If you've been following Brockton

 ...Mayor Sullivan released the report created by Nystrom, Beckman & Paris today at noon in advance of tonight's Brockton School Committee meeting. The Enterprise and WCVB have released coverage so far.

Two to read on the MCAS ballot question

 Without commenting further at this time--though I have many thoughts!--I did want to share two things that I think are below the radar to read on the ballot question ending the use of the high school MCAS as a graduation requirement: 

• The Center for State Policy Analysis at Tufts University is doing a series on the Massachusetts state ballot questions; this is the one on the MCAS question. It's really well done, and it had me finding their other ones.
  
  
• I ongoingly lament the lack of attention to the actual work being done on and around the MCAS, and the actual research (using decades of data) of John Papay at the Annenberg Institute at Brown University is something that periodically gets reported out at the Board of Ed, and otherwise doesn't seem to capture much attention (I think in part because many of those who spend a lot of time talking about the MCAS don't like the information being arrived at). He and others published this back in July.

Round up for the end of the week

 Some things to read or consider this week:

• Some Aquinnah Wampanoag elders gathered last week to talk about the closing in 1968 of Gay Head School, which served Aquinnah Wampanoag children in Martha's Vineyard.
  
  
• The Boston Globe ran an "epic fail" headline on an article that only followed the experience of two students; no systemwide data on transportation on the first day of school was yet available. This is how the educating reporting earns our cynicism.
  
  
• Useful paper out this week on public comment and public policy found four things: 
  

  First, commenters at public meetings are unrepresentative of the public along racial, gender, age, and homeownership lines; second, distance to the proposed development predicts commenting behavior, but only among those in opposition; third, commission votes are correlated with commenters’ preferences; finally, the alignment of White commenters (vs. other racial groups) and neighborhood group representatives and the general public (vs. other interest groups) better predict project approvals.

• In light of the shootings in Georgia, note that in Oswego County, NY, in response to threats by a 10 year old boy, law enforcement visited the home to remove guns if there were any (there were not), because NY has a law that "allows law enforcement to search a home and remove guns if someone is thought to have access to weapons and be a danger to themselves or others.”
  
  

• And because this always brings up discussion of mental health, a reminder that mental health is more of a predictor of victim than assailant.

• May J.D. Vance's characterization of school shootings as "a fact of life" be the real life "crime, boy, I don't know" *

________________________________________

*and if you snark about The West Wing references, you are free to read elsewhere.

Book recommendation: Dividing the Public: School Finance and the Creation of Structural Inequality

swiped from a footnote of "Dividing the Public" is this quote
from Fletcher Swift skewering Massachusetts

 Summer is generally when I try to catch up on the rest of the year's "oh I should read that!" pile, particularly as it pertains to education. Among my reads that I want to recommend to anyone else for whom school finance equity is either a vocation or an avocation is Matthew Gardner Kelly's Dividing the Public: School Finance and the Creation of Structural Inequality.

Gardner Kelly, who now teaches at University of Washington College of Education (he'd been at Penn State), takes as his topic K-12 public education funding in California, but really it is a way of examining what we may think of as foundational to education in this country: the tie between local funding and local enrollment. California starts from a completely different direction than, say, Massachusetts on this, and at various points in its history had advocates who argued that it wasn't really a state public education system if it depended on local funding. 

I could quote at length from passages of his book, which also includes midnight property raids, racial violence, and footnotes well worth examining (the above has already been added to my standard presentation on Chapter 70!). I really appreciated, though, a book that drove me to question why it is that we think the taxation of local property ought to determine the revenue available to local schools at all, and how it is that a state can require a statewide education system--check the quote at the bottom of the page here, Massachusetts!--without state revenue paying for it.

Two more to read on AI

 Two from this weekend:

• "Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that Turkish high school students who had access to ChatGPT while doing practice math problems did worse on a math test compared with students who didn’t have access to ChatGPT. Those with ChatGPT solved 48 percent more of the practice problems correctly, but they ultimately scored 17 percent worse on a test of the topic that the students were learning."
  Coverage is in The Hechinger Report, and the study itself is here.
  
