Massachusetts

Funding priorities for p-20:

Of his recommended allocation in January 2019 for secondary and elementary education during FY2020, Governor Charlie Baker signed into law on July 31, 2019, $5,176,002,652 or 67% of this fund for Chapter 70 payments for the state's foundation program. Massachusetts allocates this operating-aid inversely to school districts based on their local capacity.

In the face of recurring pressures during the past four years, Baker's administration issued An Act to Promote Equity and Excellence in Education Funding (AAPEEEF), which is an ostensible initiative to operationalize the recommendations from the 2015 Foundation Budget Review Commission with the goal to champion reform in school-finance equalization policy. An underlying goal in this plan is to accelerate the state's pace to reach the original equity goals of the Massachusetts Education Reform Act of 1993 (MERA), which shifted the burden of education payments from the local districts to the state.

The Baker administration's public release of AAPEEF was likely the outcome of continuous pressure during the last four years from inadequate operating-aid funding, modest funding increases not keeping up with inflation, an underfunded pension system, weak need equalization remedies, and emerging school-finance suits from Brockton, Worcester and Lee. The proposed initiative has sought to allocate $3,300,000,000 over a six year period from FY2020 to FY2026. A number of features in this proposed initiative for FY2020 include increases in the foundation budget-aid ($200,000,000), health care and pension ($30,600,000), English language learners ($13,500,000), at-risk students ($12,800,000), hold harmless or minimum aid ($7,900,000), Early College and Career Pathways ($1,200,000), and chronically failing school support (26,500,000). Alongside the unwavering support of these allocations, this initiative in FY2021 planned additional funding allocations for counseling and psychological services ($75,000,000) and school safety ($30,000,000). Opponents of this proposed initiative maintained that the gradual allocations over six years is too long, and insisted that the level of both tax-effort equalization and need-based equalization funding comes short of providing the adequate funding for chronically failing schools with high minority and at-risk students.

Changes to funding formula for p-20:

Given that the funding initiative plans to concentrate its increased allocations in the coming years to meet specific student needs, AAPEEEF appears to inject a refined vertical equity policy into the current state's need equalization and controversial operating-aid remedies. Since the implications of proposed remedies have not yet been articulated in changes of specific need-equalization formulae, it remains to be seen if this vertical equity policy will enhance the state's categorical grant-in-aid program or inject other methods of need-based equalization funding policy featuring either pupil weighting, weighted dispersion measures, regression based related measures, evidence-based school expenditures, or a combination therein. It is equally uncertain what impact this plan will have on changing or improving the state's tax-effort equalization program.

Pressing state issues affecting p-12:

Massachusetts' pressing issues affecting P-12 school-finance policy include lagging student performance and college-and-career readiness as well as charter school challenges. Depending on what source one relies on, Massachusetts has ranked either first or second nationally in P-12 student performance. Nevertheless, a careful analysis of student performance data continues to reveal that the bottom of the distribution has not been raised to the expected level of performance during the past twenty-five years since the passage of MERA. This means the state's distribution of actual student performance remains highly stratified, and consists of a band of schools that have perpetuated chronic failure. These chronically failing schools have high concentrations of needy and minority students. While increased funding has been given to these schools, the salient fact is that the magnitude of these students' learning needs becomes a covariate to moderate increased spending, and is inversely correlated to actual student performance. Additionally, these extra funds never fundamentally address the magnitude of these students' learning needs.

The rise of charter schools, slowed only by the cap on the growth...