Report details Kentucky's progress on education, future challenges

This from the Bowling Green Daily News:

Kentucky has come a long way from ranking near the bottom in K-12 education, and a new report contends it's because of state legislation that helped usher in key changes more than 20 years ago.

Read the Report here

The report was recently released by the Prichard Committee for Academic Excellence and the Kentucky Chamber of Commerce. It says that the 1990 passage of the Kentucky Education Reform Act brought a range of changes to public education in the state. They include helping to end the problem of nepotism hiring in school districts, creating higher standards for students, creating the state's first system for testing those standards and equalizing funding among poor and wealthy school districts, among other reforms.

Cory Curl is the associate director of the Prichard Committee, which was founded in 1983 to help public education in Kentucky move forward.

Back then, Curl said Kentucky ranked 50th in the in nation for percentage of adults with high school diplomas and 50th in adult literacy.

"Kentucky has a really remarkable story to tell about how educational improvement can happen when citizens and business and policymakers and parents work together," Curl said. "We felt like this was a story that needed to be told in a way that everyone can come to that common understanding."

Kentucky Chamber CEO and President Dave Adkisson also praised the report in a press release.

"We think this report will help Kentuckians – whether they are policy leaders, employers or interested citizens – gain a better understanding of the state’s efforts to improve education through the years," he said. "It provides a historical perspective while emphasizing the need to continue to push for excellence."

Kentucky now ranks among the top 10 in the nation for high school graduation rates. To move forward, Curl said the state needs to do more to expand education access and create more opportunities for low income and minority students.

A state-by-state report released by the Education Week Research Center earlier this year gives Kentucky an overall grade of C and a rank of 27. That report also placed fourth and eighth-grade reading and math proficiency at just above the national average, with Kentucky ranking at roughly 36 percent compared to 34.8 percent nationally. Kentucky students participating in school lunch assistance programs are still behind on proficiency, ranking below the national average of 30.1 percent at 26.3 percent.

Despite ongoing hurdles, Kentucky has progressed since the passage of KERA. In 1983, economist David Birch described Kentucky as a third world country with the nation's most uneducated workforce.

Real change didn't begin until 1985 when 66 of the state's poorer school districts sued the state arguing that funding was insufficient and unequal. In 1989, the Kentucky Supreme Court ruled in Rose v. Council for Better Education that the state's public school system was entirely unconstitutional.

The fallout forced the General Assembly to not just equalize but recreate public education funding, the report says.

For Curl, the biggest achievement of KERA was the creation of the Support Education Excellence in Kentucky program to equalize school funding across districts. A close second is the first real success at creating a system to test how well students meet standards, she said.

It allowed the committee to look at which schools had top reading scores, for example.

"It gave the public access to that kind of information," Curl said. "So it changed mindsets. It showed what was possible when students have access to high quality instruction."

When it comes to the state's current challenges, higher education access stands out.

A breakdown of the total revenue of Kentucky's public post-secondary institutions by source shows that state general fund dollars as a source of funding have fallen from 30 percent in 2003 to 14 percent in 2015.

Meanwhile, money from tuition and fees now is more than a quarter of total revenue. It made up 17 percent in 2003 and 26 percent in 2015.

The drop in funding is a concern Curl said the committee is watching.

Erin Klarer, vice president of government relations with the Kentucky Higher Education Assistance Authority, agrees it's concerning.

"The cost of attendance (to college) has certainly increased significantly while state appropriations have decreased," she said.

What's fueling the trend is a change in the way education is viewed by policy makers, she said.

“It is a philosophical question as to whether the cost of post-secondary education should be borne by those who consume it or it should be funded by the government," she said.

Emboldened by the federal Every Student Succeeds Act that shifts power to states and local districts, the Kentucky Department of Education is creating a new system for testing student success in meeting standards.

Sam Evans is the dean of Western Kentucky University's College of Education and Behavioral Sciences. He recently visited Frankfort to discuss the new accountability system with Education Commissioner Stephen Pruitt and others on a steering committee. Over the next six months, Evans said, work groups will review public feedback and group it into common themes to help inform the new system.

