Chart of the Day: Comparability Loophole

The largest pot of federal money for public schools is Title I, Part A of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act. In exchange for a share of $14.5 billion, each state and district must guarantee, among other things, that all Title I schools (schools that enroll high concentrations of low-income students) receive “comparable” portions. A new GAO report exposes many flaws in the ways districts track their spending, most notably in the way they assure comparability between schools.

The so-called “comparability loophole” allows districts to assume that all teachers make the same amount of money. They don’t, but we’ll get to that. By making this assumption, a district can ensure comparability simply by counting the number of teachers at each school and comparing them to the number of students enrolled. As long as those ratios are equal at every school, the district has met its comparability obligation.

Not surprisingly, presented with this simple calculation method, many states and districts follow it. The chart below comes from the new GAO report, and it shows that 97 percent of districts in California use the simple student-teacher ratio method to calculate comparability. In Ohio, the figure is 91 percent, and in North Carolina it’s 80.

The problem with using student-teacher ratios to ensure comparable school funding is that not all teachers make the same amount, and teachers are not evenly distributed across schools. This means that schools with more experienced teachers spend far more money per student than schools with less experienced teachers. When the Oakland school district sought to address these funding disparities by providing equal funding per student, high-poverty elementary schools saw their funding increase 24 percent. Principals at those schools were able to use that money flexibly, to lower class sizes, add intervention services, and extend instructional time for some of the neediest students. (This is important evidence that closing the comparability loophole need not force districts to transfer teachers across schools. One way to achieve funding parity would be to ensure teacher salary equity, true, but districts could provide additional supports, increase staff size, or implement other reforms that would not force teachers to transfer.)

An attempt to address the comparability loophole from the federal level was one of the major reasons a NCLB reauthorization failed in 2007, but there’s reason for optimism this time around. Last year representative Chaka Fattah (D-PA) introduced the Fiscal Fairness Act which would have required districts to use actual teacher salaries to calculate comparability. Both the NEA and reform groups like Education Trust endorsed the bill. The bill has not been re-introduced in the 112th Congress yet, but hopefully it will be resurrected. The comparability loophole is common across the country, but it deprives kids and schools of the resources they need.

Tagged as: Chaka Fattah, Comparability Loophole, Education Trust, NEA