Have you ever heard that life just isn’t fair?  It’s true.  You know what really isn’t fair?  School funding.

Some California schools get twice the funding — and more — of others

By Sharon Noguchi, San Jose Mercury News
Posted:   02/26/2012 05:37:03 PM PST, Updated:   02/27/2012 03:09:47 AM PST

Thirty-six years after the California Supreme Court ordered the state to fix its unequal system of funding schools, a gaping disparity remains between haves and have-nots.

And it may not improve much any time soon.

A scathing report on California’s school finances not only repeats the indictment of an inequitable, insufficient and irrational funding scheme, but also details how California spends on average $620 less on a student living in a high-poverty area than one in an affluent neighborhood.

The report by the Education Trust-West, an Oakland-based education advocacy group, also attacks the complexity of California school financing. "The system is a haphazard collection of arcane and hard-to-navigate policies that manage to hide funding disparities from district leaders and policy makers, not to mention parents and the public," the report, released last week, reads. "The maze of programs and formulas makes it nearly impossible to understand whether dollars ever reach the schools and students for whom they are intended."

Here’s the report by Education Trust-West mentioned above.  Clearly this is a complex problem, which would probably require a 40,000 word essay on the topic to identify the problems and begin to propose some reforms and solutions to this mess. 

I could create lots of lovely charts, comparing and contrasting financing among different districts in the Real Bay Area (by going here to Ed-Data, and clicking Districts and then Compare Finances).  I could brood over these 40 pages of state and local per-student revenue by school district across the entire state. 

Then I could make a bunch of sarcastic comments so you couldn’t tell if I was in favor of replacing all public schooling with Google Search or wanted to buy every government school student a gold-plated Tesla Roadster to ensure they showed up on time.  (Plus I would make sure I got the statewide school parking lot contracts via no-bid.  And a Lamborghini.)

The heck with it.  We’ve been having some beautiful weather, so why doesn’t everyone merely gripe about school funding, Prop 13, basic aid vs. revenue limit, and “voluntary” donations in this thread while you all pretend I said something brilliant.

This is also an Open Thread for everyone who doesn’t give a foreclosed lien about school funding.

Here’s what happens when you head over to a site called apiscores.com: you get a map with little pins representing how well each school scores on the California API.  It’s all sunshine and rainbows!  At least the pin legend uses a rainbow, where 1, the lowest ranking, is really bad apple red, and 10, the highest, is the purest purple.

I don’t know what they’re doing with that light blue for rank 6 (they should have used something more like teal or at least aqua), and the dark purple they used is more suggestive of blue (and a lower score) than the light purple.  So given that whoever made the map didn’t spend enough time playing with the Color Wheel during Art Class (which has been cut to raise API scores), let’s have a look and see who’s in the Real Bay Area (RBA) and who isn’t.  Remember, the deeper the purple, the larger the college fund balances!  And the redder, the deader (at least in real estate terms).

Whoa, check out that swath that runs northwest through southeast alongside I-280.  Does that area look familiar?  It should.

Obviously there’s more to being in the RBA than just having top school scores (you also need to be score top sushi and get to the GooglePlex in a reasonable amount of time), but it’s nice to have confirmation that this map was onto something.  Admittedly this RBA map used purple the way the school score map used green, as a mixdown.  But the core RBA comes through on both:

Anyway, zoom in on your neighborhood and check out what color your neighborhood schools are.  The more you embiggen the map, the more pins pop up, so if you can’t find a particular school, you may have to zoom in some more or not show as many school types.

This is a Weekend Open Thread.

If you’ve been reading this site for more than a few months, you’ve heard about the world-famous Cupertino Union School District, and how foreigners with suitcases full of cash will pay anything to buy a house with Cupertino Schools.  You’ve also heard about Palo Alto schools and the Mission San Jose area of Fremont.

The state API test results are in, and Cupertino has two of the highest scoring schools in the state.  They, along with Palo Alto and Fremont, also have been marked for Program Improvement, which means they have failed to make their required targets.

