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Testimony: Low-Income Students and Financial Aid

As the legislature considers a number of bills aimed at increasing access and affordability of public higher education, the state assembly’s subcommittee on education finance invited PPIC to testify this week. The focus was the unmet financial aid needs of low-income college students. Hans Johnson, PPIC senior and Bren Fellow, presented data from the recent PPIC report Making College Possible for Low-Income Students: Grant and Scholarship Aid in California, which details the importance of federal and state grant aid in ensuring that higher education remains a ladder of economic opportunity for all Californians.

Johnson noted that as the state has cut funding for the University of California (UC) and California State University (CSU), tuition has increased and grant aid has become increasingly important to help students afford college. Research has also shown that grants and scholarships help students persist in their education and enables students to focus on their coursework and complete college faster. UC and CSU remain less expensive options for low-income students in terms of “net price”—the cost of attending college after accounting for federal, state, and institutional aid—than non-profit and for-profit private colleges. However, students whose family incomes are $30,000 or less still pay nearly a quarter of their incomes, or $8,000 per year, to attend a public four-year college.

Improving college access and completion is vital to California’s economic well-being, and aid for students has become increasingly necessary. The legislature’s attention to this issue comes at a time when 60% of California high school students qualify for free and reduced price lunch and three-quarters of California’s low-income college freshmen are enrolled in a UC or CSU.

The Special Election and the Top-Two Primary

Two Democrats are heading into a runoff in a big political fight for a seat in the state senate, representing the wealthy bedroom communities of the far eastern Bay Area. The contenders are Susan Bonilla, a Concord assemblymember, and Steve Glazer, the mayor of Orinda. The race was held under the rules of California’s new top-two primary, but the role of this new system in producing the outcome is more complicated than it might seem.

Four Democrats and one Republican were on the ballot for this 7th Senate District seat, which became vacant when Democrat Mark DeSaulnier successfully ran for the U.S. House of Representatives. The race boiled down to a pitched battle between the three best-known Democrats: Joan Buchannan, a former Alamo assemblymember; Bonilla; and Glazer. The fourth Democrat received far less attention and the lone Republican actually withdrew from the race and endorsed Glazer (though her name remained on the ballot). At the time of this writing, Glazer has finished first with 33 percent, followed by Bonilla with 25 percent, and Buchannan with 23.

A goal of the new top-two system is to encourage candidates to build centrist cross-party coalitions. All candidates were on the same ballot, and voters could choose any candidate they liked, regardless of party. The top two vote getters, also regardless of party, now advance to a runoff campaign. (Technically, this special election uses a variant of the top two, in which a runoff occurs only if none of the candidates receives at least 50% of the vote. But that did not end up being a factor in this race.)

Steve Glazer fits well in this new system. He has taken a more business-oriented perspective that has put him at odds with many in the party’s pro-union establishment. With the endorsement of the only Republican in the race, he has been empowered to draw Republican voters to his banner. Moreover, the 7th Senate district is in an area with politics only slightly left of center, with more Republican voters than is typical for the Bay Area. As if that weren’t enough, counts of vote-by-mail ballots just before Election Day suggested Republicans were turning out to vote in disproportionate numbers, making them even more critical to the outcome.

However, it is important to emphasize the precise way in which the top two impacts this race. The open ballot—with all candidates listed regardless of party—is not new to special elections such as this one. Special elections have long had an open ballot, so even before the reform the District 7 candidates would have been free to reach across party lines.

The key difference comes now that the first round is over. Under the old special election system, the top vote-getters within each party would advance to a runoff election. Under the new system, the top two candidates advance even if these candidates hail from the same party. Thus, the May match-up between Glazer and Bonilla would have been impossible before the top two.

The irony is that in this particular case, the same-party race has thrown an extra hurdle in the way of the more moderate candidate. Under the old system, Glazer would have advanced to a runoff against a Republican who is no longer in the race. Now he must fight another Democrat to secure his place in the legislature.

But that doesn’t mean the top two has necessarily hurt Glazer’s chances. The same candidates may not have made the same decisions under the old system. Michaela Hertle, the Republican, might not have withdrawn from the race and endorsed a Democrat, because as the only Republican, she would have been guaranteed a spot in the runoff. Glazer might not have run for fear that he would not finish a clear first among all the Democrats. Though one can never be certain about any particular race, there is evidence that the top two has discouraged candidates like Hertle—those who hail from the major party with fewer registrants in a district—and encouraged more candidates from within the district’s dominant party. So while the top two didn’t enable cross-party coalitions in this race, it may have altered the landscape in other ways.

