No surprise — Georgia wants great schools, gives measly funding

I’ve been writing about Georgia education long enough to no longer be surprised by the difference in the political rhetoric — “We want world-class schools” — and the political reality — “But we don’t want to pay for them.”

Georgia has a gulf between aspirations and appropriations. As the number of children in poverty has climbed, that gulf has widened. We’ve upped our academic expectations of all students, including those once assumed to be on their way to jobs that didn’t need high-level math or reading skills. Many of those jobs have vanished, and we now espouse higher goals for all students. But we haven’t raised funding accordingly.

That statement is often met with the rebuttal that more money doesn’t matter. It does, which is why Georgia’s highest-performing private schools charge upward of $22,000 a year, and that’s for a student body largely comprising affluent children who arrive with every possible advantage.

Readers often point to the city of Atlanta, saying it spends more per pupil than other districts and gets lackluster results. Many Atlanta Public Schools students come from poor families and arrive with social disadvantages and learning deficits that can be overcome but require smaller class sizes, longer days and targeted help — all of which cost money.

As the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education noted in its report, “Top 10 Issues to Watch in 2018,:” “Where Georgia struggles is on the adequacy question ... While the 2018 state budget represents an increase of $714 million for education from the General Fund, Georgia ranks

38th in spending per student and invests $1,965 less per student than the national average. Since 2003, K-12 public education has experienced a cumulative cut of more than $9.2 billion.”

A new report from the American Federation of Teachers identified 25 states spending less on K-12 education in 2016 than they did before the 2008 recession. Georgia was among the 10 states with the largest reduction in education funding and among states cutting taxes even as school spending fell. The report tracks the impact of the recession and state policy changes by charting general revenue from 2004 through 2018, based on data from the National Association of State Budget Officers’ The Fiscal Survey of States.

The decrease in state funding led to Georgia districts shortening the school year, furloughing teachers and eliminating electives. Some of those reductions have been restored, but as the Georgia Budget & Policy Institute reports in its analysis: “Lawmakers added a total of $2.5 billion to the K-12 budget from the 2014 to 2019 budget years, a sizable new investment in public education at first glance. But most of the additional funds simply restore prior cuts or cover routine increases such as growing enrollment and pension obligations, rather than going to new classroom programs.”

Even as the Legislature replaced funding, it shifted costs to local districts; in 2012, the state ended its contribution to the cost of health insurance for bus drivers and custodians, and it has pushed most of the transportation costs onto the districts.

While the 2018 Legislature fully funded the state’s K-12 funding formula for the first time since 2003, the state’s Quality Basic Education Act is an outdated rubric that falls far short of the demands of today’s schools.

Yet, Georgia lawmakers continue to shift state dollars to private schools, creating and increasing a tax credit that siphons money from the coffers. In 2008, legislators created the Georgia Qualified Education Expense Tax Credit, which, in effect, diverts tax money to pay private school tuition.

The statewide cap on the total tax credit is $58 million; it increases to $100 million in 2019. Brian Kemp, the Republican candidate for governor, proposes doubling it. At a debate last week, Otha Thornton, the Democratic candidate for state school chief, warned Georgia will never achieve equity enacting tax credits and other policies that redirect desperately needed tax dollars to private schools.

Former U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan has a new book out, “How Schools Work,” that is getting mixed reviews by those who think he doesn’t fess up to his own complicity in defining great teachers as great test scores. But Duncan makes a point relevant in Georgia, one that may become more pressing if the November election ushers in an unprecedented push for school choice.

Duncan says we must see our public systems, K-12 and college, as our personal property and responsibility because their quality affects us, our children, our home values and our state. “No other public investment,” says Duncan, “is more closely tied to the American dream than the quality of education in your community.”

CONTRIBUTED Many Atlanta Public Schools students come from poor families and arrive with social disadvantages and learning deficits that can be overcome but require smaller class sizes, longer days and targeted help — all of which cost money.