Promising Proposals for Funding and Accountability in New Mexico

The New Mexico legislature has been working to increase and better target K-12 education funding to school districts with high-need students. Governor Bill Richardson and the legislature appointed a Funding Formula Task Force in 2005. The Task Force commissioned a comprehensive study of New Mexico’s public school funding formula, including an estimate of how much it would cost the state to provide a "sufficient" education to all students.

The American Institutes of Research released the New Mexico funding study in January, and concluded that "sufficient" state funding for education would require an increase of $335 million ($1,034 per-pupil), or 14.5 percent above the current $2.5 billion in spending. When the legislative session ended in March, the legislature was in the middle of considering legislation to boost spending and overhaul the state funding formula. This week, the Legislative Education Study Committee is meeting to discuss the impact of the proposed formula.

New Mexico included a critical step in this process that other states have too often left out: accountability. Without accountability, there is no way to ensure that school districts use increased funds efficiently and effectively. Any sustainable argument for additional resources requires accountability.

New Mexico, in contrast, has embraced the need for accountability measures, as Michael Rebell noted on his blog EdFunding Matters. One of the funding study's recommendations was that the state require districts to align their spending plans with their current "Educational Plans for Student Success (EPSS)." An EPSS is a strategic plan developed by every school district and individual school in New Mexico that "sets clear goals, implementation strategies and evaluation measures" for student achievement and school improvement. They include achievement benchmarks for NCLB reading and math tests and specific strategies and interventions for reaching those benchmarks. The new legislation would expand the EPSS to include achievement in other areas, such as career and technical education and special education.

The EPSS system appears to be similar to the Contracts for Excellence in New York, an accountability program that was put in place after the New York legislature approved a significant increase in state education funding last year. 55 New York school districts—those that have schools in need of improvement and receive a certain amount of the new state aid—have filled out Contracts for Excellence. The Contracts require districts to target their new funds to at-risk students and proven programs, to set performance targets for improvement, and to publicly report the results.

In moving forward with any new state funding plan, New Mexico—and all other states—should wholeheartedly embrace and emphasize accountability in a fashion similar to New York. Individual district accountability plans give school districts the flexibility to define their own goals and to select the best route to achieve them. But the state retains the power of quality control, as it must approve and monitor how the district chooses to spend its funds. And there must be total transparency for the public about the spending choices and results.

Unfortunately, a few school officials in New Mexico have already started to express concerns that any revamped EPSS system would be too much of an administrative burden.

Here’s a warning to those officials: if you want more money on a consistent basis, year after year, it would be extremely wise to accept and support increased accountability measures. If schools don’t prove to the public and the state legislature that the new money is producing results, lawmakers will take it back much faster than they gave it up.