A complicated and technical analysis of Oregon education funding came to a pretty simple conclusion.
“It costs more to achieve more,” University of Miami Professor Bruce Baker told legislators several times Wednesday, Feb. 26.
A rare joint evening meeting of the House and Senate education committees convened late into the evening to hear a three-hour report from the American Institutes for Research, a nationally recognized research organization.
Baker, presenting for AIR, pushed back on characterizations in a recent Edunomics presentation to the Legislature that Oregon was paying more to get lower results than some of its peer states. Essentially, he said the Edunomics analysis lacked the nuance to look at how and where Oregon is investing effectively in schools.
The AIR analysis said all students would benefit from increased education spending, but the report went farther than just recommending more money. It said Oregon could get improved results if it developed a funding formula that does a better job of sending more money to the schools with the highest needs students.
If Oregon defined a baseline level of expectations for education investments, it could also then look at which schools are most efficiently achieving results and how they are doing it.
AIR was tasked with especially focusing on special education funding. It found that when adjusted for inflation, Oregon special education funding has been essentially flat since 2018.
The report notes Oregon is one of only seven states that caps special education funding in its formula, and Oregon has the lowest cap. Oregon’s formula limits additional funding for special education students at 11% of enrollment even though the average number of special education students is closer to 15%. Education advocates are trying to get that cap raised this year while also adding additional money to the State School Fund to pay for a higher cap.
The report noted again that Oregon students would benefit from a more nuanced special education funding approach that recognizes some students’ needs cost more than others.
Legislators asked some pointed questions trying to pin results to investments. The answer was usually some variation of saying that Oregon has to determine what exactly it wants to achieve and what it is doing to get there before it can decide if it is getting what it paid for.
Recently retired Sen. Michael Dembrow, a longtime education champion, made a special appearance to introduce the report. He set the stage for what we hope is a careful discussion of shared accountability, appropriate funding and measurable goals among education advocates, the governor’s office and legislators.
“Let me say that when we envisioned the study back in February and March, we were thinking that it would lead to recommendations that could be developed into legislation during the 2025 session,” Dembrow testified. “While you may see things in it that can help influence and finalize other bills before your committees, I think you’ll agree that the findings here are so rich, so complex, and ultimately so consequential that what these reports need next is to be examined, analyzed and discussed deeply and broadly before new models of funding, distribution and spending are created.”
– Stacy Michaelson
OSBA Director of Government Relations and Communications
