DOVER, Del. (AP) - Delaware officials unveiled a plan Tuesday to provide more funding for low-income students and students whose native language is not English.
The proposal calls for an additional $60 million over three years for educating poor students and students designated as English Language Learners.
The plan will remove Delaware from the ranks of only a handful of states that do not provide extra funding for those student populations.
“Here’s an uncomfortable truth: We’re leaving too many of our children behind,” said Democratic Gov. John Carney, adding that the state cannot afford to ignore the issue any longer.
The proposal calls for the one-time allocation of $30 million in next year’s budget, along with $10 million added to the operating budget for each of the next three years. The money will be doled out in $20 million annual installments. Potential uses for the money include additional reading and math specialists, counselors, after-school programs and smaller class sizes.
“Sixty million dollars is a reasonable start,” said Delaware State University executive vice president Tony Allen, chairman of the Wilmington Education Improvement Commission and a longtime advocate of increased funding for at-risk students.
District schools and charter schools would receive an extra $500 for each ELL student and $300 for each low-income student. Each of the state’s 19 school districts, and each charter school, will have the flexibility to develop plans for using the money, but those plans must be approved by state education officials.
The state Department of Education will work with an independent consultant to evaluate results. A new statewide commission of community leaders, parents and educators will help evaluate the program’s success.
“We want to see results,” said Carney, adding that a key metric to gauge the success of the initiative will be third-grade reading proficiency.
“If they can’t read at grade level by grade three, their prospects after that are not as great,” he said, adding that other goals are improving eighth-grade math scores and making sure that students graduate from high school prepared for college or careers.
The state is currently the target of a lawsuit alleging that Delaware is failing to meet its constitutional commitment to disadvantaged students, including low-income children and those whose first language is not English.
According to figures cited by a judge overseeing the lawsuit, only 37 percent of low-income third-graders were rated proficient in language arts for the 2016-2017 school year. Proficiency among English language learners was 32 percent. For eighth-grade math, 25 percent of low-income students, and only 5 percent of English Language Learners, were rated proficient.
Carney said the new Opportunity Funding proposal was not prompted by the lawsuit, and that he has worked to boost funding for low-income students since he took office.
“I think it will help us with the case, but it is not a reaction to it at all,” he said.
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