Adequacy Lawsuit Filed.  The St. Cloud NAACP and the St. Cloud Educational Rights Advocacy Council filed suit in February in the Stearns County District court in an effort to combat the chronic underfunding of special education that has plagued St. Cloud (and districts throughout the state) and the court will be hearing oral arguments tomorrow.  Former St. Cloud School Board Member Jerry Von Korff has been a long-time proponent of investigating the possibility of litigation of this type and the continued failure to make significant headway in reducing the special education cross-subsidy triggered this action.  I have attached a link from The St. Cloud Times regarding the upcoming hearing.

Is special education underfunding a constitutional violation? Court to hear arguments Friday

Compensatory Education Funding Discussed.  The Minneapolis StarTribune had a front-page story in last Sunday's paper outlining the issue of compensatory education funding and how the achievement gap persists even with this funding.  The issue of Minnesota's racial academic achievement gap has been an item of intense discussion over the past two decades and the increase in compensatory education funding during this time is aimed at remedying that situation.  Along with increased compensatory revenue, many have promoted charter schools, more parent choice, and other reforms to address this gap.  Unfortunately, nothing has seemed to make a dent in differences in achievement.

The article spoke with a number of school officials and educators about the challenge and how the current level of compensatory revenue falls short of what is spent on services to address the racial achievement gap.   Often times, the revenue is used to pay for revenue shortfalls resulting from the underfunding of other formulas--particularly the English Language Learner formula--to make those services whole.  Superintendent Anne-Marie Foucault from SEE member district St. Michael-Albertville outlined her concerns over funding in the article.  St. Michael-Albertville is not a district that one would ordinarily think would run a shortfall when addressing student achievement issues, but the compensatory formula is so inadequate for that district that it spent four times the amount of basic skills revenue it received on programs to narrow achievement differences.  Districts that receive higher levels of basic skills revenue have problems of similar magnitude.

The article points out some of the disparities in the distribution of the formula and it's not my place to comment on how the formula works.  Concentration of poverty is certainly an adequate basis for having greater funding in the urban core and regional centers where diversity--especially language diversity--is growing rapidly.  I believe the question boils down to how much of a discrepancy should there be and points are made on both sides of that issue in the article.

Transparency of expenditures is also an issue and that was at the heart of Representative Sondra Erickson's request that the Legislative Auditor look into the issue further and try to get a better handle on the tracking of basic skills revenue.  As a former legislative staffer (lo, though many years ago) who was part of discussions on what should be the allowable uses of compensatory revenue, I can attest it's not that straightforward of a question.

There was talk during the session that the Governor may convene a working group during the interim to look at possible reforms to the education funding system.  Basic Skills/Compensatory Revenue would likely be a big part of that discussion in terms of amount, distribution, and allowable expenditures.  Stay tuned.

Here is a link to the article (nice job Anne-Marie):  $600M A YEAR, YET ACHIEVEMENT GAP PERSISTS  (I'm not shouting!  I copied the headline and it was all caps.  They are shouting.  Not me.)