The Supreme Court's education decision: Deja vu?
The Supreme Court ruled last week that the state legislature isn't fully funding education. Why the decision isn't the windfall for Washington education that it seems.
JAMS
Last week the Washington State Supreme court (McCleary v. State) ruled that the state legislature is failing to fully fund education. This might seem like a real victory for public education in the state, but it's not.
The McCleary v. State decision certainly highlights the state's education problems, but it's more or less a repeat of the Doran Decision — a 1977 lawsuit brought against the state by the Seattle Public Schools for not fully funding K-12 education. And, as history has proved, finding a real solution for the state's education crisis is going to require more than a successful lawsuit.
The 70s were a tough time for education funding in Washington state. The Boeing bust and its economic repercussions meant state budget cuts, which forced a heavier reliance on local property taxes to fund K-12 education. Property owners were footing more and more of the bill.
So in 1975, when Seattle failed to pass two successive property levies at the ballot box, the Seattle School District was hard hit. Filing a lawsuit against the State of Washington, the district argued that the legislature was failing to uphold the state constitution; namely the provision that declares it is the “paramount duty of the state to make ample provision for the education of all children within its borders.” Paramount duty, the Seattle School District argued, means fully funding education — not forcing local districts to take their chances with “the whim of the [local] electorate” to pass property tax increases.
Thurston County Superior Court's Judge Doran agreed — a decision later sustained by the State Supreme Court — requiring the Washington legislature to define a basic education, and then fully fund it. The ruling didn't put the state on the hook for a “total education” or for specific educational outcomes, like test scores or grades, but the legislature could no longer balance the state’s budget at the expense of K-12 students in public schools by pushing the funding burden onto local districts.
In response, lawmakers passed the Basic Education Act, which evolved throughout the 80s and 90s to seed legislation like the Essential Academic Learning Requirements (EALRs), a regimen of standardized tests to measure success, and a myriad of unsustainable and complex funding formulas intended to balance the interests of large, small, rural, and urban school districts.
But 16 years later, as part of the passage of further reforms in 1993, a report reviewing the relative strengths and weaknesses of Washington’s system concluded there was still “too much reliance on levies, funding formulas that were too complex, inadequate funding for administrative salaries, and inadequate funding for basic operational costs such as books and utilities.” Nothing had changed.
Over time, that delicate balance has eroded even further. Today parents, teachers, and advocates are finding that state allocations are not paying for the actual costs of education. For example, when I worked as a legislative advocate for the Washington State School Director's Association, we found that the state's calculated cost of educating some programs were largely based on certificated teacher time measured in salary, even though districts spend many additional dollars on non-certified staff to support teachers, facilities, and other costs.
Though it may be satisfying to watch the judiciary branch wag its finger at the legislative branch, the process doesn't bear fruit; hectoring from the bench didn’t work last time and there's no reason to believe it will now. Still the Supreme Court does seem to have wised up since the Doran decision. Justice Johnson, writing for the majority in McCleary V. Seattle decision, made clear that:
We therefore reject as a viable remedy the State's invitation for the court simply to defer to the legislature's implementation of [reform] . . . a better way forward is for the judiciary to retain jurisdiction over this case to monitor implementation of the reforms [proposed by the legislature].
However, in her concurrence/dissent with the decision, Chief Justice Barbara Madsen laid out a caveat:
I do not believe this court should attempt to establish goals or benchmarks for the legislature to meet. Rather, as we held in Seattle School District, it is the legislature's duty to define what constitutes basic education and how to adequately fund education at that level. Adopting specific standards or guidelines for defining and funding basic education is a legislative responsibility; it is not a judicial function.
While the Court seems to be holding the legislature more firmly accountable this time around, Madsen’s point is well taken: It is not the role of the judicial branch to determine the content and form of a basic education. A lawsuit is not going to solve this problem. Nor will more budget manipulations in the legislature. Funding public education is not about finding the right formulas for allocating scarce dollars. It is about finding enough money in the first place.
The real answer to our education problems lies with Washington's voters. Will we keep telling the legislature to fully fund education, while denying the state the revenue to do so? If we are to truly improve our state's education system, we'll have to trust the experts to define education, demand the legislature find a way to pay for it, and open our wallets to make it work. As Judge Doran so astutely put it, the whims of an electorate and the politicians they elect seem unable to get the message: you get what you pay for.
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Comments:
Posted Fri, Jan 13, 6:02 a.m. Inappropriate
Thank you, Mr. Valdez, for being the first person in the press to point out the obvious: the Court can make decisions but they cannot enforce them. If the legislature chooses to ignore it - and they probably will - then the decision has no impact at all.
