Equity

SB1 – Evidence Based Funding for IL?

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“We have to be able to count on each other doing what we have agreed to do.”
– Unknown

In Illinois, school funding is a major issue of inadequacy and inequity. The Illinois Constitution, in Article X, states:

SECTION 1.  GOAL - FREE SCHOOLS
    A fundamental goal of the People of the State is the
educational development of all persons to the limits of their
capacities. The State shall provide for an efficient system of high
quality public educational institutions and services. Education in public schools through the secondary level shall
be free. There may be such other free education as the
General Assembly provides by law. The State has the primary responsibility for financing
the system of public education. (Source: Illinois Constitution.)

Sadly in our school district 94% of financing for the public education comes from local sources – primarily the local property taxes. We must get the funding system back into a sustainable process.

With this blog post, I’m keeping you informed about legislation, politics, and a Vision 20/20 inspired bill called SB1. Read more if desired from the CTBA (Center for Tax and Budget Accountability).

In the State of Illinois the budget passed – this is the first state budget in two years – this is a “big deal”. For public education, though, the school funding “nuts and bolts” legislation is not yet approved and school starts in less than a month!

The following news article is written by Jessica Handy of Stand for Children. The mission of Stand For Children Illinois is:

TO ENSURE THAT ALL CHILDREN, REGARDLESS OF THEIR BACKGROUND, GRADUATE FROM HIGH SCHOOL PREPARED FOR, AND WITH ACCESS TO, college or career training.

We make that happen by:

  • Empowering everyday people to make a difference for their kids, schools, and communities.
  • Championing a bold and bipartisan approach to politics.
  • Advocating for lasting policies that improve education.

 

Confused About Budget & Funding Reform Link?

Current Events & News, Legislation, School Funding |07/07/2017

Jessica Handy
Government Affairs Director
Jessica works with parents, legislators, and other stakeholders to push for policy that puts children first.

Confused About the Link Between the Budget and School Funding Reform?

It all goes hand in hand: you can’t spend money you don’t have through a formula that doesn’t exist. That’s why in order to fix our worst-in-the-nation funding formula, ensure schools open this fall, and put our education system on a path of renewed stability, we need to enact three bills:

1. Senate Bill 1, to fix our broken school funding system.

2. Senate Bill 6, to appropriate the money to pay for schools (among other things).

3. Senate Bill 9, to support the revenue needed to pay for the budget.

About SB1: The Funding Formula

SB1 is the school funding formula overhaul that passed the House and Senate on May 31. School leaders and advocates from across the state support the Evidence-Based Funding Model created in the bill as a once-in-a-generation chance to fix Illinois’s outdated and inequitable school funding system. The Governor has said he will veto the bill, even though all schools win and the framework aligns with recommendations of his own commission.

SB1 is the only funding formula that has passed the state legislature in 20 years. Multitudes of others have been filed but failed, including a recent one that would require at least six committee and floor super-majority votes to get as far as SB1. As a practical matter and as a lead publication has said, that last-minute attempt “appears DOA.”

About SB6: The Budget

SB6, which was enacted into law with the General Assembly’s override of the Governor’s veto, authorizes state spending for the fiscal year that just started. It includes increases in the education budget, but overall, the budget spends about $2.5 billion less than current spending levels. The education budget is consistent with the school funding structure in SB1. Almost all of the state’s appropriation to schools would flow through the new, integrated Evidence-Based Funding Model. That’s $6.7 billion. Without an Evidence-Based Funding Model in place to fund the budget, schools would be out that $6.7 billion.

The reality is that last year, the legislature essentially froze the General State Aid formula in place and sent new school funds through a temporary “equity grant.” Our main funding formula has been put on hold for over a year now. Last year’s budget took a small step toward improving school funding equity, but also created the situation we’re in this year where there is no active, functioning school funding formula. Both the Republican-drafted budget in SB2214 and the Democrat-drafted budget in SB6 appropriated school funding through a new evidence-based model. It is critical that SB1 be enacted so that schools get the funding they need to open their doors this fall.

SB9: The Revenue Bill

SB9 restores most of the income tax increase that lapsed two and a half years ago. This bill is the hardest part of the package, but one that 72 courageous and compassionate representatives voted to pass this week (71 representatives voted to override the Governor’s veto and enact it into law). No one likes tax increases, but the prevalent kick-the-can-down-the-road attitude in Illinois has led to years of spending without having money in the bank to pay for it. Many who voted for SB9 are fiscal conservatives who understand that the interest on the debt that’s growing every day will necessitate bigger tax hikes the longer we wait.

