Equalization grants: Are poor systems driving Pintos while Gwinnett cruises in a Lamborghini?
Catlady, a longtime poster to this blog, has been asking the AJC to look at the strange calculus of Georgia school equalization grants through which Gwinnett out earns many poor Georgia counties.
The equalization grant program forces wealthier school districts to share money with lower wealth districts. While similar grants have been controversial in other parts of the country, the program has not roused widespread opposition here.
I am happy to report that AJC reporters James Salzer and Nancy Badertscher examined this year’s $436 million grant program and found some odd stuff.
Among their points: Somehow, Cobb and DeKalb don’t qualify for equalization grants, but Gwinnett and Henry do.
As Quitman County’s school chief Allen Fort said about the formula: “What we have is a Ford Pinto. What Fulton and Cobb have are a Cadillac and Ferrari. What Gwinnett has is a Lamborghini. When their Lamborghini has a flat tire, they get an equalization grant. When our Pinto has a flat, we get nothing.”
One of the systems the AJC reporters highlight is Calhoun County, which they describe as “a two-school system of about 600 students from a no-stoplight town 80 miles south of Columbus. Vast fields of peanuts, cotton and corn spread out across much of Calhoun County. The population is slightly less than 6,700, about one-fifth of which resides in the local state prison. The non-prison population is about half of what it was a century ago.”
The piece juxtaposes Calhoun with Gwinnett: (This is an excerpt. Please read the full AJC.com story.)
The “equalization” fund’s biggest check this fall will go to Gwinnett County — Georgia’s largest school district — followed by Clayton, Paulding and Henry county schools. At the same time, many rural districts in desperate financial condition will receive smaller grants than last year, and some will receive no help at all.
Here in impoverished Calhoun County, the grant of $150,000 for the coming school year represents a 50 percent cut from last year. Gwinnett will receive $43 million, an increase over last year and enough to cover Calhoun’s entire school budget for six or seven years.
“We don’t have art, we don’t have music, we don’t have JROTC,” said Calhoun County Superintendent Danny Ellis. “We don’t have the luxury of offering summer school. … We are cutting to the bone and there is no meat. It is literally a situation where you just wonder what can we do to stay open.”
The system is so strapped that teachers will get seven days of furloughs; Calhoun also cut a bus route and all three instructional coaches to save money. It offers only one AP class, in history. By comparison, Collins Hill High School in Gwinnett offers 21 AP courses. Calhoun’s high school has a total of 12 teachers; Collins Hill has 21 in the English department alone. Teachers in Gwinnett face two furlough days next year, five fewer than teachers in Calhoun County.
The equalization fund, set up in 1985, is supposed to provide greater equity in school funding for systems with lower property tax bases. But the collapse of the real estate market in metro Atlanta has changed this landscape, too, and the largest grants go to districts that are neither rural nor comparatively poor.
In the final hours of their 2012 session, state legislators passed a bill intended to slow the growth of the equalization fund and get more money to poor rural districts. And, in fact, this upcoming school year’s grant to Gwinnett is $13 million lower than it would have been under the old rules.
“It’s a lot fairer now than it was,” said Senate Education Chairman Fran Millar, R-Atlanta.
But the Legislature’s last-minute fix didn’t result in windfalls for many of the state’s poorest districts, and communities left out in the cold are mystified by lawmakers’ interpretation of “equalization.”
“What can we do to get some?” asked Dennis Holsey, whose son attends Hancock (County) Central High School. “We need money. We don’t have too many jobs in our area. Poverty is high. It’s not fair that our kids don’t have the same opportunities.”
Hancock County’s system, with the second-lowest household income in the state in 2010, gets no money from the equalization fund because, under the formula used for doling out the money, Hancock is too property-wealthy for its number of students.
“Our [tax digest] has declined much faster than the rest of the state,” said Rick Cost, chief financial officer for Gwinnett schools. “At the same time, we’ve also been growing faster in student population — the double whammy.”
–From Maureen Downey, for the AJC Get Schooled blog
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121 comments Add your comment
William Casey
June 19th, 2012
4:15 pm
@SOLUTIONS: Sorry! No way to verify. No points scored. No proxy. Man to “whatever.”
