impossible to know the extent to which the concept is similar to or in conflict with the push to give local school districts more decision-making powers in California.”).
[8] In Washington state, charter schools operating under public funds have been ruled unconstitutional. Under League of Women Voters of Wash. v. State, 355 P.3d 1131 (Wash. 2015), the Supreme Court of Washington reasoned public-school funds were improperly diverted to private organizations that are not subject to local voter control. Thus, “public” charter schools should have elected boards and not appointed boards if they seek to receive public funds. Furthermore, effective “choice” gives parents and students “a great “choice” of educational offerings is better accomplished by supporting and strengthening neighborhood public schools with a menu of proven policies, from early childhood education to after-school and summer programs to improved teacher pre-service training to improved student health and nutrition programs. All of these yield much higher returns than the minor, if any, gains that have been estimated for voucher students.” See, e.g., Martin Carnoy, School vouchers are not a proven strategy for improving student achievement, Economic Policy Institute (Feb. 28, 2017), http://www.epi.org/publication/school-vouchers-are-not-a-proven-strategy-for-improving-student-achievement/.
[9] See, e.g., Richard D. Kahlenberg, Why Private School Vouchers Could Exacerbate School Segregation, The Century Foundation (Dec. 19, 2016), https://tcf.org/content/commentary/private-school-vouchers-exacerbate-school-segregation/.
[10] See, e.g., Matt Barnum, Trump’s Education Paradox: Return Schools to Local Control — By Expanding Federal Power?, The 74 (Nov. 10, 2016), https://www.the74million.org/article/trumps-education-paradox-return-schools-to-local-control-by-expanding-federal-power (“Trump and others in the GOP opposed to the Common Core have insisted that the Common Core is a federal program. It is true that the Obama administration nudged states to adopt the standards by giving them extra points in their applications for his $4.3 billion Race to the Top fund, Obama’s signature education program, if the states adopted comprehensive education standards. But states were not forced to adopt the standards. The standards were developed by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School officers.”).
[11] See, e.g., The State of Racial Diversity in the Educator Workforce, U.S. Department of Education, Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development, Policy and Program Studies Service (Jul. 2016), http://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/highered/racial-diversity/state-racial-diversity- workforce.pdf (“The term “white” in this report refers to a socially constructed category of individuals who self- identify as white and non-Hispanic.”)
[12] See Frequently asked questions and answers regarding the Local Control Funding Formula, California Department of Education, http://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/aa/lc/lcfffaq.asp, last visited Friday, March 17, 2017.
[13] Id.
[14] Id.
[15] Id.
[16] See, e.g., John Fensterwald, New school funding formula to get huge increase, EdSource (Jun. 9, 2015), https://edsource.org/2015/new-school-funding-formula-gets-huge-boost-in-state-budget-plan/81128.
[17] Id.; See also California’s New School Finance Law: Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), Public Advocates, Inc. http://www.publicadvocates.org/our-work/education/public-school-funding/lcff/ (last visited Friday, Mar. 17, 2017).
[18] See, e.g., California’s New School Finance Law: Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF), Public Advocates, Inc. http://www.publicadvocates.org/our-work/education/public-school-funding/lcff/ (last visited Friday, Mar. 17, 2017).
[19] Id.
[20] Id.
[21] See, e.g., Lindsey Cook, U.S. Education: Still Separate and Unequal, U.S. News & World Report (Jan. 28, 2015), https://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2015/01/28/us-education-still-separate-and-unequal.
[22] See, e.g., More Than 40% of Low-Income Schools Don’t Get a Fair Share of State and Local Funds, Department of Education Research Finds, U.S. Department of Education (Nov. 30, 2011), https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/more-40-low-income-schools-dont-get-fair-share-state-and-local-funds-department-, (“A new report from the U.S. Department of Education documents that schools serving low-income students are being shortchanged because school districts across the country are inequitably distributing their state and local funds.”).
[23] See Wash. Const. art. IX, § 1–2; see also McCleary v. State, 269 P.3d 227 (Wash. 2012).
[24] See Seattle Sch. Dist. №1 of King Cty. v. State, 585 P.2d 71 (1978).
[25] See McCleary v. State, 269 P.3d 227 (2012).
[26] Washington’s school funding formulas are found in different sections of the Washington Revised Code. See WASH. REV. CODE §§ 28A.150.260, 28A.165.035, 28A.180.060, 28A.300.540.
[27] See id.; see also Initiative Measure №1351, https://sos.wa.gov/_assets/elections/initiatives/FinalText_578.pdf (last visited Friday, Mar. 27, 2017).
[28] See WASH. REV. CODE § 28A.150.260.
[29] Id.
[30] Id.
[31] See A Citizen’s Guide to Washington State: K-12 Finance 2015, Senate Ways and Means Committee, Washington Legislature, http://leg.wa.gov/Senate/Committees/WM/Documents/K-12%20Booklet_2015%202-10-15.pdf (last visited Friday, Mar. 17, 2017)
[32] Id.
[33] Id.
[34] Id.
[35] Id.
[36] Id.
[37] See WASH. REV. CODE § 84.52.0531(7).
[38] See Jackie Hansman and Steve Shish, School District Property Tax Levies 2013 Collections, Washington Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction (Aug. 2013), http://www.k12.wa.us/safs/PUB/LEV/1314/levy13.pdf (“The levy authority percent for 205 districts is 28 percent. There are 90 districts that have been grandfathered at a levy authority between 28 and 38 percent.”)
[39] See McCleary v. State, 269 P.3d 227 (2012).
[40] See id.
[41] See id. at 249 (emphasis added) (citations omitted) (“‘All’ children under article IX, section 1 therefore encompasses ‘each and every child since each will be a member of, and participant in, this State’s democracy, society, and economy.’ No child is excluded.”).