The whole scene is dipped in cynicism. The legislature did define Basic Education with an education reform bill last year. Since they knew that they were just window shopping and didn't have to pay for any of it, they did a lot of grandstanding and tossed every luxury item they could think of into the cart. I'm sure it looked really good to the voters back home for their state rep to go on about all of the wonderful trinkets they were promising for the kiddies. Then, when they got to checkout they did what a lot of virtual shoppers do: they walked away from the cart. They said that they would take care of it in 2018 (after all of their terms of office had expired). The Court then used that cynical, fantasy definition of Basic Education for this decision. Of course the legislature didn't fund that dream. They never intended it as a real, working definition of basic education. It was just the illusion that they were selling.
The likely result of all of this? A lowering of the bar on the definition of basic education. How far down? As far as they need to. The legislature could simply re-define basic education as "whatever the legislature funded". There. Problem solved. As crass a move as that might be, the Court is likely to accept it since they acknowledge the legislature's authority to define basic education however they wish.
Let's remember that this is the Court that defined an emergency as "whatever the legislature says is an emergency".
Posted Fri, Jan 13, 8:31 a.m. Inappropriate
It's not that courts can never enforce any of their decisions. But they can't force the legislature to spend money.
Posted Fri, Jan 13, 10:08 a.m. Inappropriate
State government may and probably does need more money to fund the level and variety of government services our citizens expect. The government definitely needs more money to sustain educational and social programs created or dramatically expanded during the last ten years. And the state needs to spend more on educating its students, of all ages.
Since the 1980's, the legislature has pushed more and more responsibility for funding K-12 onto the backs of local voters. During that time it has also dramatically increased state spending for K-12, started subsidizing the salaries of selected preschool teachers, and boosted some aspects of higher ed. Then, with the downturn in state revenues, the legislature gutted higher ed, replaced some state K-12 funds with one-time federal funds, and continued subsidizing preschool teachers. It also reduced but kept funding a plethora of social programs that assist low-income state residents who live below or just above federal poverty levels.
This legislature puts social programs on at least an equal footing with K-12 education. Legislative leaders in the majority party have said that kids can't learn unless they are supported by a number of government sponsored social programs. The fact that the constitution says that the education of our kids is the state's paramount duty doesn't mean what it says unless education includes all the outside social supports those legislators believe kids need to thrive.
The construct that social programs are equally the state's paramount duty is one worthy of discussion but it is also one that the voters need to decide. Until the voters make that determination, the legislature should fund basic education before non-constitutionally protected programs are funded. Then, if more money is needed to support education, general government and social programs, raise the taxes necessary to fund those programs or ask the voters for the money.
Voters who conclude that the legislature has been playing games with K-12 funding in order to obtain this court ruling can find evidence for their beliefs. Some legislators wanted to give education more clout in the legislative budgeting process. Others wanted an excuse to ask the voters for a new revenue source to fund education. Some legislators have admitted as much over the years. I could name names but won't.
Posted Fri, Jan 13, 11:08 a.m. Inappropriate
Our legislators play kick-the-can budget games continually, year after year. They adopt budgets they know are not sustainable, creating new programs but hiding the true costs by pushing them off until "later". They adopt "savings" that will never materialize, always betting on the come -- more money will come in to cover the sham.
A current example is the push to take over K-12 health care. They claim it will have money, knowing full well it will not. It has been studied repeatedly. Only two ways can it "save" -- through sleight of hand like a State Auditor report that admittedly ignored hundreds of millions of additional costs, or through the current proposal that would push huge costs onto teachers and other K-12 employees.
Since when has a state takeover of ANYTHING ever produced one dime of savings?
It's all about building power and the bureaucracy, and shirking the real problems that need to be addressed. It's all a con game, and the taxpayers again and again are the ones who are conned.
Posted Fri, Jan 13, 2:39 p.m. Inappropriate
There are some things that the State is mandated to spend money on; among them, roads and (at least) elementary education. So why does DSHS take 30% of the state budge right off the top? it seems that, given the constitutional mandate, the first things that should
be funded would include roads and schools. So, my question is, why are non-mandated expenditures given such high priority?
Posted Mon, Jan 16, 8:06 p.m. Inappropriate
What's even more puzzling is how the Legislature can hear from the Supreme Court that it is not fully funding education to our existing schools. And what do some of those legislators then do? Put up charter school bills so we can bring on-line even MORE underfunded schools (and drain more money from existing schools).
This from conservatives who rail about too much government and yet they want to add more bureaucracy to the state government. And spend more money on administration of charters.
Yes, that makes perfect sense.
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