[image_credit]Creative Commons/RubyT[/image_credit]
Von Korff did bring compelling litigation in 2019 with the support of the School Board, Superintendent Willie Jett and leadership of the district. In St. Cloud Educational Rights Advocacy Council, Inc. v. Tim Walz, Governor, et al. the unfair and inadequate funding in Minnesota was exposed. Inadequate funding is one of the two primary causes of the achievement gap; the other is systemic inadequacies in the delivery of education.
The seminal case on this issue is Skeen v. State (1993). The Minnesota Supreme Court held that under the Education Clause of Minnesota’s Constitution, the state is obligated to provide sufficient funds for education that will enable each student to meet state standards. The court will not set aside the Legislature’s determination unless the funding system employed somehow impinges upon the adequacy with which the state meets the fundamental right to a general and uniform education.
The fastest growing segment of Minnesota’s future workforce is students of color, yet currently they have the state’s lowest graduation rate. Minnesota fails to provide enough funding to deliver an education that meets mandatory state standards to lower-income students, students with disabilities and English-language learners. The shortfall in special education alone is about $13 million annually in St. Cloud; one would hazard to guess where similarly situated districts like Minneapolis and St. Paul fall.
Funding shortfalls not only widened the achievement gap, but as Gov. Tim Walz recently acknowledged in his Due North education plan, education over the past years has not been equal, with outcomes depending on the color of your skin or your ZIP code.
[image_caption]Sarah Williams[/image_caption]
The case does not seek to have the courts micromanage schools. Rather, it seeks to enforce a good faith requirement when the Legislature is calculating the annual revenue allocations. A 2004 task force appointed by Gov. Tim Pawlenty began work to determine whether the formulas appropriately adjust state revenue allocations for legitimate cost differences between districts, including additional costs for “at-risk” students. An equitable formula would take into account the added costs included with relevant characteristics of each student, such as disabilities, poverty, school readiness, English Language Learners, and student mobility. Unfortunately, the task force never got a chance to complete its work.
The state’s current funding approach is the direct cause of the achievement gap. The relief Von Korff and his client seek is simply for the Legislature and governor to do their job as mandated by Skeen. The state should have a vested interest in the success of its children.
“A society that invests in its children reaps real and lasting economic and social benefits.” – Bruce Baker.
Sarah Williams is a third-year student at the University of St. Thomas School of Law, and is part of the Advanced Community Justice Project Clinic.
WANT TO ADD YOUR VOICE?
If you’re interested in joining the discussion, add your voice to the Comment section below — or consider writing a letter or a longer-form Community Voices commentary. (For more information about Community Voices, see our Submission Guidelines.)
“Inadequate funding is one of the two primary causes of the achievement gap; the other is systemic inadequacies in the delivery of education.”
“The state’s current funding approach is the direct cause of the achievement gap.”
Nope. Its poverty. Poverty (and wealth) is by far the biggest determiner of education outcomes. We should be spending more in poorer areas to try to make that up, but to blame the funding approach for the gap itself is just nonsense. Its just ignoring the real problem.
The problem is that we can’t just buy better test results. Student achievement just isn’t something that if for sale. And that isn’t anything
the prose in judicial opinions can change.
My guess is that we should spend m Bore on our schools. Certainly, that has always been my position, and that is the way I have always voted. But these issues are immensely complex, and involve factors beyond the powers of our schools to solve in isolation. While funding is a factor in what happens in our schools, the “Achievement gap” has many direct and indirect causes aside from the level funding in our schools. It is simply not the case that we can close the gap simply by fiddling with a few numbers in the education funding bill. To claim otherwise is to set unreasonably high expecataions which will inevitably disappointment with a lot of resulting political damage.
Ok, here’s the deal with gaps. Any story about any sort of gap is always two or more stories masquerading as one story. In the case of achievement gaps in education, what we are saying is that one group is not achieving as well as another group. The gap itself doesn’t exist in the real world, it is a statistical artifact, that can only be addressed by the two features of which it is a composite. An groud where education is concerned, focusing on the gap can be silly, if not dangerous. One way to reduce the gap, is to lower the achievement of the higher achieving group, and leaving the lower achieving group where they are, not a policy choice I would advocate.
