Federation of Connecticut Taxpayer Organizations

The Federation of Connecticut Taxpayer Organizations, Inc. extends its congratulations to Theresa McGrath for her excellent article captioned The CT Coalition for Justice in Education Funding Lawsuit is a Scam as is being practiced in 45 States throughout the US.� Theresa�s article has been published by Education News and circulated throughout the country.� Theresa is the Executive Director of FACE, Family Alliance for Children in Education, which is a Connecticut based volunteer parent's activist group in Public Policy. Theresa can be reached at (860) 570-1203 or by email at FACE0203@comcast.net .

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The CT Coalition for Justice in Education Funding Lawsuit is a Scam as is being practiced in 45 States throughout the US

By Theresa McGrath

The CT Coalition for Justice in Education Funding is seeking litigation to force our State Government to "moralize" equal economic justice in education funding to municipalities.

This organization is comprised of a Board of Directors which include Mayors, CT Association of Public School Superintendents, CT Association of Boards of Education, The Bridgeport Child Advocacy Coalition, Rev. Alvin Johnson, Jr. with the Interfaith Coalition for Equity and Justice, and the American Federation of Teachers who are also the consultants for this group.

There is a large and growing list of National and State Professional Associations, Unions and Advocacy Organizations. Among this group, are towns that have joined, paying membership costs with your public tax dollars that range anywhere from $2,500 - $20,000.

Publicly financed non-profit parent advocacy organizations, additional school, neighborhood and faith-based organizations, such as the Interfaith Coalition of Greater Hartford, are mobilizing citizens throughout our state to put grassroots pressure on our state legislature for this upcoming legislative session!

CCJEF is a state splinter group of the National ACCESS Project. Their mission is to promote access to meaningful educational opportunities for all children. They are leading a coalition of efforts to promote litigation through the state court systems with the aid of Augenblick, Palaich and Associates from Colorado who claim to specialize in estimating the cost of an adequate education. It is interesting to note that each of these organizations have a common ground where they are largely funded by the Ford Foundation.

Ironically, while at the same time, APA has provided CCJEF with a cost analysis of CT's inadequate education funding, they have also provided a separate study for our state Department of Education to provide our Attorney General with the ammunition to pursue a lawsuit at the Federal No Child Left Behind. This study has determined that our state is under funded by $40 million over a course of seven years. When our state spends well over $7 billion in education in one year, this distribution is really a small sum by comparison.

What's more interesting about the combined efforts of all of these groups is that there has been a national effort with the McNeil/Leher productions program and local public TV networks such as CPTV, here in CT, also largely funded by the Ford Foundation. By funding such movements, one must question the agenda of the Ford Foundation for such abuse of funding public TV to force their agenda on the public. McNeil/Leher is working with states throughout the US to partake in state and local forums of discussion on achievement gaps of poor minority students and white students. McNeil/Leher had worked through Yale University's public policy department. Oddly enough, while at the same time, Yale Law School was/still is working on the CCJEF case. This discussion has drawn awareness and attention among parents of children in the New Haven failing school district and citizens living in and around the communities of these schools that a movement is coming to create change in their children's schools. From these deliberations, these same community people are being asked to listen to debates in New Haven Community Centers and Public Libraries with the intentions to gather grassroots support with individuals and advocacy groups. These groups will have been organized in time to join the CT Coalition for Justice in Education Funding organization to put pressure on their elected officials to push for more funding in their public education system.

According to CCJEF, the APA studies produced were largely driven by identifying financial inequities in education, with consideration for equalizing state and local funding mechanisms. In researching APA's studies, there is not one mention of equalizing state and local funding, which leads us to believe that the only motive is more money into public schools no matter what the tax burden to the state will be.

They have paid for a study with your local tax dollars by a school finance consulting agency called Augenblick, Palaich & Associates (aka: APA) from Denver Colorado. CCJEF claims they had asked this study to include the answers to how to adequately fund education, improve student performance, eliminate achievement gap, and balance funding between state and local taxes. However, their results only include the adequate education funding portion.

APA's study looked at the history of CT's financing in education and compared it to specifically picked states in our country. They looked at the funding trends of our state from the 70's to the present to clearly define the modern definition of Adequacy in education. They had found that our state historically, funded equity in education based on input financial trends to provide a process in education. More recently, and particularly for those states who chose to follow the federal guidelines of the Federal No Child Left Behind (NCLB) education advocacy has focused on an output process in education and a standards based form of educational adequacy, relying on accountability measures and student achievement records.