With $15 billion in unpaid bills and almost three years without a full budget, this is the critical piece of the package that will finally provide the stability that our schools need for long-term planning. Categorical payments are months delayed. General State Aid payments had been made on time, but a recent court ruling put in serious jeopardy the state’s ability to even continue making those payments in a timely fashion. And only 144 of over 850 school districts have 90-days cash on hand.

Without the revenue bill, there is no doubt in my mind that some schools would be unable to keep their doors open this year. The schools most impacted by this delayed payment cycle are the neediest districts.

The Conclusion

The budget only works if we have the evidence-based model in place. The evidence-based model only works if we have a budget to fund it. Schools can’t count on state payments for the evidence-based model or anything else unless we have revenue in place to pay for it. These three bills are all interconnected.

If your state senator or representative voted for SB9, say thanks! They stepped up and put kids ahead of politics. But while you’re at it, remind them that the job isn’t done until SB1 also becomes law. You can visit our action center to help get SB1 over the finish line here.

#PassILBudget United Effort Across IL

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For almost two years, Illinois has operated with just a partial budget for education and a “stopgap” budget for most everything else, leading to cuts at local government entities, community service organizations and education agencies that support our families and communities. Even though education has been funded, schools and students still suffer due to the lack of certainty, inequitable funding and current unpaid bills from the state.

Let’s work together to #PassIllinoisBudget.

Illinois Budget Impasse FAQ

Q: How long has Illinois been without a full state budget?

A: As of April 24, 2017 we have operated more than 22 months without a full state budget.

Q: What does the budget impasse mean?

A: The country’s fifth-largest state has been operating with continuing appropriations and court-ordered spending, while the pile of unpaid bills grows to nearly $13 billion. The state has approved a partial budget for education and stopgap or band-aid measures for most everything else. This has meant frozen and reduced budgets at local government entities, community organizations, and education agencies that aim to support our families and all sectors of society. Without a budget we all suffer.

Q: How does the lack of a state budget impact the services provided?

A: School districts launched Pass Illinois’ Budget! in late April when school chiefs should already know their financial revenue situation for Fiscal Year 2018. Like any business, school districts need to know several months – preferably more – in advance how much money they’ll receive so that education leaders and elected board members can make thoughtful spending decisions, from hiring staff to allocations for curriculum, maintenance and repairs, and much more for the coming school year.

Q: Where does Illinois school funding currently come from?

A: The state’s education budget is primarily made up of local revenue, primarily property taxes, state funds, and federal funds. 

Q: What percentage of public school funding is Illinois responsible for and how much does it cover?

A: The state, by constitutional mandate, has the primary responsibility for funding its public schools but has never come close to covering even half the cost. Illinois ranks 50th in the nation for providing state funds for education.

Q: What is the problem with the current school funding formula?

A: The current funding formula does not adequately and equitably fund education in Illinois.

Q: Have there been any proposed solutions to fix the school funding formula?

A: There are some proposed solutions, but all require the state to pass a budget with revenue to support it.

Q: Why is the state behind on payments to school districts and which payments?

A: The state has delayed payments because there is not enough revenue being received by the state to cover the expenditures that are due. These unpaid bills are part of what’s called “Mandated Categoricals” and include funding  for special education, bilingual education, transportation, and other important services. 

Q: What are school leaders doing about the state’s financial situation?

A: More than 360 superintendents (as of 5 p.m. April 21)  are calling on the Illinois General Assembly and Governor Rauner to do the following:

  • Immediately, and with bipartisan support, end the state budget impasse.
  • Improve the state’s education funding formula and invest in students and schools, including higher education institutions.
  • Pay school districts what they are owed this year.

Q: What can parents of public school students and other Illinois residents do?

A: Speak up! Contact your local legislator. To find your local legislator, visit: https://openstates.org/find_your_legislator/ and ask them to make these three requests a priority:

  • Immediately, and with bipartisan support, end the state budget impasse.
  • Improve the state’s education funding formula and invest in students, including students in higher education institutions.
  • Pay school districts what they are owed this year.

Spread the word with friends and on social media with the hashtag #PassILBudget.

