Jones Elementary School teamed up with the United Way of Delaware and Chemours to add some color to the school's halls on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. day. Jerry Habraken / The News Journal
Christina school board tabled a vote on a school consolidation plan after voicing discouragement about changes made by the state. Elizabeth Paige said her biggest concern was changes were "focused on real estate and property and not people." William Bretzger/The News Journal
MLK day of service project brightens up Jones Elementary
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Two civil rights groups on Tuesday filed a lawsuit against the state of Delaware over how it funds education, claiming the system provides more support for children who are well off than it provides for children living in poverty.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Delaware said the state's education system is not providing an adequate education to all students. The suit, filed in Chancery Court, is brought on behalf of Delawareans for Educational Opportunity and the Delaware NAACP.
“Every child deserves a chance to succeed,” Kathleen MacRae, the executive director of the ACLU of Delaware, said in the statement. “All students have a right to an education that prepares them adequately for college and the world of work."
The Delaware Department of Education issued the following statement about the suit:
"The Delaware Department of Education has not seen any complaint from these groups and will respond to any litigation against it in court. It is the goal of the Department to assist Delaware's schools in preparing every student to succeed in college or career and life."
According to the lawsuit, the state is failing students from low-income families, students with disabilities and students who are learning English. Test scores for these disadvantaged students are far below state standards set by the Delaware Department of Education in its new plan, the Every Student Succeeds Act, or ESSA.
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One of the most startling examples is Bayard Middle School in Wilmington, where only 3 percent of students are proficient in math and a mere 8 percent are proficient in English. More than 75 percent of the school's students are considered low-income and almost 9 percent are English language learners. About a quarter of the school's students are in special education.
Students at Bayard are almost entirely African-American and Hispanic/Latino.
State testing data shows 64 percent of low-income students, 85 percent of English language learners and 86 percent of students with disabilities did not meet the state standards in grades three through eight for English language arts, the lawsuit said.
Seventy-four percent of low-income students, 81 percent of English learners and 89 percent of students with disabilities were below the state’s math standards in those grades, the lawsuit added.
About half of Delaware's third-graders struggle to read.
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The suit claims the state has long recognized that disadvantaged students are performing poorly in comparison to their peers and has detailed the problem in state-commissioned task force reports issued in 2001, 2008 and 2015.
These reports lay out educational standards and interventions necessary to support achievement, including smaller class sizes; expanded school time; highly qualified, specially trained teachers; a focus on early literacy; current technology; effective family engagement; and partnerships with health, family welfare and specialized education service providers.
Yet, the lawsuit says many schools in Delaware are not provided with enough resources to follow these recommendations and recent spending cuts have made them even further out of reach.
“Despite the best efforts of teachers, families and school staff, the current education system fails too many Delaware children," said ACLU-DE legal director Ryan Tack-Hooper in a statement. "The state often provides more support to children who are well off than it provides to children living in poverty. The state must meet its constitutional obligation to adequately educate all students."
There are also fewer resources available to schools because property values have not been reassessed for more than 30 years, the lawsuit said. The result is that the underlying school tax base has remained flat for decades while the cost of running schools has risen substantially due to inflation and increased enrollment, the lawsuit said.
One proposed solution has been to institute a needs-based funding formula, which gives a bigger piece of the pie to those disadvantaged students by weighting them more highly. It's something that has been argued for by the Wilmington Education Improvement Commission, a state advisory committee established by former Gov. Jack Markell in 2015 to come up with ideas to improve education in the city.
But Gov. John Carney, listed as a defendant in the lawsuit, has said he is not in favor of needs-based funding, in part because it gives extra money to school districts serving at-risk kids without holding them accountable for how they use it. He has also said there is neither the financial nor political support for such a measure.
The lawsuit says that 46 other states provide additional financial support for English language learners, however. There are 35 states that provide additional financial support for low-income children.
"From 1990 to 2011, 26 states substantially increased funding for low-income students and high poverty schools to ensure meaningful educational opportunity for all — the majority as a result of court orders," the suit says. "As a result, we now have two decades of robust empirical evidence about whether and how school funding affects student achievement. It demonstrates that adequate funding leads to increased achievement, even among students who face significant barriers to achievement because of their socioeconomic circumstances."
While the state does not determine the amount of money spent at each school on a per-student basis, the lawsuit says "an analysis of teacher salary data at every school shows that, in at least seven school districts, the per-student expenditure at a school decreases as the percentage of low-income students in the student body of a school increases."
The seven districts are Appoquinimink, Capital, Caesar Rodney, Christina, Indian River, Milford and Red Clay.
There are also disparities from district to district. For example, in 2013-2014, Delaware allocated $1,694 per pupil less to Woodbridge School District than to Brandywine School District, even though Brandywine’s per-student wealth (property value divided by the number of school children) is more than one and one-half times that of Woodbridge.
Similarly, the state spent $450 per pupil less in Caesar Rodney School District than it did in Appoquinimink School District, although Appoquinimink’s per-student wealth exceeds Caesar Rodney’s by approximately $100,000.
Teachers in the poorest districts received an average annual salary of $55,600 in 2013-14 compared to $61,600 in the richest districts, according to the lawsuit. Teachers in low-income schools are also less experienced, the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit also mentions racial discrimination and outlines the history of desegregation in Delaware. It contends that the Neighborhood Schools Act passed in 2000 and the Charter School Act has led to resegregation.
For example, in the 2016-2017 school year, Warner and Shortlidge Elementary Schools were 2.6 percent and 3.3 percent white, respectively, while the district in which they are located is 43.6 percent white.
By contrast, Heritage Elementary School, in the same district but outside the city of Wilmington, was 70 percent white. The highest-performing charter school in the area, the Charter School of Wilmington, was 6.3 percent black.
The percentage of black students enrolled in predominantly non-white schools in 2010 was ten times higher than 1989.
The lawsuit also contends that at-large voting in school board elections gives wealthier, suburban residents more power over how school districts are run.
Delawareans for Educational Opportunity is an association of concerned parents and community leaders that includes parents of low-income students, students with disabilities and English language learners. Delaware NAACP is dedicated to ensuring that all students have an equal opportunity to obtain a high-quality public school education.
The complaint and other information is available at www.ACLU-DE.org and www.DECLASI.org.
Contact Jessica Bies at (302) 324-2881 or jbies@delawareonline.com. Follow her on Twitter @jessicajbies.
Looking for more education news? Visit delawareonline.com/education. Submit story ideas at http://delonline.us/2i2tugB.