The Oregon Quality Education Commission is responsible for figuring out how much the state should be spending on students for a quality education. While the commission has been around for a little more than two decades, the state legislature has not once spent the suggested amount the commission puts forward. John Rexford is the chair of the commission. He joins us to share how the commission comes up with its calculations and some of the unexpected costs that come with running schools.
The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB, I’m Dave Miller. As the Portland Public Schools strike continues, we’re going to start today with a statewide look at education funding. For about two decades now, the Oregon Quality Education Commission has been responsible for figuring out how much the state should be spending to ensure that students get quality educations. But throughout that time, the state legislature has never allocated enough money to meet the level put forward by the commission. John Rexford is the chair of the commission. He joins us now. Welcome to Think Out Loud.
John Rexford: Good afternoon, Dave.
Miller: Good afternoon. What’s the mandate of Oregon’s Quality Education Commission?
Rexford: We are actually the legislature’s response to their constitutional requirement to sufficiently fund K-12 education at a level that will meet the state’s quality education goals. So, the mission was created, as you said, a couple of decades ago. Its charge is to define that level of resources needed to meet those goals, along with identifying best practices that may be used in also delivering that level of education.
Miller: How does our state define a quality education? I mean, in order to first figure out how much money lawmakers should put forward to meet these goals, you have to have these goals. So what are you all working towards?
Rexford: The quality education goals are defined in statute and there are a lot of words there, frankly, Dave, and when you parse them out, there’s 19 different elements in terms of having students really prepared for their future. The Quality Education Commission, starting in 2014, has essentially distilled that down to having at least 90% of students graduate within four years of entering high school. So we have a lot of really broad goals, but the commission, in trying to get their arms around it over time, has defined it at that 90% graduation rate
Miller: In the most recent state report card we saw that something like 83% of ninth graders are on track to graduate. Standardized test scores, as I’m sure you know well, in reading and writing and math, the most recent ones, are really dismal in a lot of ways.
How much attention do you pay to how students are doing as opposed to the amount of money that schools are, or should be getting?
Rexford: Well, we’ve got a very narrow focus and that is, what is that bucket of resources that we need to make sure that we support those students to get them across the line. One of the things that we have identified in our 2022 report is a wish that we could get some additional support to kind of update the model, if you will. And one of those updates would be to bring in more of the interim measures more formally into our process.
So things like ‘ninth grade on track,’ ‘third grade reading,’ ‘fifth grade math,’ some of those other interim measures, so that we’re not just looking at that singular measure of graduation rate after the students have been with us in the system for 13 years.
Miller: What difference do you think that would make – I mean,
updating the model, practically speaking - if in the end, in addition to this longer 40-page report, if what you’re saying is you’re arriving at a number. What difference do you think changing the model would make in how you actually make your recommendation to the legislature?
Rexford: I think the primary benefit of an update would be to make sure that we’re including all those discrete costs of delivering the education that we’d like to deliver. For instance, as we delve into some of our work, we have refined a lot of the existing model. Some of the assumptions were pretty outdated.
One great example is in moving into the 2022 report, we updated the section on how many computing devices we think are appropriate to have in schools. And it really reflected a model where six students would have one computing device. And that’s really what the model looked like back in 2000. So we’ve been able to update incrementally over time things like that - staffing levels, including school nurses and library media specialists. Those sorts of things that you need to make sure you define and include in an appropriate school setting.
We really want to dig even deeper in refining some of the differences between, for instance, rural and urban settings, suburban settings. For instance, we’ve been looking at some numbers that the very small rural settings - and we have many of those in Oregon school districts - come at a cost premium, that we really weren’t capturing in the older model. So we’re just looking for some support to dive into that. And then also, I think it’s really important to do a broader stakeholder engagement process as we kind of do those updates, to make sure that we’re reflecting today’s needs and the future needs of the students and families of the state of Oregon.
Miller: How far away is Orego’s allocated budget right now from what the quality education model says it should be?
Rexford: I actually, on behalf of the commission, reported to the joint Public Education Appropriation Committee in September, and at this point in time, our calculations show us to be about a billion and a half dollars short of what the commission recommends. That’s about 12.5% away from the goal. And that range, that shortfall over the past 10 biennium has ranged from as high as 38% back in the throes of the great recession, to just a little over 5% in the last biennium. That 5% number really was affected by the pandemic and kind of the dislocation of enrollment. So that’s kind of an outlier. We typically run about 20% or so short over time, in terms of funding our systems to meet those goals.
Miller: I imagine that every district has their own particular situation. But in general, where do you think that the $1.5 billion would go to if lawmakers were to find much more money to put towards K-12 schools?
Rexford: I suspect, and this is more based on my own observations [and] my own work in the profession, that
most of that money would go to hiring more staff. Both more licensed staff in the classroom and supporting the classroom, as well as paraprofessionals in the classroom and supporting the classroom. We spend, generally in schools, 80% to 85% of our budgets providing staff and support for students. And I think that would be the variable cost, would be just putting more adults in schools with children.
Miller: Which could mean smaller class sizes perhaps or more services for students.
Rexford: Yeah, absolutely. And I would see both of those sorts of things manifesting in a situation where we have more resources.