Santa Clara County schools tops in state scores, yet feds see failure

By Sharon Noguchi, San Jose Mercury News
Posted: 08/31/2011 12:00:17 PM PDT, Updated: 09/01/2011 03:45:45 PM PDT

(Photo, left) Second-graders work on their reading skills in their class, taught by Lisa Gregoire at Cesar Chavez Elementary School, in San Jose, on Wednesday, Aug. 31, 2011. The K-5th grade school has vaulted 63 points this year on API — the state’s measurement of academic achievement — after climbing 64 points last year. (KAREN T. BORCHERS)

In contrasting scenes of celebration and chagrin on Wednesday, South Bay schools again topped the state in annual test scores, while more of them than ever before are being labeled failures by the federal government.

Two schools in the Cupertino Union School District, Faria and Murdock-Portal, tied for first in the state, with 998 on the Academic Performance Index, among elementary schools. Yet simultaneously the district fell into the feds’ failing category. It’s among plenty of surprising, and surprised, company. Santa Clara Unified’s Millikin placed second with 997, Fremont Unified’s Mission San Jose placed third with 996 and Palo Alto’s Hoover placed fourth with 995 among elementary schools on API. Yet all three school districts landed in "program improvement," the federal equivalent of a report card "F."

Meanwhile several districts with students that traditionally have struggled — Alum Rock, Gilroy and Sunnyvale elementary — posted strong gains. They’re still on the federal watch list, but teachers were elated to see their progress.

So with rising scores at the top and bottom schools, and in a valley known for stellar public education, how is it that 19 of Santa Clara County’s 31 school districts, plus the County Office of Education, appear poised to suffer federal sanctions and embarrassment?

How can this be?  19 out of 31 districts in the county synonymous with Silicon Valley not meeting federal goals?

This graph (right) from the Merc helps tell the story.

No Child Left Behind required all subgroups, not just the school district as a whole, to maintain increasing proficiency levels, and for 2011, schools and every subgroup need to hit 67% proficient on all state tests.  The reasoning behind it made sense: help all students, not just the ones who had money and college-educated parents.

The graph shows California schools were improving their test scores.  They just didn’t improve them as fast as the goals were going up.

By 2014, all students are supposed to be proficient in every school district everywhere.  How is such a goal going to be met?  When some students have parents who work two or three jobs and aren’t home to read to them or help with homework, why is this the schools’ fault?  When some students don’t get fed regularly, or live in the middle of a gang turf war, or don’t actually have a regular place to live, are they somehow magically going to score “proficient” on a state test?

That’s a wonderful goal, but expecting schools to make all children proficient without putting programs in place to support the students who most need it is insane.  In fact, programs shown to help student results in poor families, such as Head Start, have been cut.

This is the equivalent of demanding all students be proficient at track events, but not providing track facilities to schools that didn’t have them, or excusing students from track meets who have to work to help their family pay the monthly rent check.

Now, where do Cupertino, Palo Alto, and Fremont school districts come in?  The first two had excellent API scores.  But some of the subgroups didn’t hit that 67% proficient mark. Now, if you know anything about statistics, you know that the smaller your data sample, the more scatter your see.  What do you think will happen if you start measuring small subgroups of a school district population and demand that every single one of these various smaller samples, many of which are chock-full of the kind of students who don’t test well, all hit the overall goal?  These subgroups include economically disadvantages, English language learners, and students with disabilities, and yes, every one one of those groups with these academic, financial, and societal challenges are expected to score as well as the overall school district, or to put things more bluntly, their target is the same as the groups with all the advantages.

Now what will happen if the goal is moved up 11 percentage points a year?  How many schools are capable of moving all groups up at that rate?  How realistic is it to demand that all English-language learners score 100% proficient in 2014, or all students with learning disabilities, or all students that qualify for reduced-lunch prices?

As the graph shows, it’s going to be more and more difficult for schools to “pass” the NCLB standards in the next three years, since if any subgroup “fails,” so does the entire district.  Unless the standards are changed within the next year or two, any school district large enough to have disadvantaged subgroups will be accorded an NCLB Program Improvement school.

