Equity, Equality and Adequacy -- Let's at least debate with a common vocabulary

Texas is spot-on when it comes to differentiating between equity and adequacy of public school funding. As they point out, "equity is not the same as equality." Perhaps Michigan and particularly Governor Snyder, can learn something from the Lone Star state advocates of fair funding for public school children?

Perhaps...

Equity vs Adequacy

Equity: n. fairness 

Adequacy: n. the minimum amount to be sufficient 

Excellent: adj. of the highest or finest quality

Education Equity
For many years in Texas, there were huge differences in the amount of money available to educate children in public schools. Before 1995, some of the wealthiest school systems spent $10,000 per student and had low school tax rates. Poorer school systems often had as little as $3,000 per pupil and had much higher taxes.

What is at stake? See photos and stats on Texas schooling before and after fair funding.

"Equity," or an equitable system, means that all communities – whether rich or poor...have equal access to similar amounts of revenue per student.

Equity is not the same as equality; it does not mean that every school district gets the same amount of funding. Some schools need additional funding to serve students with disabilities, to provide bilingual education, and to provide free and reduced-price lunches. In a truly equitable system, every school district has enough funding to provide a quality education to all of its students.

Why Fight for Equity?
Americans agree that a child's future should not depend on his or her heritage, parents' income or neighborhood. Our sense of justice insists that wherever a student comes from or lives, she or he should have the opportunity to succeed. Just as we insist that Texas have a quality highway throughout the state so that all Texans can travel easily and safely from north to south, so we believe that schools should have the resources to serve all students, to build the skills and capacities they need to reach any destination.

Education Adequacy

What is adequacy?
Since the late 1980s, the issue of equity has taken a back seat to the topic of finance adequacy. Unlike the equity debate – which focuses on the disparity in funding between districts – the adequacy debate focuses on defining a minimum level of funding needed for every school to teach its students.

Why does adequate set the bar too low?
The problem with adequacy is that it provides for education that is "just enough" rather than excellent. We have to ask ourselves, if we had adequate education, wouldn't we have adequate, not excellent, employees? Wouldn't we have adequate, not engaged citizens? Wouldn't we have adequate, not excellent, opportunities for our children to go to college?

All children deserve the best possible education, adequacy for some and excellence for others is, by its very nature, discriminatory.

Superintendent Britten Headlines Wyoming Senior Center Series

The Insanity of Continuing Inequity

You’ve probably heard this said before, but insanity is continuing to do the exact same thing over and over while expecting different results. I sometimes feel that our school district is caught in this type of maddening cycle, with ever-increasing expectations and obstacles that prevent student success while receiving declining financial support from our state legislature.

We’ve operated with a continuing deficit in our budget for the past five years. Costs have risen through normal inflation, student learning needs have expanded, state mandates have increased, and yet our current per-student funding from Lansing has fallen to 2005 levels. This has forced us to cut a number of programs, services and material support for the classroom while trying our best to keep class sizes small and avoid laying-off teachers. But because the state continues its stance of providing less funding, we are finding it very difficult to avoid reducing the number of teachers, cutting more programs, and expanding class sizes.

The state took over funding of public schools like ours back in 1994 when the voters approved “Proposal A” that year. Prior to that, our district would periodically ask the voters in this community to approve an increase in the operational millage if more funding was needed to meet higher costs. Besides taking over the funding responsibility, the state has also increased graduation requirements dramatically and under the federal No Child Left Behind laws, also mandates high proficiency rates on the annual MEAP and MME tests. Yet, the state has done nothing to improve school funding and provide equitable resources, including school buildings, technology, science labs, and other facilities. As a result, there are school districts in Michigan that get as much as 35% MORE in state per-student funding than Godfrey-Lee.

Here’s an example of the unfairness in school funding perpetuated by our leaders in Lansing.  In 2010-11 (the last year the state provides financial information for each school district), Godfrey-Lee received $9,594 in state and local funds for each of our students, while a certain district on the east side of the state received $17,338 per student. That equals 81% more funding per student for a district that is property-rich in a county that has a paltry 4% poverty rate for children ages 0-17, while the Godfrey-Lee community, fifth lowest in property values in the entire state, struggles with a 34% poverty rate (highest in Kent County). Something is not right yet our elected officials in Lansing continue to bury their collective heads in the sand.

We have just begun a new legislative session in Lansing and unless our senators and representatives hear from all of us, this unfair school funding will continue despite all students being expected to achieve the same college-and-career-readiness standards. Your voice will make a difference but only if you speak out.

Real School Reform is Blocked by our Perceptions

"...the way we see "education" is colored by two things: our own personal memories of schooling - which are remarkably similar across the past 100 years - and our national conversations about schooling - which are remarkably negative, dispiriting, and two-dimensional. 

"Combine these two influences, and what you get is what we have - a society that views K-12 education reform via a default set of images and memories that inhibit our collective ability to imagine something better, something new."

A Different Story About Public Education - Of, By, For: In Search of the Civic Mission of K-12 Schools - Education Week

Which Schools Are Not Following Arne Duncan's Public School Reforms

Be aware of what is happening to one of America's pillars of democracy.

"This is not an exaggeration. Allow me to explain it further: Education reform proponents, whose backgrounds are primarily from management, finance, technology, government—and not education—are trying very hard—to the tune of billions of dollars—to sell the public a rather interesting bill of goods. You will see, among other things, the championing of common core standards, standardized assessments, data-collection systems, and an expensive technological infrastructure to make this all possible."

Why America's Prep Schools Aren't Following Arne Duncan's Public School Education Reforms | Education on GOOD