Why are Oregon schools pinched for funds while national statistics show the state’s school funding levels per student are above the national average?

In an attempt to answer the question posed above, the Oregon School Boards Association commissioned ECONorthwest to investigate the state’s K-12 funding situation since the 1990 passage of Oregon’s first property tax limitation measure and the start of the K-12 school funding equalization process.

What did they find? Not surprisingly, the answers are complex. No 30-second sound bite answers emerged.

• Comprehensive Analysis of K-12 Education Finance in Oregon

Two key factors impact the funding-level debate:

• Implementation of equalization, which provides comparable levels of funding for all students. Under the equalization formula, now completely implemented, districts well-funded prior to equalization dealt with budgets that grew at a much slower pace than districts poorly funded prior to equalization.
• Significant increases in special instruction funding. Since 1992 spending per student on special instruction in Oregon’s public schools increased 14.3 percent annually while spending on regular classroom instruction increased 3 percent annually.

Note: Special instruction in this report includes alternative education, English-language learners and programs for developmentally and physically disabled students.

As part of the study, ECONorthwest conducted in-depth interviews with 16 school districts from both sides of the equalization formula. They found that districts on both sides of the equation took money away from regular programs to meet special instruction demands.

“While total spending per student did keep pace with inflation, a significant amount of the increased dollars were funneled into special instruction,” says John Tapogna, ECONorthwest economist. “Funding special instruction did come at a price to a district’s regular programs.”

“In 1992 Oregon schools spent an average of $448 per student on special instruction,” says Chris Dudley, OSBA executive director. “By 2000, the system spent $1,301 per student.”

A significant slice of special instruction funding requirements is mandated by the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. “The federal special education mandate is embarrassingly under-funded by Congress,” Dudley says. “This lack of federal money to support federal laws takes more and more money away from our schools’ regular instruction.”

The conclusion: National reports, although providing accurate per student spending numbers, fail to capture the complex changes Oregon schools faced during the 1990s. The national reports address overall spending but do not address the tradeoffs between spending for regular instruction and for special needs instruction.

“Schools cannot continue to maintain the quality education they now provide Oregon’s young people and deal with fewer dollars for regular academic programs,” Dudley says. “Oregonians never aspired to be average and certainly not in educating our children.”