Getting back to Cupertino, two of the 25 schools in the district had subgroups missing the targets.  That’s right, even if a school district has a 92% success rate in meeting these difficult targets, the whole district is a failure.  One of the schools has the most transitional population in the district (Nimitz).  The other is an alternative school whose philosophy embraces an integrated curriculum with small group projects, and many parents refuse to let their children take the state tests (McAuliffe).  Amazingly, Cupertino didn’t get dinged for insufficient compliance overall (95% of a district and all subgroups must be represented on the tests.)  They met 33 of 37 criteria.

In Palo Alto Unified, the only school failing to make the “grade” was Escondido, and again, the problem was not API scores.  They met 25 of 34 AYP criteria. In particular, not enough students with disabilities participated in testing.

And in Fremont, also finding itself in Program Improvement for the first year, a whopping 19 out of 33 schools failed to meet the requirements.  Fremont Unified met 37 of 46 criteria.

Here’s the list of school districts in Santa Clara County that aren’t in Program Improvement:

• Lakeside Joint (one elementary school)
• Loma Prieta Joint (one elementary, one middle)
• Los Altos Elementary (7 elementary, 2 middle)
• Los Gatos Union (4 elementary, 1 middle)
• Los Gatos-Saratoga Joint Union (2 high schools)
• Luther Burbank (one elementary)
• Orchard Elementary (one elementary)
• Saratoga Union (3 elementary, 1 middle)
• Union Elementary (6 elementary, 2 middle) Since this district has both middle schools marked as not meeting all requirements, I think this is a mistake saying the district is NOT in PI

What do these school districts have in common? They’re SMALL. The more schools in a district, the higher the odds one of them is going to miss a requirement somewhere, pulling down the entire district. That’s a guaranteed recipe for failure, and seems to be exactly what some people wanted.

This year, over 4000 California schools have “failed.”  What will happen when almost every school district is considered “failing” by these insane standards, statistically guaranteed to make almost everyone a loser?  And who were the idiots who agreed to them?

It’s back to school time, and that means it’s time for another completely arbitrary ranking of our educational institutions!  US News and World Report set loose on our high schools, and have come up with the latest, greatest, most up-to-date rankings… using data from two years ago! (You’re probably valuing your house based on old prices too!) 

We also have the Newsweek numbers, which carry much less weight for two reasons: Newsweek is now just a subsidiary of The Daily Beast, and they don’t have the same concern as US News that a school needs to do well by all its students.  The Newsweek stats are skewed beyond belief toward college readiness, and only college readiness.  So let’s ignore them for now.

The top 100 schools that survived US News’ “three part” testing were given the “Gold Medal” and ranked 1 through 100 based on a “College Readiness Index,” showing how many of their students took AP or IB exams.  A few of these top schools actually scored a perfect 100, which meant every single student took at least one college-level exam.  That Quality Adjusted number is the exams actually passed, as opposed to taken.

Two states couldn’t survive this rigorous data-parsing at all, so all high schools in Nebraska and Oklahoma were thrown into the trash-heap of non-Specialness!  The other 48 states plus the District of Columbia had all their high schools thrown into the Mixmaster of Mystery.  But you don’t care which school had the highest score unless you could consider sending your kids there while holding down your high-paying job at the Googleplex!  So here are the Bay Area schools that got the Gold, and the third-highest school may be a surprise.

Schools within 20 miles of Google are conveniently marked in Bay Area Blue.

Bay Area High Schools on US News & World Reports Gold Medal List

Unfortunately, the Silver and Bronze medal schools aren’t conveniently (I mean meaninglessly) ranked.  But here are the Bay Area also-rans, because I’m sure you’re looking for your kids’ or your own school and wondering if you made this “grade” for the bragging rights.  Silver Medal schools met the same criteria as Gold, they just didn’t score as well on the CRI and thus missed the Top 100.  The cut-off for Silver is a CRI of 20.0.