At the meeting, Evans said conversation mostly centered on moving away from one single metric for school success to a more "dashboard" approach that shows growth in several areas and discourages competition among districts.

"If we can move in that direction, that’s gonna be huge," he said.

In designing the new system, Evans stressed due diligence and said without it "it’s going to be a recipe for failure down the road."

Performance-based Budget Cuts

This from the Century Foundation:

What Is Performance-Based Funding in Higher Education?

When states allocate funds to individual colleges or to systems, the largest budget items include faculty and staff salaries and benefits, and campus operations and maintenance. These budgets are often set based upon historical trends and fixed costs, resulting in an incremental approach to budgeting in which the prior year’s budget serves as the primary determinant of the current-year budget.¹⁰ While incremental budgeting offers a degree of predictability, it may not be responsive enough to the changing needs of various campuses. This is why many states also embed formula funding into their budget models, where appropriations are based on a number of metrics such as enrollment growth, credit hours taken, and classroom square footage. Incremental and formula funding are the most common ways states allocate funds to higher education, but the reemergence of performance-based funding is changing that landscape.¹¹

For the past three decades, state spending on higher education has been a shrinking pie. Today, state appropriations per student are lower than they were in the 1980s since state support has failed to keep pace with enrollment demand. As states divest, they have pushed costs onto individual students and families in the form of higher tuition. As shown in Figure 1, public colleges now get more money from students’ tuition dollars than from state appropriations. As a result of these funding trends, there is greater pressure for colleges to show they are making the most of their scarce public support.

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The trend toward greater tuition reliance and reduced state support does not bode well for improving college completion for two reasons. First, research consistently shows that a $1,000 increase in tuition is associated with approximately 5 percent lower enrollment.¹² As state support declines and tuition rises without being offset by additional financial aid, we can expect fewer students to persist through college. Second, colleges that have fewer resources also have lower graduation rates and students take longer to finish their degrees. State appropriations help colleges serve students by offering better academic support services, lower faculty-to-student ratios, and reducing tuition—all of which are shown to be effective ways to increase degree attainment.¹³ If a college does not have adequate financial resources to support student success, then it becomes even more difficult to meet performance goals. Many of our nation’s lower-income, working class, and racial/ethnic minority students are enrolled in colleges that have the fewest financial resources, suggesting performance-based funding models could exacerbate inequalities if they do not account for this context.

Performance-based funding has emerged in the context of tight state budgets as a way to encourage efficiency and to make colleges responsible for their own destiny: those that fail to perform will lose more of their funding. Performance-based funding has developed in two distinct waves. The first occurred in the 1990s when eighteen states adopted early versions of performance-based funding. Some of these states (South Carolina) did away with incremental budgeting and used performance formulas to allocate 100 percent of their appropriations. Most others allocated performance funds as a bonus program, where colleges would compete for additional funds that were separate from their base budget. These early programs were popular with legislators, but were discontinued when political parties turned over and economic conditions weakened in the early 2000s. Consequently, several states discontinued their policies throughout the early 2000s, with only a handful keeping the policy in place.

The second wave of performance-based funding began around 2010 when several states adopted (or readopted) new versions of the old policy, as shown in Figure 2. [...and Kentucky can now be added to the list.]

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Today, thirty-two states (see Figure 3) operate with performance-based funding policies for their public institutions of higher education. The resurgence of this policy is remarkable considering the history of performance-based funding, in which two-thirds of all states that experimented with the policy discontinued it at some point in time.¹⁴ The resurgence in recent years may suggest states have learned from past experiences—perhaps old efforts failed because of design flaws—and new models will yield more effective and sustainable outcomes. The old models did not prioritize degree completion, funds were typically small and only came as bonuses (rather than built into the base), performance metrics were either too vague or too varied, and states rarely rewarded intermediate success. Further, the old models did not differentiate across the diversity of missions and educational offerings.