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Addressing Equity -Opportunity- Acceleration for All #Engage109

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“Continuous effort, not strength or intelligence is the key to unlocking our potential.” – Winston Churchill
 

In the Deerfield Public Schools, District 109, we have decided to make a change to mathematics program delivery models starting in

ENGAGE, INSPIRE, EMPOWER

the 2017-18 school year in the 6th grade. We are going to eliminate “regular math” and offer “accelerated math” for all.

We engaged in a comprehensive review of our own student performance (status, growth, standardized test results) data and decision making processes. We also consulted with our research analytics partners, the ECRA team, as well as board members, we are confident that the right steps moving forward involve changing the math delivery model in 6th grade. We also made this decision after speaking with district and building administrators and a comprehensive review of research and data.

This equitable math curriculum delivery model change is based upon a substantial body of educational research, two years of our student performance data analyzed by professional psychometricians, and our unified, ongoing desire to create and sustain the most effective and proven structures for student learning possible. 
This decision is also supported by emerging themes of needed differentiation stemming from the input and analysis of the strategic plan information (from more than 1700 people’s input).
  • Strategic Planning Update: Board of Education President Nick Begley commended his fellow Board members and the administrators for a productive strategic planning meeting on Saturday, January 21. Dr. Lubelfeld reported that the District gathered input from more than 1,700 people as part of the process. He explained that the strategic planning process is an opportunity for stakeholders provide guidance to the Board to set the path of the District. The District 109 Board reviewed all the input and worked with ECRA in a half-day workshop to develop a draft plan that  includes the mission, vision, portrait of a graduate, guiding principles, goals and objectives. The administrative team will meet on January 31 to review the objective statements as they begin to plan the action plans to meet the objectives and goals. At the February 13 Committee of the Whole meeting, the Board and administrative team will meet to bring together their work. The final plan will be presented to the Board for action at the March 20, 2017 meeting.

 

As district and building and community leaders,we feel it’s incumbent upon us to design instructional structures that meet the needs of all children and provide equitable educational opportunities for all students. The current delivery model is providing barriers to access for some students, denying them the best opportunity to successfully master grade level standards.
The fact that less than 27% of 6th grade students enrolled in regular math for the past two years met minimum standards is simply unacceptable. We are not assigning blame to any teachers, of course, yet we are also not willing to make excuses for these results or overlook these results.
In our local situation, we discovered that sixty two students were enrolled in regular math (over the past few years) yet they had similar historical achievement levels to 32 students in accelerated math.  The 32 students in accelerated math grew at higher rates than the 62 students in regular math.
 
The issues surrounding how to best meet the needs of students is part of a broader look at education in general. Over the years, most recently through John Hattie’s meta-analysis of school studies, researchers have “proven”/found” that various instructional methods and organizational approaches have differing effects on student learning. Hattie’s findings relating to ability-based grouping are simply not encouraging.
 
In considering changing the model of 6th grade math offerings, members of the administration have reviewed and studied an abundance of research related to tracking, ability grouping, and instruction. In addition, the partnership with ECRA Group has allowed us to review and analyze multiple points of local student performance data over the past few years in each “program.”
 
Sharing one of many videos about ability grouping – causing us to pause, think, and “unlearn” for children – ALL children!

Our 6th grade math model moving forward calls for four sections of accelerated math on each middle school team with TAP (our gifted ed and high achieving track) still remaining separate. We understand that this will be a change for our current sixth grade math teachers.
However, it is worth noting what will not change: 6th grade teachers will move from teaching 4 sections of 6th grade math to 4 sections of 6th grade math with the curriculum map standards (as the “floor” for all students, but the “ceiling” for none) remaining identical to what they are now. The expectation for differentiation is not new, it’s done every day in every K-5 classroom across the district, and it has been happening in our middle school classrooms as well for decades.
 
We believe children must be allowed to show competence and mastery of their grade level standards, and when they do, the teacher must allow them to move beyond in an effort to remove the limits on our students.
 
