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Click Here For Equity News Archives Email bhaig@execpc.com to receive every new issue. In this issue:
AEF Members Need to Take
Part in Task Force Hearings Governor Jim Doyle's Task Force on Educational Excellence has scheduled two meetings for members to receive public testimony.
The first meeting is scheduled for 10 a.m. on Thursday, November 6 in Room C 106 at the Northern Technical College in Wausau. The Task Force will take public testimony from 3 to 7 p.m. The second meeting will take place in Milwaukee on December 11 at a location to be determined.
I
encourage you to attend the Task Force meetings or submit
testimony via the website. A progress report is due near the end of
2003, and a final report should be out by spring. AEF
has taken the opportunity to inform members about the issues they'll face.
Executive Director Doug Haselow has spent the past several weeks getting
in touch with Task Force members and letting them know the importance of
equity for students and taxpayers. He distributed our Legislative Proposal,
which provides an excellent overview of the situation. In some cases, it
could be the first real exposure the Task Force members have had to the
history, structure and issues revolving our state school finance structure. The
Side-by-side Comparison of School Finance Plans
may help you understand the issue yourself. And below, you'll find a report
from former Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction assistant superintendent
Bambi Statz which clearly shows that pupil weighting systems for special
education does not lead to over-identification of disabled children. Because the Governor wants to be sure all Task Force
meetings are both open to the public and involve public input, it is important
for AEF members to appear at the upcoming hearings and emphasize the inequality
of our current system. Again in 2003-04, some districts are able to invest
twice as much public money to educate their children as other districts.
And again, some property owners are forced to pay school property tax
rates five times as high as others. At
the same time our categorical aid system continues to fail to meet the
additional educational needs of the student populations identified in
the standard set by the Wisconsin Supreme Court. Task
Force members need to hear about the impact of these failings of our system
from those of us who must live with them and the state's responsibility
to correct them. I urge you to discuss these issues with the members both
as individuals and at the public hearings. The
Task Force's timetable makes legislative action this session very uncertain,
as legislators circulate nomination papers in June. At this point we do
not know whether any school finance issues may become legislative campaign
issues. Nonetheless, we will continue to focus on the basics of state
responsibility, equal access to state and local revenue and additional
funds to meet additional educational needs. If you have any questions, please contact me toll free - 866-781-8332
The Wisconsin Supreme Court has directed that districts
with disproportionate numbers of children with special needs (known as Exceptional
Educational Needs -- EEN), as well as those with limited English language
skills and those who are economically disadvantaged, be taken into account.
Some have advocated that the additional educational needs of each of these
populations can best be addressed through an equalized pupil weighting system
which would increase the amount for both aid and revenue limit purposes. One
such proposal suggests that state assistance be provided to cover the
excess costs of special education services by applying an additional 0.2
(pupil count or weighting) for students whose special education services
occur during less than 21% of the day. Pupils whose special education
services apply to between 21-60% of the school day would be weighted an
additional 0.5, and students receiving such services more than 60% of
the day would be weighted at an additional 1.5. These weights would be
added to the 1.0 full-time equivalent (FTE) pupil count for every pupil
in the district. Opponents of pupil weighting, however, have argued that
a system of weighting students with special needs would present an incentive
for identifying such students and that the incidence rate would likely
increase. State-by-State
Analysis A
total of 48 states included references to special education funding. Of
those 48 states, 26 states were identified that tied special education funding
to the number of EEN pupils identified by the local district. (Note: New
Jersey was removed from this group because of questionable data.) The remaining
25 states were classified as "weighting" states, and almost all of these
used a formal pupil weighting system that assigned additional FTEs to pupils
with disabilities. In a few instances (California, Delaware, Indiana, and
South Dakota), funds were distributed on a flat dollar-per-pupil basis.
While this did not carry the concept of pupil weighting into the general
education aid formula, the issue of providing an incentive for identifying
students with special needs would also apply to these models. Hence, they
were counted among the states that rely on pupil counts to distribute money
for EEN services. Click here to see a list of the states
included in this set, along with a brief summary of the pupil count mechanism
utilized in each case. The
remaining 22 states were classified as having "cost-reimbursement -- non
pupil weighting" formulas. In these states, local districts are reimbursed
for special programs either on the basis of actual costs or flat dollar
amounts. In a two instances, Kansas and Missouri, funding was distributed
on the basis of teachers or units (not pupils). Since this was not directly
correlated to the number of pupils, these were also categorized as cost
reimbursement. (Note: Michigan was removed from this group because of
questionable data.) Click here to see the list of 21
states classified as cost-reimbursement. Examining
EEN Incidence It
should be noted that these comparison groups of states were based on the
funding formulas in place in each state in 1997. No attempt has been made
to determine if changes in formulas had taken place over the four-year
period. In addition, it is recognized that many factors influence EEN
identification rates and no value judgment is being made about the level
of incidence in any particular state. Further, it is emphasized that this
study of trends across these two groups of states has in no way attempted
to identify a cause and effect relationship between the funding formulas
and the rate of EEN incidence. The results do, however, suggest an interesting
pattern when types of funding formulas are compared with incidence rates. Findings Figure 1; Four-Year Summary of the Rate Of EEN Incedence By Groups of States Based on Funding Formula
This
analysis shows that there is little difference between the EEN incidence
rates of states using pupil weighting and those that do not. The group
of states using pupil weighting to distribute special education funding
actually had a slightly (0.20) lower rate of EEN incidence in 1997 than
the group of cost reimbursement states. Their rate of EEN incidence also
proved to be below the national average. In
each of the four years studied (see Figure 2), the group of states using
a cost reimbursement formula had a higher EEN incidence rate than did
the pupil-weighting group. An examination of the trend over the four year
period shows that between 1997 and 2000 the pupil weighting group went
from 12.36% EEN to 12.95%. This represents a .60 or 4.62% increase in
the rate of EEN incidence in this group of states. During the same period,
the cost reimbursement group went from 12.56% to 13.33% or an increase
of .78 (5.82%). Figure 2
While
it is apparent that neither group increased at a high rate over this four-year
period of time, the larger increase (.18 or 1.20% more) was seen in the
cost reimbursement group, not the pupil-weighting group. The national
increase in EEN incidence over this period was .68, which represents an
increase of 5.20%. Conclusions The
review also shows that it is higher among cost reimbursement states as
a group than it is among states that subscribe to pupil weighting. Lastly,
it shows that the change over the four-year period was greater among cost
reimbursement states than it was among pupil weighting states. Hence,
this reveals that cost reimbursement states as a group started out higher,
grew more and ended higher than did the states applying pupil-weighting
formulas to fund special education programs. Ultimately,
it would appear from these findings that fear of over-identification of
EEN pupils based on pupil weighting components of state funding formulas
is unwarranted. REFERENCES
-- National Center for Education Statistics (2001). Public School Finance
Programs of the United States and Canada: 1998-99. U.S. Department of
Educational Research and Improvement, U.S. Department of Education. National
Center for Education Statistics Common Core of Data (1997-2000). http://www.nces.ed.gov/ccd/.
NCES_ReportEENMultYrs2.xls. Appendix A: List of States Identified Utilizing Pupil Weighting (Eliminated New Jersey)
Source: NCES Public School Finance Programs of the United States and Canada: 1998-99 (NCES 2001-369) Appendix B: List of States Identified Not Utilizing Pupil Weighting (Eliminated Michigan)
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