Five years after Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature passed a sweeping new school finance law meant to provide extra help to struggling students in poor, minority communities, new federal test scores raise difficult questions about the effectiveness of the 2013 measure.

Every two years, at the order of the federal government, the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests are administered to check on fourth- and eighth-graders’ progress in math and reading in all 50 states. While eighth-graders showed gains on reading, California’s overall scores for 2017 released earlier this month remained on average among the worst in the nation, as the EdSource website reported.

But a deeper dive into the data showed that California fourth-graders scored worse on math than any state but Alaska. Poor scores by African-American students caught the eye of Ryan Smith, executive director of the Education-Trust West. “At a time when California is claiming to lead on issues of what’s right in our country, we should see black students improve at far greater rates, not sliding back decades,” he told EdSource.

What made the results particularly disappointing were the high expectations that had accompanied the enactment in 2013 of the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) – arguably the biggest change in California public education since Gov. Pete Wilson and the Legislature approved the hiring of thousands of new teachers in 1996 as part of an ambitious effort to reduce the number of students in first-, second- and third-grade classes to no more than 20 per teacher.

Brown led the push for LCFF, calling it a commitment to social justice and education equity. The measure guaranteed additional funding to districts with high concentrations of English-language learners, impoverished families and foster children. The law’s second main component also eliminated most of the top-down funding edicts imposed on school districts.

Brown argued that local districts had a better grasp on what their students’ needs were than state lawmakers and Sacramento bureaucrats, and that LCFF would give local schools extra resources that would allow them to improve education outcomes for struggling students.

Claims that funds were diverted came early and often

But even before this month’s disappointing test scores, the Local Control program had drawn fire. In January 2015, the Legislative Analyst’s Office said none of the 50 school districts it reviewed had set up adequate standards to make sure the funds were used as they were supposed to be. Soon after, Education Trust-West and other groups which advocate for poor and minority students said funds meant to specifically help these students were instead used for overall district spending, starting with teacher raises.

Brown supported state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson after he formally rejected the criticism – with both saying, in effect, that local control meant local control. Efforts in recent years by lawmakers to force a stricter accounting of LCFF dollars have been blocked by teachers union allies in the Legislature, notably Assemblyman Patrick O’Donnell, the Long Beach Democrat who chairs the Assembly Education Committee. In 2016, the governor vetoed an LCFF accountability measures that managed to win the Legislature’s unanimous approval.

But in January, in presenting his final budget before being termed out, Brown offered an indirect concession to those upset with how LCFF dollars had been used.

“While many districts have seized the opportunities offered under the formula to better serve their students, others have been slower to make changes,” his 2018-19 spending plan noted. “To improve student achievement and transparency, the budget proposes requiring school districts to create a link between their local accountability plans and their budgets to show how increased funding is being spent to support English learners, students from low-income families, and youth in foster care.”

Under the law, each school district was supposed to adopt a Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) to ensure English-learners and foster children were getting the extra help that Brown and lawmakers promised. These plans outline district priorities and relate them to funding decisions.

Three years later, California education reform groups increasingly question how the LCFF is working out. They cite little evidence of more resources going to struggling students and many instances of extra dollars going into general school district budgets, with the blessing of Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson.

This frustration led to the unusual decision last week of three reform groups — Public Advocates, Education Trust-West and Californians Together — to simultaneously issue studies that question how local LCAPs are being implemented.

Difficult to impossible to determine progress

EdSource has a roundup of their concerns:

Districts are not providing the level of transparency promised in exchange for increased spending flexibility,” wrote Public Advocates, a nonprofit law firm that has threatened to sue the West Contra Costa Unified School District for failing to disclose how it planned to spend millions of dollars on high-needs students. “Most districts are missing the opportunity to use the LCAP as a comprehensive planning tool for continuous improvement.”

“The usefulness of the LCAP as a means of accountability is compromised by the difficulty in gleaning a sense of coherence and what the plan actually entails,” Californians Together, a coalition of parent, professional and civil rights organizations focused on the needs of English language learners, wrote in a report, published this month, analyzing LCAP plans to improve services for English learners.

The reports, which follow similar analyses last year, studied several dozen LCAPs for the current school year from large and small, urban and rural districts. Public Advocates’ report, released Wednesday, can be found here. Education Trust-West’s report is here.

All three reports made the same overall criticisms: that it is often difficult, if not impossible, to find out how much some districts are spending on high-needs students; to track the expenditures over time; and to find a justification or rationale for districts’ spending decisions.

Brown won’t second-guess local funding decisions

Part of the reason for the frustration of reform groups isn’t related to problems implementing the Local Control Funding Formula at the district level. It’s with Gov. Brown, whose appointees on the State Board of Education sided with Torlakson on the question of whether the funds could be used for teacher raises and other broad district expenses.

At the 2013 signing ceremony for LCFF, Brown depicted the law as reflecting a historic new commitment to helping English-language learners. But of late, Brown administration officials have emphasized the “local control” aspect of the law — not the promises that more direct help would be given to the 1.4 million students who struggle with English in state public schools.

In a January 2015 telephone interview with editorial writers after unveiling his proposed 2015-16 budget. the governor said he would look into complaints that funds were going to teacher raises, not English-language learners.

But a year later, his aides took a sharply different position. In a January telephone interview with editorial writers after the governor unveiled his proposed 2016-17 budget, state Finance Director Michael Cohen said LCFF was meant to empower officials at local districts to make their own decisions. If they considered teacher raises a priority, the Brown administration had no issues with that, Cohen said.

The reform groups will present their critical findings about the law’s implementation to the State Board of Education at a meeting in May. The board is expected to try to fine-tune LCAP rules to make them easier to comply with and complete.

State Board of Education President Michael Kirst acknowledged local concerns about how unwieldy the process had become as a February state Senate hearing. But that hearing didn’t focus on the larger question of whether the LCFF’s initial goal of directly helping English-language learners and foster children was actually driving decisions at the district level.