Covid-19, Public School Budgets and Accountabaloney

In a nutshell: Just at a time when appreciation for our public schools (and all they have to offer our children) is at its highest in decades, the economic downturn associated with the COVID-19 crisis threatens Florida’s ability to provide a high quality system of free public schools. In Florida, public education funding has NEVER recovered since the Great Recession a decade ago, with education funding remaining more than 20% below inflation adjusted levels. Further cuts will devastate our system and have long term consequences for Florida’s children and their chance at future success. Lawmakers will be called back to Tallahassee to adjust the 2020-21 budget, with rumors they will be cutting $10 Billion (from a $93 Billion budget) as early as June. Public Education funding should be protected.

What’s a Floridian to do? To begin with, we recommend you read our blog and listen to a podcast… then contact your legislators.

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I recently discovered a podcast episode devoted to two of the topics that currently occupy the majority of my thoughts: the COVID-19 pandemic and the future of public education. “This Podcast Will Kill You” is hosted by two young epidemiologists. Each episode “tackles a different disease, from its history, to its biology, and finally, how scared you need to be.” Not surprisingly, they are currently doing a series of episodes focused on the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the world, which they call “Anatomy of a Pandemic.” Chapter 10 focuses on COVID’s effect on education and schooling in the United States and features an interview with journalist Jennifer Berkshire and education historian Dr. Jack Schneider, who just happen to be the hosts of my favorite education related podcast: Have You Heard. I recommend you add both podcasts to your library.

There are so many great parts to this episode. They begin with three compelling first-person accounts regarding the impact of the transition to distal learning on students and educators. Later, they discuss how the current move to distance learning has highlighted just how much schools provide to students beyond basic instruction in core content areas. They report overhearing a student describe the current COVID-era, online/distance learning as “like school has been passed through a sieve with all of the enjoyable parts filtered out” (great analogy!). There is a great discussion (at around 29:00) regarding how inequities outside the classroom (for example, household income and parental level of education) impact success in the classroom and how such inequities, and their impact on the “achievement gap,” are being exposed by the COVID crisis. There is, also, a sobering discussion (at 37:30) describing the types of students (for example, low income children, English language learners or those with special needs) who are being “left behind” by the current shift to distance learning during this pandemic.

We encourage you to take the time to listen to the entire podcast, but our blog post will focus on the effects of COVID on our accountability system and impacts of the economic crisis on education funding.

At 40:52, the hosts ask three important questions:

• Do you think that this pandemic will make policymakers and politicians see the economic value of schools and how fundamentally important schools and public schools are to the economy overall?
• Or do you think that this might lead to a further decrease in funding to public schools ultimately resulting (hopefully not) but in a dismantling of the entire public school system?
• How do you think that our definition of school might change after this pandemic?

Schneider, who is the author of the book “Beyond Test Scores: A Better Way to Measure School Quality” (which I, also, highly recommend) hopes the COVID experience will get people to think beyond the limits of our current test-based accountabaloney:

For the past 20 years we have had an accountability system in this country that measures schools by primarily standardized test score results in two subject areas Math and English, in grades three through eight as well as one year of high school. At the high school level they look at graduation rates and increasingly across the states they are looking at student attendance rates.

This is such an impoverished way of trying to understand school quality that I have, sort of, shouted myself a hoarse over the past 10 years about the damage that this does. It does damage to schools in that schools are incentivized to narrow their missions and, particularly schools serving the least advantaged, who by virtue of the fact that they are serving the least advantaged are less likely to have a high standardized test scores, those are the schools that are most incentivized to narrow their missions. Moreover, these kinds of narrow metrics pit schools against each other in a way that makes some schools look good and other schools look bad, even if they’re all doing a stellar job. And this undermines the work of public education, it denigrates the work of teachers, it demoralizes students and communities.

And, I think, the present pandemic is beginning to show us a little bit more about what schools actually do. (For example,) my kid is really happy when she goes to school (and that sure isn’t measured in the accountability system) but- I can see it with my eyes right now- I can see she’s dragging in a way that she doesn’t when she goes to school… she wants to go to school. She misses her teacher with whom she’s established a real connection. It’s a highlight of her day to just see her teacher- measure that! It’s a highlight of her day when she gets to connect with her classmates, with whom she’s built real bonds, and I’ll say that this is a diverse school and her class is a diverse class and so the fact that she’s connected with them is something that’s not only meaningful socially for her, I think it’s meaningful politically for our community and for America- measure that!

These are the sorts of things that I think many parents and community members may be experiencing as they’re seeing their kids in terms of their social and emotional outcomes right now… in terms of their engagement… in terms of the things they’re learning… so I think that one of the things that may come out of this is a broader definition of school, a definition that aligns more with the kind of implicit definition that we all operate under and that, I think, we often aren’t really cognizant of because we become so habituated to the accountability regime and the kind of narrow metrics associated with it.

