Last year, an amendment to the Mississippi Constitution that would mandate adequate and efficient funding of public schools — and the ability to seek judicial relief — was placed on the November 2015 ballot. It is called Initiative 42.

Soon after, the Mississippi House passed an alternative to Initiative 42 also to go on the ballot. The implication of that alternative, 42-A, is that school funding should be tied to achievement.

This alternative will at best muddle the issue and most likely doom the initiative outright.

Only about 30 percent of student achievement comes from in-school factors such as teachers, principals and class size. Almost 70 percent comes from outside factors like access to resources. This imbalance becomes amplified in Mississippi, which ranks at the top in poverty, teen pregnancy and illiteracy.

If lawmakers wanted to make the biggest effect on student achievement, they would focus on those home and community factors that matter most.

However, to overcome these factors it would take a greater commitment of focus and resources than our lawmakers want to give.

So, the public school is asked to perform miracles and use its 30 percent effect to overcome the 70 percent effect outside school. Because most communities across Mississippi do not have the resources to fund their own schools, the state is asked to help.

Now, there are those who maintain money is not the answer. They claim by offering competition and choice — like merit pay, charter schools and vouchers —- student achievement will improve while lowering cost.

Hogwash.

The facts are:

4In a December report on school efficiency and funding, no clear factors were found between funding, efficiency and achievement, other than poor districts require more money. In fact, districts scoring a “C,” “D” or “F” spent MORE on instruction than “A” or “B” districts.

4Teacher quality is very important. But evidence demonstrates that about 80-90 percent of all teachers are comparable in effectiveness, with only a small percentage considered Ineffective. So unless a child has a truly terrible teacher, she or he will have a quality teacher. But by telling teachers they are only valuable if they are in the top 1-5 percent (i.e., Merit Pay) you undermine and discourage teachers to the point it becomes difficult to retain or recruit.

4Research demonstrates that charter schools, as a whole, are no better than community public schools. A recent study in Ohio showed that most charters were outperformed by their public school counterparts. New Orleans Recovery District, which is held as a model for charters, scored a “D” in the most recent rankings.

4School vouchers transfer public dollars to private schools with little to no oversight and no accountability. Louisiana, Indiana, Wisconsin and Washington D.C., which use vouchers extensively, report no real improvement in student achievement. Even vouchers that theoretically sound good (special-needs vouchers) are poorly-written to provide a backdoor to transfer public money to private schools with no evidence that student achievement improves.

Elected officials claim they will spend more money on education, but not on fully funding schools through MAEP. Instead, the money will be “targeted”: Testing vouchers, charter schools, merit pay pilot, private pre-K grants (NOT universal pre-K), and others.

It’s a ruse.

Over 90 percent of Mississippi students attend public schools, but instead of investing in those schools, lawmakers want to shift funding to sources that will benefit only 10 percent of students. This is a return to the days when schools were funded only for the affluent; poor and minority schools were neglected.

The argument about school funding is simple: do you support a chance at a quality education for all students, that the purpose of schools is to prepare students to take their place in our society and be contributing members? Or do you believe in a dual system, for the haves and the have-nots, and that money is wasted trying to educate the poorest, highest minority, economically depressed areas of our state?

Traditionally, Mississippi has held the latter; I work to try to make it the former.

 

Shannon Eubanks is the principal of the Enterprise Attendance Center in Brookhaven, Mississippi.