Politics                                                   

School funding realities need to replace perceptions By CHARLES N. WHEELER III

As every parent knows, field trips are almost as much a part of the school year routine as math tests and book reports. A group of Chicago youngsters took an excursion that was far from ordinary a few weeks ago. On what should have been the first day of classes for some 411,000 students in Chicago public schools, a few busloads of kids, parents and community organizers traveled instead to Wood Dale, the suburb in DuPage County and home to Senate President James "Pate" Philip, whom they blamed for prolonging the financial crisis keeping Chicago children out of the classroom.

The protesters' point was simple — if the Republican leader could see to it that his local school district had enough money to open on time, then he also should see to it that Chicago schools are funded adequately so that city children can be educated.

Implicit in the protest was the erroneous presumption that Philip somehow secured favorable financial treatment from the state for "his" schools. In reality, if Wood Dale schools are sound fiscally, it's mainly because local residents have been willing to pay relatively high property taxes for education. While Chicagoans complain that its Board of Education gets only about one-third of its resources from the state, state dollars account for less than 10 percent of the Wood Dale budget. About three-quarters of the Wood Dale district's funds come from local property taxes, about half again as much as in Chicago.

The stark contrast between perception and reality helps explain why the Chicago school crisis was so intractable and why efforts to improve school funding statewide are so difficult.

Chicagoans tended to see the problem in terms of the state not providing enough money for city schools, while suburbanites and downstaters were more inclined to blame the Chicago Board of Education and the Chicago Teachers Union for not accepting fiscal reality and tightening their belts.

Moreover, the state's corrosive regionalism permeated the discourse; even though the rescue plan proposed by Mayor Richard M. Daley involved no state dollars, public sentiment outside Chicago ran strongly against a perceived "bailout" of city schools.

Schools across the state would like more state aid, and Democrats hope to make education finance a major issue in next year's campaign for governor. Their main thrust in the early going has been that Gov. Jim Edgar has failed to meet the financial needs of the schools, forcing local school officials to rely more heavily on property taxes.

The inherent danger in that line of attack is that voters may equate the criticism with a call for higher taxes, without which it would be hard to provide much new money for education. Less than 40 percent of voters embraced that option in 1992, when a constitutional amendment lost that would have required the state to pay at least half of school costs.

One of the main criticisms then was that the proposal offered no guarantees of either lower property taxes or improved student performance. Property tax relief can be written into law, but there's really no way to mandate better educated graduates. Obviously, learning is not made easier when students are malnourished, teachers are underpaid, textbooks are outdated, and classrooms are ill-equipped. There's also ample evidence that dollars alone don't always guarantee quality education.

Thus, those pushing for more school spending — probably bankrolled by an income tax increase — must make a strong case that additional funds would yield results. Merely proposing to pump more dollars into the existing education structure isn't likely to win many converts among skeptical citizens. Instead, what's needed is a plan that links additional funding to specific changes — in curriculum, class structure, school organization or other factors — that have

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been shown to enhance educational quality and student learning. Implicit in this approach is permitting school boards, principals and teachers the leeway to put into practice the methods yielding the best results.

One avenue to such flexibility could be the "Learning Zone" Edgar proposed for Chicago. While its details are to be worked out by a special panel, the concept envisions an area in which a wide variety of rules and regulations would be waived to allow innovation that otherwise might smother in red tape. Another might be the "charter school" idea advanced by House Republicans, under which groups of teachers and parents could ask to design and operate their own schools with public funding. In either case, creativity and innovation would be encouraged.

And how could anyone find a magic list of proven ways to create better schools? Start with schools that already are getting the job done. To find them, a good starting point might be a just-published report from the Taxpayers' Federation of Illinois entitled Performance Rankings of Illinois School Districts. In the study, the state's 942 school districts are compared, not with a statewide average, but rather with other districts with similar percentages of low-income children, a key indicator of test performance. In each group, districts are rated based on state assessment test scores and on per-pupil spending.

The study shows some districts seem to have done a better job educating their students at less cost than their peers; others spent more with less apparent success. Its authors warn against drawing conclusions, but the study identifies districts that seem to be doing something right and thus merit closer scrutiny.

Few would dispute that our children deserve a quality education, whether they live in Chicago or Cairo. But those who advocate higher taxes to pay for it first must find a way to convince taxpayers they'd be getting their money's worth. *

Charles N. Wheeler III is director of the Public Affairs Reporting program at Sangamon State University in Springfield and a former correspondent in the Springfield Bureau of the Chicago Sun-Times.

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