The Education Reform Act of 1993

All of which brings us to the Education Reform Act of 1993. There was a clear intent on the part of the crafters of the reform act to comply with the court's ruling. State education commissioner Robert Antonucci pointed out that the learning goals outlined in the education reform bill awaiting Governor Weld's signature mirrored the Supreme Judicial Court's definition of an educated child. (Jordana Hart, Boston Globe, 17 June 1993, p. 47)

Jami McDuffy, the 13-year old lead plaintiff, was from Brockton, and looking back at how Brockton saw the court ruling and the subsequent reform package helps us understand where we are today in terms of school improvement:

"'Our schools do a damn good job with terribly limited resources,' said Rep. Christine E. Canavan (D-Brockton), a member of the Brockton School Committee for the last four years. 'Imagine what they'll do once they get the money they deserve.'"

"Education reform is expected to provide Brockton with an additional $4.4 million in state aid for education next year, and an additional $25.7 million by the year 2000."

- Michael Grunwald,
Boston Globe , 20 June 1993.
South Weekly section, p. 1,

Brockton in fact received over $42 million in state education aid in FY 99, more than the $25.7 million than had been anticipated by Representative Canavan. Let us take a look at where we are seven years after the McDuffy decision and seven years into the latest education reform effort.

There were three primary tools developed in the Education Reform Act of 1993. The first was substantially increased state aid for under-spending districts. The second was a series of curriculum frameworks that would let school districts know what their students were expected to learn. The final piece was the MCAS, a system of assessments that were aligned with curriculum frameworks developed by the state's Department of Education. The MCAS would be a truth teller. Results would enable us to track reform progress for each district each year.

The theory behind the Massachusetts effort was similar to the theory of most other states. Set high standards, evaluate progress towards meeting those standards, and add resources to traditionally underfunded districts to help them meet the standards.

The goals of the Education Reform Act of 1993 can be reduced to two basic elements:
1.) Equalize school spending
2.) Improve student achievement

The theory behind this effort was that if school districts were given more money, and if there were a way to measure progress, then the districts would spend that money in productive ways that would improve the schools so that students could meet new high standards. The indicator of progress was the MCAS, a series of tests that every district has to administer every year. MCAS scores over time would tell us how we were doing.

Equalizing Spending

The first goal was to equalize spending among districts. As a result of law suits, the courts ordered equalization of education funding, and one task of the Education Reform Act was to use increased state funding to level the spending field. That has been largely accomplished as illustrated by this chart.

Because of ineffective education reform efforts over the years, a group of citizens went to the courts in 1978 and sued to equalize educational opportunity between high-spending and low-spending districts. The theory was that the major barrier to effective education was the difference in education spending between advantaged and disadvantaged districts. The law suit began as Webby v. Dukakis (1978) and was resolved in 1993 when it was known as McDuffy v. Robertson. (415 Mass. 545) The court put the suit on hold for a few years to see what the state would do legislatively to fix the problem.

This chart shows per-pupil funding between 1994, the first year of education reform, and 1998. The chart is set up in terms of school district demography.

Based on demography, we have six broad clusters of district ranging from Very Advantaged (Wellesley, Wayland, Cohassett) to Very Challenged, the big cities and some of the distressed towns such as Ware and Winchendon. Communities that are more advantaged demographically tend to spend more on educating their kids than do less advantaged communities.

Back in 1994, there were sharp differences in what different kinds of communities were spending. The more demographically advantaged communities spent more. The gap was significant. This chart represents average spending, but there were huge differences between individual communities. Everett spent $4400 per pupil. Weston spent $8900.

By 1998, that gap had narrowed. Very Advantaged Massachusetts still spends a bit more than the poorer communities, but not nearly as much more. (This data reflects FY 98 per-pupil expenditure numbers. FY 00 numbers would narrow the gap even more.) So, the state did what it said it would do under the Education Reform Act of 1993 - it brought systems closer to more of a general spending parity.

¹The following chart looks at the state in terms of demographic kind of community (KOC) with cities and towns being placed in one of six KOC clusters. This demographic methodology was developed in my doctoral dissertation in 1998. It sorts communities based on the impact of demography on student achievement on standardized tests. Very Advantaged communities include towns like Wellesley, Lexington, Medfield, and Andover. Advantaged communities include places like Franklin, Marblehead, Natick, and Newton. Upper Mid-Mass communities include Walpole, Ipswich, Brookline, and Chatham. Lower Mid-Mass communities include Beverly, East Bridgewater, Stoneham, and Agawam. Challenged communities include Dartmouth, Quincy, Peabody, and Methuen. Very Challenged communities include Everett, Ware, Fall River, and Boston.