At any rate, there is no doubt that the top two has changed the contest moving forward, since Glazer and Bonilla never would have faced each other in the runoff without it. The ultimate test of the system lies with the outcome of this same-party race, and the political leanings of the person who wins it.

Drought Watch: Priorities for Cities and Farms

This is part of a continuing series on the impact of the drought.

A spate of recent news articles have reinforced what most Californians already know: the state is locked in a grim drought, with unusually warm temperatures and near-record low snowpack. Since this is the fourth consecutive dry year, reserves are low and water scarcity will be acute in some farming regions and watersheds.

In our new report, Policy Priorities for Managing Drought, we highlight four areas that need reform to reduce the economic, social, and environmental harm from drought in California: 1) improving water use information; 2) setting clear goals and priorities for public health and the environment; 3) promoting water conservation and more resilient water supplies; and 4) strengthening environmental management.

The third item on this list – promoting conservation and more resilient supplies – refers to steps needed to improve the ability of both urban and agricultural areas to weather droughts. California’s urban water agencies are already in much better shape than they would have been, thanks to significant investments since the early 1990s in conservation, local storage, alternative supplies like highly treated wastewater, and new connections between neighboring water systems. But cities need to redouble their efforts. In particular, they can do much more to reduce landscape irrigation, which still accounts for half of urban use. Financial incentives like rebates for replacing turf with more drought-tolerant plants can help. Yet to encourage widespread change in habits, cities also need to adopt water rates that send a strong signal to customers who are using too much water outdoors.

For California’s farmers—who require large volumes of water for irrigation during the dry growing season—the options are somewhat different. Investments in more efficient irrigation technology provide numerous benefits: higher quality produce, lower use of pesticides and chemicals, and higher yields. But in most places this technology doesn’t free up new water. That’s because the water not consumed by crops in less efficient irrigation systems either returns to rivers or recharges groundwater basins, where it gets reused. For farmers, one of the best drought adaptation tools is a well-functioning water market, which can help get water from willing sellers to willing buyers.

The market helped many farmers keep their orchards and vineyards alive last year, and it will help this year too. (And as the recent purchase of some water by Southern California’s large urban water wholesaler demonstrates, the market can also help cities bolster critical drought reserves.)

Yesterday the State Water Resources Control Board reauthorized—and amped up—some urban outdoor water use restrictions as a way to push the conservation efforts of local water agencies. In our report, we suggest the board could also take steps to promote the water market. In particular, some local irrigation districts that have abundant supplies still restrict sales outside of their districts, even when farmers in these districts would be willing to sell. Just as excess landscape watering in cities can be considered unreasonable during droughts, prohibiting water trades could also be considered unreasonable. Allowing scarce water to move to where it’s most needed would help all of California get through this drought.

Video: Implementing California’s School Funding Formula

The success of California’s new funding formula hinges on whether school districts can improve achievement for students, especially those who are high need. New PPIC research focuses on the issues raised so far by implementation of the new formula—a process that will take eight years.

Last week, Laura Hill, PPIC senior fellow and one of the reports’ co-authors, provided an overview of PPIC’s findings in Sacramento. Her presentation was followed by a panel discussion that looked at the challenges and opportunities presented by the new funding formula. Panelists were Carolyn Chu of the Legislative Analyst’s Office; Jonathan Raymond, president of the Stuart Foundation and former superintendent of the Sacramento City Unified School District; PPIC research associate Paul Warren; and Riverside County school superintendent Kenneth Young. Patrick Murphy, PPIC research director moderated.

The PPIC reports are listed below:

Implementing California’s School Funding Formula: Will High-Need Students Benefit?

Implementing Local Accountability in California’s Schools: The First Year of Planning

Low-Income Students and School Meal Programs in California

Can Preregistering Teens Boost Voter Turnout?

