How does the Student Opportunity Act work?

Several years into Massachusetts’ education funding reform, the Student Opportunity Act, the state has poured millions into high-need districts — often urban and high-poverty districts. The state’s new spending formula, rolled out in 2021, has helped New Bedford pay for more counselors, nurses and other staff — but low test scores persist.

The Student Opportunity Act revised the spending formula within Chapter 70 — the state’s primary school funding law — and increased Chapter 70 funding by a projected $1.5 billion across its seven-year rollout. 

Its goal was to close academic achievement gaps. Districts with high populations of students with disabilities, students from low-income families, students of color, or English learning students receive the most in Student Opportunity Act funding. Roughly three-quarters of the additional aid has been directed toward Gateway Cities like New Bedford, but achievement gaps remain. 

Andrew O’Leary, New Bedford Public Schools superintendent, said the district has used Chapter 70 aid money to hire support staff, including paraprofessionals, behaviorists and health aides, especially for students with disabilities. He said with districts’ efforts to “build inclusive environments, student achievement will grow and achievement gaps will be lower.”

The New Bedford Public Schools intend to close achievement gaps by allowing all students to receive instruction in standard classrooms — with the guidance of in-class support staff — rather than pulling high-needs students out of the classroom to receive additional instruction, said O’Leary. 

Does the reform plan need more accountability?

The state requires all school districts to submit a three-year evidence-based plan for improving student achievement with SOA money, accompanied by annual updates. Some advocates say these plans lack transparency, making it difficult to measure whether SOA dollars are improving student outcomes as much as they could.

“The plans generally are terrible across the state,” said Ed Lambert, executive director of the Massachusetts Business Alliance for Education. “Many of the plans talk about investments and things that are not evidence-based, and there’s really been a lack of good state oversight on this.”

O’Leary said that the phrase “SOA funding” is a misnomer because it makes it seem like separate funding, rather than a reworking of the Chapter 70 formula. He said the legislative mandate for districts to issue reports reflects an “inherent assumption that districts would not spend the money appropriately.”

The state does not require districts to report how every dollar of Chapter 70 funding is spent. It only requires districts to report on certain “evidence-based programs” that will be used to address educational disparities. 

O’Leary said the SOA reporting requirements are based on flawed reasoning, because there is no guarantee that every dollar can ensure an additional level of academic output.

But Lambert says it begs the question: “What did we get for all this new money?”

​​In the 2024 SOA summary report, the Education Department identified a selection of evidence-based programs that districts could choose to add to their most recent plans, submitted last April. Among the most frequently chosen were curriculum implementation, student mental health support, and services for students with disabilities, according to the report. 

Lambert said districts have been slow to implement the most effective evidence-based programs. Finding more ways for the state to partner with districts — rather than leaving the planning up to districts — will provide more efficient reinvestment guidelines, he said. 

Last year, New Bedford received more than $236 million in Chapter 70 aid, which was distributed to public and charter schools, and saw a 7.6% increase this fiscal year. 

Implementing the SOA is taking longer than anyone would like, across the state, O’Leary said.

Lambert also recognized the delay in improvements. “I think that we’ve just got to get busy with that work, and still believe every student can achieve,” Lambert said. “Otherwise, we’re going to leave cities like New Bedford and Fall River behind.”

Education in post-pandemic classrooms

The COVID-19 pandemic is one reason it’s taken the state longer than expected to carry out the reforms and see improvements. 

Just months after the SOA’s launch, the funds it promised to deliver were frozen in the midst of the pandemic. The legislature postponed the original due date for introductory plans until January 2021. The latest plans cover a three-year stretch that ends with the 2026-27 school year. 

Vatsady Sivongxay, executive director of Massachusetts Education Justice Alliance, said pandemic learning set students back.

“We saw our students suffer both socially and mentally, and that really factored into their ability to do well on standardized testing,” she said. “It’s really tough to say that these fundings didn’t help improve student scores when there were these unexpected factors and challenges.”

Standardized testing scores in Gateway Cities were already below the state average before the pandemic, according to state data. Their low scores, which SOA funding aimed to correct, have still not recovered. 

