Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, January 15, 1994 TAG: 9402250027
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Which is what makes the latest set of recommendations, from the General Assembly's Commission on Equity in Public Education, so special: Its members have the power to get the money to carry out the ideas.
With both Senate Majority Leader Hunter Andrews of Hampton and House Majority Leader Richard Cranwell of Vinton behind them, chances are dramatically improved that serious anti-disparity money will win legislative approval this year.
Rather than simply fiddle with the state's existing school-funding formula or propose an increase in overall appropriations, the commission proposes to implement specific measures for improving school quality for low-income children. This emphasis - on finding concrete ways to improve schools, not just spend more money on them - is the right one.
Not that lowering maximum student-teacher ratios or starting programs for low-income 4-year-olds comes free. Preliminary estimates place the price tag at from $50 million to $100 million per year.
While that's less than half what the Virginia Education Association says is needed to remedy school-funding disparities, it's a significant piece of change - and significantly more than the $20 million proposed by Cranwell but blocked by Andrews in the 1993 General Assembly.
And while the proposals are program-driven rather than formula-driven, their effect will still be to bolster the budgets of poorer districts.
Smaller maximum student-teacher ratios, even when they apply generally, help poorer districts because the costs of stiffer minimum requirements are plugged into the state's wealth-based formula for distributing school aid. That's why a central complaint of poorer districts is that state standards are unrealistically low; it's harder for them to make up the difference.
The commission has also proposed a couple of initiatives geared directly at low-income students. Not all districts with large numbers of poor students are themselves necessarily poor, in the sense that they have a low per-student tax base. On balance, though, spending geared toward students who are poor should also help poor districts. And helping students is, after all, the point of the exercise.
Ensuring that all children in Virginia have relatively equal access to a basic education of high quality is the goal behind all the funding formulas and quality standards. Targeting the needs of poor children is one way to help the effort.
With legislative rivals Cranwell and Andrews now on the same disparity-reducing train, wouldn't it be a good time for a new governor to climb aboard too?
Keywords:
GENERAL ASSEMBLY 1994
by CNB