No student is a statistic, and I don’t believe that treating them as statistics will get us very far at all, so let’s dump the numbers and address the problem. The simple and indisputable fact is that in Minnesota there are way too many kids whom we don’t teach nearly well enough. Why is that? What is the nature of our lack of success? Would more money help? I can tell you, I just don’t know. But what I do believe, is that there is no more difficult or challenging problem we face in our civic lives, and no problems more vulnerable to misunderstand or a malign politicization. We are all in this together.
“The simple and indisputable fact is that in Minnesota there are way too many kids whom we don’t teach nearly well enough.”
I absolutely would dispute that “fact.” I would agree that there are too many kids that are not getting an adequate education, but its not something that should be blamed on the teachers or schools. The strongest predictor of academic success is wealth. The best teachers in the world can’t overcome the poor nutrition, low-quality childcare, lack of reading and early education, lead paint in homes and other environmental factors that affect kids in poor families.
You can use schools to try to overcome these things – we had free breakfast for everyone qt St. Paul schools. But its not fair or accurate to say that the problem is caused by schools.
For working and urban folk, let’s turn schools into fully-staffed year-round community centers. Open, say, 6 am to 10 pm M-F. Kids falling behind could get additional help, in addition to myriad other benefits.
Schools already have everything, the building, transportation and parking, the cafeteria and food, classrooms, desks, computers, library, gym. Why should they ever close?
Good idea. Especially for working poor families.
Yes I would adjust my comment to include all communities, including rural. It’s hard to see it abused by those who don’t need it. The elites don’t want their kids mixing, although it would do them a world of good.
I agree, that is a good idea. It will cost roughly 160% more than the current budget (doubling the hours the building is open plus another 1/3 of the year during the summer. Add Pre-K and we’re roughly triple the current education spending. It would also require hiring roughly 50,000 employees state wide for that extra shift. You’ll get some savings on the physical buildings but there will be additional wear-and-tear from being open extra hours too. Are we really prepared to triple education spending overnight?
I like it. Great idea.
Totally not true! The main indicator for education is effort and time spent learning. Saying poor people can’t learn is just not true.
It absolutely is true. Wealth/poverty is absolutely the best predictor of academic performance. Its not that poor kids can’t learn – its that statistically they don’t. They have disadvantages that they can’t overcome in school.
Time spent learning is something that correlates to wealth and poverty. Wealthy parents can spend more time with their kids and are more involved with their education. Parents who work nights or multiple jobs can’t do the same.
Totally untrue. There are folks from every wealth level that have succeeded in school (and life) through effort. Saying “poor folks” can’t learn or somehow if you are born into a poor family you will struggle is pure class warfare. It is up to the individual and his family to overcome the public Government school system and folks like you that want to re-enforce “if you are poor the world is against you “. Give parents vouchers to send their child to the school that is right for them. This “I know what is best for YOUR child” nonsense has to come to an end.
Schools are there to teach child the basics, not discriminate against “poor folks”. Make sure schools spend their time teaching children not raising them!
I feel like I’m trying to explain masks or vaccines here.
I am not saying that no one can do it. That its impossible for poor people to become successful. Obviously, many do. But the biggest determiner of academic success and failure is wealth and poverty. That is an absolute facts.
By saying its effort, what you are saying is that poor people don’t put in the effort but rich people do. Now that is actual class warfare. Pretending that the rich and poor have a level playing field. That kids going hungry doesn’t effect their academic performance. That getting evicted from their homes and moving every year doesn’t have an effect. That not having parents around to read to them and help with homework doesn’t have an effect. That is real class warfare. The “effort” is a lot easier when you don’t have the built in disadvantages.
I’m still waiting for any of that mindset to explain why there are hundreds of millions who work very hard, give forth tremendous effort, yet still never succeed. After all, everyone who works hard is inevitably a success in their world, so what gives?
And here is how “effort” works:
I worked during the day so I was home at night to make sure my kids did their homework. And I could help them with that homework – with the exception maybe high school calculus – because of my educational background. There were consequences when grades slipped. There were consequences at home when kids got in trouble at school. The kids knew they were going to college because their parents went to college.
A lot of that doesn’t occur with poor families. Single parents. Parents working nights. Parents with limited education themselves. And I’m not saying the parents don’t care or are bad parents. I’m saying that their circumstances don’t allow them to emphasize education like I did with my kids. If you are worried about having enough to eat and paying rent, school takes a backseat. These are the kinds of things people with privilege take for granted.
