A Global Perspective in Policies for Funding Basic Education and Implications for California’s Public Education

When it comes to education and funding in the United States, what often comes to mind are the popular campaign slogans and proposals of progressive politicians: free college; cancel student debt. The premium on higher education is certainly straining the potential of the United States and its population to compete with foreign nations, however, while the premium on higher education is of great importance to resolve, the paramount issue of funding and educational outcomes at the secondary school level is significant, more so for schools that have a sizeable number of students that are socioeconomically disadvantaged. Nowhere can vast inequalities in the outcome in education be seen other than in California, a state with a diverse student population — a quarter which are considered English Language Learners — and rife with wealth inequality, hence the need for reform and federal intervention in public school funding policies to ensure equal opportunity for students of all backgrounds in an increasingly hypercompetitive global knowledge economy.

Within the state of California, many reforms have taken place since the 1970s in order to make funding per-pupil more equal across and within districts. Julien Lafortune lays it out clearly in his report, covering that the 1971 California Supreme Court declared the state’s public education funding system unconstitutional in Serrano v. Priest, prompting the state to construct a funding system that would cap the amount local property tax that each district could direct towards school funding (5). Despite equalizing funding, it is important to point out that limiting the amount of funding public schools are available to receive results in more harm than good. The harm became evident when Proposition 13 was passed by voters in 1978, which “placed a cap on property tax rates and restricted annual increases on property value,” (Marine, Boser) which left states with no other option than to rely on a “shrinking pot of money” to fund schools throughout the state (Semuels). These neoliberal market reforms, the cutting taxes to favor financial powers, are important as they result in the defunding of school districts throughout California, thus impairing the quality of education and the livelihoods of thousands; in California, Proposition 13 did exactly this, while funding for school districts was equalized, it was equalized downwards, meaning that there was now less money going towards the institutions and people who made quality education possible. While California has further reformed its public education system in recent years, as will be discussed and analyzed later in this essay, it is imperative that the federal government becomes involved in the public education system in order to address and rectify inequalities that hinder students, primarily disadvantaged students, in their advance toward a better life.

Americans still widely and largely believe that the federal government funds approximately one-third of public education, yet that could not be further away from the truth, as the federal government only funds about ten percent the cost of public education in the U.S. according to the Walton Family Foundation, a fact further vindicated with similar findings in Pasachoff’s report. Similarly, in California, the federal government covers roughly ten percent of public-school funding, with the state and local governments covering roughly forty-five percent each for school districts, granted, the state directs more funds districts which lack the local property taxes in order to equalize funding (Murphy and Paluch). This is largely what is at play in California and in many other states, but I’d like to emphasize California particularly for its stagnant public-school performance, much which seems to be a consequence of improper reform, lack of funding, and improper resource management — hence, the importance of involving the federal government in reforming the funding and standards for public education to ensure a quality education for all students.

Student performance at California’s public schools has remained stagnant over the course of two decades when looking at both recent Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium (SBAC) scores (Fensterwald and Willis) and Standardized Testing and Reporting (STAR) scores from 2000 to 2013 (Baron). This signifies that assessment reform, while useful for implementing of highlighting new curriculum, is not one of the major factors in preparing students for a lifetime of learning — albeit they are still useful for gauging general student progress. More importantly, the available resources students have in their classrooms and homes play a more significant role in their attainment of a quality education, such that financial reform of public education takes center stage. Following the decision made in Serrano v, Priest, California, despite holding “…the highest GDP of any state… ranks 41st in per-student funding, 45th in the percentage of taxable revenue spent of education, 45th in student teacher ratios and 48th in the number of staff per student,” (Flint). Regardless of California’s efforts to reform its public education funding system there are flaws that can only be addressed federally. Consider the passing of Proposition 98 in California which set the minimum spending requirements allotted for public education in California to 40 percent of the General Fund (Lafortune 5) which addressed the issues that Proposition 13 had introduced regarding funding, nevertheless it resulted in district funding becoming highly dependent on the “revenues and economic climate” (Johnson 5). For those that know recent U.S. history, the Great Recession did not bode well for anyone or anything, including California’s General Fund given its dependency on income taxes. As a result, California’s public schools suffered a loss in funding after spending of the general fund was reduced by a few billion dollars for a few years, as were programs that assisted families in poverty (“California state budget (2008–2009)”), with per-pupil spending decreasing by 23% following half a decade after the Great Recession (Murphy and Paluch), the consequence is noticeable in the STAR test results showing no improvement in the subsequent years as Baron’s graphs illustrate. Undoubtedly, should a recession of that magnitude happen again, students, especially those from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds, would bear the brunt of the damage as staff would be cut, student to teacher ratios would increase, and resources would be spread thin to across those that need help the most; this would further increase the gap of educational equality between the few who are fortunate and the plurality who are unfortunate, consequently perpetuating a cycle of social and economic inequality. Accordingly, modeling a federal program, one that intervenes on a larger scale than Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), No Child Left Behind (NCLB), and Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) could help address the shortcomings of the funding and educational models for public education in many states, including California.

