Opinion ID: 3051186
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Declaratory Judgment and Arizona’s School

Text: Funding System After lengthy pre-trial proceedings and a bench trial, the district court on January 24, 2000, held that Arizona was in violation of the EEOA and granted declaratory judgment in Flores’ favor.3 See Flores II, 172 F. Supp. 2d at 1239. Of the many issues raised in Flores’ complaint, only one EEOA issue was decided by the court: “[W]hether or not Defendants’ [sic] adequately fund and oversee the Lau program in NUSD . . . .”4 Id. at 1226. The rest of the EEOA violations originally alleged, including failures adequately to evaluate and monitor ELL students, to provide tutoring and other forms of compensatory instruction, and to design successful ELL programming, were covered by a consent decree approved by the district court on July 31, 2000. See id. 3 The earlier proceedings, which involved changes of counsel on both sides and various other procedural hurdles and delays, are summarized in Flores I, 48 F. Supp. 2d at 943-46. 4 Because 20 U.S.C. § 1703(f) codifies the central holding of Lau, ELL programs are sometimes referred to as “Lau programs.” 1812 FLORES v. HORNE The particulars of Arizona’s school funding system are therefore at the heart of this case. We pause to describe them here. Consistent with Article XI, § 1 of the Arizona Constitution, school funding in Arizona is designed to be essentially equal across districts, despite differences in local property values. See Roosevelt Elementary Sch. Dist. No. 66 v. Bishop, 877 P.2d 806, 811-16 (“Roosevelt I”) (Ariz. 1994).5 To ensure equality, the state calculates the maximum support level a district may spend, referred to as the revenue control limit, see ARIZ. REV. STAT. § 15-947, and then pays the difference between that level and the amount the district can raise by levying a state-mandated tax rate against property in its area, see ARIZ. REV. STAT. § 15-971. Thus, regardless of the local tax base, the amount each district can spend per pupil is roughly equalized statewide, by first setting a maximum spending level and then making up the gap between local tax revenues and that level with state funds.6 The revenue control limit, and hence the district support level, is calculated by adding together funds designated for transporting students to school, see ARIZ. REV. STAT. § 15945, and “base support” funds, see ARIZ. REV. STAT. §§ 15943, 944. It is these base funds with which we are primarily concerned.7 These funds are unrestricted — school districts may spend them essentially as needed — and do not appear to have been calibrated “to any minimum amount necessary 5 Article XI, § 1 provides in pertinent part that “[t]he Legislature shall enact such laws as shall provide for the establishment and maintenance of a general and uniform public school system.” (Emphasis added). 6 School districts may also try to pass ballot measures, called “overrides,” to raise county taxes and so secure funds above the revenue control limit. See ARIZ. REV. STAT. § 15-481. 7 These funds, along with other federal, state and county funds, including funds provided to support ELL students, are sometimes referred to as “maintenance and operation” or “M & O” funds. See Savage v. Glendale Union High Sch. Dist. No. 205, 343 F.3d 1036, 1041 (9th Cir. 2003). FLORES v. HORNE 1813 for a basic education.” See Roosevelt I, 877 P.2d at 810. Nonetheless, they represent the core funding provided for such an education. Funding allocations are made by using a weighting system: A per pupil weighted amount of funding is calculated by multiplying a “support level weight” (which varies by district type and size and by the student’s grade level) by a statewide baseline amount. See ARIZ. REV. STAT. §§ 15-943(1)(a)-(2)(a) (weights), 15-901(B)(2) (baseline). For the 2006-2007 school year, for instance, the statewide baseline amount was $3,133.53. ARIZ. REV. STAT. § 15-901(B)(2)(a). The support level weight for a typical student in grade eight in most school districts is 1.158, ARIZ. REV. STAT. § 15-943(2)(a), so a district could spend $3,628.638 to support that student in 2006-2007. Not all students are “typical,” of course. Some have special needs which impose additional, incremental costs. ELL students, for example, naturally require additional support. Arizona’s funding formula provides for these incremental costs through an additional “Group B” weighting system which adds additional funding for various student groups, including ELL students. See ARIZ. REV. STAT. § 15-943(2)(b). In 200607, for instance, the Group B weight for ELL students was 0.115, so a district received an additional $360.369 to cover the ELL component of that student’s education, on top of the base level $3,628.63 provided for each pupil. The core assumption of Arizona’s funding formula, then, is that ELL students impose incremental costs on a district, above the base level funding allocation. So, while all of the funding (base level and Group B weights) is allocated to the district as a block grant, a district that spends more on ELL 8 This figure is the product of the support level weight (1.158) multiplied by the baseline amount ($3,133.53). 9 This figure is the product of the Group B weight (0.115) multiplied by the baseline amount ($3,133.53). 1814 FLORES v. HORNE incremental costs than allocated is necessarily spending less on basic educational needs per pupil. Taking this framework as a given, the district court in its 2000 declaratory judgment opinion inquired whether Arizona’s funding specifically for ELL students — the Group B weights — actually covered the incremental costs of ELL programming. The court found that it did not. Flores II, 172 F. Supp.2d at 1239. This finding was well supported. Arizona had conducted a cost study in 1987-88 which determined that school districts were spending about $450 (in 1988 dollars, unadjusted for inflation) per ELL student. Id. at 1228. This study was seriously methodologically flawed; it did not, for instance, determine what districts should be spending. But even by the study’s flawed measure, Arizona’s ELL funding was inadequate on a statewide basis. Twelve years after the study, the district court found, Arizona’s ELL Group B weight, 0.60, provided only about $150 per student. Id. at 1238-39. That this support was inadequate to live up to Arizona’s EEOA obligations to its school districts and their students was supported by several examples of resource-linked ELL program deficiencies in NUSD, including: 1) too many students in a class room, 2) not enough class rooms, 3) not enough qualified teachers, including teachers to teach [English as a Second Language] and bilin- gual teachers to teach content area studies, 4) not enough teacher aids, 5) an inadequate tutoring program, and FLORES v. HORNE 1815 6) insufficient teaching materials for both [English as a Second Language] and content area courses. Id. at 1239. In short, Arizona’s “minimum base level for funding Lau programs [was] arbitrary and capricious and [bore] no relation to the actual funding needed to ensure that [ELL] students in NUSD are achieving mastery of its specified ‘essential skills.’ ” Id. In particular, the court held, the ELL Group B weight appropriation was “not reasonably calculated to effectively implement” the ELL programs, and Arizona had, therefore, “failed to follow through with . . . resources . . . necessary to transform theory into reality,” as the Castaneda framework requires.10 Id.; see Castaneda, 648 F.2d at 1010. C. Post-Judgment Relief and Arizona’s ELL Programs The judgment was not appealed. Nonetheless, Arizona did not take action to eliminate the violations found in the Declaratory Judgment. Instead, the state legislature defeated several attempts to commission an adequate study of ELL costs that would enable it to set appropriate ELL funding levels. In October of 2000, ten months after the issuance of the Declaratory Judgment, the district court ordered Arizona to “prepare a cost study to establish the proper appropriation to effectively implement” ELL programs. Flores v. Arizona, 160 F. Supp. 2d 1043, 1047 (“Flores III”) (D. Ariz. 2000). Such a study was critical, the court indicated, because “as a matter of law the State’s minimum base level for funding Lau pro10 The district court was aware that base support funds could be diverted to ELL students if the target Group B weight funding is inadequate and a district so chooses. Flores II, 172 F. Supp. 2d at 1229. Because base level funds support typical students, the district court focused on the Group B weights, see id. at 1238, which are, again, the amount that Arizona projects will be necessary to spend in addition to the base level funds to meet the special needs of ELL students. 1816 FLORES v. HORNE grams bears no relation to the actual funding needed to ensure that [ELL] students are achieving mastery of the State’s specified ‘essential skills.’ ” Id. at 1044. This injunction was not appealed either. Shortly after the injunction issued, in November 2000, Arizona voters approved two propositions that altered Arizona’s school funding and ELL programs. Proposition 203 largely abolished bilingual education, replacing it with sheltered English immersion, a teaching method “in which nearly all classroom instruction is in English but with the curriculum and presentation designed for children who are learning the language.” ARIZ. REV. STAT. § 15-751(5). Proposition 301 increased school funding generally in Arizona through a sales tax increase. See ARIZ. REV. STAT. § 15-901.01. Prop. 301 funding is available for many purposes but is not directed specifically towards ELL programs. See ARIZ. REV. STAT. § 425029(E)(1)-(10). Meanwhile, as ordered, Arizona commissioned a cost study (we refer to it as the “SjobergEvashnek study,” after the consulting group that largely directed it). The final study, however, proved to be a disappointment. It did not estimate the incremental costs of EEOA compliance, but instead reported on what several districts nationwide were spending. The study reported widely variable incremental costs for various ELL programs, ranging from about $185 to $3,000 per ELL student. It also found that NUSD was spending $331.60 in incremental costs per pupil, while noting that the NUSD program might not “fully address the unique and extraordinary needs of [NUSD’s ELL] population.” Some additional guidance came from a study conducted by the staff of several Democratic members of the legislature (the “Staffers’ study”), also released in 2001. Aggregating data from other states and from Arizona, the Staffers’ study estimated $1527 in incremental costs per student would be required for EEOA compliant programs — a number, it noted, FLORES v. HORNE 1817 which was generally consistent with the experience of other states. Arizona did not act on either study. After Flores again moved for post-judgment relief, the court, on June 25, 2001, restated its holding that “as a matter of law the State’s minimum base level for funding Lau programs” was not rationally linked to “funding needed to ensure that [ELL] students are achieving mastery of the State’s specified ‘essential skills.’ ” Flores v. Arizona, No. CV-92-596, 2001 WL 1028369 at  (“Flores IV”) (D. Ariz. 2001). It ordered Arizona to provide funding that “shall bear a rational relationship to the actual funding needed” by no later than January 31, 2002. Id. at . This injunction, too, was not appealed. The legislature responded by enacting HB 2010 on December 19, 2001. That law increased the ELL Group B weight to 0.115, which generated, at that time, about $339.61 per student, roughly the amount that NUSD was recorded as spending in the SjobergEvashnek study. HB 2010 also provided funds for a more comprehensive cost study than had been done previously. Contending that HB 2010 was not adequate, Flores again moved for post-judgment relief. Initially, the district court agreed with Flores. It held, in an order issued on April 8, 2002, that the $339.61 in base level funding was not adequate because it was based on NUSD’s actual spending (as of 2001), which generated “the very program that this Court’s Declaratory Judgment held to be deficient.” Flores v. Arizona, No. CV-92-596 at 3 (“Flores V”) (D. Ariz. 2002). A few months later, however, the court reconsidered, on Arizona’s motion, and held that HB 2010’s funding levels were adequate “as an interim measure pending further study and review,” including the cost study funded by HB 2010. Flores v. Arizona, No. CV-92-596 at 1-2 (“Flores 1818 FLORES v. HORNE VI”) (D. Ariz. June 12, 2002). The order was not appealed, and three years passed.11 Again, the legislature gathered some data and, again, it did not act upon the data it received. As part of HB 2010, the legislature commissioned a detailed cost study from the National Conference of State Legislatures (the “NCSL study”). NCSL submitted a first draft in August 2004 and a second draft in February 2005, upon which we rely. The study used two approaches: A survey sent to Arizona school districts to determine then-current ELL program spending and two expert panels, one of state and one of national experts, convened to estimate the costs of EEOA-compliant ELL programs. The school district survey was hampered by a small response rate — only seven of the sixteen surveyed districts provided data. NCSL noted the problem but analyzed the available data, which showed an average expenditure of $669.35 per pupil in incremental costs. NCSL cautioned that this data was limited and of questionable quality, noting that the cost figure might be “somewhat understated.” Expert estimates of appropriate (rather than actual) spending were significantly higher. The national expert panel recommended a range of spending, based on the degree of students’ need for help and grade level from $1,026 per pupil for low-need students at the high school level to $2,571 for high-need elementary school students. The state expert panel recommended spending $1,785 in per pupil incremental costs in grades K-2 and $1,447 in grades 3-12. 