Making time for important things is learning how to manage life. Nothing you just said makes any difference if you make learning a priority. Government, tax funded, public schools move a 2nd grader to 3rd grade when they cannot do 2nd grade work. By 4th grade if you can’t read, you will not learn to read in public schools but somehow you get moved from grade to grade until 18 years old… That is criminal!!
Making excuses and claiming poor folks can’t make it just feeds the negative narrative. The problem is, learning not being a priority and public schools failing our children. BTW, Mpls public schools get 20+k per student, so it is not a funding issue.
When you don’t have enough to eat and can’t afford your rent, making learning a priority is difficult. You can shame these people all you want, and blame schools for not fixing the problem, but it won’t solve anything.
This is the definition of the soft bigotry of low expectations. Meanwhile, poor immigrants from Asia are achieving at higher levels than even the allegedly privileged white kids. Because the parents (yes two) expect it and value it.
That’s a nice catchphrase, but it ignores the reality of how hunger and housing insecurity do make it difficult to get ahead.
You are ignoring the reality that poor people have agency and need people to stop lying to them about what they are capable of. They have more resources available than ever before but what they need is all the white saviors to get out of the way.
A little math: Kids go to school (actual education time) lets say 6 hrs a day for 165 days a year, 6*165=990 Hours in a school setting. 365*8= 2,920 hours sleeping, 8760 hours a year -990-2920= 4,850 hours a year for friends neighbors and family interaction. The moral of the story is the amount of time friends family and neighbors have to improve a child’s education is 4.90 what it is for a school. Perhaps the real answer is that schools cannot compensate for lack of educational promotion at the home, family, community level? I.E parents need to take responsibility for their kids outcomes, it isn’t just a school issue.
I would agree that there are too many kids that are not getting an adequate education, but its not something that should be blamed on the teachers or schools.
I am not blaming anyone, I am just saying that the fact is too many kids are not getting an adequate education.
“The strongest predictor of academic success is wealth.”
Well, we can’t make kids rich, so we need a plan B. And the fact is, plenty of kids do well in school whose parents aren’t wealthy.
” The best teachers in the world can’t overcome the poor nutrition, low-quality childcare, lack of reading and early education, lead paint in homes and other environmental factors that affect kids in poor families.”
There are lots of challenges in our schools. We need to address them, but we can’t allow them to become excuses for failuere.
“And the fact is, plenty of kids do well in school whose parents aren’t wealthy.”
Well, that is like saying plenty of pack-a-day smokers live to be healthy 90-year olds. But smoking does significantly reduce lifespans and health outcomes in the aggregate. And wealth and poverty are the greatest predictors of academic performance.
“Well, we can’t make kids rich, so we need a plan B.”
Well, I would like to think that we could lift kids out of poverty. But even if we can’t or won’t, you still have acknowledge that poverty is the biggest cause of the achievement gap. Ms. Williams’s piece does not do that – it is based on falsehoods.
“but we can’t allow them to become excuses for failuere.”
Who has failed? Schools? Teachers? If the cause for poor academic performance is poverty, and schools can’t overcome that, have they failed? You absolutely are blaming teachers for something that is out of their control. Which is the same thing the corporate education “reformers” do. Like Ms. Williams here, they ignore the biggest problem so they can go after teachers. We get nonsense terms like “School to prison pipeline” from them. Schools may not be able to save kids from the path they are on, but they aren’t sending them to prison. Simply telling the truth and acknolwedging the reality is not making excuses. Schools should absolutely try to help kids overcome their backgrounds. But you need to be honest about what is really happening, which this piece does not.
Now you wouldn’t be suggesting that we should be discussing what we shouldn’t be discussing? i.e. a piece of the problem may be that some parents are very ill-equipped, physiologically, socially, emotionally, financially, etc. to be a parent, or parents! And that we perhaps have a social/welfare net that still encourages them to be a parent or parents!
Well no, because no amount of shaming, blaming, punishing, or cajoling will stop people having sex, and by extension having kids. You wanna advocate tearing families apart, or forcing sterilization on the “undesirables’ you wish to see stop procreating, good luck with that, I suspect it’ll be a rather lonely hill to die on.
Congratulations, you have 100% fallen into the ultra left wing trap, not my problem the government should deal with it, no personal responsibility required, I just make them, you deal with em! Its everyone else’s fault but mine, my kids don’t achieve some level of success, the schools are to blame, social services are to blame, society is to blame, justice is to blame, neighborhood is to blame, everyone is to blame but me, sounds like a 100% T**** voter!