California has been struggling lately with voter engagement. Turnout in the 2014 statewide elections, both in the primary and the general, set record lows. Turnout among young voters was especially bad. A recent report from Mindy Romero of the California Civic Engagement Project showed that an abysmal 8% of 18 to 24 year olds cast a ballot in 2014. As Paul Mitchell of Political Data Inc. dryly noted, “In California, an 18- or 19-year-old was more likely to be arrested this year than actually vote in one of the statewide elections.”

In this environment, California has been exploring and adopting all sorts of policy changes to improve turnout. One of these is preregistration: the practice of allowing voters who are not yet old enough to vote to place a flag in the system that will activate their registration as soon as they come of age. California has had preregistration for 17-year-olds since 2009, and for 16-year-olds since last year. However, neither reform will go into effect until the state completes work on a new voter registration database in 2016.

Most of the conversation around this reform has focused on making it easier to get more young people registered by expanding the window of opportunity for doing so. Yet interesting new research suggests there may be more to the reform than meets the eye.

In a recent paper in the prestigious American Journal of Political Science, John Holbein and Sunshine Hillygus of Duke University find that young people who enter the voter rolls through preregistration vote at higher rates than young people who register the traditional way. Depending on how it is measured, the boost in youth turnout is anywhere from a modest 2% to a whopping 13%. While theirs is not the first research to suggest an impact from preregistration (see, for example, this report by Michael McDonald of the University of Florida), Holbein and Hillygus go to great lengths to isolate the causal impact of the reform itself. Thus, we can be pretty confident that the effect they find is real.

This is a very intriguing result. It suggests that there is something about the act of preregistration that makes young people more likely to follow through and cast a ballot. Even more amazing, the boost in turnout measured by Holbein and Hillygus came years after the young people first signed up.

What could be producing this effect? Though the authors can’t say for sure, they speculate that it may have something to do with the way young people participate in the preregistration program. Preregistration often occurs at special school events where there is a certain fanfare around the process. Such fanfare is likely to impact teenagers with extra force, since they are actively shaping their own political identities. In other words, this paper may tell us as much about the potential benefits of civic education in high school as it does about preregistration itself.

More generally, the research also reminds us that total turnout is not a good way of assessing the performance of reforms. California’s turnout has been horrible lately, and any single reform is not likely to alter that basic truth. But if we can identify reforms that improve matters at the margins, then enough of them might add up to a more substantial effect.

A Move to Raise Turnout in LA

Turnout in the most recent Los Angeles City Council election was almost impossibly low: slightly less than 9% of registered voters, or about 150,000, cast ballots. Governance of a city of almost four million was in the hands a group that could squeeze into the Rose Bowl.

And yet this same select club did something on Election Day that all but guaranteed their membership will grow. The days of the “Rose Bowl electorate” are numbered.

LA City Council races fall in the spring of odd-numbered years and don’t coincide with state and federal elections. The City Council races also have voter turnout that is 20 or 30% lower than in state and federal races in neighboring years. The explanation for the difference is not complicated. Visibility and excitement are powerful drivers of turnout. Elections that receive attention across multiple media outlets—such as those for Congress and the presidency—create a buzz that voters find harder to ignore. To expect a similar buzz for stand-alone local races is to require a volume of coverage that those races almost never receive.

What makes the most recent City Council election so unusual is that two extraordinary measures, City Charter Amendments 1 and 2, were also on the ballot. They proposed moving City Council and school district elections to coincide with the federal and state elections that draw more voters to the polls. Even more amazing, the small, dedicated group who voted on these measures passed them by a 3-1 margin, effectively taking a step to end their own privileged position in city and school district politics.

Will this actually increase participation in these local races, or will voters get “ballot fatigue” and opt out when they get to the end of longer ballots? In a 2002 Public Policy Institute of California report, Zoltan Hajnal, Paul Lewis, and Hugh Louch concluded that about half the difference between local and federal turnout can be attributed to election timing. That suggests that the timing change will prompt most voters to weigh in on local elections, even if they are drawn to the polls by higher profile congressional or presidential contests.

The problem of low turnout in LA will not be solved by this policy change. There are clearly other factors driving turnout down, factors that consistently place LA County near the bottom of the turnout list in all elections. But in passing Charter Amendments 1 and 2, voters in LA have taken an important step toward encouraging higher participation in city elections, one that deserves serious consideration by other cities as well.