11 Among the events of those years was another general school funding increase. In November 2002, Arizona voters approved Proposition 202, which dedicated a portion of the state’s share of Indian casino gambling proceeds to a school improvement fund for teacher compensation, class size reduction, dropout prevention, and instructional improvement programs. See ARIZ. REV. STAT. §§ 5-601.02(H)(3)(b)(I); 15-979. None of these monies are specifically directed to ELL programs. FLORES v. HORNE 1819 Again, Arizona did not act to bring its system into line with either set of cost data. Again, Flores moved for post-judgment relief.12 On January 28, 2005, the court set an April 30, 2005 deadline for Arizona to “appropriately and constitutionally fund[ ] the state’s ELL programs taking into account the Court’s previous orders.” Flores v. Arizona, No. CV-92-596 at 5 (“Flores VII”) (D. Ariz. 2005). D. The First Contempt Order and HB 2064 Arizona failed to act before the deadline. Flores moved for sanctions. On December 15, 2005, deploring the fact that “[t]housands of children who have now been impacted by the State’s inadequate funding of ELL programs had yet to begin school when Plaintiffs filed this case,” the court held that Arizona was in civil contempt. Flores v. Arizona, 405 F. Supp. 2d 1112, 1113, 1119 (“Flores VIII”) (D. Ariz. 2005). It set a deadline of fifteen days after the start of the 2006 legislative session for compliance with its order, and imposed a schedule of fines that would begin to accrue if Arizona did not act and that were to be distributed to Arizona schools to support ELL students. Id. at 1120-21; see also Order re: Distribution of Fines, No. CV-92-596 (D. Ariz. March 16, 2006). Arizona did not enact compliant legislation and accrued over $20 million in fines. Eventually, in the spring of 2006, Arizona Governor Janet Napolitano allowed HB 2064, the legislature’s effort to create a permanent compliant funding system, to become law without her signature.13 HB 2064 is consistent with Arizona’s “base costs plus Group B weights” approach to education funding, but 12 Not long before this motion was filed, the litigation was transferred from Senior District Judge Alfredo C. Marquez, who had handled it from the outset, to District Judge Raner C. Collins. 13 Governor Napolitano’s statement on HB 2064 appears later in this opinion. 1820 FLORES v. HORNE includes some additional ELL funds designed to cover incremental costs above Group B weight levels, although there are no guaranteed appropriations for these funds. Along with this funding structure, the statute provides for further statewide standardization of ELL programs, presumably in part to make it possible for the state more easily to monitor and assess the impact and use of allocated funds and the need for additional funds. To drive the standardization process, HB 2064 creates the “Arizona English language learners task force” within the state Department of Education. See ARIZ. REV. STAT. § 15756.01. The task force is “to develop and adopt research based models of structured English immersion programs for use by school districts and charter schools.” Id. at § 15756.01(C).14 Each school district and charter school is to adopt one of the models or request a waiver. See ARIZ. REV. STAT. § 15-756.02. To aid in implementing the models, HB 2064 also creates an “Office of English language acquisition services,” which is to develop guidelines for monitoring ELL students and programs, create teacher training programs, and provide other forms of technical assistance. See ARIZ. REV. STAT. §§ 15-756.07, 15-756.08. Finally, the state Board of Education is charged with developing a structured English immersion “endorsement” program for use in training and certifying Arizona’s teachers. See ARIZ. REV. STAT. § 15756.09. The models, and ELL education generally, are funded by three mechanisms under HB 2064, representing significant potential increases in ELL funding but coming with significant limitations: First, HB 2064 raises the Group B weight for ELL students 14 The models are “limited to a regular school year and school day,” id. at § 15-756.01(E), and do not provide guidance for after-school and summer school programs. FLORES v. HORNE 1821 from 0.115 to 0.140, which corresponds to an increase from about $340 per student to about $450 per student. See HB 2064 § 6, to be codified at ARIZ. REV. STAT. § 15-943(2)(b).15 There is, however, a significant cut-back as well: Unlike earlier Group B weight funding, under HB 2064 Group B “funding for the same ELL pupil shall not be provided for more than two fiscal years.” HB 2064 § 6. Second, HB 2064 establishes the “Arizona structured English immersion fund,” which provides supplemental funds above the Group B weights to implement the models. See ARIZ. REV. STAT. § 15-756.04. Those funds come, however, with several restrictions. Like the Group B weights, they are limited to two years of availability for any one student. ARIZ. REV. STAT. § 15-756.01(J). And only “incremental costs” of the programs are funded, which are defined as those “in addition to the normal costs of conducting programs for English proficient students,” id. at § 15-756.01(L), and which do not include “compensatory instruction.” “Compensatory instruction” consists of “programs in addition to normal classroom instruction . . . [which] are limited to improving the english proficiency of current english language learners and pupils who were english language learners and who have been reclassified as english proficient within the previous two years.” ARIZ. REV. STAT. at § 15-756.11(G). In addition, the amount of money provided by the structured English immersion fund is offset by the following funding sources: 1. All federal title III monies and any other federal monies designated solely for the educational needs of english language learners. 2. The portion of title I and title II A monies deter15 As we note below, this increase is not yet in effect. 1822 FLORES v. HORNE mined by the english language learner population as a percentage of the qualified population. 3. The portion of impact aid monies determined by the english language learner population as a percentage of the qualified population. A school district or charter school shall only apply unexpended impact aid monies to english language learner programs after it has applied its impact aid monies for other allowable uses as permitted by state law. 4. The portion of [monies the district may levy to further desegregation efforts pursuant to ARIZ. REV. STAT.] § 15-910 . . . determined by the english lan- guage learner population as a percentage of the qualified population. 