Advocates for disadvantaged children are insisting that $500 million in increased state education aid going to public schools in recent years is not being spent on the at-risk students. They are pressing legislators to put language in the state budget to make school systems do just that.
But state School Superintendent Nancy Grasmick, superintendents from the largest systems and the senators who represent those districts are strongly resisting the measure.
Matthew Joseph, executive director of Advocates for Children and Youth, told a Senate committee that a study by his group found that only $23 million of the $500 million in Thornton school aid intended for at-risk students was being spent on them.
Jerry Weast, the superintendent in Montgomery County, the state?s largest school system, called the study “categorically false, misleading, and the methodology is deeply flawed.” Weast said that the study should have focused on student outcomes, rather than on how the money is being spent.
Grasmick agreed, telling senators, “We have seen progress in every single school system, in every single subgroup” and that it is largely due to a focus on improving the quality of teachers throughout the school systems.
A report from an independent consultant found that almost 60 percent of the $1 billion increase in school aid during the last five years has gone to improving salaries.
Grasmick said that one of the basic ideas behind Thornton was to combine a whole series of targeted programs into a single overall boost in school aid.
But Joseph insisted that the justification for Thornton increases was that “we need to spend money specifically on these students” who are falling behind, and the school systems are not doing that.
Sen. Patrick Hogan, D-Montgomery, chair of the education budget committee, said “I think it misses the whole point: Are the kids performing better, are the scores getting better?”
Joseph said there was so much resistance to his group?s study because “it is going against the common wisdom that they?ve heard.”