[We couldn’t agree more. Florida’s accountability system, with its focus on high stakes, state mandated standardized tests, wasn’t working. It failed to measures what really makes our schools great, it unfairly labeled low income schools as failing, it wasted millions and millions of dollars annually on testing, which could have been better spent elsewhere (like on librarians, social workers or school nurses) and it encouraged a narrowed curriculum and a teach-to-the-test atmosphere, especially for our most at-risk students. No one wants to go back to that “status quo” after Covid.]

Berkshire addresses the issues of funding:

So, there are actually two distinct issues here. One is the what is the impact going to be on kids that closing schools has, right? – like the months of of lost time. But then there is this bigger issue of what’s going to happen as the bottom falls out of the economy? We saw just yesterday – the governor of Hawaii announced 20% pay cuts for teachers- the dip in state coffers is going to be like nothing we’ve seen before. We’ve gotten used to hearing politicians say that money doesn’t matter when it comes to schools – it’s a refrain we hear regularly from our Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos – but this ISN”T true. There is now a mountain of evidence of just how much money matters and just how much kids, especially the most vulnerable, were hurt when states whacked at their budgets during the great recession.

Now we’re looking at something that’s gonna be worse and so, when we talk about the impact that this time is going to have on kids, we need to make sure that we’re thinking about this next stretch when we’re dealing with all of this budget fall-out because that’s when you’re going to hear people start to say, you know, there’s a way we can do this much more cheaply: we can just move it all online and, when we hear that, we need to remember that we’ve just seen what that looks like and just how many kids are left out of that equation. 

A 2017 report titled “The Impact of the Great Recession on Student Achievement” looked at population-level achievement data and showed the onset of the Great Recession significantly reduced student math and ELA achievement (read more about it here). The adverse effects of the recession were not distributed equally among the population of U.S. students, but rather hit hardest the very same types of students who are currently being “left behind” by the today’s shift to distance learning during this pandemic:

• “the recessionary effect on student achievement was concentrated among school districts serving more economically disadvantaged and minority students – i.e. the so-called Achievement Gap widened.”
• “the academic impact of the recession was more severe for students who were older at the time of first exposure to the recession, compared to their younger counterparts.”
• “the recession’s effects on student achievement were concentrated in districts with the largest reductions in teacher personnel, providing evidence that the effects we observe are driven, in part, by the recession’s negative effects on school resources.“

The authors concluded:

Finally, since there are long-term effects of student achievement on adult earnings (Chetty, et al., 2011; Chetty, et al., 2014; Fredriksson, Öckert and Oosterbeek, 2012), the consequences of the Great Recession will continue to be felt by students most impacted by the recession. The recessionary impact on student achievement identified here, coupled with the known effects of student achievement on future earnings, suggest that students who experienced the Great Recession during their school-age years will likely suffer long-term economic declines, compared to students least impacted by the Great Recession. Therefore, future efforts to mitigate the longer-term effects of economic downturns must address the short-term and disparate impact that economic recessions have on student achievement.

“The Impact of the Great Recession on Student Achievement“

Such conclusions don’t bode well for our Florida kids. In Florida, public education funding has NEVER recovered since the Great Recession. As documented by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, seven states have K-12 funding more than 10% BELOW pre-recession levels, with Florida’s funding affected the most, remaining more than 20% below inflation adjusted levels. Further cuts will devastate our system and have long term consequences on our children, especially our most vulnerable, and their chance at long term success.

A recent article in EdWeek warns that draconian cuts to public schools could come as soon as this summer and reported “The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities earlier this week estimated that states will collectively lose close to $500 billion next fiscal year.” Congress is working on another relief package, this time for state and local governments. Will it include enough to support public schools during this crisis? Public schools are vital to the economic recovery. They should be considered “Too Big To Fail.”

Florida lawmakers will be called back to Tallahassee, as early as June, to adjust the 2020-21 budget, with rumors they will be cutting $10 Billion (from the current $93 Billion budget). At funding levels 20% BELOW the last recession, current public education funding should be protected. The social distancing necessary to safely reopen schools in the fall will require smaller class sizes (more teachers) and increased bus routes. Students will return with more needs – both academic and social-emotional. Schools will need large supplies of personal protective gear, disinfectants and health screening. Our schools will need more funding, not less.

It is never too early to attempt to influence your state and federal representatives on the importance of adequate funding for public schools. They need to hear from you regularly. Make sure they understand the value of public schools and how fundamentally important public schools are to you and to the economy overall. Make sure they understand that Florida’s public schools have not recovered from the last recession and that there is “a mountain of evidence of just how much money matters” when it comes to schools and that kids, especially the most vulnerable, were hurt by budget cuts during the great recession. Ask for a substantial federal relief package for public education and a state budget without further cuts to our public schools.

We will post legislative updates and more information as it becomes available. Please contact your representatives today.

You can find your Florida legislators here: https://www.myfloridahouse.gov/Sections/Representatives/myrepresentative.aspx