William Casey
June 19th, 2012
4:18 pm
@RON F: Good points. However, other states manage larger counties. Maybe a “hybrid” system is needed. Keep schools where they are but have one administration for four counties, etc.
William Casey
June 19th, 2012
4:31 pm
@SOLUTIONS (again): It’s getting better. My son, William F. Casey IV is currently carrying a 3.65 GPA as a Senior in MATHEMATICS (hard to argue with that but I’m sure you’ll find a way) at Georgia Southern. Unlike your imaginary GT graduates, this fact can be verified. BTW– he’s stealing your tax dollars by working for the University as a math tutor. Guys who can do math and speak precise English are in demand. He’s also doing a degree in Philosophy (logic) just for fun. I’m confident about his future but, thanks for the concern.
Teachers deserve better
June 19th, 2012
5:20 pm
Seems like not only the kids are bad in math but so are our lawmakers.
This story shows what I’ve always said- there is no money or information given to systems other than those in ATL.
Our system was told we’d lose over a million to give to the poor systems and to find out it goes to Gwinnett is infuriating .
There is case law against such funding disparity and someone needs to review it and sue the DOE and the sponsoring lawmaker who is probably from Gwinnett
Solutions
June 19th, 2012
6:28 pm
Ha ha ha, Georgia Southern, not in the same class as Georgia Tech, not even close. ROFL at you and your undergraduate son………..
Solutions
June 19th, 2012
6:30 pm
YO Casy, a question: what do the call the guy who graduates last in his medical school class? Give up? scroll down a bit.
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Doctor
William Casey
June 19th, 2012
6:45 pm
@ “Solutions” from Mr. Casey: I’m glad that my cardio guy didn’t graduate last in his class. LOL
William Casey
June 19th, 2012
6:51 pm
@ NO SOLUTIONS: The laughter is mutual. Is your picture in the Phoenix yearbook? Mine’s in the ‘67 GT yearbook. Look it up, loser. ROFLMFAO
Solutions
June 19th, 2012
8:50 pm
So even as a legacy you couldn’t get junior into tech…what a hoot…..
Solutions
June 19th, 2012
8:52 pm
I don’t think Phoenix existed when I graduated in the early 70’s…try again little fella……
Peter Smagorinsky
June 20th, 2012
6:03 am
School funding disparities persist, analysis shows
By Valerie Strauss
Legislators can extend the school day, force new tests on students and link the scores to a teacher’s job, but a new analysis about disparities in school funding raises the uncomfortable question of just how effective any reforms can really be when issues of equity are ignored.
The second edition of the National Report Card, called “Is School Funding Fair?” is a critique of state school funding systems that shows that many public schools don’t get the resources they need to boost student achievement — even if there are plenty of folks who like to say that money doesn’t really matter in education.
The national average funding level is $10,774 per pupil, a $642 increase over the estimate in the 2010 report, with the highest-funded states in the Northeast — along with Wyoming and Alaska — and the lowest-funded states largely in the South and West. And the differences in funding are large: Using nationally adjusted figures, the authors say that a student in Tennessee receives less than 40 percent of the funding of a comparable student in Wyoming.
Adequate funding, of course, is not the definitive answer to public education’s problems, but it is certainly a necessary if not dispositive prerequisite.
The analysis rates the 50 states on funding levels, funding distribution, state fiscal effort and public school coverage with data from 2006 through 2009, in which the effects of the economic recession were just beginning to be felt.
Results, taken from the executive summary, show the following:
* Only 17 states have progressive funding systems that provide greater funding to high-poverty districts. Utah, New Jersey, Ohio and Minnesota remain the four most progressive states.
* Six states have funding systems in which districts with higher poverty rates actually receive less funding than more well-off districts. The most regressive state is Illinois, followed by North Carolina, Alabama, Michigan, Texas and Colorado.
* Six states did relatively well on all four indicators: Iowa, Kansas, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New Mexico and Vermont.
* Three states were below average on all the indicators: Florida, Missouri and North Carolina. Florida has seen a substantial decline in state effort and funding level.
* Most states needed improvement in at least one area.
* Some states have improved funding distribution by at least one letter grade (Delaware, Kansas, Louisiana and Maryland), while other states have regressed one letter grade (Minnesota, Montana, North Carolina, North Dakota and Texas).