For this reason, a federal program is necessary, not so much because a state is incompetent with policies it implements to fund their services, but because of the fact that the federal government can run a deficit in its spending, while states and cities cannot. This suggests that even during economic contractions, public schools would not have to worry about being able to spend money they do not have, so critical resources would not have to be cut to balance a state budget, as was the case in California. Furthermore, the federal government can utilize its ability to spend not only to equalizing funding, but to direct more funding schools that are composed of a student bodies that are socioeconomically disadvantaged, so that, even during times of great economic distress, the quality of education won’t be affected for those most vulnerable. The idea of government intervention in public education is not far-fetched, as Martin and Boser explain in their paper regarding former President Johnson’s signing into law the ESEA which sought to promote “quality and equality” in the education of young people via federal funding (Brenchley), more specifically assisting schools with a significant amount of socioeconomically disadvantaged students through Title I funding. Moreover, Semuels goes on to discuss how ESEA was re-authorized with the passage of NCLB and the subsequent rally against federal intervention in public education, as “schools struggled to keep up with testing requirements and progress reports.” Although NCLB sought to address disparities in the quality of education between schools by increasing federal funding (toward general programs and programs that help poorer students), making disparities transparent, and punishing schools for consistently performing poorly on assessments, which quickly earned the ire of many (“No Child Left Behind: Expanding the Promise, Guide to President Bush’s FY 2006 Education Agenda.”). However, just because NCLB wasn’t a clear victory, it demonstrates the ability of the government to increase funding to public schools while specifically targeting students most in need, something vitally needed in California and across the country to prepare students for a changing global economy that prioritizes knowledge.

President Johnson’s signing into law the ESEA, promoting the need for quality and equality in the nations education system, and subsequent federal laws don’t address the important matter regarding the United States lack of fundamental commitment to the education of its citizens at a federal level. The importance of a federal commitment to pre-tertiary education can be found by looking at other countries outperforming the United States on the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) which the National Center for Education Statistics defines as “… a study of 15-year-old students’ performance in reading, mathematics, and science literacy conducted every 3 years.” Countries such as Finland, Singapore, and Poland have their students perform significantly better than the United States in the 2018 PISA test results and previous PISA results. This raises the question, would federal involvement in the United States public education system assist in providing a quality education that closes the notable achievement gap between students in the United States?

Finland’s history demonstrates that a positive change in the quality of education is indeed possible. According to Tung, a graduate and writer of Stanford, Finland’s system of education wasn’t always as successful as it is now, with it being one of the lower achieving countries in all of Europe. What changed was Finland’s federal government addressing the issue, as it had promised in Section 16 of its Constitution to ensure that “‘Everyone has the right to basic education free of charge’ and this right guarantees citizens ‘the opportunity to develop themselves without being prevented by economic hardship,’” (Dickinson). By enshrining education, Finland’s government is communicating that a quality education at the pre-tertiary level is a priority. For instance, Finland, crafted narrow federal outlines for what schools should aim to achieve and cover beginning in the 1980s, while at the same time doing away with assessment-based teaching and stratification of students based on results, instead choosing to invest money into the social welfare of students, the resources available to them, and teacher quality (Darling-Hammond). The results are obvious when looking at Finland’s PISA results and Finland’s between-school variance on the test, which was significantly lower than many other countries, demonstrating that its policies led to improved educational opportunity for all schools, regardless of their social and economic composition. If the U.S. federal government took that leap of faith to commit to its citizenry a quality public education for all people in its Constitution, then it could ignite the change and outcomes desired of education for many of its struggling students, who often lack the guidance and support that they need to succeed as I witnessed firsthand as a teacher’s assistant for a remedial algebra class at my high school.