  
• The New Yorker, if you can get past the paywall, has a piece from Ted Chiang entitled "Why AI isn't going to make art" which includes the following: 
  

  The task that generative AI has been most successful at is lowering our expectations, both of the things we read and of ourselves when we write anything for others to read. It is a fundamentally dehumanizing technology because it treats us as less than what we are: creators and apprehenders of meaning. It reduces the amount of intention in the world.

But what did Fair Share get us?

ahem...

I hope by now you've seen that the Fair Share amendment, which taxes at 4% on every dollar over a person's first $1M in income, has far exceeded expectations. As noted back in May: 

Massachusetts has collected about $1.8 billion from a voter-approved surtax on the state’s highest earners through the first nine months of the fiscal year, the Department of Revenue said Monday in a quarterly report.

That’s more than $800 million more than what the Legislature and Gov. Maura Healey planned to spend in surtax revenue for all of fiscal year 2024, raising the possibility of a sizable pot that will land in an Education and Transportation Reserve Fund and the Education and Transportation Innovation and Capital Fund, both surtax specific accounts, once the books close.

Remember, unless you've made a million plus at least a dollar in income? You are not paying this. And if you made a million plus a dollar, you're only taxed the extra 4% on that one additional dollar.

I've seen some confusion about this, so I thought I'd clear up a few things. 

First, the above money doesn't get spent until next year; this is a reserve fund, so the funding goes in and sits until the total is determined by the state comptroller in December. It's pretty clear, though, that the state's been conservative with projections, and this is one where we do really want to spend the money that's coming.

Second, this is funding--like most in the state--that's allocated by vote of the Legislature, signed by the Governor. There isn't some sort of formula where everyone gets some of this. I've heard districts ask how they can apply, or if it's being allocated evenly...that isn't how this works at all. The Legislature decides on what, within transportation and education, they want to spend the money on, and that's where it goes.

Funding was allocated in this year's budget from last year's Fair Share collection. Again, there is a very good chance that you are not personally paying for this--these efforts are not increasing your taxes!--but we as state residents are benefiting!

• universal free lunch - a program much in the news, due to Minnesota similarly funding meals for all students, the reimbursement to districts of the federal reimbursement rate for non-federally reimbursed meals (the wonkish explanation!), this $170M is from Fair Share funding. 
  Yes, we literally have our millionaires making sure all kids eat!
  Remember, the FY24 number is a compromise and is expected to still not be enough to fully reimburse the expense to districts
• $74/pupil increase in minimum aid in chapter 70. I've ongoingly argued that this is not a fair, equitable, way to get aid to districts, and yet...here we are. $37M here for K-12 districts.
• free community college is funded from the Fair Share amendment (there's several lines of public higher ed funding, in fact)
• $110M to regional transit authorities-- aka, local bus systems
• $60M for MBTA physical infrastructure
• $20M for a low income reduced fare program for the MBTA
• $7.5M for ferry services
• $36M for safety work at the MBTA
• $45M for municipal roadwork
• $10M for a skilled workforce pipeline for the MBTA (those bus and train drivers don't grow on trees!)
• $175M for child care grants (operations)
• $15M to reduce the waitlist at early childcare and education for teen parents and homeless families
• $5M for preschool expansion
• $65M for increased salaries and benefits for early education and care
• $18M for reducing the early childcare waitlist
• expanding early college, technical, and innovation pathways at $2.5M 
• the Literacy Launch, funding for both curriculum and professional development, which they compromised at $20M for
• Green Energy infrastructure grants to schools for $10M
• developing a framework for mental and behavioral health funded at $5M

This is all really good stuff! We should be proud that we fought for this money! 
I wish more people were more clear on where it is going. Please spread the word!

Sometimes you have to say 'we told you so'

The Worcester School Committee voted in 2021 to break from the current vendor provider, Durham, and take busing in-house, with issues being cited regarding a lack of drivers and excessive costs. A 2019 study by the district projected that taking busing in-house will lead to $3.5 million in savings. A subsequent analysis conducted by the department revealed that the actual savings for fiscal 2023 were $5 million, and that email complaints from parents fell by 76%.

from today's Worcester Telegram & Gazette 

The T&G itself links to their report from the time, which includes the following: 

But Superintendent Maureen Binienda recommended Worcester not take on busing entirely on its own, and continued to defend Durham’s track record of collaborating with the district.