The Massachusetts Education Funding System is Unsustainable — Here’s Why
Massachusetts leads the country in education, but the system’s shortcomings are vast
Meghan Kane, The Progressive Teen Staff Writer
Massachusetts is generally regarded as the best state in the nation for education, with a high school graduation rate of 87.5% and 42.7% of adults having at least a bachelor’s degree. In fact, Massachusetts is so advanced in education that if it were a country, its students would rank 9th in the world.
However, the state’s system has a number of faults and fallbacks — many of which are harmful to low-income districts and students.
Essentially, the way the Chapter 70 foundation budget works is that the state determines the minimum amount that it needs to give in funding to school districts, and the district fills in the rest through means such as taxes. The state aid amount is determined by factors such as enrollment and demographics, inflation, and wage adjustment. This is where a gap forms. Richer communities such as Lexington and Cambridge can afford to spend more per pupil, often paying up to 82.5% of their foundation budget because they can afford to spend such money on education. However, poorer communities such as Brockton cannot afford to fund education as heavily because they simply do not have the money to do so.
Therefore, such school districts experience lower-paid teachers, less access to school psychologists and guidance counselors, more dilapidated facilities, and less access to up-to-date textbooks and technology, despite the large emphasis being placed on technology’s role in a 21st Century classroom.
Massachusetts is home to an ever-growing population of ELL, or English Language Learner students. Total student enrollment in Massachusetts has dropped since 2000, but the number of ELL students has doubled to over 90,204 students, or 9.5% of the total student population. Furthermore, 90% of school districts have at least one ELL student, and 19% have 100 or more ELL students. The problem here is not the students themselves, as they have no choice in the circumstances that place them as an ELL student. The problem is how their accommodations are funded.
Massachusetts funds ELL students through their foundation budget, instead of having a separate budget through which funds are allocated to them. Special education, in contrast, has a separate budget. With the growing number of ELL students in the state, the foundation budget for each district is being stretched out so much that other services, such as literacy specialists for children below their reading level, are not being provided in schools as frequently as they are needed because schools are spending their budget on ELL accommodations instead.
Not only is the formula itself flawed, but another entity is sucking money out of the public education foundation budget. Charter schools, or independent schools that can operate outside of in-district regulations, give the atmosphere of a private school while still being publicly funded. Yes, while charter schools are mostly funded by tuition payments, they are still funded by its district’s foundation budget. Charter schools admittedly have some benefits, such as enhanced learning through smaller class sizes. However, the money that charter schools take from public funding hurts the existing public school in their respective districts, which perpetuates the cycle of more students going to charter schools to escape poor conditions in public schools and subsequently driving up the amount that charter schools absorb from the foundation budget. Charter schools themselves are not necessarily the problem, the way in which they are funded is the problem.
Three competing school finance bills are sitting on the floor of the State House, each drafted by Governor Baker, Rep. Paul Tucker, and Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz, respectively. The differences between the bills are vast, but hard to spot. Most differences are in special education rates and future employee benefits, but Sen. Diaz’s bill, known as the Education Promise Act, most notably proposes a $1.5 billion increase in foundation budget funding.
For more information, you can find each bill at https://malegislature.gov. Baker’s bill is H.70, the Promise Act is S.238/H.586, and Tucker’s bill is H.576. There are solutions to Massachusetts’ education problems, the debate is over which solution is the best long-term.
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