Objective reality is a “100% ultra left wing trap”? Ok then. Please, enlighten me as to how you’d propose eliminating a biological imperative our species has been compelled to perform since it’s earliest evolution, how you intend to solve an issue that’s plagued us for probably nigh on 100,000 years. I know back in the earliest days of our kind, there’s some rather compelling fossil evidence towards infanticide in the face of scarcity of resources, that the way you wanna go?
“Biological imperative”, thought the topic was “Minnesota must change its education-funding approach to address the achievement gap” are you suggesting we are wild animals unable to control sex drive and reproductive functions?
We should expect folks to take responsibility for the upbringing of their children, All rights no responsibilities doesn’t work. There are countries cultures in the world that achieve better results than us. Maybe we can learn something.
Simply following the conversation. You’re the one who brought trying to stop undesirables from reproducing into the discussion. Funding for education is a necessary byproduct of attempting to maintain a society where the needs of everyone, even those who don’t hew to your personal standards of excellence, need to be addressed.
Though I am curious, if we’re not animals, what exactly are we?
Wild or civilized? Free to choose or instinct? Looks like you are struggling with that.
Check human population growth from say 1900 or so to present, then you tell me. What I find amusing is the assumption that prudishness is somehow more civilized than not, it’s like arguing with my grandparents.
“…some parents are very ill-equipped, physiologically, socially, emotionally, financially…” Gee, I wonder how that happened.
Well I don’t think “it happened” it is the way things are! Our schools are not designed to be substitute, parents, grandparents families and communities, no matter how much $ we throw at them, what next 24/7/365 boarding schools? We don’t ask our public works water department to build bridges, or licensing to take care of trees, although they are all part of the city government, we do seem however, to ask our school system to heal all the ills of our family/social infrastructure, no matter what they are.
Taking away the social welfare net is just going to hurt the kids. Its not going to stop the parents from having them.
It seems that no one is talking about the behemoth that is the teachers union. Wealth helps but is not the answer. Money is not the answer as our largest school districts have the higher per pupil funding yet some of the worst statistics on academic success. What is needed is more school choice – something the union tries to stop at all costs. The system they have entrenched and defended to no end is not working for everyone. There are students failing in schools both in the cities and in rural communities. If the system is failing, then you change the system. But the DFL, who basically gets all of the funding from the teachers union, needs to seriously look at alternatives. But it’s too bad they are beholden because of all the money they get.
Right-wingers love to blame the teachers’ unions for poor outcomes, but then, they have a visceral antipathy toward unions anyway. They try to arouse anger among non-unionized employees, saying “Look at all the benefits that those teachers enjoy! Isn’t that awful?”
Of course, that’s the wrong question. The right question is, “Why do you, as a non-unionized worker, not enjoy wages and benefits comparable to what your parents and grandparents expected as a matter of course?”
The right-wingers never explain the *mechanism* by which teachers’ unions harm education. It’s like their claim, not heard much anymore, that “gay marriage will devalue/harm/undermine heterosexual marriage.” They kept saying it, but they never explained exactly *how* same-sex marriage would have a negative effect on heterosexual marriage.
Supposedly the schools are infested with a majority of bad teachers, whom the union protects. That’s the myth promoted by the right-wing radio jocks. Teachers are evidently uniquely bad in the right-wing world, with a much higher proportion of bad apples than the business world, law, medicine, religion, the arts, sports, or any other field.
But what is the reality?
School districts have three years to decide whether a teacher is worth keeping. There is nothing to prevent them from firing a bad teacher in that time, and if a real dud slips through the tenure process. that is the fault of the administration for not exercising the power that they have.
Once teachers have tenure, it is STILL possible to fire them, but it must be for cause and through due process. That is, you can’t fire a teacher for giving the star quarterback a well-deserved “F” in a class, as much as sports-crazed fans would like that to happen. You can’t fire a teacher for talking back to a principal who has made a dumb suggestion. You’d better have one of a fairly short list of valid reasons.
Do teachers “go bad” at times? Sure, especially if they are burned out from dealing with bratty kids whose parents defend their brattiness, administrators who spend their days thinking up new paperwork or imposing a slick but unworkable curriculum that some salesperson promoted, having to buy supplies out of their own pockets, having to deal with the fallout from poverty, and having spiteful commentators who wouldn’t last for five minutes in a room full of seventh graders tell them how awful they are.
