Editorial: Forget above and below; the bottom line is results

Like Audrey II, the voracious plant in “The Little Shop of Horrors,” the state’s education establishment is once again demanding the state “feed me.” Now it wants the $30 million in new below-the-line funding Gov. Susana Martinez has earmarked for education reforms, including merit pay for great teachers, early-college high schools and a dropout warning system.

Currently $2.4 billion a year — 43 percent of the state budget — goes to K-12 public schools. That sizeable investment is considered above-the-line funding because it is funneled through the funding formula and disbursed to districts based on student enrollment and student needs, including special education services.

To date that formula funding has delivered a student population in which just 43 percent of students can read and 36 percent can perform math calculations at grade level, and just 7 of every 10 graduate in four years. Yet districts oppose even a small amount of money targeted at trying to change those numbers with different approaches.

There’s no question school officials believe they need that extra money — the hand-wringing and dire predictions at Albuquerque Public Schools have already started, with a multimillion-dollar budget shortfall if the district does not get class-size waivers and APS Chief Financial Officer Don Moya warning “I can’t speak to the merit of (the governor’s) programs, but I don’t know how much good they’re going to do if they’re going to be done in schools where we can’t hire teachers or heat or light the classrooms.”

But can he — or any other member of the status quo — speak to how adding a trickle of cash to the $599 million that already flows to APS will improve its proficiency numbers and graduation rates? Where will the money even go and how will it ever be tracked?

The governor and her education chief have made it clear there are accountability measures attached to their $30 million in new below-the-line reforms — they either target specific deficiencies such as D and F schools, or reward specific outcomes such as effective teachers and school leaders as well as top schools.

Those kinds of programs, predicated on results, are the ones that deserve a shot.

This editorial first appeared in the Albuquerque Journal. It was written by members of the editorial board and is unsigned as it represents the opinion of the newspaper rather than the writers.