Californians and Immigration

While the courts, and perhaps Congress, decide the future of President Obama’s actions on immigration, the most recent PPIC Statewide Survey shows how Californians view the issue. Most Californians (69%) supported the president’s executive order protecting as many as 4 million undocumented immigrants from deportation; while 30 percent were opposed. Californians are much more likely to support executive action on immigration than adults nationwide (52% support, 44% oppose).

Across California’s political, regional, and demographic groups, support falls short of a majority only among Republicans (35%). By comparison, most Democrats (83%) and independents (63%) support the president’s actions.

Looking more closely at the January survey findings, we see results consistent with California’s reputation as a blue state. More than 60 percent of Californians across regions and gender, age, education, and income groups support the administrative action on immigration. Considering that Latinos are by far the largest group affected by the executive order, it’s not surprising that nearly all Latinos (89%) support presidential action on immigration; however, 55 percent of whites also voice support.

Support for the president’s action is consistent with favorable opinions on recent reform proposals that have been debated but not enacted by Congress. The Senate passed a plan in 2013 that would have provided a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants if they met certain requirements. Our September 2014 survey showed that a strong majority—82 percent—including more than 55 percent across parties supported this plan. In fact, more than 65 percent across regional, age, education, income, and racial/ethnic groups were in support.

Beneath Californians’ support of both the president’s executive action and the Senate’s comprehensive immigration plan is a generally favorable view of immigrants. In our January survey, a majority of Californians (63%)—as they have in past surveys dating back to 2000—viewed immigrants as a benefit to California because of their hard work and job skills; 32 percent viewed them as a burden because they use public services. Most Californians across political, regional, and demographic groups view immigrants as a benefit—Republicans (27%) and adults age 55 and older (49%) are the exceptions.

Our survey results help explain why California hasn’t waited for Congress to act on immigration reform. The state has passed a number of laws in the last two years that pave the way for undocumented immigrants to get student loans and financial aid, professional licenses, and, most recently, driver’s licenses. Home to the largest share of immigrants in the nation, California has the most at stake in immigration debate and has consistent views on it.

Drought Watch: Treating Stormwater as a Resource

This is part of a continuing series on the impact of the drought.

This weekend, the Southland got some much needed rain. This storm helped fill local reservoirs and moisten parched soils—bolstering the region for a fourth year of drought. Unfortunately, too much of this stormwater simply ran straight into local rivers and the ocean, picking up numerous pollutants along the way. Local and state officials want to change this by developing programs that capture and store more stormwater—simultaneously reducing pollution and improving water supplies.

In California, it’s hard to pay for such programs, given our complicated laws on local water finance. To gather ideas about how the state might help, two Senate committees held a joint informational hearing last week. I provided some context on funding issues and opportunities, drawing on PPIC’s recent work on water system finance.

Stormwater is one of California water’s “fiscal orphans.” It faces a critical funding gap—on the order of $500 to $800 million annually—in large part because of constraints introduced by Proposition 218, a constitutional amendment approved by voters in 1996. Around this time, stormwater management changed. What was once the routine job of getting storm drainage out of streets as fast as possible became the much more difficult job of preventing the contents of this drainage—an often toxic mix of fuels, fertilizers, pesticides, animal waste, and trash—from harming our waterways and beaches. Proposition 218 introduced strict requirements on how to calculate the costs of these programs, and it also required that local voters—rather than their elected representatives—approve any fee increases. Local governments have been in a bind ever since. They are required by law to manage this pollution, but they face voter resistance to paying for cleanups that mainly affect people living in communities downstream.

The new interest in treating stormwater as a resource—not just a nuisance—is part of a welcome shift toward thinking about California’s water in a more holistic way. For too long, we have been managing different aspects of our water in isolation—with separate programs for water delivery, wastewater treatment, and management of floods and stormwater. If it is done right, capturing stormwater in rain gardens and wetlands can filter out the pollution while storing the water for later use. Recent court rulings and Assembly Bill 2403 (enacted in 2014) helped clarify that the costs of capturing stormwater for water supply can be included in the bills for water delivery. This makes better management easier: increases in water rates require customer oversight but not direct voter approval.