Finally, this entire change process directly relates to the PLC (professional learning communities) work in which we have been involved. There are four basic questions we all must continuously ask and reflect upon every day:
 
  1. What do we expect our children to know and be able to do? (As mentioned before, with this change the answer will be the same: the 6th grade CCSS for mathematics will be the floor for all students and the ceiling for none).
  2. How will we know if they learned it? (Again, largely nothing will change; we will continue to use MAP, PARCC, DCA, and ongoing daily formative assessment data to monitor our results)
  3. How will we respond when some children do not learn? (Our answer to this question, based on all available data the past two years, is the “why” of this whole movement. This is something we’ve examined extensively and–having done so–determined we must now respond systemically; something must change to determine if we can get better results moving forward)
  4. How will we respond when some students already know/can do? (We want to spend more time on answering this question next year with the acceleration for all model, in which we insist on 6th standards as floor for all, yet the ceiling for none. How can we individualize/personalize 6th grade math instruction to make sure the ceiling is limitless for kids)
 

Internally we shared some of the following background information and resource collection:

There has been a lot of discussion, thinking, review and reflection about the administration’s goal to reduce tracking at the sixth grade math level next year. Our aim is to raise expectations and remove limits to student growth by making all or just about all math (except TAP/gifted) accelerated. Our “acceleration for all” philosophy is driven by research, best practices, literature, experience, professional judgement, resources available to us, and the performance on the achievement test of children in the “regular” class for the past two years. One hypothesis for the poor performance is the ill effects of ability grouping/tracking as has been in place. In addition, the past few years offers us incredible gains and growth – never before seen or experienced in the district. Our student performance K-5 is impacting needed changes in models at grades 6-8.

Please see these videos for perspectives from experts on tracking and ability grouping:

This is a complex and multifaceted issue that tracking alone does not explain. We believe that raising expectations for all students in the current “regular track” will improve student performance.

Additional literature/research information on this well researched topic:

According to Mary Fletcher, there are many benefits to expect when instructional staff are conversant with and dedicated to differentiated instruction and detracking:

  • Differentiation allows more students to feel invested in the lesson, thereby decreasing behavioral problems. Students who previously opted to be viewed as “bad” rather than “stupid” will have their learning needs met and other talents explored, allowing them to drop the “bad” act and become instead a valuable member of the class.

  • Students who might have been considered less intelligent because they learn in a nontraditional way become invaluable contributors to the heterogeneous classroom.

  • Differentiated instruction encourages flexibility. Teachers thus become adept at adapting lessons to fulfill each student’s individual needs.

  • Detracking removes the limits that come with rigid thinking about how learning should and does occur. Fair does not always mean “the same.” For example, allowing a student who struggles with the physical act of writing to type his notes can benefit that student and the rest of the class. Not only does the student get access to the material, but the entire class has a reliable set of notes that can be used for those who were absent. This student now becomes an expert—and essential—note-taker who takes pride in his responsibility and sees himself as a member of the class.

Eliminate the Lowest Track First

There is little doubt that tracking does the most harm to students who are consigned to the lowest track. According to the National Research Council (NRC), low-track classes have an especially deleterious effect on learning, since such classes are “typically characterized by an exclusive focus on basic skills, low expectations, and the least qualified teachers” (Heubert & Hauser, 1999, p. 282).

The preponderance of research regarding low-track classes was so overwhelmingly negative that the NRC concluded that students should not be educated in low-track classes as they are currently designed (Heubert & Hauser, 1999). It makes sense, therefore, to begin by eliminating the classes that do the most harm to students.

Why Ability Grouping Doesn’t Work by Shirley Clarke

Detracking for Excellence and Equity compilation of research findings from several sources

Moving Beyond Tracking by Wm Mathis

From: The Mathematics of Hope: Moving from Performance to Learning in Mathematics Classrooms– Jo Boaler:

Other changes need to happen as well. Mathematics teachers need to stop frequent, timed testing; replace grades with diagnostic feedback (Black et al. 2002; Boaler & Foster 2014); and deemphasize speed, so that the students who think slowly and deeply are not led to believe they are not capable (Boaler, 2014). Perhaps most significantly and most radically, schools should also remove fixed student groupings that transmit fixed mindset messages and replace them with flexible groupings that recognize that students have different strengths at different times (Boaler 2009; Boaler & Foster 2014).

Keeping Track: The Policy and Practice of Curriculum Inequality (Oakes)

Current DPS 109 5th Grade Data to review for Placement Discussions

Potential Resources for teachers:

Jo Boaler’s Online course for Teachers

Why Do Americans Stink at Math by Elizabeth Green

The American Math Crisis– Forthcoming Math Documentary

The Stereotypes that Distort How Americans Teach and Learn Math by Jo Boaler

How Math Should Be Taught – Jo Boaler

When You Believe In Your Students They Do Better -Jo Boaler

As always we welcome comments, thoughts, challenges, examples, etc!