5. The ELL [Group B] weight . . . . ARIZ. REV. STAT. § 15-756.01(I)(1)-(5). At the same time, HB 2064 provides that “[m]onies from the fund [are to be used] . . . to supplement existing programs for english language learners . . . . [and] shall not be used to supplant available monies used to pay for the normal costs of conducting programs for english proficient students.” ARIZ. REV. STAT. § 15756.04(F). Importantly, there is no guaranteed legislative appropriation for the structured English immersion fund. Instead, after school districts and charter schools submit budget requests, the Department of Education is to verify and “collect all . . . [the] requests and submit them to the [Arizona] legislature for funding.”ARIZ. REV. STAT. § 15-756.03(C). The legislature is not required to appropriate any monies to fund such requests. Third, HB 2064 establishes the “statewide compensatory instruction fund” to be used for compensatory instruction only. See ARIZ. REV. STAT. § 15-756.11. These funds, too, FLORES v. HORNE 1823 come with a caveat: They “shall not be used to supplant any federal, state or local monies, including desegregation monies . . . , used for compensatory instruction that [had been] budgeted for english language learners as of February 23, 2006.” Id. at § 15-756.11(E). In other words, the state funds provided must not replace any funds already in use for the same purpose. The total amount of funding is also limited. Although the legislature appropriated $10 million for this program for the 2006-07 fiscal year, no further appropriations are required by the statute. HB 2064 § 9. HB 2064 was for the most part immediately effective. School districts and charter schools, however, could not adopt the models until they were developed, which they now have been. Also, monies for the structured English immersion fund do not have to be appropriated and to this point have not been. Most importantly, the provisions associated with the Group B weight increase, require court approval. In this regard, HB 2064 provides: [The Group B weight increase and appropriation to fund it, along with the two-year cut-off] do not become effective unless the United States District [C]ourt for the [D]istrict of Arizona in the case of [Flores v. State of Arizona] issues an order that, by this act, the state has taken appropriate action to establish a program that addresses the orders in the case and, at least on an interim basis, the court will permit this act to be fully implemented to determine whether the resulting ELL plans and available funding to implement the plans bear a rational relationship to the cost of implementing appropriate language acquisition programs. HB 2064 § 15(A). Although Governor Napolitano allowed HB 2064 to become law, she did so without vouching for its compliance 1824 FLORES v. HORNE with the 2005 court order or with the Declaratory Judgment. To the contrary, she announced that she was “convinced that getting this bill into court now is the most expeditious way ultimately to bring the state into compliance with federal law,” and requested that the Attorney General move the court for expedited consideration of the law.16 16 Governor Napolitano’s statement on the matter provides, in relevant part: I received House Bill 2064, related to [ELL] programs. I have decided to allow the bill to become law without my signature so that we can move this dispute to a different forum and get a ruling from the Flores Court as to its sufficiency. After nine months of meetings and three vetoes, it is time to take this matter to a federal judge. I am convinced that getting this bill into court now is the most expeditious way ultimately to bring the state into compliance with federal law. .... Although I am allowing House Bill 2064 to become law without my signature, I do not believe this bill meets either the Court’s multiple orders or our existing consent decree. It fails in a number of important ways, including but not limited to: • Arbitrary Funding Level: there is no reason to believe that the funding contained in House Bill 2064 bears any rational relationship to the actual cost of implementing a successful language acquisition program. • Failure to Ensure Academic Accountability: the point of teaching children to speak, read and write in English is to allow them to succeed academically and to ultimately become contributing members of the workforce. This bill cuts off funding to students after two years, regardless of their academic progress and does not ensure ELL students would even be able to pass AIMS [Arizona’s achievement test]. • Failure to Determine Program Effectiveness: rather than using respected experts to advise the state on best practices and the real costs of ELL instruction, House Bill 2064 instead creates a system by which political appointees with no required minimum qualifications make important educational policy decisions. • Unwise Creation of a New Bureaucracy and Excess Paperwork: the bill adds an extra layer of government and does not focus on long-term student success. FLORES v. HORNE 1825 E. The First Relief from Judgment Ruling and the Remand By this point, six years after the Declaratory Judgment, the positions of the parties had shifted, with Arizona and the state Board of Education abandoning their defense of the suit and largely siding with Flores. As a result, when, on March 3, 2006, the state Attorney General moved on behalf of Arizona for the court to consider whether HB 2064 satisfied its order, he was arguing against Arizona’s own law. The Superintendent, however, maintained his position and was joined by the Speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives and the President of the Arizona Senate as intervenors (we refer to them as the “Legislative Intervenors”). Later that March, these parties moved to purge contempt and, in the alternative, for relief from judgment under Rule 60(b)(5). Their joint motion was based largely on HB 2064, which, they contended, “creates a plan for adequate funding of programs for [ELL students],” and brings Arizona into compliance. The district court disagreed, ruling on April 25, 2006, that HB 2064 does not comply with its orders or with the Declaratory Judgment because the “Act does not [bear] any rational relationship to the cost of providing an ELL program . . . and it has added new hurdles to the mix.” Flores v. Arizona, No. CV-92-596 at 3 (“Flores IX”) (D. Ariz. 2006). The court held the Group B weight increase insufficient, and the two-year cut-off on most funds irrational. Id. at 7-8. The two new funds, moreover, were structured in ways that violated federal law. Id. at 4-7. The Superintendent and Legislative Interve- • Violation of Federal Supplanting Laws: the bill requires ELL payments to school districts and charter schools to be reduced by the amount of federal monies they receive, in violation of federal law. 1826 FLORES v. HORNE nors appealed both that order and the December 2005 contempt order. On August 23, 2006, in an unpublished memorandum disposition, this court vacated both orders as well as the obligation to pay fines. Flores v. Rzeslawski, 204 Fed. App’x. 580 (“Flores X”) (9th Cir. 2006). The court noted that “the landscape of educational funding has changed significantly” since 2000 and remanded for the district court to hold “an evidentiary hearing . . . regarding whether changed circumstances required modification of the original court order or otherwise had a bearing on the appropriate remedy.” Id. at 582. The court made clear that it reached none of the other issues in the case. Id. F. The Evidentiary Hearing On remand, the district court held an eight-day hearing in January 2007. Testimony at the hearing focused on three broad areas: (1) HB 2064 and other changes in Arizona’s ELL programming and funding; (2) conditions in NUSD; and (3) conditions in other school districts statewide. As the evidence adduced in the hearing is at the core of our inquiry today, we summarize it in some detail here.