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The more recent round of performance-based reforms have been rebranded by advocates as “outcome-based,” and are supposed to be guided by seven principles, according to a firm providing assistance to many of the states employing performance-based funding:¹⁵

• Align incentives with state priorities
• Focus on completion
• Prioritize traditionally underserved students
• Hold all sectors accountable to the policy
• Differentiate metrics by mission and sector
• Tie significant amounts of funding to performance
• Build funding into base budget, then phase-in

By following these principles, the advocates argue, state performance-based funding efforts will create the conditions where colleges now produce significantly more college graduates. By focusing attention on completions, the logic goes that colleges will adopt strategies for improving student outcomes while also “aligning institutional spending priorities with those of the state.”¹⁶

Recognizing the importance of a flexible approach that acknowledges the ways that needs vary across campuses, the strategies that emerge from performance-based funding will vary from campus to campus, depending on each college’s financial capacity and resources available to develop new programs or improve existing ones. For example, some campuses might use technology and predictive analytics to identify and reach out to students who are struggling academically. Other campuses might provide new ways to deliver development education or allocate financial aid in order to retain and graduate more students. The theory is that by being clear about the goal, the experts at the campus level can figure out how to get there, incentivized by the funding tied to the goal.

It Isn’t Working—Why Not?

Despite the compelling logic behind paying for performance in higher education, research comparing states that have and have not adopted the practice has yet to establish a connection between the policy and improved educational outcomes. To date, there are twelve quantitative evaluations of state performance-based funding (see Table 1). There is remarkable consistency in the findings, all of which were conducted using different research techniques, spanning different periods of time, and examining various policy outcomes. Researchers typically examine how the policy affected graduation rates or the total number of degrees and certificates produced each year. These are the ultimate outcomes of performance-based funding, yet researchers have also examined intermediate outcomes like retention rates, selectivity, and resource allocation.

TABLE 1. SUMMARY OF QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH ON EFFECTS OF PERFORMANCE-BASED FUNDING
	Authors*	Outcome	Years studied	Effects on outcome
1	Shin & Mitlon (2004)	Graduation rates	1997-01	Null
2	Volkwein & Tandberg (2008)	Accountability score	2000-06	Null
3	Shin (2010)	Graduation rates & research funds	1997-07	Null
4	Sanford & Hunter (2011)	Graduation & retention rates	1995-09	Null
5	Rabovsky (2012)	Revenues & expenditures	1998-09	Mix, mostly null
6	Radford & Rabovsky (2014)	Graduation rates & degrees	1993-10	Null, sometimes negative
7	Hillman, Tandberg, & Gross (2014)	Bachelor’s degrees	1990-10	Null
8	Tandberg & Hillman (2014)	Bachelor’s degrees	1990-10	Null, some + over time
9	Tandberg, Hillman & Barakat (2015)	Associate’s degrees	1990-10	Mix, mostly negative
10	Hillman, Tandberg, & Fryar (2015)	Associate’s degrees & certificates	2002-12	More short-term certificates
11	Umbricht, Fernandez & Ortagus (2015)	Degrees, diversity, & admissions	2003-12	Null, more selective, less diverse
12	Kelchen & Stedrak (2016)	Revenues, expenditures, & financial aid	2003-12	More merit aid, less Pell aid
Source: Compiled by author from the studies listed in note 17

Across this body of research, the weight of evidence suggests states using performance-based funding do not out-perform other states—results are more often than not statistically significant. The most instructive findings come from case studies of Indiana, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Washington, all of which based their policies on the seven principles identified by advocates. In Indiana, universities have become more selective and less diverse while also not improving degree production. In Pennsylvania, universities did not produce more degrees even after operating under performance-based funding for nearly a decade. After Tennessee increased the financial incentives and redesigned its policy, universities did not improve their graduation or retention rates. And in Washington, the state’s community colleges responded not by producing more associate’s degrees but by increasing short-term certificates. Despite each state having goals related to improving college completions, their performance-based funding policies have not yet achieved the desired results.

Studies that use national samples rather than state-specific cases arrive at similar conclusions. In most of these national studies, states employing performance-based funding either decreased their degree productivity or they simply do not out-perform other states. In some cases, colleges responded to performance-based funding by enrolling fewer low-income students while spending more on non-needy students. Despite the weight of evidence pointing largely to null or negative effects, one study found positive effects on degree completions after several years of implementation. After about seven years, states using performance-based funding produced about 0.05 standard deviation more bachelor’s degrees than other states. While positive, this effect size is quite small and delayed when compared to other interventions that have larger and more immediate impacts on degree completion.