The reason this is important to me is because I could see myself in their shoes, as I was raised in a single parent home living along the poverty and near-poverty line with my four other siblings for what constitutes a majority of my life. The only reason I managed to make it to where I am now was because of the stratified system that placed me in advanced classes early on in elementary and allowed me to access the guidance and support that students from my background would be unable to access normally, especially students who that are English Language Learners, as my mom was when she immigrated here at the age of ten. So, when I rulings like that of California Supreme Court in CQE v. California where it’s essentially stated that “… there is no state constitutional guarantee of any level of education quality or minimum funding to support education,” (“Campaign for Quality Education v. California”), I imagine no other way to address the issue that affects those in poverty, those from broken families, and those new to the state other than through the federal government, as many issues of inequality have been dealt with in the past.

Unfortunately, the U.S. federal government has long held the view that public education is a duty unto which the states are mainly responsible for, but the passage of recent laws prove that it is capable of intervening in states education standards and funding in a beneficial way. In 2015, with the passage of the ESSA law, it did exactly that, by providing “…states and local school districts with supplemental funding to help address the particular needs of economically disadvantaged students,” (Heise 151) specifically by changing federal funding provided to states to block grants (“How the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) Will Impact Education Marketers”), allowing states to control direct funding to specific programs within the state that better accommodate disadvantaged students. On the other hand, a significant number of developed countries don’t spend as much per-pupil as here in the U.S., so more funding may not be the silver bullet.

When considering a global perspective, we can see that the United States spent roughly $16,000 per-pupil in 2017 according to Rushe, from The Guardian, with Canada, Germany, Finland, and South Korea following respectively, each spending thousands less per-pupil than the U.S. while achieving a higher quality of education. To add on, there is a research that the benefit of spending more on per-pupil funding lacks a strong connection with achievement (Chun 52–54). Even more disruptive to any presumptions held, even if notionally, is that California was spending about 90% more per-pupil than is actually reported, the discrepancy reaching about $25,000 per-pupil in Los Angeles County, several thousand off of what was reported (Chun 55). This paints a stark difference with Finland, a country that is five million strong, only spending around $10,000 per-pupil (Rushe). Likewise, Singapore spends around $10,000 per-pupil in basic education (“Singapore: Governance and Accountability”), and according to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Poland spends roughly $6,000 per-pupil in basic education, significantly lower than most other countries, yet it performs among the top in the quality of basic public education if the PISA results from the last decade are to be taken into consideration, granted, PISA only assess fifteen year old students every three years and does not convey the other underlying factors that could be affecting test results, such as rampant poverty in inner-cities, familial troubles, lingering racist policies that still haunt the layout of many cities, and other prominent issues. Even so, a test can still be a good standard to measure improvement within a country. On the contrary, Finland prides itself on not requiring students to take standardized tests, instead it uses “… school-made summative and diagnostic assessments to see where a student needs more help to be able to become successful,” (Matias 22), all the while not using the scores to compare students or different schools, but to cater to individual students who are struggling. However, such a system is only possible because on the best of the best are hired to be teachers in Finland, as it is seen as a high prestige career, whereas in the U.S. we’re all familiar with the saying “Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach,” which is meant to disparage educators for having what is considered a low-prestige career in the U.S., but I am of the belief that education and educators in the U.S. should be seen as forces for good that we should focus on improving in order to laude them as Finland does, but I digress. What Finland, Singapore, and Poland have in common is the national government funding a significant portion of their municipality’s public basic education, with the remaining costs usually being supplemented by the municipality, as is the case in Finland and Poland, or with Singapore’s more centralized system where funding is primarily received from the national government. In all cases, the governments determine the amount of funds to give based on the number of students and the number of students who fall under a plethora of categories that indicate need for extra support.

