For the first time in the Quality Education Model’s 26-year history, the Legislature is poised to declare it has met its funding goals.
Nobody seems happy about that, highlighting the model’s fraught history, the complexity of education funding and the gloomy financial realities that could almost immediately nullify the victory.
The Joint Public Education Appropriation Committee will meet Wednesday to receive the draft “Report on the Adequacy of Public Appropriations.” Oregon law requires the Legislature to adequately fund public education to meet “quality goals established by law” or say why not and what is being done.
Every even-numbered year since 1999, the Quality Education Commission has delivered a summary called the Quality Education Model that estimates what it would cost to deliver a high-quality education to all students, although everyone agrees that what that means is not clearly spelled out in statute.
And then every odd-numbered year, the Legislature delivers a report saying it failed to reach the number.
Until this year.
The 2025 report says that when factoring in the many revenue streams available to schools, especially the Student Success Act, the Legislature has met the overall funding target of the model and maybe even a bit more.
Education advocates say they could argue with some of the accounting but overall are grateful for the Legislature’s additional investments, especially the revisions to current service level calculations that pushed up the State School Fund amount for 2025-27.
Other hearings next week during Legislative Days, though, show public education advocates have bigger concerns than the QEM tally.
On Tuesday, a Joint Ways and Means Education Subcommittee hearing will look at proposed education funding cuts to deal with the state shortfall brought on by federal tax law changes. State agencies have been asked to draw up lists of possible 2.5% to 5% reductions. The Oregon Department of Education list chips away at some of the very programs the Legislature counted to reach QEM.
On Wednesday while the education appropriation committee is hearing that Oregon is funding education appropriately, the Legislature’s revenue committees will be seeing the quarterly Oregon Economic and Revenue Forecast, which will give an idea just how well the state can continue that funding.
“Debating over QEM accounting doesn’t change the number of dollars going to classrooms where our students need them,” said Stacy Michaelson, OSBA Government Relations and Communications director. “The Legislature’s report highlights the complexity of education funding and how much of it has strings attached for how districts can use it.”
Michaelson offered as example that the legislative report critiques the QEM for leaving out the cost of alternative education settings such as long-term care or hospitals but includes the funding for those programs as part of the calculation to determine that QEM has been met.
The Legislature declaring it has met the QEM funding target raises the question of just how useful it is as a measure of school districts’ actual budget needs. Portland and Salem-Keizer public schools have already announced a combined $75 million budget shortfall, and many other districts are discussing budget cuts based on their 2025-27 funding.
Education advocates, including OSBA, are calling for more discussion with the Legislature about how to make the commission more effective and the model more relevant.
The Quality Education Commission and its model have come under fire from the Legislature in recent years, and the commission itself has lobbied for funding to reform its model. Just last month, the Joint Public Education Appropriation Committee held a hearing on an evaluation of the model with some scathing questions from the legislators.
The model bases its calculations on creating an idealized elementary school of 360 students, a middle school with 500 students and a high school with 1,000 students and then extrapolating the cost per student for the state. It aims to name the staffing, resources, curriculum and supports the schools would need based on education research and best practices.
But the model can’t fully account for the vast differences in Oregon school sizes and locations as well as issues such as rapidly evolving technology, deteriorating facilities and local staffing challenges. It also doesn’t include a virtual school, a recent development for many districts.
The model, which was set up to calculate a State School Fund target, has tried to incorporate the current variety of funding streams. Complicating the math, some of that money goes to all districts while other grants have targeted recipients and limited uses.
Another example offered by Michaelson is the High Cost Disability Fund, which reimburses districts when the cost to serve a student with complex needs exceeds $30,000. When calculating the target, the QEM adds the statutorily set transfer to the High Cost Disability Fund on top of the base prototype school cost assumptions. But the legislative report fails to acknowledge that the required transfer and associated reimbursements are expected to cover just a fraction of districts’ actual service costs.
John Rexford, who was the Quality Education Commission chair for the 2024 model, said the commission has tried to be more transparent but adding in more data has only added to the ways the numbers can be interpreted.
The legislative report explicitly disagrees with how some funding sources, particularly the Student Success Act money, were calculated into the model.
“It’s fair to say there has been some miscommunication,” said Tricia Mooney, the current Quality Education Commission chair and the Hermiston School District superintendent.
According to Mooney, the problem stems in part from the fact that the commission gets its numbers from the Oregon Department of Education staff while the legislative analysts use their own numbers. She also pointed out that the commission is an unpaid group of volunteers dependent on resources and staffing allotted to it by the Legislature.
Mooney said arguing over numbers loses sight of the model’s goal of identifying best practices for Oregon schools so that all students receive a high-quality education.
“Finger pointing isn’t moving instruction forward,” she said.
Rexford said any discussion of this year’s QEM needs to keep one thing in mind: “If the Legislature met the goal for this biennium, it’s still important that we do it six more biennia in a row to support this year’s kindergarteners through graduation.”