In 2015, states actually saw fewer students graduate from college than in previous years despite the fact that most states provide incentives for colleges to improve performance. How could this be?

In 2015, states actually saw fewer students graduate from college than in previous years despite the fact that most states provide incentives for colleges to improve performance. How could this be? How could educational attainment actually drop when the majority of states have created incentives to do just the opposite? Interestingly, the findings presented above are consistent with other performance management literature, in which performance regimes have been characterized as a “triumph of hope over experience” and results often do not follow from performance incentives.¹⁸ This is likely due to flawed assumptions embedded in the pay-for-performance logic.

To begin, proponents believe that traditional input-oriented funding models provide little to no incentive to increase completion. They claim colleges will underperform in the absence of incentives and that “public finance literature undergirds the idea that incentives and alignment to objectives matter.”¹⁹ Still others argue that “colleges and universities have had few financial incentives to prioritize student success.”²⁰ From this perspective, states that never adopted performance-based funding should produce graduates at far lower rates than that of states using performance-based funding. But the evidence presented earlier shows that states without performance-based funding produced degrees on par with (and sometimes better than) those using performance-based funding. Even in the absence of explicit performance goals and financial incentives, colleges increased degree completions when provided with additional resources.

In other words, public sector organizations can indeed produce positive outcomes even when financial incentives are not present. In fact, there are many cases in which performance declined when high-stakes performance incentives were introduced into complex organizations. When hospitals moved toward performance pay models, they did not improve health outcomes for patients. Despite the financial incentive, surgeons became more likely to avoid sicker patients, have higher rates of misdiagnosis, and even cancel operations or extend wait times.²¹ In elementary education, where the goal was to increase test scores, teachers became more likely to teach to the test in response to high-stakes performance accountability.²² In workforce development, local job placement centers had the goal of improving employment stability but did not significantly improve the labor market outcomes for displaced workers even when the incentive system encouraged long-term outcomes.²³

The Assumptions Don’t Match the Reality

For the logic of performance-based funding to result in actual improved outcomes, there are at least three assumptions that must hold true: the incentives must encourage low-performing institutions to improve, there must be a clear pathway for achieving better results, and the changes must be sustainable. As explained below, in higher education, none of these assumptions hold true.

Assumption 1: Incentives encourage low-performing institutions to improve.

One of the most common themes found in the qualitative evaluations of higher education performance-based funding is that low-resourced colleges struggle to meet performance goals. Consequently, they may lose funding and actually have less capacity to make educational improvements. This funding loss can result in a performance paradox in which states demand performance, yet do not provide colleges with the resources to perform. As a result, high-performers may be the most likely to benefit and low-performers may struggle to keep pace. To the extent this occurs, it would only exacerbate existing inequalities in the postsecondary finance system.

These inequalities have emerged in other fields. For example, high-achieving and wealthier K–12 schools have been found to excel in state performance accountability systems.²⁴ Similarly, schools that already had high accountability ratings were more likely to receive funds and thus achieve even greater improvement.²⁵ Examples are not limited to education: hospitals and health care providers that were already performing well were in strong financial shape consistently outperformed others.²⁶ In higher education, it is likely that the colleges already performing well will have the resources necessary to respond and adapt to the performance regime. Those with the least resources may struggle to respond if they do not have the staffing, experience, or financial capability to adopt or implement new retention and completion initiatives. In order to give colleges an equal chance at competing for performance funds, it is necessary to ensure colleges are competing on equal footing where those with the fewest resources are not unfairly penalized for not having the capacity to respond. Even if a funding formula differentiates according to mission or enrollment profile, it is important to assess whether the institution has the necessary resources (financial, personnel, technological, and so on) to implement effective practices to improve performance.

Assumption 2: There is a clear pathway for achieving results.

