OPINION: Pence would change state funding to schools with $64 million in 2015

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence and Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell have a lot in common. They are conservative favorites whose names occasionally show up on lists of potential 2016 White House contenders.

They both govern states where Republicans have pushed aggressive education reform agendas, and where belt-tightening through the recession has left them with work to do to win back teachers who have gone without cost-of-living pay raises.

They both used major speeches this month to stake their claim to the reformers' mantle, with Pence announcing plans to expand Indiana's voucher program and McDonnell saying he wants A-through-F school grading like Hoosier schools have.

And both governors recently called for about $60 million more annually for K-12 education — money that would go toward boosting teachers' pay and hiring new ones.

The difference is in how the governors are proposing dividing up some extra cash for education on top of that.

McDonnell's idea is modest. He wants to set aside $1.4 million to hire reading specialists to help public schools where fewer than 75 percent of third graders are demonstrating proficient reading skills — and give those schools extra time to work with students who need help.

Pence's is bigger. He wants $64 million in additional school funding in 2015, but he wants it to go only to schools that reach performance goals, including high graduation rates and test scores — while also giving schools regulatory freedom to meet those goals.

In other words, McDonnell wants to spend Virginia's extra education dollars on helping the worst-performing schools. Pence wants to spend Indiana's money rewarding the best-performing schools.

They're starkly different approaches that aim to achieve the same goal.

McDonnell's fits with the "compassionate conservative" notion that former President George W. Bush advanced. Pence's survival-of-the-fittest approach gives schools reasons to improve but doesn't rescue them if they fail.

If he gets what he wants, it would be a major departure from Indiana's current method for funding K-12 schools.

Indiana's education dollars are divvied up on a per-pupil basis. Schools report how many students they have each year, and the state adjusts their payments accordingly.

The amount each school gets per student, though, is different. It's based on a series of factors, including a "complexity index." That index wraps in the percentage of students in each district who qualify for free and reduced lunch, minority students and students who speak English as a second language — and more.

As a result, schools that serve populations considered statistically "easier" to educate get somewhere around $5,500 to $6,000 per student, while schools with statistically more challenging student populations can get north of $8,000 per student. In larger districts, that difference can add up quickly.

If Pence gets what he wants, it would be a significant departure from Indiana's approach to education funding over the years. It would create a second pot of money that isn't funneled through a formula that includes the complexity index.

Some state lawmakers have called Pence's approach unfair because it doesn't take the difficulty of educating certain student populations into account at all. Pence says he's more concerned with rewarding excellence.

While both Pence and McDonnell are pursuing expanded "school choice" options, the reality is that some students will remain in the struggling schools they're trying to give parents opportunities to opt out of.

How best to improve those schools — through McDonnell's intervention efforts or Pence's system of rewarding performance and penalizing failure — is an important debate with wide-ranging implications for the future of state education funding.