By the time Dan Wright took his turn at the podium before the State Board of Education terminal March, he already knew his district'south fate was sealed. The five schools in Stockton Unified School District that received funding under the Quality Education Investment Act, or QEIA, were going to exist kicked out of the plan.

"I knew the answer past the time I got upwards in that location; cypher I said would change their minds," said Wright, the District's Banana Superintendent for Elementary Teaching.

It came to pass on June 30. At midnight that solar day, those v schools became $1.74 million poorer. They are among 71 schools that have failed to meet their academic targets for receiving QEIA funding. More could follow next week, when the State Board takes up another batch of waiver requests.

QEIA grew out of a lawsuit filed by the California Teachers Association against then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger for reneging on a promise to repay school districts and community colleges nearly $3 billion that was "borrowed" from Suggestion 98 in 2004-05, which in turn affected 2005-06, in guild to assist go the country through a budget crisis.

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Nether the settlement, the state agreed to repay the money over seven years to the state'south 1,455 lowest performing, highest poverty schools.  As information technology turned out, there was there was only enough money to fund fewer than 500 schools. The state immune school districts to rank their schools eligible for QEIA in order to skin the list.  Idue north exchange, the schools had to hold to a set of academic and other weather (see box on left) to keep receiving the money.

Set expectations, non prescriptions

Although the State Department of Education hasn't yet released the final listing of schools that will be asked to get out the plan, near 30 percent of final year's 474 QEIA schools fell curt in at least one required area. Of those, the schools that missed their Academic Operation Alphabetize targets are almost likely to be dropped. So far, 39 have asked the State Lath of Education for waivers from their API growth targets and all but one were denied. (More on that in a minute.)

Past and large, the State Board has been more supportive of waivers for schools that could not maintain lower form sizes and staffs of highly qualified teachers required by QEIA.  Board members best-selling that fifty-fifty with the boosted money from the program, schools were forced to lay off teachers due to billions of dollars in education cuts in recent years.

In that location'south besides a significant policy distinction when it comes to academic achievement, said State Board

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President Michael Kirst. In an electronic mail to EdSource Today, he wrote that the State Board of Education "regards Academic Operation Index outcomes every bit the chief goal of QEIA, and therefore has non agreed to waive this essential provision of the police force. Class size and teacher status are ways to that end."

Stockton Assistant Superintendent Wright argues that if the goal is to better academically, and so QEIA's academic algorithm is flawed. It requires schools to exceed their average API growth for 3 consecutive schoolhouse years, kickoff with 2008-09. Wright said that's likewise rigid.  He agrees that schools should have to show growth, simply they should have a few years to bear witness that. Nightingale Charter, for example, lost 42 points the first year – which Wright attributes to an awful reading program from the previous yr – only gained 72 points over the next two years after the district ditched the new reading curriculum and the new superintendent who implemented it.

"The biggest effect is that line in the sand. You don't gear up a flat line. You gear up the expectation that we ameliorate, and there are multiple means of showing that," Wright said. "Every situation has to be looked at on its claim, and non every API situation is exactly the aforementioned."

That'due south the instance with El Cajon Valley Loftier School in Grossmont Union High School District. The 2,100-student high schoolhouse was supposed to better by 7.3 points, but just managed to increase its API by 4 points. It even missed alternative goals and targets that had been established. State Department of Pedagogy staff recommended denying the waiver.

But El Cajon'southward waiver request was unique. In 2008, the San Diego County community became a resettlement expanse for Chaldean Christian war refugees fleeing Iraq. Nearly 500 enrolled in the high school over the next four years. The Board overruled staff and approved the waiver. "This is markedly different from whatever other waiver request that'southward been earlier us," said Lath fellow member Carl Cohn, expressing the other members' beliefs that this was far from a precedent-setting determination.

A word about money

When the QEIA law was passed, California wasn't in the middle of a multibillion-dollar financial crunch. As the magnitude of the deficit has emerged and instruction has been put on the chopping block, there's been a lot of tension over what to do with money left over when QEIA schools drop out, lose enrollment, or are removed from the program. It's about $138 million according to the State Finance Section.

The legislation has proven open to estimation.SB 1133, the 2006 neb that implemented QEIA, says that any funds not used should "exist available for reappropriation only in furtherance of the purposes of the bill."  Specifically, information technology required that the first priority would go toward cost-of-living increases and growth in the number of students in participating schools.

However, that hasn't happened. The Legislature has used the money for other educational priorities, and the state Legislative Analysts Part wrote that the funds should be spent on other Prop 98 priorities.  The California Teachers Association insists that the leftover money must exist reinvested in the QEIA program because it'south office of a legal settlement.  The teachers union expects that the state will end upwardly extending the program past one extra year, through 2014-15, in lodge to avert another court battle.

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