Rebutting Weighted Student Funding: The New Magic Bullet

Weighted School Funding (WSF) is the new magic-bullet darling of the conservative education think tanks. First proposed earlier this summer in a report by the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, and next week the subject of a Center for American Progress conference in Washington featuring Rod Paige, John Podesta and others, it cleverly cloaks an anti-teacher wolf in pro-child sheepskin with a new way to resolve all the inequities that plague education finance today.  

Under this intra-district school funding method, dollars would follow the student to whatever public school his/her family chooses. (Some WSF advocates would omit the “public” in that sentence.) The dollars would reflect that child’s educational needs, and ensure that whatever school s/he attended would have fair funding and equally qualified teachers.

For years, critics have blamed the unequal distribution of experienced teachers between schools in richer and poorer communities on labor contract provisions that give senior teachers preference in school placements and transfers. Now that NYC has eliminated seniority transfers, another culprit must be found.

WSF supporters say this inequitable teacher distribution is the result of the way school districts allocate funding to schools. They argue that measured in real dollars schools in poor communities actually get much less funding than schools in richer communities, even after factoring in poverty-related funds like Title 1, because of the relatively low pay of their teachers, and this is clearly discriminatory.

The WSF remedy is for districts to send dollars, weighted for student needs, to schools, instead of allocating positions. Then schools in poor communities would receive more money and be better able to recruit more experienced teachers. But they do not say how this would happen.

What will change the competitive disadvantage of schools in poorer neighborhoods with greater challenges and tougher working conditions? And what will reduce the greater teacher attrition rate in those schools?

Under the current system, funding for teachers is provided to schools irrespective of the cost of the teachers. When schools are allocated positions, principals are free to hire teachers at any level of experience/cost. The fact that they have trouble doing so is not a function of what they have to spend but of the more difficult working conditions in their schools.

If they have dollars and not positions, won’t many principals prefer less experienced, cheaper teachers and shun senior teachers, thus freeing up more money for other needs? Would this not lead to age discrimination in hiring? WSF supporters say that principals won’t do that because they are held accountable for results, and so will seek the best teachers. But principals may think that other uses of those funds, like hiring test-prep companies, might raise scores more than experienced teachers would.

With WSF, proponents argue, more affluent schools would receive less funding and could no longer afford to hire all-senior staffs. This would free up more senior teachers to be hired by poor schools. But in areas like NYC, surrounded by more affluent school districts, it may also cause more senior teachers to flee to the suburbs.

Finally. one argument put forth by a WSF advocate (Paul Hill in Harvard Educational Review, Summer 2006) is that “many quality teachers want to work in [“troubled”] schools but they know that doing so goes against the incentives created by the placement system and school budget. Fearing they could be the only experienced teacher in a difficult situation, most teachers choose to work elsewhere.”  That is a real stretch, not backed by any study of why teachers choose or reject schools in which to work that I know of. 

Hill concludes that under WSF, “schools in low-income neighborhoods would have more money than their current teachers earn and would be able to bid for some of the experienced teachers who came along.” Again, with the current system of neutral funding, those schools can “bid” for those teachers now, and if they succeed, they will have the money to pay for them because he district funds positions, regardless of their cost.

If WSF supporters want to enable schools in rough neighborhoods to attract and retain more experienced teachers, they might consider several potentially more effective alternatives, like decent facilities, smaller classes and enough books, materials and supplies so teachers can do their jobs. In addition, targeted strategies can help:

·      More support for new teachers in those schools, including lighter teaching loads and more time for training, preparing and observing other teachers.

·      Opportunities for advancement for mid-level teachers, including taking on more responsibilities (like mentoring, curriculum development, planning school-wide projects) for additional pay.

·      Extra pay for teachers who meet qualifications and volunteer to teach in hard-to-staff schools.  

Those are to-the-point solutions to help bring the best teachers to where they are most needed. But could the WSF advocates really have another objective in mind?  Read Hill’s explanation of why low-income children get the least experienced teachers. 

He calls it the result of “a deliberate policy of budgetary distortion.” And, he says, “Districts have adopted [this policy] for one reason only — to enable implementation of the seniority placement provisions of collective bargaining agreements.”

Of course, we should have known. It always comes back to the teacher unions.

Well, if seniority placements was the problem, then the elimination of the seniority transfer plan should be the dawn of a new day in equity for children in NYC. And if it turns out that, even after some 3,000 transfers under the new Open Market system, some schools still manage to attract the most highly qualified teachers while others don’t, perhaps the pundits will have to look for something else to blame.

Like maybe someone should look at those successful schools and see that they are professional communities where the conditions respect both the teachers and the students.  Maybe that’s the elusive magic bullet to bring all students better schools and the best teachers. 

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