However, more action is needed because some of the costs of stormwater programs relate strictly to managing pollution. The legislature should consider other ways to help local agencies raise the needed funds. One promising direction involves expanding the scope of a 2001 law. This law (AB 810) authorized two Southern California water agencies to apply revenues from the extra charges on water bills for overwatering landscapes—a source of polluted runoff during the dry summer months—to stormwater programs. It’s worked well, and it would be easy to extend this authority to agencies around the state.

Another simple fix would be to let local agencies use their state transportation dollars—funded mainly by the tax on fuels—as matching funds for state grants that support stormwater projects. Under current rules, the state considers these transportation funds to be “state” monies, even though they are generated by local drivers and earmarked for local use. If those rules were changed, local governments that are revamping their streets to make them more bike- and pedestrian-friendly could also create rain gardens that capture, treat, and store stormwater—for a small added cost.

Steps like these are examples of low-hanging fruit that can help California get on a more sustainable path of managing its scarce water resources.

Video: Briefing Focuses on Health and Nutrition Safety Net for Children

More than half of all California children participate in at least one health or nutrition program designed to help low-income residents, according to a newly released PPIC report. At a briefing in Sacramento on Friday, PPIC research fellow Laurel Beck described the report, Enrollment in Health and Nutrition Safety Programs among California’s Children, that she co-wrote with PPIC senior fellow Caroline Danielson and research associate Shannon McConville.

Beck said that increased resources to administer assistance programs had raised enrollment in the programs—Medi-Cal, CalFresh, free and reduced-price school lunches, and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC). As of 2012, nearly all low-income children up to age four were enrolled in at least one of these programs. But the researchers found significant variation across programs and counties. They concluded that better coordination could further the state’s goal of full enrollment of eligible children.

Local Decisionmaking in California’s Schools

California schools and districts are in the early stages of implementing the state’s new school finance system, the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF). The new system involves much more than a new way of allocating state money to schools. At the heart of LCFF is the handing over of decisionmaking power to local districts—as well as responsibility for meeting the state’s educational goals. Results from the California sample of the national Schools and Staffing Survey (1999‒2011) point to some of the challenges the state will have in implementing the new system.

Goals. LCFF prioritizes student achievement, as measured by scores on standardized tests, performance in Advanced Placement exams, and college and career readiness. However, the Schools and Staffing Survey indicates that principals put more weight on basic literacy than on advanced skills such as academic excellence and college readiness. In other words, principals seem to be setting a lower bar, and aligning their goals with the state’s priority areas is going to be a challenge.

  • More than half (54%) of principals see building basic literacy skills (reading, math, writing, speaking) as their most important goal. This view is slightly more prevalent among principals of elementary schools, schools with high percentage of minority students, and urban schools.
  • College and career readiness—one of the eight LCFF priority areas—is not a big priority for principals, even in middle and high schools. Just 2 percent of principals consider college preparedness to be their most important goal and just 4 percent prioritize occupational or vocational skills.

Parental involvement. The law requires that parents be involved in LCFF planning and implementation. However, very few schools involve parents in their decisionmaking processes. A real cultural shift will be required to engage parents in a meaningful way.

  • Most schools rely on open houses, parent-teacher conferences, and special subject-area events to communicate and interact with parents.
  • Very few schools involve parents in school instructional planning—for example, developing learning activities or soliciting feedback on curriculum. And few schools involve parents in governance—through PTA or PTO meetings or parent booster club—or budget decisions. Urban schools are the most likely to engage with parents, but parental engagement is going to be a significant challenge, particularly in large and rural schools.
  • Only half of schools have staff assigned to work on parental involvement—this is more common in schools with high percentages of minority students and schools in urban areas.

LCFF is an ambitious overhaul of California’s school finance system, designed to help districts meet clear educational goals. As the results of the Schools and Staffing Survey show, successful implementation is going to require major cultural changes in schools throughout the state.

TOP CHART SOURCE AND NOTE: Schools and Staffing Surveys (1999‒2011).”Secondary” includes both middle schools and high schools. High minority schools have student populations that are more than 75 percent minority; in high-poverty schools, more than 75 percent of students are eligible for free or reduced-price meals. Bottom chart source: Schools and Staffing Survey (2011).
BOTTOM CHART SOURCE AND NOTE: Percentages reflect principals’ responses to the following question: “What percentages of students had at least one parent or guardian participating in the following events?”