As is required by the Flores consent decree, Arizona has significantly improved its ELL infrastructure. It has also increased overall school funding and, to a lesser degree, ELL program-specific funding. Nonetheless, Arizona’s 134,000 ELL students continue to lag behind statewide average test results for all students. The new administrative structure created by HB 2064 augments Arizona’s efforts to further improve and standardize ELL programs statewide. The state Department of Education holds regular seminars and training sessions and has develFLORES v. HORNE 1827 oped monitoring protocols for school districts. Statedeveloped proficiency standards for ELL students are used to evaluate programs and to identify problems. Arizona has also made efforts to standardize the testing used to classify children as ELL or English proficient.17 Perhaps most importantly, after August 31, 2006, all classroom teachers, supervisors, principals, and superintendents are required to obtain an endorsement in ELL teaching methods. See ARIZ. REV. STAT. § 15-756.09; ARIZ. ADMIN. CODE R7-2-613(J). Along with these ELL-specific structural changes, Arizona has increased overall school funding.18 On an inflationadjusted statewide basis, including all sources of funding, support for education has increased from $3,139 per pupil in 2000 to an estimated $3,570 per pupil in 2006. Adding in all county and local sources, funding has gone from $5,677 per pupil in 2000 to an estimated $6,412 per pupil in 2006. Finally, federal funding has increased. In 2000, the federal government provided an additional $526 per pupil; in 2006, it provided an estimated $953.19 17 Before 2004, Arizona allowed districts to select among four different tests to decide when to “reclassify” students out of ELL programs into mainstream classes. Beginning in 2004, Arizona instituted the Stanford English Language Proficiency Assessment (“SELP”), which was in use from 2004 through 2006. SELP was generally regarded as too easy to pass, and reclassification rates increased measurably during its use. Arizona fine-tuned SELP, renaming it the Arizona English Language Learner Assessment (“AZELLA”), and has been using the new test since the fall of 2006. The transition from SELP to AZELLA appears to have measurably decreased reclassification rates. As a result of these shifts in testing methodology, ELL reclassification rates are not easily comparable over the years. 18 Broader state efforts for at-risk children generally benefit some ELL students. These efforts include several funding streams for tutoring programs. In one tutoring program, 88% of ELL students were able to raise their scores by one achievement level in at least one subject area of Arizona’s standardized academic achievement tests; 92% of non-ELL students in the same program so raised their scores. 19 Arizona has also significantly increased spending on school physical plant needs, largely in response to another class-action suit. See Roosevelt Elementary Sch. Dist. No. 66 v. Arizona, 74 P.3d 258, 259-263 (“Roosevelt II”) (Ariz. Ct. App. 2003). 1828 FLORES v. HORNE Arizona’s ELL-specific funding increases are associated with HB 2010 and HB 2064. At the hearing, two important points concerning HB 2064 emerged: First, none of the defense witnesses were able to establish what data, if any, the Group B weights are based upon. The weights do not appear to have been set with regard to any specific program costs, known or estimated. Second, Flores’ expert on federal educational funding statutes, Thomas Fagan, testified that if the federal government concluded that HB 2064 was in violation of federal statutes, it could take significant enforcement actions, including a cut-off of some or all federal education funds.20 Despite Arizona’s expanded ELL infrastructure and budget, ELL students still achieve below — and often far below — state average passage rates on Arizona’s “AIMS” academic achievement test and fall below the minimum passage rates Arizona must meet to reach the “annual measurable objectives” required by the No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (“NCLB”), Pub. L. No.107-110, 115 Stat. 1425, as test results from the 2004-05 and 2005-06 school years show.21 See 20 U.S.C. § 6842 (federal standards). These test results must be viewed with two significant caveats: First, because AIMS testing was not carried out in 2000, we do not know whether the performance of ELL students has improved relative to that time. Second, Arizona has changed the AIMS test itself, including altering the passing score, and has twice changed the system it uses for reclassifying ELL students — once at the beginning of the 2004-05 school year, and again at the start of the 2006-07 school year. Results for those students classified as ELL across those years are therefore not clearly comparable. 20 We discuss these potential violations and their consequences below. 21 Standardized tests do not, of course, provide a full measure of a school’s successes and failures. Educational quality is too complex to be reflected in a single score. But test scores do provide us with at least a rough sense of relative performance, and so are useful here. FLORES v. HORNE 1829 Due to these limitations, and to a general lack of longitudinal data on individual ELL students, we do not have data that conclusively demonstrates whether ELL programs ultimately succeed — that is, whether children pass through them rapidly and ultimately perform as well as non-ELL students. So, while the test results we next discuss are certainly troubling, it is important to understand the limits of their analytic reach. With these caveats, we turn to the data. While Arizona students generally exceeded NCLB-mandated passage rates in math and reading, passing the AIMS test at rates of between 60% and 70%, ELL students were far behind. For example, among third graders, who pass the exam at a higher rate than older ELL students, only 50% passed the math exam in 2005 and just under 40% passed the reading exam in the same year.22 The situation grows worse at higher grades — in 2005 only 33% of ELL tenth graders passed math and only 20% passed in 2006. In reading, only 30% passed in 2005 and that number fell to barely more than 10% in 2006. In neither year did ELL reading scores in any grade meet federal standards, and in 2006 ELL students’ math test results for all grades also fell below the federal line at every grade level. Nor do students necessarily leave ELL status rapidly. While all witnesses agreed that some students may swiftly become proficient in English, they also agreed that many will need ELL instruction for more than two years, and that some will still need help after three years of training. In short, despite considerable efforts, and some improvements in outcomes, Arizona, as a state, does not appear to have turned the corner on ELL education performance. 22 The passage rates for third graders in 2006 were even lower: 40% for math and 30% for reading. 1830 FLORES v. HORNE
The statewide achievement gap between ELL and non-ELL students is also present in NUSD, although the district has made significant strides since 2000. The improvements it has made, however, appear to be due largely to successful management rather than to adequate state funding for ELL programs. The record indicates that with adequate incremental ELL funding, the improvements could have been greater and this gap could have been further narrowed.