Incentive regimes work best when tasks are routine, non-complex, and when there is only one principal and one agent involved in delivering a service. In this environment, a manager is able to design and enforce a performance contract with an employee: if the employee does not perform, they do not get paid. This performance model has been found to work well in some industries, such as the classic example of windshield installation, where agents have direct and unambiguous control over the production process.²⁷

However, in public sector organizations the tasks are rarely routine or non-complex, and there is rarely just one principal and one agent involved in delivering a service. Students interact with any number of administrators, faculty members, and peers on a daily basis, meaning that the production of a college graduate is a collaborative task in which no single person is responsible for achieving a goal on their own. Unlike installing a windshield, the process is neither automated nor under the direct and unambiguous control of a single person. In fact, windshield installers may find the external incentives to motivate their behaviors, while college administrators and faculty members may be more intrinsically motivated to perform. Two decades of research on public sector motivation show that high-stakes external pressure can actually “crowd out” intrinsic motivation, reducing the likelihood of performance.²⁸ In this context, weak financial incentives are preferable to high-stakes incentives.

To complicate the task even further, the pathway from policy goal to policy outcome is not linear. Even straightforward goals are actually quite ambiguous to achieve. For example, getting a student to graduate from college seems straightforward—they simply need to accumulate enough credits over time and be in good academic standing to receive a degree. But in reality, there are a number of pitfalls along the way that can deter a student from completion, just as there are a number of people on campus (faculty member, staff, administrator, and so on) involved in the student’s ultimate success. For a performance-based funding system to work, it would need to isolate each individual’s unique contribution to the ultimate outcome. How to achieve this without crowding out public service motivation and in a way that can disentangle the value-added of one individual over any other is unclear and not without drawbacks.

Assumption 3: Effects will be sustained over time.

Proponents often refer to performance-based funding as a “game changer” that will usher a new era of success for public higher education.²⁹ However, experience from other sectors shows that when results occur, they are often only short-term and not sustained over time. The most common example comes from evaluations of the federal Job Corps, which initially showed positive impacts but the impacts declined over time.³⁰ These job training and placement centers produced short-term employment results that did not last beyond eighteen months.³¹ Similarly, hospitals that operated performance-based funding policies saw short-term impacts that, within about five years, began to decline.³²

One of the leading reasons results do not last over time is because the data generated from performance regimes may not be useful in professional practice. While there is some evidence that colleges are using performance data, it occurs in uneven ways depending on campus cultures and capacities.³³ This means performance regimes likely will not change internal operations in ways that induce long-term change. To change these internal operations, states should pursue training of campus officials so they are better able to use data to guide decision-making. But before trying to change internal operations, it is important for states and colleges to have a good sense of what precisely is the problem in need of change and exactly what data is needed to help solve that problem.

A Way Forward

Taken together, each assumption has some degree of face validity that intuitively appeals to how policymakers think colleges and universities will respond to performance incentives. But in light of the research findings both inside and outside of higher education, there is good reason to be skeptical of each assumption since they may not hold true when it comes to increasing educational outcomes. To date, there is little empirical or theoretical support behind performance-based funding in higher education, yet states continue to adopt and expand their efforts even when the weight of evidence suggests performance-based funding is not well suited for improving educational outcomes. Fortunately, there a more promising direction states could adopt to achieve better results.

Colleges that have more financial capacity are in the best position to serve students well; in fact, funding per student is one of the strongest predictors of college graduation.

Colleges that have more financial capacity are in the best position to serve students well; in fact, funding per student is one of the strongest predictors of college graduation.³⁴ As states divest from public higher education, they shift the financial responsibility onto students in the form of higher tuition. Rather than stemming this tide, performance-based funding may actually reinforce this race to the bottom in that colleges that have the greatest capacity are those that will be most likely to perform well. If this occurs to a high extent, then financial incentives are a blunt policy instrument not well designed for improving college completions. Instead, states should focus on building the resource capacity of the lowest-performing colleges and then allocate funds according to performance-oriented needs.