Miller: You’ve been at this for a while. What are the reasons why we have never…we have gotten, as you noted, in the really odd and dislocated times of the pandemic, but in general 15%, 20% or so, sometimes more, [we are] below what the state itself says is a quality education. Why? Why are we always below that?
Rexford: Well, the ‘why’ is kind of outside the purview of the commission, but as an observer and participant in the system, there are lots of needs to be met for people in the state of Oregon. And the legislature and the governors over time have had a difficult task in allocating those resources out in the manner that they think best meets the needs of the state. And unfortunately, over time, that has not been to the fullest extent, public education. The School Success Act, the corporate activity tax that has been implemented has certainly been a boost for K-12 education and we appreciate those funds and I think that’s why we’re sitting in a number that’s more like 12.5% as opposed to 20% now.
Miller: So in all of that time that you spent as an administrator before you became the chair of this commission, I’m just curious if you can give us a sense for what the rest of us may not be aware of when it comes to the unexpected or surprising costs of running a school. What should we, as Oregonians, be thinking about?
Rexford: Well, just two things, Dave, from that perspective come to mind. One is that there are a lot of students that need additional support and if we’re gonna get more and more of them across the finish line, if you will, and giving them a diploma that means something, and that they’ve got choices and options to make as they leave our system, it will take additional staffing. It’s not just your grandmother or grandfather’s classroom, where we had one teacher in front of 30 students all aligned in their rows. There’s a lot of needs and issues outside the classroom that come into the classroom that we need to mitigate with appropriate services.
The other little quirk in school funding that is another thing we’d like to examine a little bit is, we have a bifurcated or split system in that the money for operations primarily comes through the state, this school support fund, but capital construction and keeping school facilities up, so that they’re safe and conducive for our children, is really a local issue, and that’s an issue where we have a real disparity across the state in communities ability or choice to support those upgrades. So we’ve got some really nice school facilities but we’ve got some school facilities that really, really need some help to make sure that the kids can have a warm, dry, supportive environment to have their education.
Miller: Based on your own professional experience, and setting aside your official job position now as chair of the State’s Education Quality Commission, I’m curious what has stood out to you in the current strike and the long ongoing labor dispute at Portland Public Schools?
Rexford: Again, I don’t know all the ins and outs of what’s going on. I read a lot. I think it’s one symptom of an entire system that’s under financial pressure, and over time, we’re talking 20 years of chronic underfunding and that puts a lot of pressure on the adults in the room in trying to find a balance to meet student needs. And I think again, personally, I am hoping that the adults can find a solution soon, so that we can get those students back in the classroom. We’ve already got a lot of work to do to get through the impacts of the pandemic and having kids out of school is not helpful. So I’m hoping they can find a solution soon.
Miller: “The adults in the room.” I’m pretty sure that’s similar language to what we heard from Governor Tina Kotek last week.
Over the weekend, 16 of the 19 Portland-area lawmakers in the legislature sent a letter to the Portland School Board. They said, basically, we gave you what you asked for in the state budget, more than has ever been allocated in a biennium. And they added something more pointed. They also said that Portland Public Schools spends a higher percentage of its total budget on administration than the state average, than most other schools. Does the Quality Education Commission have anything to say about how districts spend their money, as opposed to how much they should get?
Rexford: No, we do not. That’s really outside of our purview. And part of that is informed by how it gets allocated through the state school fund, and then how it’s implemented on the ground in each 197 school districts and 19 ESD’s. So, no, we don’t have a whole lot to provide there. Obviously, our model includes levels of administration, basically at the school level, and then some of the district level. But other than that, we don’t really dissect what each of the school districts is doing.
Miller: What do you think of the level of control that the Oregon Board of Education currently exerts in local schools? And I should remind listeners again, you are a long time, now former administrator of schools or of an education service district. So your perspective is, I imagine, one from the local level.
Rexford: Absolutely.
Miller: But I guess what I’m really asking is, do you think the state should exert more control to say, with money limited, this is how you should focus your limited resources?
Rexford: Obviously, coming from that local level, I always have trepidation about direction from outside the local setting because each and every school district, in my experience, is dealing with a unique set of issues and those people closest to those issues, I think, should be ultimately making the allocations.
I appreciate and support accountability measures and if school districts are not meeting the needs of students in some significant way, I’m not afraid of that accountability. I think it is important. It is important for folks to be using best practices, using research- based curricula and really focusing on what each student needs to be successful. And we think that the quality education report can be a real resource for both policymakers and practitioners, both useful and valid. I would encourage all legislators to take a few minutes to read at least the executive summary and the high level findings in the quality education report. I think they might find it informative.
Miller: Do you get the sense that lawmakers are paying attention to what you do? I’m just wondering about your level of frustration and if you feel like you’re being listened to?
Rexford: Oh, I think there’s always opportunities to spread the word, right? I know that we have really great engagement with the Joint Public Education Appropriation Committee and certainly some other legislatures have directly reached out to us and we provided information. So we’re really trying to raise our visibility to make sure that they know that this resource is out there. They’ve got an awful lot of other stuff to worry about and we wanna make sure that we’re kind of the go-to resource when it comes to these kinds of questions.
Miller: John Rexford, thanks very much for your time.
Rexford: You’re welcome, Dave.
Miller: John Rexford is the chair of Oregon’s Education Quality Commission.
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