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Associated Press
(Published in the Nashua Telegraph)
Published: February 12, 2007

Parties differ on developing new school funding system
By NORMA LOVE, The Associated Press

CONCORD – A Lexus, a Cadillac or a Ford? Leather or cloth seats? Stain protected?

It doesn’t sound like a discussion of educational quality, but car analogies are popular these days among lawmakers struggling to decide how much English students should learn and whether art and Latin are essential or extras.

In September, the state Supreme Court gave the state until July to clearly define the “adequate education” the justices say the state must provide to all. The definition must be simple enough to put a price on it.

Democrats say an honest appraisal can only be done if determining the cost is done afterward.

But Republicans – like Rep. David Hess – believe a new school funding system should be developed as a package that defines adequacy, puts a price on it, funds it and creates a way to hold school districts accountable for delivering it. The court’s September decision mandated all four tasks, not just coming up with a definition, Hess pointed out in an opinion piece published this month.

“When shopping for an automobile, would you enter the showroom, select a Kia, a Ford or a Cadillac and drive it off the lot without knowing how much it would cost or whether you had enough money to pay for it? Of course not! Without having to worry about the finances, we’d all pick the Cadillac,” he wrote.

Rick Trombly, a lobbyist for NEA-NH, the state’s largest teachers union, argues adequacy can be defined without worrying about the cost of each component along the way.

“We can build a car and we know we have to have seats in the car. Certainly wooden crates are not going to be sufficient. Leather is debatable, but whatever you decide you’re going to have to defend as meeting adequacy,” he said.

After suggesting that car analogies might be a “guy thing,” House Speaker Terie Norelli then offered one herself:

“I’m not going to go in and buy a Lexus because the court didn’t say we need a Lexus. However, I have to have enough money to at least go in and buy a car that has four wheels, that has a running engine, that can get me from point A to point B. That’s adequacy and I have to be able to fund it.”

How hard is it to put a finger on the Ford version of adequate versus the Cadillac version? “Hard. Very hard. It’s very hard,” said Trombly, who added: “The Legislature can pass a law that night is day and day is night. The question is, will it succeed?”

The teachers’ union is working on a definition to present to lawmakers, but is having trouble deciding what isn’t essential to producing well-rounded students, he said.

“As educators, we see the whole made up of the parts,” he said. “It’s very hard to pick out one piece and say, ‘Hmm. Maybe that’s not a component of an adequate education.’ It’s very hard to deconstruct. Do we pay for buses? Do we pay for paper? Of course you do. You have to get the students there.”

New Hampshire is not alone in its struggles. According to the National Access Network, only five states – Delaware, Hawaii, Mississippi, Nevada and Utah – have not had a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of K-12 public school funding. (The Education Commission of the States says a lawsuit in Indiana was withdrawn before it was decided.)

John Augenblick, a Denver-based education consultant, traces the lawsuits to a change in thinking about what students should know. The genesis was a 1989 Kentucky Supreme Court ruling throwing out that state’s school funding system.

Most states adopted standards to gauge student performance without any idea of the cost, he said. What followed were lawsuits aimed at linking the cost to the goal and getting states to pay for it, he said.

The federal Goals 2000 program and No Child Left Behind Act reinforced the premise that student performance should be measured against a set of learning objectives.

Norelli, Senate President Sylvia Larsen and others believe the state’s minimum school standards – officially called “approval standards” – and curriculum frameworks are starting points for a definition. The standards cover such inputs as student-teacher ratios while the frameworks set targets such as a child’s ability to read with comprehension at grade level. Statewide tests already measure performance in grades 3-8.

The state tried to persuade the court that New Hampshire already provides more than an adequate education and pointed to the minimum standards, curriculum frameworks and No Child Left Behind requirements as evidence.

The court said that without distinguishing between what was adequate and what was beyond adequate, the entire $2 billion annual cost of public schools could be assigned to the state, which now provides $837 million in school aid each year.

That means lawmakers must decide what is a local responsibility and, if Democrats prevail, without deciding at the same time if the resulting state obligation is a Cadillac, Lexus, Ford or something with four wheels and a running engine.

“I don’t think (the court ruling) requires the state to pay for everything,” said Andru Volinsky, one of the lead lawyers for Claremont and the four other school districts whose lawsuit led to funding reforms. “The state has to define what level of competence is required in these areas. I don’t think that necessarily means everything that happens in every school in New Hampshire has to be paid by the state, nor does the opinion call for that.”

Steve Norton, executive director of the New Hampshire Center for Public Policy Studies, does not believe the Legislature will be locked into one price for the definition it accepts. Norton and Augenblick note that other states dealing with the issue use four basic costing methods that can produce different results.

Volinsky insists the state must first decide on the components of adequate.

“If we say we want the vocational aspects to mean we prepare our kids to be hamburger flippers, that’s shortsighted. If we want computers, we need a different curriculum to meet the goal,” he said. “In the first instance, the Legislature has to say the desired lifelong skill level is hamburger flipping or technology.”