* Hawaii and Maine each had a particularly large disinvestment in public education, reducing their funding effort by over 20 percent.
* In Louisiana, Delaware and the District of Columbia, about one-fifth of the student population is enrolled in private schools, and those students come from households with incomes as much as two and three times those of public school students.
The new statistical analysis was done by David G. Sciarra, executive director of the Education Law Center in New Jersey; Bruce Baker of Rutgers University Graduate School of Education; and Danielle Farrie, research director of the law center.
Follow The Answer Sheet every day by bookmarking http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet .
Solutions
June 20th, 2012
8:02 am
More money for education will not solve the low IQ problem, as Kanas City has found out the hard way. Under court order, billions of dollars have been poured into that school system over the last decade, yet stupid is still stupid, as the test results demonstrate. The schools are gilded palaces to learning, the teachers over compensated, the school system spending ever more dollars, yet the outcomes are the same: low standardized test scores.
Another View
June 20th, 2012
8:54 am
Peter’s view is so right so many times.
KIM
June 20th, 2012
9:29 am
Fulton Co has twice the money that Gwinnett has. Compare the results. GCPS out performs in all areas. $ does not make the diff. BUT it helps like torment. And for the poor counties. They have always taken $ given to them to enhance their low tax base and turned around and lowered their millage. So, they still struggle financially. But also, don’t overload your mouth. Gwinnett is truly struggling financially. Don’t kid yourself.
KIM
June 20th, 2012
9:32 am
@William Casey: Phoenix serves a group of students who would make you or any other elder quite proud. I’ve always said a person who has to advertise where he/she went to college is insecure and has to “tell” you so you’ll know. Others show what they know through good work.
KIM
June 20th, 2012
9:38 am
@Solutions: You are arrogant, so I suspect little of what you say is true. People who write things like you do, rarely tell the whole truth. To write that your children have a title of any kind says volumes.
C Jae of EAV
June 20th, 2012
11:05 am
Simply put Rep Mayo nailed it right on the head, the public education funding model in GA, with all its peices and parts needs to be wholesale put on the table and completely re-thought.
The gap between the haves and have nots is shamefully glaring, meanwhile we continue to see fiscal waste & abuse run amuck in many of the larger systems across the state.
teacher&mom
June 20th, 2012
11:48 am
@Peter: Any idea if the states that showed a regression in funding also had an shift in “leadership”? Was there a shift in which party controlled the legislature and Governor’s seat?
Just curious to know if the is/isn’t a correlation.
bu2
June 20th, 2012
2:46 pm
@Maureen
Gwinnett having the 3rd lowest tax wealth per student just doesn’t make sense. Has anyone questioned how they calculated it? Is it simply taxable value/students or do they tweak it? Are they using the property tax base from 1985 instead of last year?
The land and homes are worth more in Gwinnett than probably all but 2-3 counties in the state. And the commercial property is worth more than all but Fulton, Dekalb and Cobb. Does everyone in Gwinnett go to public schools and have 4 kids? It just really doesn’t make sense that they have less of a tax base per student than Baker County or a score of other rural counties or that they have less than Clayton which has less than 1/3 the people but only 1/2 the students.
bu2
June 20th, 2012
2:51 pm
I see they do have more than Clayton along with Pelham city. But I just don’t see how they have less than any of those districts around Pelham-Mitchell, Baker, Grady, Worth, etc.
Mark
June 22nd, 2012
9:09 pm
Maureen, is right….equilization has helped poor rural counties whose property does not generate the revenue needed to give students an education. Each local district has to put up at least 5 mills to get state dollars. However, the state then equalizes the per pupil revenue (generated locally) to the 75th percentile for every mill spent after that. From 1997-2008 poorer districts have made great gains due to the equity formulae in spite of austerity cuts. The authors needed to explain that many of the districts cited left large sums of money on the table as they were not willing to tax themselves at levels anywhere close to the metro mean to reap the windfall of equilization. Finally, those counties that had property values balloon in the last boom (metro) have been hurt the greatest in the bust. This is not to say that overall spending on education has stagnated and then dropped in line with the economy. Read, “Challenges to equity: A study of Georgia school funding for the years 1997–2008.” It might help make things clearer.