A corollary to state financial aid policy may be an instructive way to think about performance-based funding and its consequences. Paying colleges according to how well they perform on various metrics is not dissimilar from the way states allocate “merit-based” financial aid based on students’ academic performance. While merit-based aid is politically popular, it is an inefficient way to allocate resources since it primarily benefits students who would already do well in college regardless of the aid. In a similar vein, performance-based funding is likely to benefit colleges that already have the greatest likelihood to perform well. Instead of allocating scarce financial resources in this way, it would be more efficient and effective to target subsidies to colleges and universities that have the greatest financial need.³⁵

A “need-based” funding model for colleges and universities would target resources to institutions serving the most underrepresented student populations. After all, the problem with college completion is not that elite or highly selective colleges are under-performing, but rather that campus resources are insufficient in many of the public institutions that low-income, working class, and racial/ethnic minority students attend. Building these schools’ capacity to better serve such students would be a far more effective and promising way to increase college completion. Some states using performance-based funding have incorporated diversity into their funding models, but this is bound to be insufficient if diversity and equity is not at the forefront of finance reform. By prioritizing equity, rather than embedding it within a funding formula, states will be in a better position to improve educational outcomes.

Shifting away from this “merit-based” performance regime toward a “need-based” equity-funding system could address many of the shortcomings noted in this paper. By focusing on closing inequalities, building the service capacity of colleges with the fewest resources, and supporting the professional development of professionals involved with educating students, states will be more likely to improve the performance of their public colleges and universities. Experience and evidence shows that this approach would be a more promising strategy for improving college completions. After all, allocating scarce funds to colleges that are already performing well will only reproduce inequalities. Targeting scarce resources to those that have the greatest needs and the least current capacity will likely yield better results. This would usher in a new era of state funding that prioritizes results by prioritizing equity: a radical proposition in a higher education landscape that has for too long rewarded inequality.

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This report is the fourth in a series on College Completion from The Century Foundation, sponsored by Pearson. The views and opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or position of Pearson.

Notes

1. Richard Rothstein, “Holding Accountability to Account: How Scholarship and Experience in Other Fields Inform Exploration of Performance Incentives in Education,” Nashville, TN: National Center on Performance Incentives, 2008, https://my.vanderbilt.edu/performanceincentives/files/2012/10/200804_Rothstein_HoldingAccount.pdf.
2. State Higher Education Executive Officers, “State Higher Education Finance,” State Higher Education Finance, 2015, http://www.sheeo.org/projects/shef-%E2%80%94-state-higher-education-finance.
3. The traditional approach to funding “does not incent program/degree completion” and encourages colleges to enroll but not retain students. Martha Snyder, “Driving Better Outcomes: Typology and Principles to Inform Outcomes-Based Funding Models,” Washington, D.C.: HCM Strategists, 2015, http://hcmstrategists.com/drivingoutcomes/wp-content/themes/hcm/pdf/Driving%20Outcomes.pdf.
4. Stan Jones, “The Game Changers: Strategies to Boost College Completion and Close Attainment Gaps,” Change: The Magazine of Higher Learning 47.2 (2015): 24–29.
5. Nancy Shulock and Martha Snyder, “Don’t Dismiss Performance Funding,” Inside Higher Ed, 2013, https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2013/12/05/performance-funding-isnt-perfect-recent-study-shortchanges-it-essay.

Schools didn't start it. Achievement gaps start earlier.

The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) showed a significant narrowing of the achievement gap between blacks and non-Hispanic whites on reading and mathematical tests between 1971 and 1996. Although the NAEP did not begin collecting data until 1971, the seventeen year-olds it tested in 1971 were born in 1954 and entered school around 1960. Their scores, therefore, reflect the cumulative effects of home and community environments dating from the late 1950s and 1960s including: 1) national efforts to equalize opportunity and reduce poverty that began in the mid-1960s and continued or expanded in the subsequent decades [Head Start, compensatory funding for poor schools, affirmative action]...all of these policies are likely to have helped blacks more than whites; 2) Educational changes that were not primarily intended to equalize opportunity [such as increased spending and early schooling]; 3) Changes in families and communities that may have been influenced by efforts to equalize opportunity and reduce poverty but occurred mainly for other reasons. [Parents had more formal education, more affluent blacks moved to the suburbs].

The importance of social programs to the success of school students appears to be significant and direct. During the presidency of Lyndon Johnson, when such programs flourished, the gap began to narrow. After the cuts made to social programs during the Ronald Reagan administration, the gap grew. What happens to children outside of the school greatly impacts the results seen inside the school.