Bay Area Schools Ranked Silver Medal
(no rankings given, but sorted by CRI)

And I’m sure you noticed who’s missing, too.  Where’s Los Altos High?  Where’s Los Gatos?  Where’s Cupertino?  Go away Fremont, nobody expected you to show up. 

Bronze Medal schools did well on state tests (parts 1 and 2 of their filtering) but not college-readiness (taking and passing AP or IB exams). .

Bay Area Schools Ranked Bronze Medal (no rankings given)

Honorable Mention schools are the reverse of the Bronzes: they have the college readiness scores but fell down on the state test results.  There are only two California schools with Honorable Mention. Here is the Bay Area entry:

Bay Area Schools with Honorable Mention

This school may seem familiar to you: it’s the Bay Area charter featured in Waiting for Superman.

So getting back to that surprising Fremont showing, here’s one reason why Mission San Jose blew Monta Vista, Lynbrook, Gunn, and Paly out of the water.  Turns out Useless News and World Distort ranked the schools a lot of different ways.  Here’s one of their rankings that MSJ also did well on.

So, home prices in the Fremont Hills should be higher than Palo Alto or Cupertino?  Why or why not?

Oh, yeah, Newsweek’s Top 500 School list, as if anyone cares.  Not one Cupertino school.  Paly isn’t on the list either.  Or Lowell!  The score is made up of the graduation rate (25%), the matriculation to college rate (25%), AP tests per graduate (25%), average SAT scores (10%), average AP/IB test scores (10%), and AP classes offered (5%).  And note that again, AP tests per graduate, not per test taker.  Riiiiiight.  Because we can’t have kids not going to college in our “best” high schools.

The Newsweek Nonsense of Supposed High School Bestness: Bay Area

Hey Newsweek, I hear Paly’s lawyers will be calling you real soon, and both Monta Vista and Lynbrook are going to beat you up behind the gym after PE.  With their 16 inch laptops.

No, I can’t walk home with you, I got band practice.

Here’s an opportunity that doesn’t come along every day!  Wouldn’t you like to enroll your teen in Lynbrook High School, in the “we’re actively throwing nonresidents out of our schools” Fremont Union HSD?

Of course, there’s a catch.  To take advantage of this amazing offer, you have to already live in the FUHSD attendance area.  Talk about the rich getting richer!  Here’s the most recent test scores, for those fortunate enough to consider this amazing (and very limited) opportunity.

*Located right at Cupertino/Sunnyvale border and the vast majority of students are from Sunnyvale, with remainder from Cupertino and Los Altos.  Hey Fremont, the “growth” API means it’s supposed to get BIGGER than the “base” score.  That means the growth number is supposed to go UP.  You know.  MORE.

And some other wanna-be high schools are almost as aggressive about removing “illegal students” as FUHSD.  What a sincere form of flattery, hiring a private detective to ferret out people living on the wrong street.

All parcel taxes for schools fail in Santa Clara County; bonds pass

By Sharon Noguchi

[email protected]

Posted: 11/05/2010 07:00:00 PM PDT

Updated: 11/05/2010 10:28:12 PM PDT

When it comes to school taxes, Santa Clara County voters in the past have marched to their own education-boosting drummer, usually amassing the 66.7 percent supermajority required to tax themselves extra for schools.

School leaders counted on the same reception to their pleas this year, hoping voters would approve taxes to help avert drastic cuts to classrooms and libraries and increases in class sizes.

But this week, all three school parcel taxes in tax-friendly Santa Clara County failed, although four bond measures passed. Only two of 18 school parcel taxes statewide passed, among them Fremont Unified School District in next-door Alameda County, which received 69.5 percent of the vote for its first-ever parcel tax.

To obtain approval, Fremont campaigners focused on pounding home their message: Because of recession-induced state budget cuts, the district needed dollars for basics such as reading, math, science and libraries, which last school year were cut 50 percent. They stressed that the district had been a responsible steward of public funds. Not only are test scores rising, but also all the projects promised for a 2002 bond measure were completed on time and under budget.

