2012 Election Coverage – The State of Education

For years, studies have said American students are falling behind the rest of the world in education. Politicians at every level of government have looked for ways to improve our educational system, so our country will continue to be competitive on the world stage.

At the same time, tightening budgets have caused a lot of these initiatives, like the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) passed under President George W. Bush in 2001, to go underfunded.

While there has been praise for parts of NCLB that increase school accountability and seek to close gaps between advantaged and disadvantaged students, the bill has a number of serious flaws, according to U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. In addition to being underfunded, NCLB places too much of an emphasis on standardized testing and punishes schools that fail to measure up to the bill’s strict requirements, rather than helping them improve.

“We need to get the election over just so, at the federal level, they’ll focus on reauthorizing the national education laws,” said Sturgeon Bay Schools Superintendent Joe Stutting. “We’re still under NCLB even though everybody admits it’s a flawed law.”

In 2009, President Barack Obama launched the Race to the Top initiative to provide funding for state and local educational reforms, but actual reform of NCLB has been stalled in Congress for years.

As a result, the President and the Department of Education offered waivers to states that would not have measured up to NCLB’s requirement that 100 percent of students be proficient in reading and math by 2014. In exchange, states were required to develop plans that increased standards for students.

Wisconsin is one of 37 states that received the federal waiver. The state’s Department of Public Instruction (DPI) is creating new student tracking and intervention systems and new assessments for students, teachers, and schools. While educators and administrators approve of most of the changes Wisconsin is implementing, they ask where the funding for these new programs will come from.

“Right now there are a lot of initiatives being put out at the state level. Most of them have a price tag,” said Stutting. “So when I talk to Garey Bies and Frank Lasee and other state elected officials, what I ask them to do is, whatever mandate you do, do not pay for it out of the current pot of money. Don’t add another piece to that pie that is already not enough to fund education.”

In the state’s 2011-13 budget, Gov. Scott Walker and the legislature reduced the amount spent on K-12 schools by $834 million, a nearly 8 percent decrease from the previous budget. Some cuts came by eliminating aid for advanced placement, alcohol and drug abuse prevention, alternative education, children-at-risk, and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics programs, as well as general aid.

“The budget cut state aids at historic amounts for public schools, as well as reduced revenues that schools can collect,” said Christina Brey, Wisconsin Education Association Council (WEAC) spokesperson. “I don’t think you can have the kind of cuts to education that Wisconsin has seen and not have an impact on children.”

In order to offset the cuts, the budget requires teachers to pay more into their health insurance and retirement plans, reducing teachers’ take-home salaries. To prevent municipalities from raising property taxes to cover any gaps in funding, the budget reduced school district revenue limits by 5.5 percent.

The revenue limit, and the state’s school funding formula, is a contentious issue for Door County school districts. Because of high property values and declining enrollment, Door County schools don’t receive much, if any, general state aid and often have to go to referendum to ask their communities to provide funds beyond the amount they’re allowed to raise via property taxes under the state’s revenue limit.

“I think we’re finally coming to the realization that land value does not equate with the income level of an area,” said Stutting. “So somehow we have to balance that out, without making winners and losers.”

The DPI has been floating a new school-funding plan through the legislature since 2010. According to the DPI website, the “Fair Funding for Our Future” plan would guarantee a minimum amount of state aid for every student at a school and make technical formula changes that strengthen rural, declining enrollment, and negatively aided districts.

No action has been taken so far to make the new formula a reality.

“Obviously, with any proposal it requires more money, and that’s the real challenge the state is going to have,” said Stutting. “But if we value education, we’re going to have to figure out how we’re going to come up with the money and do it.”

In addition to straightforward funding issues, Wisconsin’s public schools have also had to contend with state policies that put more money towards funding charter schools, which are held accountable for student achievement but are not subject to the same regulations as public schools. The state also provides vouchers to some low-income families who would like to send their children to private school but can’t afford it.

Funding charters and private schools with taxpayer money has been touted as a way to increase educational options for students and encourage schools to increase quality as they compete for students, but some feel the funding being given to these schools is funding that could be going to improve public schools.

“At the same time you’re cutting from one, you’re putting additional money towards an entirely different school system in Wisconsin,” said Brey.

To see where the 2012 candidates stand on these and other educational issues, including the role of government in funding higher education and what schools should be focused on teaching, turn to the breakdown boxes linked on the left side of this page.