APA defines Adequacy by relying on standards from expectations of students, a way to measure those expectations, holding providers accountable for student performance. They have identified these standards as already in place from our state and federal departments of education. APA fails to identify where the accountability piece is in our public education system.

APA had looked at a few key methods to measure the financial estimate of adequate funding. The two methods they relied on were called the Professional Judgment and Successful school District. Professional judgment method allows educators to determine the resources needed to allow students to meet the standards. Successful School District assumes cost can be inferred from past practice that meets standards.

What APA had excluded in their research was the Statistical or Economic Modeling, which looks at model schools with effective student results. Why had they excluded this method of approach to estimate the educational adequacy? Could it be perhaps because there are schools in our state that are using their education dollars wisely? Could it be the fact that the results of this model would expose the misuse of state and local funds are the real issue of concern that truly needs to be addressed, and potentially could be the real answer to the education inadequacy in our municipalities? Could it be that the highest performing schools were non-union schools such as private schools, parochial schools and Charter schools?

APA had composed their research through gathering superintendents, administrators, board of education members, school business officials, and other educators from geographically diversified schools throughout our state. This group was used to answer the questions of what resources were needed to help the vast majority of students to meet state and federal academic standards. Including the base dollar amount needed to meet academic expectations and adjustments needed for district size, at-risk and special education students and English language learners. This group of publicly paid employees spent their publicly paid time to create hypothetical school districts, which mimicked actual school districts in our state, which included special education and at risk expenditures, including English Language Learners expenditures. They were asked to create simply a good curriculum with no frills.

There have been a large number of litigation cases on adequate funding throughout our country that have based their case under Brown v. Board of Education. The Horton vs. Meskel case is on its third try to address an adequate education for our densely minority populated school districts. This particular case has based their findings on comparing state testing standards and expenditures in education to almost the highest fiscal per pupil expenditures. Our state had agreed to allow for more educational opportunities by providing new public and magnet schools and public school choice, with no accountability measures and inadequate equal educational opportunities for all children, through a gambling system called the "Lottery;" where state and local officials have questioned it's rigging.

The CT Coalition for Justice in Education Funding is taking this case one-step further to pursue their own lawsuit for funding. This group has looked to the New Jersey Abid cases and the Maryland grassroots led legislative action to provide information on what their next steps should be. Supported by an attorney, Michael Rabel, the chief counsel and executive director for the ACCESS project, a New York based group leading the way to litigation throughout the U.S. who has recommended to CJEF that they must determine the actual dollar amount to fund education. Michael Rabel stated at a CCJEF conference, held at our state Capitol, "After our schools have been funded, we must THEN look at the accountability piece."

The New Jersey case, led by attorney David Sciarra had won the case based on the funding disparity of poor urban school districts and high performing districts which happened to be in the most elite areas of New Jersey who's per pupil expenditures were $10,000. The outcome of this case has forced the state of New Jersey to provide poor and minority urban districts with universal preschool (a voucher program) which included facilities and supplemental programs, funding equivalent to the wealthiest school districts, and the state was responsible to ensure that the urban school districts show continued improvement.

To take a look at the map that this CCJEF group has laid out for us, we can envision a possible crisis in our state for education bankruptcy for our localities and our state. We can see that there is a real threat of a lawsuit, but there is no leg to stand on. Because we already fund our urban schools far beyond what our highest performing schools do. We can see this threat of a lawsuit being used to generate a fear to gather grassroots groups from urban areas to put pressure on our state legislature to provide more money to the school districts who sign onto the lawsuit.

If our state provides even more state funding to those failing school districts, it will be taking away from other towns, or there will be a need to increase our state taxes.

While this lawsuit is being filed, interestingly enough, there are federal lawsuits being filed from the state level to federal level on the No Child Left Behind throughout our country, which will cause Federal tax increases; oddly enough, with the aid of studies from APA and the Access project. These tax increases will become the burden of the middle class as it always is, to the point where there will be no more middle class which is promoting a CT State Legislative initiative to Regionalize Education funding, which will create yet another level of government, causing more taxation and expensive mandates on localities. This initiative will force more people to rely on government supports and ever more control of all citizens. Is this what we want in CT? Most importantly, will more funding really provide and equitable education for all children?

Articles of Interest

Greater New Haven Citizens� Forum on Education

Academic Achievement Gap

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:i5cnAkWA0cwJ:www.pbs.org/newshour/btp/pdfs/newhaven_backgrounder.pdf+theresa+mcgrath&hl=en&gl=us&ct=clnk&cd=23

No Child Left Behind Act

http://www.ed.gov/nclb/landing.jhtml

EducationNews.Org �

http://educationnews.org/