No one is talking about it because its total nonsense. Its a right-wing boogeyman, but has nothing to do with the actual problem.
It seems that no one is talking about the behemoth that is the teachers union.
Certainly teachers and their unions have a role in making our schools better. I would think that goes without saying.
While we can’t say that funding is irrelevant, dinking around with funding formulas has never resolved the achievement gaps and is unlikely to do so. Achievement gaps ubiquitous throughout the state regardless of funding. Here in my suburban paradise of St. Louis Park we have an impressive achievement gap despite multiple consecutive multi-million dollar bonding initiatives. I don’t think SLP can claim to suffering a funding shortage.
The problem is far more basic. The problem is that we turned public education into a market rather than a public obligation. A lawyer had to go court to remind everyone that education is a constitutional right in MN in 2019 ( I think this has been in our State Constitution since what? 1860?) tells you just how incoherent our priorities have become in this regard. Instead of focusing on education the students sitting in desks in our classrooms, we created a competitive market wherein schools and school districts compete to attract high achieving motivated students and their parents.
I live a couple blocks away from our SLP Junior High and for years they’ve been spending big bucks on all kinds of new programs and space dedicated to attracting students from outside SLP. Every day SUVs are lined up for blocks to collect kids from other districts cities, while our education gap remains unchanged. For the first time ever I actually voted against one of the ballot initiatives in the last election because as far as I could tell, that money was to be spent on a bunch of stuff that had nothing to do with reducing the education gap. The new spending is all dedicated to “branding”, “marketing” and attracting new students rather than educating the ones we already have sitting in our classrooms.
Look, we KNOW how to educate everyone, we’re just not doing it. We’re not doing it because we’ve twisted the entire project into an incoherent expression of “free market innovation”. The whole fiasco has devolved into a customer satisfaction exercise centered on affluent parents looking for the best “experience”. We knew this would exacerbate inequalities and re-segregate the schools, and we were warned… but consumers gotta be consumers.
I’m not saying funding can’t be more equitable, but I can guarantee that these funding battles won’t reduce the gaps. From now on when SLP schools ask for more money to build something to attract new or more students I want to know how this is going to raise math and reading proficiency for our students of color? As far as I’m concerned THAT is only problem our educators should be focusing on.
Amen. Paul, what you’ve described is decades of feel good Mantra chanting. The parents who vote for School Board, and the School Board members know it, are voting for THEIR kids. Who do you think votes ?
As i’ve always stated the first ring suburbs are bastions of feel good “Children First”. The moment you dig you find another reality.
we KNOW how to educate everyone, we’re just not doing it.
I don’t think we do. We just do the best we can.
I have talked about the achievement gap, that we teach some kids better than others. But do we even teach the high achieving kids well enough? One way to make the achievement gap wider is to raise achievement levels of high achieving kids. Is that something we shouldn’t just because it makes the achievement gap numbers look worse?
“I don’t think we do. We just do the best we can.”
Failure is the “best” we can do? Sorry kids, but illiteracy is all we have to offer… it’s out of our hands, too bad so sad. This is exactly how “moderate/centrism” has transformed our country into an incubator of crises and failure. The irony is that this mindset emerges from the free market ideology that promised us a state of the art education system if we would only turn our public schools into incubators for innovators and let free market forces decide the outcome. THIS is our state of the art new and improved education system?
Bushwa!
The achievement gap isn’t a point spread between high achievers and everyone else, it’s a qualitative measurement of low proficiency among poor students and students of color. This gap doesn’t exist because high achievers have surged so far ahead of everyone else; you can only score so high on these tests… the dial doesn’t go up to 11. This is a demographic sample folks, why are almost all the “high achievers” while kids from affluent households?
Education isn’t a zero sum production, you don’t have leave “high achievers” behind in order to provide basic proficiency for all the other students. Anyways, by definition high achievers reach higher levels of achievement in any system… we didn’t leave Thom Friedman behind here in St. Louis Park in order to teach everyone else how to read. It’s actually difficult to imagine an outcome wherein raising over-all levels of proficiency lowers proficiency or opportunity for high achievers.
Yes, we know how to teach people, human beings have been teaching other human beings for millions of years. Human brains are literally hard wired to learn… you can’t actually stop a child from learning, any parent can tell you that. The idea that we needed entrepreneurs to “invent” education was always a ridiculous neoliberal fantasy that went nowhere. We wouldn’t be having this conversation if that had worked. We don’t need Superman, we just need to focus on the mission, use the tools in our tool box, and dedicate the necessary resources… the ONE thing we haven’t tried.