Much of the improvement at NUSD stems from the suc- cessful management of Kelt Cooper, the district’s Superintendent from 2000 to 2005. His successor, Dr. Guilermo Zamudio, has largely sustained Cooper’s management policies. Despite the efforts of both superintendents, however, ELL students in Nogales continue to face serious challenges. Cooper, who took the helm at about the time the Declaratory Judgment issued, adopted policies that ameliorated or eliminated many of the most glaring inadequacies discussed by the district court at that time. Cooper was able to reduce class sizes by enforcing restrictions on the district’s open enrollment policy, significantly improving student/teacher ratios. In addition to lowering class sizes, Cooper improved teacher quality by changing the district’s policies regarding the hiring of experienced teachers and by refusing to pay unqualified teachers who had been certified on an emergency basis as if they had the proper experience. He also fired many teachers’ aides, many of whom were, he found, largely unqualified. Cooper also worked to institute district-wide student performance monitoring. Additionally, he pioneered a uniform system of textbook and curriculum planning, and he largely eliminated what had been a severe shortage of instructional materials by better accounting for and preserving available materials and by acquiring new materials when needed. FLORES v. HORNE 1831 Using careful financial management and applying for “all funds available,” Cooper was able to achieve his reforms with limited resources. His budget did, however, rise between two and four percent annually, partly because the district twice passed an override, that is, a county-wide tax measure. Nonetheless, Cooper’s successor, Dr. Zamudio, indicates that there are still significant resource constraints. Despite Cooper’s recruitment efforts, Nogales still must rely on some long-term substitutes, rather than upon permanent teachers. Other teachers have been “emergency-certified” and so have not been trained according to Arizona’s standards. NUSD’s starting base pay of $28,500 per year, which is below the statewide average, makes it difficult to recruit the fullyqualified teachers that NUSD needs. The recruitment challenges mean that Dr. Zamudio has been unable to reduce student/teacher ratios further, to 15:1, which, both he and a defense expert testified, would significantly enhance English learning success. He would also like to be able to hire trained teacher’s aides, who would be helpful in ELL programs, for the lower grades but has been unable to do so because of resource limitations. The limits of NUSD’s progress, even as it has improved its ELL programs, are apparent in the AIMS test results and reclassification test results introduced at the hearing, which show the same problems that appear in the statewide data. The test results, we caution, have the same limitations that we have discussed at the state level, and cannot be read unequivocally to demonstrate that ELL programs are failing in NUSD because we lack longitudinal data on the performance of student cohorts who began as ELL students and who may or may not have been reclassified. It is fair to say, however, that the indications provided by the test data largely do not point in positive directions. For instance, while it is clear that NUSD has reclassified many students, it is not clear how much of this success can 1832 FLORES v. HORNE be attributed to genuine academic progress and how much to changes in its classification methodology. During the 19992000 school year, there were 5,104 ELL students. The next year saw similar numbers, but between the 2001-02 and the 2003-04 school years, the number of such students hovered around 3800. Then, when Arizona implemented a new testing protocol (which was later concluded to be reclassifying too many students and replaced), the ELL population declined to about 3200 students in the 2004-05 school year and to 2474 the next year. In 2006-07 a new, reputedly more accurate and more difficult to pass test came into use, and Dr. Zamudio testified that he expects ELL student numbers to increase again. Because of these shifts in reclassification methodology, the meaning of “ELL” changed over time. Comparison of AIMS test data for ELL students and non-ELL students over time are therefore not reliable. But, as some patterns persist, we can point to several general trends based on AIMS test results for the 2003-04, 2004-05, and 2005-06 school years.23 First, within NUSD, ELL students in lower grades are doing substantially better than ELL students in higher grades. In 2005-06, for instance, while only 27% of ELL third graders failed24 math, 76% of ELL tenth graders failed. ELL third graders failed reading 37% of the time; 78% of ELL tenth graders failed. And 35% of ELL third graders failed writing, while 76% of ELL tenth graders failed. 23 Although the patterns we describe are consistent from year to year, passage rates varied somewhat from year to year. They rose from 2003-04 to 2004-05 but fell again in 2005-06. One of the defense witnesses suggested that the high 2004-05 passage rates could be related to problems with the reclassification system. 24 AIMS is graded on a four-part scale. Students may “fall far below” the passing score, “approach” but not meet the standard, “meet” the standard, or “exceed” the standard. When we refer to the percentage of students “failing,” we mean those who either “fell far below” or only “approached” the state passing score. FLORES v. HORNE 1833 Second, ELL students in NUSD generally do worse than the state average score for all students (ELL and non-ELL). Only students in the lower grades sometimes reached or beat the average. Older students are falling far behind. For tenth graders in 2005-06, for instance, only 36% failed math statewide, but 76% of ELL tenth graders in NUSD did. For reading, the tenth grade state failure rate was 29%, while the tenth grade ELL failure rate in NUSD was 78%. And for writing, the state tenth grade failure rate was 36% and the NUSD tenth grade ELL failure rate was 76%. Third, within NUSD, ELL students are still falling behind the district average for all students. Again, the gap grows more pronounced in higher grades. In 2005-06 in third grade, ELL students failed math at a 27% rate, reading at a 37% rate, and writing at a 35% rate, rates that were not too much worse than the district averages of 22%, 29%, and 30%, respectively. By tenth grade, however, ELL students failed math at a 76% rate, reading at a 78% rate, and writing at a 76% rate, far worse than the district averages of 50%, 42%, and 39%, respectively. The picture, then, is of relative success at lower grades (although not equal to that of English speaking students within NUSD), and increasing failures for older students, a significant majority of whom are failing the state’s basic achievement tests. Federal performance classifications under NCLB generally correspond with this portrait: In 2004-05, one of Nogales’ two middle schools failed to meet its adequate yearly progress goals under NCLB, as did the alternative high school. In 2005-06, the same middle school was under a restructuring plan, and corrective action was being taken in the alternative high school. The main high school had been given a warning, as had a lower-performing elementary school. 