The money arrived more or less on schedule. The scores did not. That is the seven-year record, in its barest form, of the Student Opportunity Act, the 2019 law by which Massachusetts lawmakers pledged to raise education aid by about $1.5 billion over seven years and steer the largest increases to several dozen needy districts among the state’s more than 300.
School funding has since climbed nearly 50 percent, according to a Globe review of state data; this year’s allocation is nearly $7.7 billion. The MCAS scores by which the investment was meant to be judged remain below their pre-pandemic levels, and some dropped again in the results released last Tuesday.
“It feels a little bittersweet,” said Anthony Clough, a policy analyst at the left-leaning Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center. “How are we supposed to celebrate the culmination of this really progressive law when it hasn’t really panned out for anybody in the way we thought it would.”
The timing deserves noting. The schools shut down in 2020, less than six months after the law passed, and most scores have not bounced back. Then the costs arrived: pandemic-era inflation, employee health insurance, special education, all rising faster than lawmakers envisioned, while declining enrollment shrank per-pupil allocations. Districts that won the largest increases found themselves cutting programs and staff anyway, or raising local taxes.
In Lynn, which cut about 50 school positions this year, Mayor Jared Nicholson fears a “fiscal cliff” if the formula is not adjusted quickly. A legislative commission is expected to recommend changes by Oct. 31, 2028. Until then aid flows under the current law, whose guarantee of at least $30 more per student each year has been raised repeatedly by Beacon Hill lawmakers and Governor Maura Healey — to $160 this year, the increase going to about 85 percent of districts.
The overhaul took years of pressure from teacher unions, families and district leaders alarmed by the wealth gaps among districts; New Bedford, Brockton and Worcester threatened to sue. “It was a long overdue I-O-U,” said Andrew O’Leary, New Bedford’s superintendent. “Those of us who worked in urban districts for a long time had seen the result of the fiscal inequities. It was constant budget crises and constant compromises.”
New Bedford expects $271 million in state education aid this year, up more than 60 percent from the 2019-2020 school year and covering about 85 percent of what the state requires the city to spend, including charter-school tuition. Districts taking the money must file plans with the state on how it will close achievement gaps, the accountability language written in to ensure the spending would be prudent.
The gains are real, if partial. Chronic absenteeism — a barometer the state watches closely — fell to 21 percent last year, after hitting 48 percent in the 2021-2022 school year. More students are taking Advanced Placement exams, and passing them.
The Parker Early Childhood Center opened last fall, classrooms stocked with books and blocks, the pre-K expansion’s milestone. “If it’s not in the building, you get it in a week,” said Kaitlyn Arruda, a teacher there. In June, parents clutching balloons and flowers watched their children become the first to graduate from the program. “She came to life academically and socially,” Carlos Avila said of his stepdaughter. “She’s in a good position to step up and go to kindergarten.”
At the high school, O’Leary walked a corridor under new LED lighting. “As simple as it sounds, when something breaks it gets fixed,” he said. “That wasn’t always the case.” A student, Joseph Reyes, said the wider course offerings were helping him work out what to do with his life: “Personally, it has helped me find out more about who I am.”
State Senator Jason Lewis, co-chair of the Legislature’s Joint Education Committee, believes the money has gone where it was meant. “I think we have closed that gap a lot,” he said, the additional funding letting Gateway Cities provide “the class sizes, course offerings, guidance counselors, tutoring, and other supports ... they otherwise would not have been able to provide.”
The gap that remains is $2,672 per student between wealthy and poor districts, according to a Massachusetts Taxpayers Foundation report last year. Brookline voters have approved two major property-tax increases since the law passed, including a $23.25 million request last spring for school and town services; Brookline spends twice what the state requires on education. New Bedford, state data show, struggles to meet the requirement.
“We fund the school system right at the foundational level — not a penny more — because that’s all we can afford,” said Mayor Jon Mitchell. To balance this year’s municipal budget he eliminated 94 city positions, deferred a new police headquarters and made other cuts; the schools were spared, because the state requires the spending.
O’Leary worries about what survives if the formula is not adjusted for costs that have outrun it. “It would be a real tragedy if the stability, the level of service, the investments, and the outcomes we are seeing are compromised in future years,” he said. In the meantime there is the early childhood center, and the sunflowers and roses, and a mother who has noticed her daughter can finally pronounce the letters R and D.