On the 2024 MCAS English Language Arts exam, New Bedford students scored below state expectations in most grades, with the exception of grades six and eight. Thirty-four percent of 10th-graders did not meet expectations for the ELA portion on the 2024 MCAS exam. Almost half also scored below expectations in math and science.

Massachusetts received $2.9 billion in K-12 federal pandemic relief — roughly $3,000 per pupil. While those funds helped academic recovery nationally, statewide trends in Massachusetts tell a different story: 82% of districts did not meet their own 2019 math scores, and 86% still did not match their reading scores, according to the Education Recovery Scorecard, a nationwide study on post-pandemic education relief.

Part of the issue is low classroom attendance, according to the same study. At the end of last school year, about half of all New Bedford students missed 10 or more days of school, with almost a quarter “chronically absent,” meaning they missed 10% or more of the school year.

Still, the rate of chronically absent students in New Bedford has decreased significantly since the height of the pandemic, when almost half of all students fit this category. O’Leary attributes the decline to investments in instruction and hiring staff who can build relationships with students and enforce attendance. 

But chronic absenteeism rates have still not returned to pre-pandemic times, according to state data. 

“There’s a point we have to get back to, rather than a point we have to work forward to,” said O’Leary.

Inflation cut into new school funding

Another significant impact of the pandemic on the reforms is inflation, according to Sivongxay. 

Chapter 70 includes a 4.5% inflation cap and that cap has not kept pace with actual school cost increases, she said. In recent years, inflation rates for schools in Massachusetts reached up to 8%. That has advocates questioning whether or not districts are receiving the full benefit of the SOA.

“Those cost increases really, really impacted students,” said Sivongxay. “I remember last year when some schools weren’t fully staffed. That impacted our students in the most low-income districts.”

Post-pandemic staffing issues have been a persistent problem across districts, said Mary Bourque, executive director of the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendents. 

“You do tend to have larger class sizes, because you’re not able to have as many smaller group adult interactions when you’re unable to hire,” said Bourque. 

The Massachusetts Budget and Policy Center, a public policy research and advocacy organization, projected that if the Legislature had lifted the Chapter 70 inflation cap, it would’ve unlocked an additional $465 million in SOA funding statewide. New Bedford could have gained nearly $14 million in additional SOA aid in FY2025, according to MassBudget. 

“We need to look at, is there a different way for us to approach times that are unexpected?” Sivongxay said. “Is it responsible to have a cap on inflation?”

Lambert also sees the argument for lifting the inflation cap. But he said that if the state does unlock $465 million in additional education revenue, it must be clear about where that money will go. 

“If we’re just going to address it and send that $400 million out without any strings … we’re just throwing money away, honestly,” he said. 

Other states have had more success when they tell districts where to spend the money based on data, Lambert said, rather than letting local control take over, like it does in Massachusetts. 

“We need to have a little less local control and a little more investment in what has been proven to work,” said Lambert.

Proposed legislative changes 

How to continue funding the Student Opportunity Act is up to the Legislature. 

In June, legislators expanded the state’s Chapter 70 funding by $496 million for the current fiscal year. They got the money from the state’s 4% surtax on annual income over $1 million, also known as the millionaires’ tax. Some critics said that broke the promise that the millionaires’ tax, passed by voters in 2022, would fund new education initiatives, not existing ones.

One bill filed in the Senate proposes creating a commission to ensure equitable funding for public education, including a revision of the way local funding of schools is determined. The bill was reported favorably by the Senate in mid-September and referred to the Senate Ways and Means committee on Oct. 20. As of early February, Ways and Means has not scheduled a hearing for it.

The commission would also consider the elimination of the inflation cap.

Gov. Maura Healey’s administration recently held several listening sessions about Chapter 70 funding, with a focus on the local funding requirements.

Healey’s budget proposal for the next fiscal year fully funds the final year of the Student Opportunity Act with $7.6 billion in Chapter 70 aid, a $242 million increase over this fiscal year, the State House News Service reported.

The Legislature will examine Chapter 70 funding, including the SOA aid, as it writes the next state budget, which should be finalized in June, O’Leary said.

Isabelle Oss, a recent graduate of the journalism master’s program at Boston University, covered state government for The Light as part of the Boston University Statehouse Program.