By contrast, Santa Clara County voters mirrored statewide trends: California voters this week approved 70 percent of school bonds but rejected 89 percent of school parcel taxes. The record was similar in San Mateo County, where the lone parcel tax failed but four school bonds passed.

It’s pretty obvious why this happened – it’s unfair to landlords, other businesses, and retirees who don’t have children that they should be paying for schools. If kids want better schools, their parents should pay out of pocket directly – just like they do in Cupertino and Palo Alto.

Congrats to the Bay Area for finally reaching fiscal sanity. The next step is to divert money from schools into rebating property taxes. After all, what do you get from spending money on kids? Not much. But what about reducing property taxes? Now that’s a smart ROI!

Another day, another school staving off impending doom.

Teachers, school staff OK salary freeze

by Nick Veronin,  Mountain View Voice Staff

Teachers and staff of the local high school district have agreed to forego salary increases for two years.

The pay freeze, together with a change in retirement benefits for some staff members, will help the Mountain View Los Altos high school district save money, officials said.

At its Sept. 13 meeting, the high school board approved salary freezes for teachers and school staff represented by the California School Employees Association.

The teachers union and the local chapter of the CSEA went along with the district’s plan, which ensures that salaries will not increase for employees represented by either union until the 2011-2012 school year at the earliest.

Cupertino Unified School District added five furlough days to this year’s calendar as part of the staff contribution to covering a $3.4 million shortfall.  San Jose Unified schools took last week off.

State legislators budget deal, after 100 days of no action on allocations, does not pay schools the full amount they are owed.

Some schools are asking the voters for help.  Three school districts have placed parcel taxes on the November ballot, including Cambrian (Measure L, $96 a year), Foothill-DeAnza (Measure E, $69), East Side Union HSD (Measure I, $98),  Another four are seeking bond measures: San Jose/Evergreen (Measure G, $268 million), Santa Clara Unified (Measure H, $81.1 million), Franklin-McKinney (Measure J, $50 million), and Moreland (Measure K, $55 million).

The parcel taxes require a 2/3 vote to pass, the bond measures require 55%.  And if you want some political intrigue, two neighborhood associations have organized against the San Jose/Evergreen bond measure, claiming the community college district has wasted money on unneeded projects, needless travel, and consultants.  The best quote from the arguments against the measure is “The San Jose Mercury News has said that their fiscal credibility on a scale of 1 to 10 is zero.”

How are things in your school district(s)?  Any stories of treachery in budgeting?  Wait, isn’t Los Altos in the Real Bay Area?  Why are they dealing with budget issues?  What do you bet nobody read down this far? 

Congrats to the world famous Real Bay Area high school! Let’s see where they placed this year in the US News and World report rankings!

Let’s look and celebrate the ones in the Top 20!

Uh… Santa Cruz at 19? Well, that’s sort of Bay Area, but not Real Bay Area.

Let’s look and celebrate the ones in the Top 40!

What the heck? Where are they? Maybe we should filter by state. Let’s look at California only:

There we go. Now, sure, you can say that these are 76th, 134th, and 169th ranked nationally… but they are in the Top 10 in California, which means… drumroll… that they are Top 10 in the world!

Let’s take a quick look at our arch nemesis, New York:

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! These must all be lies!

Ok, let’s take a look at our other arch nemesis, New Jersey.

Hah. So it turns out those famous, good, New Jersey schools were just a lie. (This is pretty strange…)

What puts a house in rather than out of the Real Bay Area (RBA)?  A damned good school district.  Now watch some meddlesome busybodies try and ruin everything!

Consolidate Santa Clara County school districts to save millions, grand jury recommends

 

By Sharon Noguchi

Posted: 07/04/2010 07:15:28 PM PDT
Updated: 07/04/2010 10:24:07 PM PDT

When budgets are tight, businesses often consolidate — so why not school districts?