Similarly, in California, the passage of the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) in 2013 in the California legislature allowed for the more equitable distribution of funds to disadvantaged districts by giving “… districts greater spending flexibility, with the consolidation of many categorical aid programs — which fund specific areas or services — into unrestricted block grants,” (Lafortune). The significance of this being that it is easier for districts to invest in what they best see fit for their students, just as the other countries mentioned earlier did in order to raise the outcome of education for all of their students. More importantly, the concentration grants that go to districts with a high need, “… low income, English Learners, homeless, and/or foster youth,” (Lafortune) student body that is fifty-five percent and above. This is important because it directs more money to students that attend districts where the resources necessary for cultivating success in the modern world are not all present. Additionally, the LCFF also resulted in the construction of a school accountability system, California School Dashboard, to track and analyze school performance.

Unfortunately, I don’t think the school accountability system is encouraging when cross-referencing it with other systems, such as the California Department of Education’s Data Quest or Additional Reports and Data. I mention this because, while the school accountability system may be a good way to analyze other factors besides funding that could be affecting a quality return on secondary education, it can serve to mask inadequacies in schools, such as I believe I saw with the school I attended after comparing it with the more affluent and academically renowned schools located a few miles away, where despite the lackluster academic performance on Advance Placement Tests and National College Tests, the school I attended is depicted as performing the same or even better on the “college/career” metric in comparison to the more affluent and better performing schools. Although tests have their biases, they are largely one of the only methods available to tell if students are prepared for a more rigorous academic journey or if they need assistance as Finland prioritizes, at least in comparison to the manner in which the accountability system in California works, and I’m of the belief that we shouldn’t create new metrics, especially flashier ones, to disguise metrics that are more telling about whether or not students are being prepared to engage in more rigorous coursework that serves to expand their horizons and prepare them to be competitive at the global level.

In order to genuinely be successful in transforming the funding of education in California, and the U.S. in general, the U.S. Supreme Court would have to side with a plaintiff suing the U.S. federal government for not ensuring funding that addresses disparities between different public schools and school districts, as many school districts in the U.S. still receive their funding from property taxes, which as we know, disproportionately favors one group of people over another, perpetuating inequality in the quality of education that is able to be obtained at public institutions. By making education a federal matter, the U.S. would be able to invest into the areas of education that are significant in uplifting those from disadvantaged backgrounds while also producing the critical thinkers necessary to keep the U.S. dominant in an increasingly competitive world, otherwise the U.S. will be wasting precious time, as a result of students having to learn the basics necessary to achieve a higher education while in higher education, which is not productive — nor cheap given how long most students take to receive their bachelor’s degree on average. The implications of these conclusions are that, while there are social areas, such as family background and stability, that are important for addressing the ability for students to learn and achieve a quality education, it is first and foremost a question about the resources available to students to succeed that the U.S. should be focused; that is, producing quality teachers and tutors to help students understand and apply the curriculum they are learning.

So, with California having just recovered its public education funding levels from the Great Recession, and the implementation of laws that serve to best help disadvantaged students, it’s only a matter of time before we see the extent to which funding leads to academic success in public schools in California, and the U.S. in general, otherwise the future of the knowledge based economy that Americans have dominated for the past half-century may be ceded to countries that better recognize the importance of establishing an educational system that empowers everyone, yet, while education should be an important measure with how the U.S. and California rank in the world and how it prepares students for a hypercompetitive job market, it’s of greater importance to recognize how a quality education can serve as a vehicle to personal freedom. Therefore, the U.S. telos for intervening with public education funding and policy should be to ensure to make the best of every student regardless of their background, like Finland, Singapore, and Poland, all while not succumbing to a game of numbers, which is to say, money shouldn’t be the main concern, but neither should test scores. In doing so, the U.S. will truly be able to close the inequality gap in public education while offering the opportunity for all people to succeed at the local, state, national, and global level.

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