New reports show that six years after Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature approved a sweeping overhaul in how school funds were divvied up, the evidence is mixed that the overhaul is accomplishing its main goal: improving the academic performance of the 1.2 million English language learners in California public schools.

Under the law, known as the Local Control Funding Formula, schools with high percentages of English learners, foster children and poor families get additional funding that in 2013 was described as being specifically to help these students achieve proficiency in key subjects. Since then, about $30 billion in LCFF grants have been distributed.

But a 2015 decision by then-Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Torlakson to allow LCFF dollars to go for teacher raises and other general uses has led to critics such as Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-San Diego, arguing that struggling students aren’t getting the help they were promised in 2013. Earlier this year, Weber persuaded a legislative panel to have state Auditor Elaine Howle review how the grants are being spent and possibly examine their effectiveness.

Reformers see bad faith in how law was implemented

The pending audit is highly anticipated by education reform groups which have for years accused the state government of showing bad faith in implementing LCFF. 

Defenders of the law have some data that back up claims it is working as intended. An EdSource analysis of the state’s Smarter Balanced test scores released earlier this month showed that schools with high numbers of LCFF students had seen a 9 percent increase in student English proficiency over the last five years. But the same analysis showed little change in the “achievement gap” between white and Asian students and those of Latino and African American descent. 

And a Public Policy Institute of California report released in August found that increased funding hadn’t changed a fundamental problem that makes progress difficult in struggling schools: They still had teachers who were considerably less experienced than those in wealthier communities. These schools are also far more likely to have teachers offering instruction in fields in which they had no training. The PPIC suggested there was evidence that these issues had gotten worse in recent years.

Because of strong teacher job-protection laws, veteran teachers have considerable latitude about where they work. Schools in wealthy communities that often get help from parental and community fundraisers have a huge edge over schools in poor communities where teachers often feel they have no choice but to bring in basic supplies for students from destitute families.

Civil rights lawyers again target LAUSD over spending

Meanwhile, in Los Angeles Unified, the state’s largest school district, a formal complaint has been filed by the Public Advocates civil rights law firm that alleges that much of the $1 billion-plus in LCFF money the district gets annually is being used in ways that are not properly documented as required by state law. The complaint includes numerous examples from district records of LCFF grants being spent in questionable ways.

In 2016, Public Advocates filed a similar complaint against L.A. Unified, which some district officials strongly disputed. But the next year, the district agreed to provide an additional $151 million to 50 schools with high concentrations of English learners, foster children and students from poor families.

“Brown, architect of the Local Control Funding Formula which restructured the state-school fiscal relationship, had struggled in recent months over the program’s regulations as two of his own goals within the new system were challenged by key interest groups.

“The governor had sold the program last spring by arguing local officials should be put in charge of more of the spending decisions – but he also wanted more of the money to target disadvantaged students.

“The two came in conflict with civil rights groups, who criticized an initial set of regulations for not ensuring targeted money would actually go to low-income students, English learners and foster youth.”

And where will it go if it doesn’t go to these kids? You guessed it. Teachers’ compensation. Why else would the CTA and CFT back this change?

Plea for changes to strengthen rules

EdTrust-West sent the state board a letter early this week warning how weak the regulations were:

“The regulations guiding districtwide uses of supplemental and concentration funds are overly broad. These provisions risk undermining the significant progress that has been made to ensure these grant dollars will benefit the students who generated them.

“LEAs [Local Education Authorities] with more than 55% unduplicated students may use supplemental and concentration grant funds for any purpose, as long as they can describe how those services must meet the district’s goals for unduplicated students. The current template would allow such goals to be no different than those established by the LEA for all students. Thus, this proposed standard does not treat the use of supplemental and concentration funds for unduplicated pupils any differently than base dollars available to address the standard program.

“We believe this creates a significant potential loophole, as it allows a considerable portion of the dollars generated by unduplicated pupils for their specific “beyond-base-grant” needs to be spent on increasing or improving services for non-unduplicated pupils. A district could, for example, use supplemental and concentration grants to purchase tablet computers for all district students. To justify this, the LEA could argue that these investments will help meet its goals for all students, including unduplicated pupils. While improving the standard program may be an appropriate use of base grant funding, these decisions would be inconsistent with the law’s premise that the additional funds generated by unduplicated pupils should be directed, first and foremost, to improving the educational experience of unduplicated pupils and should not be treated as base funding to expand the core program.”

Make sure funds ‘actually benefit’ high-needs students

How can the reforms be salvaged? EdTrust-West had some ideas:

“We believe that stronger protections around districtwide and schoolwide use of funds may well be necessary to ensure that supplemental and concentration funding are actually used to benefit the students generating them, consistent with the premise of LCFF. These stronger assurances would include:

“1. Higher districtwide and schoolwide thresholds that capture LEAs and schools serving significant concentration of unduplicated students,

“2. Criteria for determining whether a service meets the standards for “most effective” use of funds,

“3. Stronger provisions assuring that supplemental and concentration funds can be used for districtwide and schoolwide services only if the service demonstrably provides a differential benefit to unduplicated pupils in order to address unduplicated pupil goals, and

“4. Criteria for County Offices of Education to oversee and approve LCAPs.”

It’s going to be interesting to see how this is reported — to see if reporters even understand what we’re seeing here is a teacher union power play. I’m not optimistic.