Some kids need more help to achieve than others due to a variety of issues; it’s more complicated than some people understand or will admit. Poverty (resulting in hunger and often a lack of parental engagement), frequent moves, learning and behavioral disabilities, and different language and culture origins can all make it harder to succeed in school. Public schools are charged with the herculean task of adequately educating children across the spectrum of all of these issues and more. Conservatives like to parrot the usual line about vouchers but the fact is that private schools will never offer enough vouchers to take care of them all because these students are simply more expensive to educate and private schools are no better (and often less) equipped to take care of them.
Furthermore, data show that private schools don’t actually do a better job for voucher students. Public schools actually out-perform private schools when you do a “like student” analysis.
“The achievement gap isn’t a point spread between high achievers and everyone else, it’s a qualitative measurement of low proficiency among poor students and students of color. This gap doesn’t exist because high achievers have surged so far ahead of everyone else; you can only score so high on these tests… the dial doesn’t go up to 11. This is a demographic sample folks, why are almost all the “high achievers” while kids from affluent households?”
Then they should call the achievement gap something else, something cacthier than “a qualitative measurement of low proficiency among poor students and students of color”, I hope.
“we didn’t leave Thom Friedman behind here in St. Louis Park in order to teach everyone else how to read. ”
He became a columnist for the New York Times. Who knows what he could have achieved if he had had a better education?
“Then they should call the achievement gap something else,..” Hiram, the nature of the “gap” we’re discussing has been defined, you just seem to have missed it. The measurements we’re discussing are a central feature of this discussion.
Yeah, poor Friedman, who knows what he could have become given half a chance? No one should have to settle for a handful of Pulitzer Prizes and a lifetime of celebrity and recognition. Poor bastard.
Who knows what any of the kids in our school system COULD become given a decent education… kind of the point eh?
So anyways… if you think we can clear all of this up with a new funding formula…
Here’s the formula: First, you decide you want to build a state of the art public education system, and what that system looks like. We have the knowledge and expertise to do that. Then you figure out how much that system costs and you pay for it. As long we keep trying to do it the other way round… funding first, system later, we’ll just keep circling failure.
Funding education in Minnesota is really complicated because education in Minnesota is really complicated. Do we fund the schools in the Northwest Angle the same way we fund the schools in Minneapolis? Education in Minnesota must be equal. What does that mean when comparing two such disparate school systems. If one has Chinese language immersion, does the other one have to have Chinese Immersion too?
” the nature of the “gap” we’re discussing has been defined, you just seem to have missed it. The measurements we’re discussing are a central feature of this discussion.”
In policy terms, I do get it. We teach a lot of kids ineffectively, and so a lot of kids have bad test scores. “Achievement Gap”, I suppose, is something wordsmiths have created a definition for to gloss over this reality. And for a lot of reasons, pumping more money into the system isn’t necessarily going to have the desired effect on those measurements.
“And for a lot of reasons, pumping more money into the system isn’t necessarily going to have the desired effect on those measurements.”
Check it out… Hiram and I agreeing about something!
Just to flesh out my observation regarding how “complicated” education in MN is (recognizing that it’s not really any less complicated in other States). The neoliberal assumption that a state of the art education system would “naturally” emerge from a competitive “market” environment simply layered additional and unnecessary complexity into the system. If you look at state of the art public education systems (yes, they do exist) you find that made no such faith-based assumptions. The complexity of our funding mechanisms emerges from the overly complex system of attempts to provide market incentives i.e. rewards and punishments for succeeding for “failing” schools, funding tied to the number of students, and attempts to privatize or semi-privatize the system with charter schools, and vouchers. When you create this mish-mosh of market rewards and punishments and then try to figure out how to pay for it, of course you end up weird and dysfunctional funding “formulas”.
When you start with the weird assumption that nobody knows what a state of the art education system looks like, and that “competition” of some kind is the only way to invent one… you’re pretty destined to fail. And when you have one of your only two political parties is actually hostile to public education (this goes back to the first Great Awakening of the 1820’s, and emerges again with the anti-desegregation movement) you have a formula for failure. The problem is that we had a wicked bipartisan agreement that supported an incoherent and dysfunctional approach to public education, and we’re still wallowing in that miasma of confusion and magical thinking.