Blaming teachers and schools for creating and tolerating achievement gaps may be effective as political rhetoric, but as policy it is not going to produce satisfactory results...only more promises and blame.

This from Elaine Weiss in the Society Pages:

For all of its craziness and scariness, the 2016 election campaign has hammered home for millions of Americans the degree to which massive inequities permeate our daily lives and threaten our democracy.

Unfortunately, understanding how inequalities affect us has yet to permeate the education policy world. While the transition from narrow, punitive No Child Left Behind Act to the Every Student Succeeds Act represents real progress, there is still a widespread belief that schools are the main drivers of achievement gaps and that they can, and should, be responsible for closing them. Correcting this fallacy is critical to getting the education system we need – one that is both equitable and excellent – and will help correct some of those larger inequities as well.

In reality, the same systemic forces that have sucked most of the income and wealth from the bottom half of our population in recent decades and channeled it into the top one percent have substantially widened income-based achievement gaps. Without intentional measures to direct a broad range of educational and other resources to reversing that trend, gaps will continue to grow. And because big disparities in parents’ – and society’s – investments in children begin at birth, those resources need to be channeled early.

Many of us know that students from poor families, and especially low-income students of color, are often two to three years behind by the time they begin high school. What is far less widely known is that those same students began school that far behind. In other words, our highly inequitable school system, which consigns students with the greatest deficits to the least credentialed and experienced teachers, is doing more to maintain gaps that children brought with them on their first day of kindergarten than to create them.

A study by my colleague, Emma Garcia, finds that, in fact, students in the bottom social class quintile lagged their highest-social class peers by a full standard deviation in both reading and math at kindergarten entry. Those same students were about half a standard deviation behind on such social emotional skills as persistence, self-control, and social interactions, which are equally critical to academic, and life, success. Mind you, education researchers typically translate that “standard deviation” into two or three years of schooling. Let that sink in: one in five students start kindergarten one to three years behind, whether behaviorally or academically.

When we looked across racial groups, the gaps were smaller, and could be explained substantially by social class. Given that nearly half of black five-year-olds who started school in 2010-11, and almost two thirds of English-Language Learner Hispanic children, versus just 13 percent of their white peers, are living in poverty, however, shifting the comparison groups doesn’t improve those students’ real life contexts.

Schools didn’t start these problems. And the evidence tells us that schools alone can’t fix them.

Early fixes that will work. 

Luckily, there is also some very good news on this front. Unlike fixes for our bigger, broader societal inequities, strategies for closing these early childhood gaps are well understood, extensively documented, and, miraculously, have fairly wide support across the political spectrum. A paper just published by five EPI researchers lays out both the multiple societal problems created by our failure to make the needed public investments in quality early child care and education, and the broad set of benefits to be reaped from righting that wrong.

First and foremost, an ambitious national investment in early childhood care and education would help get all our children to the starting gate in much better shape. Another recent study, conducted jointly by the National Institute for Early Education Research and the Center for American Progress, suggests that universal pre-k alone would narrow math gaps by between 45 percent and 78 percent (black- white and Hispanic-white gaps, respectively) and virtually eliminate pre-kindergarten reading gaps.

But the benefits to the investments we propose extend much further. Ensuring a living wage for child care providers would not only improve their quality of life and enhance their contributions to the economy, but help stabilize the workforce and, ultimately, benefit the children they care for. Because child care is such a burden for young families – as expensive as rent or more so in many cases – making high-quality child care available would provide a benefit of about $11,000 annually for Florida families with an infant and a preschool-aged child who are earning the state median income. And removing this barrier to women’s workforce participation would help bring American women in line with their international peers, with potential gains to the gross domestic product of as much as $600 billion annually.

As the election comes closer, we must continue to push all candidates in both parties to focus on the severe problems working Americans face. Let’s make the early childhood investments we suggest front and center. By our analysis they are low hanging fruit—politically and economically.

Elaine Weiss is the National Coordinator for the Broader Bolder Approach to Education, where she works with four co-chairs, a high-level Advisory Board, and multiple coalition partners to promote a comprehensive, evidence-based set of policies to allow all children to thrive in school and life.

