In this assignment I’ve been asked to react to the practicality of each of the seven recommendations in
the Terman and Behram article “Financing Schools: Analysis and Recommendations.” In addition, I’m to
provide an indication of where I believe my state is with regard to its educational reform and these
recommendations. In the following paragraphs, find my response.
Recommendation:
“To provide adequate funding for all schools, states should guarantee every school district a foundation
level of funding sufficient to achieve state-specified basic academic goals. The foundation level of
funding should be based on the actual expenditures of schools currently meeting or exceeding those
academic goals.”
Practicality: Generally, I think this goal is practical and of high value. I qualified this statement with
‘generally’ because I think there are situations where virtually no amount of dollars will achieve a
specific, absolute academic goal. Each year that passes, our school district is comprised of a higher
percentage of students brought up in homes where education is not valued. This is due to those valuing
education fleeing the city, or never moving into it, for towns with better schools systems. The cost of
educating a student who does not wanting nor value an education almost insurmountable – I call this
the “you can provide a student an education, but you can’t make him learn” dilemma. I’m of the
opinion that the only cost feasible way to educate children of this mentality is first to convince them of
the value of education. This in itself is not inexpensive and, of course, will not be effective on all of the
students.
New Hampshire’s situation: The NH Supreme Court ‘Claremont decisions’ forced the initiation of this
process over a decade ago. Although the pace of change has been slow, over the past six years or so,
the state has come a long way to providing funding for an adequate education. The level of funding is
still much below the level proposed in the recommendation, but the trend is in the direction of the
recommendation. Nonetheless, due to the difficult economic times, I predict the forces attempting to
counter the Claremont decisions will strengthen. State representatives regularly introduce amendments
to the state constitution, designed to nullify the Claremont decisions. To date, none have passed.
Recommendation:
“To improve student outcomes, schools serving concentrated populations of low income students
should have access to high quality technical support and sufficient funding for planning and focused staff
development.”
Practicality: I would direct you to my previous practicality statement, particularly the dilemma I outlined.
In the situations where this dilemma exists, typically districts this recommendation addresses (low
income), it is difficult to ensure a high level of outcome. High quality technical support, funding for
planning and focused staff development will help only if honed or customized to the particular problems
of the low income population of students.
New Hampshire’s situation: The state does very little to specifically address concentrations of students
from low income families. Due to the state funding mechanism being based on property values and
property values being indirectly linked to income level, the level of funding somewhat addresses
disparities in income.
Recommendation:
“To provide needed supplemental services, the foundation level of funding should be adjusted to
account for the level of student poverty and limited English proficiency within each school district.”
Practicality: I think this is a very practical recommendation. States have data on poverty and ELL
students and can adjust funding levels to accommodate both. The challenge is to determine just what
level of supplemental funding should be used.
New Hampshire’s situation: State funding does provide supplemental funds for ELL students. Poverty is
indirectly accommodated for by the mechanism being real estate property tax based. I do think NH
addresses both of these situations, but the student poverty level needs much refinement.
Recommendation:
“Foundation funding plus supplemental funding for poverty and limited English proficiency should make
it fiscally possible to deliver a basic education. In addition, every community should have the option of
providing an enriched, higher-quality school program at a reasonable cost to local taxpayers. When local
communities voluntarily use this option to raise local taxes to benefit schools, states should partly
subsidize low-property-value communities to reward them for their tax efforts, up to a reasonable
limit.”
Practicality: I think the practicality of this recommendation is difficult. No organization should be at the
mercy of the whim of others to determine what it spends. A situation like this often leads to ‘gaming’
the spirit of the regulations specifying the formula or mechanism for determining funding. Granted,
‘gaming’ can be the case for any funding mechanism, but most of the time the receiver of the funds
can’t just set a higher tax and collect more from not only their citizens, but the state. An example of the
gaming I’m concerned with: a town may allocate many costs to provide school district services in order
to make their schooling appear to be much more expensive, allocate additional local taxes to cover
those allocated costs, which are actually things the town might normally incur not in the school district
budget, such as road maintenance around schools. I think this recommendation is a tough one to
ensure consistency. Additionally, I think if the previous recommendations are implemented, then all
students will receive an ‘adequate’ education demonstrated with measurable acceptable outcomes.
District wishing to provide more, should fund it themselves.
