Business Groups Detail Elements of School Funding Reform Bill

Today, the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education delivered a letter to every legislator with a list of five elements we want to see included in the final school funding reform bill.  The letter was signed by our statewide business partners Associated Industries of Massachusetts, the Massachusetts Business Roundtable, and the Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation as well as MBAE Affiliates including the Massachusetts Competitive Partnership, the Greater Boston Chamber, the Worcester Regional Chamber, Springfield Regional Chamber, Mass High Tech Council and 21 other affiliates from across the state.

We are urging legislators to support a school funding reform bill that does the following:

1. Fully implements the recommendations of the Foundation Budget Review Commission through a multi-year, fully-funded revision to the Chapter 70 formula that will achieve adequacy and equity for all students. Funding provisions should include revisions to the Charter School tuition reimbursement program schedule and percentages, and the creation of a standing FBRC.
2. Maintains and enhances the state accountability system to ensure new funds go to those students who need them the most and are used effectively to close achievement gaps, set statewide and district targets for closing achievement gaps with annual reporting on progress, and collect and transparently report on data related to college and career readiness and an expanded list of school metrics. The State should require, at a minimum, creation of a plan, to be made public, as to how and where they will use ELL and low income allotments to serve intended populations, ensure reporting of a robust and user-friendly set of comparable data from school to school that correlate with student post-graduation success, and create a Data Advisory Committee per the FBRC recommendations.
3. Adds a new Chapter 70 enrollment category for Early College and Career Pathways to enable replication and expansion of these promising high school reform strategies, that directly address college and career readiness. Every effort should be made to incentivize a new approach to preparing students for the future, including the awarding of industry-recognized credentials, work-based learning opportunities, and successful college and career pathway programs.
4. Provides significant and supplemental funding for innovation and the implementation of best practices in underperforming schools. It is vital to set aside money to support grants to schools and districts to innovate and create new approaches to closing achievement, opportunity, and skills gaps while also ensuring that the Commissioner and DESE have the ability, with flexible funding at the Commissioner’s discretion, to inject funding into schools needing improvement with the scaling up of promising practices.
5. Enacts Innovation Partnership Zone legislation to provide communities with a new tool for empowering schools and educators to address persistent low-performance and encourage innovation. Allowing for the expansion of autonomy and flexibility for educators, with school and zone level decision-making, these “zones” can create collaborative partnerships for success and should be extended for voluntary use across the state.

MBAE and our affiliates across the state will be working to ensure these elements are included in the bill.