After all, Santa Clara County school districts are a hodgepodge of large and tiny agencies, each with its own administration, and with century-old boundaries that randomly join disparate regions while dividing other communities. Some superintendents oversee 25,000 students, while others supervise only a few hundred.

So the Santa Clara County civil grand jury has recommended unifying and consolidating the county’s 31 school districts, which it projects could save $51 million annually.

District officials dispute the estimated savings, and question the benefits. In past decades, similar suggestion have been shunned as politically implausible. Why should this time be any different? For one, schools are facing unprecedented cuts to their budgets now.

The grand jury released two reports on June 24th: “Achieving School District Efficiency through Consolidation” and “Looking at Policies Our Schools Use to Find and Place Employees.”  These thrilling potboilers describe that “while the school districts in Santa Clara County are doing well in all areas, there are redundant administrative functions that can be made more cost effective through school district  consolidation.”  I tell you, I couldn’t put it down!

By merging elementary and high school districts that share attendance areas, the county’s 31 distinct school districts could be reduced to 16, unless the county actually has 34 districts (per 2008-09 Grand Jury report “Who Really Benefits from Education Dollars? (Hint: It’s Not the Students)“).  That’s the fun of an official report; you just never know what alternate facts could emerge!  Last year’s report had six findings and suggested actions, and it’s number 6 that must have led to this year’s threat to school administrators:

Finding 6

The operation of 34 K–12 school districts and four (4) community college districts
creates excessively high management and administrative costs. Five K-12 school
districts have excessively high Superintendent costs per student which is reflective of
the district’s having only one or two schools.

Recommendation 6

A consolidation of districts should be considered to reduce the numbers and costs of
Superintendents/Chancellors, Boards of Trustees, administrative staff and overhead.

One piece of good news for administrators and board members is the grand jury didn’t recommend all 31 school districts be rolled up into one countywide nightmare like Los Angeles Unified.  Instead, they selected feeder elementary districts that could be merged with high school districts, creating “Unified School Districts” that serve the same boundaries.  These are the four “lucky” high school districts and corresponding K-8 districts singled out:

• Campbell Union HSD with Burbank SD, Cambrian SD, Campbell USD, Moreland USD and Union ESD
• Fremont Union HSD with Cupertino USD and Sunnyvale SD
• Los Gatos-Saratoga HSD with Lakeside JSD, Loma Prieta JSD, Los Gatos USD and Saratoga USD
• Mountain View-Los Altos HSD with Los Altos SD and Mountain View-Whisman SD

The civil grand jury’s reasoning is that unified school districts save money and can operate more efficiently than smaller districts with just a few schools.  The grand jury holds up these unified districts in Santa Clara County to support the concept: Gilroy, Morgan Hill, Milpitas, Palo Alto, San Jose, and Santa Clara.  And their gold standard of the benefits of school district unification is last year’s formation of Twin Rivers Unified.  In Sacramento.  Puh-leeeeeze!

Are they seriously suggesting that RBA cities such as Saratoga, Cupertino and Los Altos should emulate mediocrities such as Milpitas and Morgan Hill?  Seriously?  The only RBA city on the Unified list is Palo Alto, and they’re so Special none of the regular rules apply anyway.

Can you see parents who paid the RBA premium to live in Los Gatos wanting to share a school district with the hillbillies of Lakeside?  Or the families who paid the big bucks to live south of Fremont Avenue now finding themselves sharing a school district with North Sunnyvalers?  Wouldn’t every Los Altan sooner pull their kids out of public school than consort with those troublemakers from Latham Street?

Obviously I’m not going to comment about the proposed Campbell Unified District, because they aren’t in the RBA so nobody much cares.  The Grand Jury also wants to merge four East San Jose school districts into two union districts, and even fewer burbed readers would ask. (Berryessa + Orchard, Alum Rock + Mt. Pleasant, if you insist.  You’re welcome.)  All 21 school districts suggested for consolidation have 90 days to respond to the civil grand jury, and expect the replies to be even more thrilling reading.