1834 FLORES v. HORNE In a survey of the test results of ELL students statewide, NUSD students’ performance was also consistent with this general snapshot. This survey, commissioned by Arizona’s Department of Education, reported the 2005 test results of students who were classified as ELL in 2003 and ranked schools by the average AIMS scores of these students.25 Some, but not all, of NUSD’s younger ELL students did very well. Four NUSD elementary schools ranked in the top ten schools in the state by this measure, with passage rates of over 70%. Two other elementary schools fared more poorly, ranking 41st and 152nd, with passage rates of about 60% and about 50%, respectively. Middle school performance was lower — one tied for 165th place, also with about a 50% passage rate, and the other ranked 409th, with only about 40% of its ELL students passing the test. The high schools are at the bottom of the heap. The main high school ranks 575th, with a 28.37% overall passage rate and Santa Cruz Alternative High School is four from the bottom at 625th place and a 8.62% passage rate. Finally, there is at least one clear bright spot: For all grades in 2005-06, reclassified ELL students were doing about as well as native English speakers, which is a notable accomplishment, and which suggests that the ELL programs may well benefit those who successfully transition out of them. But, as the data on such scores does not track individual students, showing when they passed through ELL programs and 25 No effort was made to verify that a given student was still ELL or that he or she had remained in ELL programming for the two intervening years. Nor are test scores available for these students in 2003. The result is that the survey data does not present a longitudinal survey of the progress of students who remained in ELL programs for that period. Nor is the data of value in demonstrating that NUSD’s ELL students are doing better relative to non-ELL students, as non-ELL students’ performance was not measured or ranked. More importantly, if, as Flores alleges, Arizona systematically underfunds ELL programs statewide, comparing one allegedly underfunded district with another does not show that funding in any given district is adequate. FLORES v. HORNE 1835 how long it took them to do so, and because the reclassification methodology continues to shift, this bright spot does not offset the otherwise troubling ELL test data. On the data available, it is possible that some high achievers may rapidly be leaving ELL programs while other students continue to struggle, never achieving at the same levels as non-ELL students. Indeed, Dr. Zamudio testified that reclassification in NUSD takes, on average, four to five years and the district court so found. The encouraging success of reclassified students is therefore of limited significance with regard to the overall impact of NUSD’s ELL program.
NUSD estimates its per pupil incremental costs for ELL programming for the 2005-06 school year at $1570.42, over three times the Group B level weight funding Arizona provides for ELL programs under either HB 2010 or HB 2064. NUSD has been able to finance the improvements it has made by seeking grants, diverting state base level funding away from other purposes, and passing county-level budget overrides. Of the $1570.42 per pupil that NUSD indicates it spends on ELL programming, over half this amount, $824.25, is drawn from the district’s maintenance and operations account (which includes both the ELL Group B funds and base level support funding). As this amount is well above the Group B weights, it indicates that NUSD is dipping into funds that would otherwise be used to fund basic educational purposes. Federal funds add about $484.05 per student, but most of these funds are earmarked for at-risk, low-income students, rather than ELL students (although the two groups overlap). Another $43.43 per student comes from county override funds. The remaining $218.69 per student comes from a variety of state, federal, and local funding sources and grants. NUSD’s budget has increased over the years, but ELLspecific funds have been a relatively small part of that 1836 FLORES v. HORNE increase. A schematic break-down of the budget over the relevant period, which does not appear to include the relatively small amount of funding from the county, was entered into evidence before the district court. We reproduce a somewhat modified version of that table here. The break-down shows all funds available to ELL students, including funds that are not ELL-specific. ELL-specific funding sources are labeled as such, and the total amount of ELL-specific funding is separately recorded: 1999- 2000- 2001- 2002- 2003- 2004- 2005- 2006- 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 Base $2,592 $2,618 $2,721 $2,788 $2,858 $2,929 $3,039 $3,173 level state funds Group B $156 $157 $163 $321 $329 $337 $349 $44426 ELL funds Other $0 $0 $0 $126 $83 $64 $0 $74 state ELL funds Federal $439 $448 $467 $449 $487 $638 $603 $597 Title I funds Federal $58 $63 $74 $101 $109 $91 $92 $87 Title II funds 26 This amount is based on HB 2064’s Group B weight increase. If that portion of HB 2064 does not go into effect, the figure will be $364.86. FLORES v. HORNE 1837 Federal $0 $0 $0 $67 $89 $114 $118 $121 Title III (ELL) funds Other $58 $56 $59 $47 $207 $214 $205 $109 state and federal grants Total $3,302 $3,342 $3,484 $3,899 $4,162 $4,387 $4,406 $4,605 of all funds Total $156 $157 $163 $514 $501 $515 $467 $639 ELL funds In sum, as this table suggests, ELL-specific funds have never covered all ELL programming costs. NUSD can pay the incremental cost of its ELL programs only by diverting nonELL-specific funds for that purpose, and the district was able to do that at the time of the Declaratory Judgment, as now. These ELL-specific funds, however, have increased, due largely to the rise in Group B weights occasioned by HB 2010 in 2002-03 and will increase again due to HB 2064 if the new Group B weight goes into effect. There remains, however, a fundamental mismatch between the ELL costs NUSD requires and the funds provided for that specific purpose.27
