What We Learned When We Fought For — and Won — Equity in Massachusetts’ School Funding System
By Massachusetts State Senator Sonia Chang-Díaz
In 1993, Massachusetts passed the Education Reform Act, a law that made students across our state a promise: that no matter where they were from or how much money their families had, they would get a quality education. Yet 25 years later, Massachusetts’ opportunity gaps remained among the highest in the nation and that promise far from fulfilled. That's why, in late 2019, we sharpened our pencils and we tried again: we passed the Student Opportunity Act, which boosted the state’s public education funding formula. While every school district would benefit from the infusion of new dollars the law provided, it focused especially on districts with the highest concentration of low-income students, who had never before received the resources necessary to have an equal shot. The Student Opportunity Act was anchored in finally making real that promise from over two decades earlier.
As a state senator, my fight for what would eventually become the Student Opportunity Act began in 2015, when I was co-chair of a bipartisan commission to recommend updates to the state’s education budget formula. It hadn't been substantially updated since that 1993 law, and our final report found that Massachusetts schools were being underfunded by $1-2 billion per year. To update the formula and fully fund our schools, and to drive good use of those dollars, the commission made five recommendations. These included fully accounting for districts’ healthcare costs and special education costs, creating a data task force, and most ambitiously of all, closing the opportunity gaps for low-income students and English language learners. In order to formulate the final two recommendations, the commission dove into studies that provided hard numbers about what it would take not to lessen, but to actually eradicate, those gaps and provide an equitable education for every child. The data pointed us in a clear direction: real education equity meant Massachusetts needed to provide at least double the funding to students living in dense poverty as it did to non-poor students.
Issuing these recommendations was one thing; getting them into law was another entirely. Governor Baker’s administration came out with a smaller plan, cultivating the narrative that the equity recommendations were unachievable. “Compromise” packages that implemented the recommendations related to healthcare and special education (which benefitted upper-income districts as much as lower-income ones), but left out the reforms focused on lower-income students, gained favor, and one such bill actually passed on the House floor. An equitable education funding formula was not going to propel itself into law: to do that, we needed a strong marriage of data and organizing. That meant bringing together a multiracial, cross-class, geographically diverse coalition that included students, parents, teachers, grassroots organizers, researchers, community and business leaders, and even NFL players. The coalition mobilized and organized on a number of fronts: they made phone calls and attended community meetings, spoke at marches and gave interviews to reporters, testified at State House hearings and met with their legislators. At many points over those four years, our coalition could have taken an off-ramp and accepted a third of a loaf. We could have decided that providing enough funding to make opportunity gaps between lower-income students and their wealthier peers only less egregious was good enough. And we probably could have even declared a political victory for it.
We didn’t make that choice. We chose the data — and what they indicated for a generation of future students — over political expediency. But it turned out these values resonated with families across Massachusetts’ political spectrum. In early 2019, two House colleagues and I filed the only education funding bill to include all five of the commission’s recommendations, including the full equity provisions. When momentum began coalescing behind it, and pressure from constituents mounted, legislators got on board. The idea that every student in every zip code deserves an equal start in life is hard to argue against, and when it came time to vote, the bill passed unanimously in both the Massachusetts House and Senate. It was signed into law by the same Republican Governor who originally told us we had asked for too much.
This was possible because equitable education funding is extremely popular. Data for Progress polling shows that a clear majority of voters nationwide (77 percent support, 12 percent opposed) support increased funding to low-income schools.
Of course, our fight for education equity is far from over. Funding under the updated formula was set to phase in beginning last year, but it was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, meaning the FY2022 budget will be the first year our schools receive funding and resources at the new rates. It couldn’t come at a more vital time: this pandemic has exacerbated inequities and schools will need significant support after over a year of disruption, isolation, and trauma for students. Luckily, we have the advantage of the durable coalition we built: legislators, parents, activists, and educators at the ready, who are familiar with the ins and outs of the funding formula and who know that when we fight to make true education equity a top priority in our budget, we win.
When the Student Opportunity Act first became law, I spoke about my hopes that the policy could serve as a model for other states. But in the early days of the Biden Administration, there is another lesson here as well, about the power of coalition-building and the possibilities that emerge when you choose to stand by your values and organize hard for them. During the Trump years, progressives spent tremendous energy and resources playing defense at the national level, working tirelessly to hold the line against the enactment of policies that would inflict harm on our communities. Our experience fighting for — and winning — the Student Opportunity Act in Massachusetts shows what we can accomplish when we harness that energy and momentum to move forward. We don’t just have to fight against the world we’re afraid of. We can fight for the world we want.
Sonia Chang-Díaz (@SoniaChangDiaz) is a State Senator representing Massachusetts’ Second Suffolk District.