UofL tuition hike blocked after fiery clash

This from the Courier-Journal:

After another fiery clash between trustees, President James Ramsey’s adversaries Thursday blocked a proposed 5 percent tuition hike for students that would have raised those costs for in-state residents by $526 a year.

UofL President James Ramsey

Ramsey’s staff told the Board of Trustees’ finance committee that the tuition hike was essential to avoid an $18 million deficit after cuts in state funding for higher education under Gov. Matt Bevin’s budget.

But Trustee Craig Greenberg, saying “we can’t keep funding the university on the back of the students,” suggested it instead avoid the increase by using some of the $38 million that the university last year loaned to the University of Louisville Foundation.

“It seems to me that the foundation should be supporting the university, not the university supporting the foundation,” he said.

Ramsey, however, defended the transfer of the money to the foundation, calling it a “cash management strategy” and “just a way to get the highest return we can.”

Ramsey supporter Ron Butt, the panel’s chairman, said the foundation will pay the university 1 percent interest on the money, compared with the ¼ of 1 percent it was previously earning. “If you run a business, you move money routinely between companies," said Butt, who after the meeting denounced Greenberg’s suggestion as "irrational" and “extremely reckless."

Jason Tomlinson, the foundation’s chief financial officer, said the money couldn’t be spent to avoid tuition increases or for other operational expenses because it is in effect the university’s “emergency fund.”

Greenberg, though, said that faced with tuition increases, after 17 years of state budget cuts, “It seems like we have an emergency now.”

And when Butt called for a second to his motion to approve the recommended tuition hike, Pamela Feldhoff moved the motion, but the other three members on committee – Greenberg, Steve Campbell and Jonathan Blue – refused to give him one.

“I guess the motion fails,” Butt said. “Now we start over again.”

The surprise development leaves the university without a budget. The committee, which must propose a budget to the full board, has no meetings scheduled. Ramsey told the university community in an email late Thursday that "we’re confident that we’ll get to an approved budget in the very near future."

Butt told reporters after the meeting that Ramsey's opponents were “grandstanding” on behalf of a “private agenda,” although he said he doesn’t know what that agenda is. Without the tuition increase, he said, the university would have to lay off faculty or “close a building,” which he said also would hurt students.

But during the acrimonious session, Greenberg challenged the transfer and Butt’s defense of it, calling him and allied trustees “masters of obfuscation.”

Defending his acumen, Butt, a certified financial planner, shot back that he has a degree in finance. And Dr. Bob Hughes, who chairs the foundation’s board and also is a trustee, accused Greenberg of political speechmaking.

Under a deal approved last July, the foundation’s real estate unit can use the $38 million for up to three years for road projects and acquiring property, while paying interest of 1 percent. Tomlinson told WDRB.com, which first reported the arrangement, that it benefits both the university and foundation and represents “basic cash management” between two organizations that exchange funds every month.

Under the proposal, tuition would increase 5 percent for both in-state and out-of-state undergraduates. Tuition would rise to $11,608 for the former and to $26,090 for the latter. Costs for on-campus housing also would increase by 2 percent.

Susan Howarth, the university vice president of finance, told the committee that the tuition increase is required because the university must absorb 4.5 percent reduction in its state funding over the next two budget years, starting July 1. The tuition increase also would pay for 2 percent raises for faculty and staff, she said.

But she said about 30 percent of the $18 million the tuition hike would generate would be plowed back into student loans, which would lessen the burden on some students. Provost Neville Pinto also said the university would adopt a “credit for credit” program in which student who complete 30 hours a year would get a $400 credit on their tuition the next fall.

The proposed budget also called for an additional $500,000 reallocated from the president’s and provost’s office budgets for student need-based aid; a 5 percent increase in student aid; and $100,000 to ensure UofL’s lowest-paid employees are making a living wage.

The meeting drew several trustees who don’t serve on the finance committee, including Chairman Larry Benz, who said he opposed any increase in tuition and noted that students would be paying for the faculty raise.

The 5 percent hike is the maximum that public universities in Kentucky may raise tuition under rules set by the Council on Postsecondary Education.

Greenberg, however, said, “Just because we can raise tuition doesn’t mean we have to.”