NUSD’s reported incremental costs for ELL programming, and its need to divert other funds to cover them, are generally consistent with the experiences of districts across Arizona. 27 We note that, for a variety of contractual and statutory reasons, and to ensure a fiscal cushion, NUSD carries over some portion of its budget every year, including some funds that it might otherwise spend on ELL programming or other needs. That practice, rooted in careful fiscal planning, does not indicate a surplus of funds for educational needs. 1838 FLORES v. HORNE District officials testifying at the hearing reported incremental costs ranging from $1,077 per student to $4,072 per student. All of these districts are funding their programs by diverting funds from other sources, often by using additional taxes that they are allowed to levy for use in desegregation programs.28 Group B weights, alone, are not generally sufficient to fund ELL programs. Testimony from officials in other districts confirms that reclassification regularly takes longer than two years for many students. The average reclassification time in the Tucson Unified School District, for instance, is 4.6 years. In the Murphy Elementary School District, nearly two-thirds of ELL students took more than four years to be reclassified. Similarly, in the Scottsdale Unified School District, the majority of ELL students take more than two years to be reclassified, and in the Glendale Union High School District, 46% of ELL students at one school and 15% of ELL students at another had been in ELL programs for more than two years. No district submitted evidence showing that all of its ELL students had been reclassified within two years. G. The Ruling on Remand After the evidentiary hearing at which the facts concerning the current status of ELL students and ELL funding were presented, the district court again denied relief from judgment. Flores v. Arizona, 480 F. Supp. 2d 1157, 1167 (“Flores XI”) (D. Ariz. 2007). 28 A broader survey of school district officials conducted for Flores by Dr. Chuck Essigs of the Arizona Association of School Business Officials yielded similar results. Dr. Essigs did not independently verify his survey results or ensure that responding districts used a common cost reporting system. As these results vary widely (from $351 to $3,874), neither we nor the district court rely much upon them. It is worth noting, nonetheless, that, for the fourteen surveyed districts with over 1,000 ELL students, incremental costs in 2006-07 in all but one were above $1,000, with most of the districts’ incremental costs in the range between $1,000 and $2,000. FLORES v. HORNE 1839 The court held that the improvements at NUSD do not establish that Arizona is fulfilling its duty to fund ELL programming rationally. Id. at 1160, 1166. Most of these improvements, the court found, are due to NUSD’s own management improvements, not to reliable or sufficient funding. Id. at 1160. And the improvements are limited: NUSD’s ELL high school students, in particular, are still falling well behind its non-ELL students, and even the successes will be “fleeting at best” unless Arizona meets its funding obligations. Id. Thus, although NUSD is “doing substantially better,” id., and the state has developed a significantly improved infrastructure for ELL programming, “mere amelioration of those specific conditions” cited as examples of the funding shortage in the Declaratory Judgment, is “inadequate” to justify relief: “Rather, compliance would require a funding system that rationally relates funding available to the actual costs of all elements of ELL instruction.” Id. at 1165. The district court went on to determine that the Superintendent and the Legislative Intervenors had not demonstrated that such a system was in place. The court decided that HB 2064 does not sufficiently address the inadequacies of Arizona’s ELL funding system and, in fact, introduces new problems. In so holding, the district court reasoned as follows: HB 2064’s increase in Group B weights is inadequate, as “the per-student incremental cost of providing ELL instruction is greater than either the current Group B weight of $365 [set by HB 2010] or the increased weight of $444 that would be provided if [the c]ourt approved HB 2064, both in NUSD and in other districts.” Id. at 1162. HB 2064’s two-year cut-off of that funding would suddenly, and irrationally, further underfund school districts. Id. at 1166. The HB 2064 grant programs, which might have linked funding rationally to costs, are no better. The Arizona structured English immersion fund suffers from the same irrational two-year cut-off, id. at 1163, and both it and the compensatory instruction fund violate provisions of federal law that bar taking federal funds into account in mak1840 FLORES v. HORNE ing state funding decisions and bar supplanting existing state funding with federal monies. Id. at 1166. The district court concluded that, without a rational funding system for ELL incremental costs, Arizona remains out of compliance with the EEOA, despite some successes in NUSD: On January 24, 2000, this Court held that the State’s minimum funding level for ELL programs was arbi- trary and capricious and bore no rational relation to the actual funding needed to insure that ELL stu- dents could achieve mastery of the State’s academic standards. . . . More than 7 years later, circumstances in this regard remain the same. The Moving Parties have not shown compliance with this Court’s decree, much less changed circumstances that would warrant modification or dissolution of this Court’s order. Id. at 1167. The district court gave Arizona until the end of the then-current legislative session to comply. Id. The Legislative Intervenors and the Superintendent timely appealed.29 29 After Arizona failed to comply with the district court’s order in Flores XI, the court again found the state to be in contempt on October 10, 2007. See Flores v. Arizona, No. CV-92-596 (“Flores XII”)(D. Ariz. 2007). The present compliance deadline is March 4, 2008. Id. at 4. The contempt order has been separately appealed and is not before us. We do, however, discuss it below in Part II(C)(2) for the light it sheds on the adequacy of HB 2064. FLORES v. HORNE 1841 Volume 2 of 2 FLORES v. HORNE 1843