New Hampshire’s situation: New Hampshire does have a matching infrastructure funding mechanism for
school building, but outside of that, little additional funding is available beyond the conservative
adequate funding for academics.
Recommendation:
“To relieve school overcrowding or to pay for major building repairs or improvements, low-propertyvalue school districts in most states currently must levy local taxes far higher than those in high-
property-value school districts. When school districts raise local taxes (or issue bonds) for construction,
states should equalize funds generated by low-property-value districts, up to a reasonable limit.”
Practicality: This is interesting to me. The more I think about the recommendations and impact to state
budgets and size of their obligations, the more I realize that many of these recommendations would
have a much more dramatic impact on state’s with relatively small state governments with low tax
burdens, such as New Hampshire. How practical the recommendation is would have a lot to do with the
governmental philosophy of the state. These would be less impactful and less dramatically
implemented in a state like Massachusetts, with a larger, well organized and better funded state
government than say New Hampshire, which a relatively much smaller, even per capita, state
government. I think in theory the practicality of this recommendation is very feasible, but the
practicality of implementing this, and most other of these recommendations, will vary a great deal state
by state, depending on the scale and philosophy of the existing state government.
New Hampshire’s situation: As I mentioned in my previous descriptions of NH’s situation, NH does have
a matching type of mechanism to help all districts with infrastructure costs, but there is not differentials
made for districts serving low income families. Fortunately, at least currently, NH’s low income
concentrations still garner sufficient income that bonding for infrastructure is not too terribly overburdensome. This is particularly true now that the state does provide a level of funding for educating all
students.
Recommendation:
“To hold schools accountable for the efficient and effective use of funds, education authorities at the
state and local levels should commit to a few highly stable, measurable academic priorities.”
Practicality: I completely agree that holding school accountable is vital to the success of increased state
spending on schools. The further the money is spent from where it is collected the more the
accountability must be made explicate. I also strongly agree that theoretically academic outcomes is
what should be the measure of accountability, but just how does a district deal with ‘the dilemma’ I’ve
introduced an invoked above.
As a side note, I find it interesting that the recommendation made involved the accountability, but did
not explicitly mention incentives and sanctions as the article does mention when talking about
Kentucky. I say that because I’m always torn as to how to deal with sanctions. If a school fails, what do
you do to sanction it without doing a disservice to the students? This is always a tough situation.
New Hampshire’s situation: New Hampshire has no accountability for the funding. In fact, just this year
our school district received $7.5 million dollars more than last year, yet our aldermen chose to hold flat
our school budget. We incurred layoffs and many other cuts to programs to keep the budget flat. The
$7.5 million was effectively used to offset the non-school town costs that increased by even more than
the $7.5 million. The accountability mechanisms of NCLB are the only accountability I witness in our
school district. I generally find that our district is not held accountable at all. Certainly, almost no
accountability from what I’m used to working in companies. I should qualify that, no academic
accountability. They are very accountable to their funding levels, and prevention of lawsuits. Our
district and its schools are accountable for staying within budget, beyond that, no accountability.
Recommendation:
“To make ongoing, informed decisions about the use of funds, education departments at all levels
should collect much more detailed information about how education budgets are spent and how
resources are utilized.”
Practicality: I have no doubt that this is practical and essential to improving the cost and quality of
education in the country. Prior to teaching I help corporations establish great management: principles,
processes, standards, metrics, etc. Aside from the lack strong leadership, the area that in my experience
education is most lacking is having a systemic philosophy to verify results and enable continuous
improvement. The same challenges businesses have faced, will be faced, and in some cases are already
being faced, by school districts. Much can be learned by studying what businesses generally refer to as
change management.
New Hampshire’s situation: New Hampshire is in the dark ages with regard to data and information
based decision making. Verifiable metrics and measures are almost completely lacking, and where they
exist, they exist due to federal mandate.
Although in the past decade New Hampshire has made great strides in more equitably and adequately
funding education, more work is required, particularly to ensure adequate funding. More advanced
aspects of equitable and adequate education funding, generally being implemented by states with more
mature experience with such funding, have yet to be addressed by New Hampshire. How, when and
even if New Hampshire addresses accountability, data and information based decision making and the
many other aspects of school funding is anyone’s guess. Our fine state is still hammering out
fundamental funding issues such as providing adequate funding for all schools.