Now, some of these recommendations make sense.  There is only one school in Lakeside, Luther Burbank and Orchard School Districts.  One-school districts are clearly wasteful, and the Grand Jury has already noted criminal behavior in Burbank SD.  But some of the proposed unified districts will be much, much larger than others.  The proposed Mountain View-Los Altos Unified would have 21 schools, and the proposed Los Gatos-Saratoga Unified, 14.  But both proposed Campbell and Fremont Unifieds would have 41 schools each, which isn’t much smaller than San Jose Unified’s 43.  All the other current Unified Districts (which the Grand Jury report specifies as an ideal model) have between 14-24 schools.

41 schools?  Are they serious?  Does this fit the reasoning behind “Five K-12 school districts have excessively high Superintendent costs per student which is reflective of the district’s having only one or two schools”?  Cupertino USD, a K-8 district, already has 25 schools, which is more than all but one existing SC County unified district.  This is not a school district with excessively high costs, the complaint of the 2009 report.  This is a district that manages to produce perfect API test scores despite below-average funding.  But someone took the idea of merging feeder schools into high school districts and ran all the way to Twin Rivers Unified with it.

At a certain point, large school districts lose the ability to respond to parental concerns, and nobody could call a 41 school unified district anything but large.  Effective and responsive school districts are exactly what parents expect when they spend the big bucks to buy in the RBA.  So recognize this plan for what it is: a recipe to remove Cupertino from the RBA forever. 

It’s clearly a plot by Palo Alto real estate agents.

And now, may I present a guest post.  Take it away, madhaus.  Why thanks, madhaus, don’t mind if I do.

Sacramento Bee: Education Coalition Sues California Over School Funding

California’s system for funding public schools is irrational, unstable and in need of overhaul, a lawsuit filed Thursday asserts, and prevents 6 million students from receiving the education they are entitled to under the state Constitution.

The lawsuit, filed by a coalition of students, parents and education groups against the governor and the state, puts California on a growing list of states slapped with what lawyers call "adequacy" suits

Thirty-three states have faced adequacy lawsuits, in which plaintiffs argue that a state does not give schools enough money to achieve that state’s academic standards. In most cases, experts said, the states have lost in court and been forced to come up with more funds and a new way of paying for schools.

Now that’s the American way.  Something’s broken?  Sue ‘em.  The lead plaintiff in this case, Robles-Wong v. California, is a junior at Alameda High School.  Yay, Bay Area, We’re #1!  We’re #1!  And despite a press conference in Sacramento, the suit itself was filed in Alameda County.

A spokesman for the group noted California had some of the highest educational standards in the country, with some of the lowest funding rates.  Yeah, take that, New Jersey!  We do more with less!  We’re the best at writing standards, and the best at failing to meet them!  Boo-yah!

The article also described the method of determining each California school district’s unique funding as “a complicated funding formula.”  This is akin to noting that the General Theory of Relativity is “kind of tough,” as there are only four people in the entire world who understand how the state school funding algorithm actually works.  One of them has an unlisted phone, one refused to respond to repeated requests for comment, and the other two were driven insane by the process of mastering it.

Okay, assuming you were actually reading any of this, by now you’re saying, madhaus, you are just making that part up.  Am not.  See?

San Jose Mercury News: Schools, PTA sue California over education funding

For most of California’s roughly 1,000 school districts, the state budget crisis has caused per-student funding to fall for two years. But the complaint reaches beyond current cutbacks. For decades, California schools have budgeted according to a complicated funding mechanism determined by multiple laws and court rulings and resulting in unpredictable and different per-student amounts for each district. For example, in 2008-09, Evergreen Elementary School District in San Jose received $7,787 per student, but Palo Alto Unified received $14,214.

The suit contends that the state has neglected to do what the constitution requires: prioritize school funding.

See?  See?  “Complicated funding <miscellaneous noun>.”  Told you so.

Can’t get enough of this?  Read the lawsuit (PDF, 59 pages) by clicking here.