Afton Partners

At the beginning of this year, the National Conference of State Legislatures predicted there was a chance that more than half of states could finally overhaul the antiquated—and, advocates say, often inequitable—formulas that have been dictating their K-12 funding for years. But balancing state and local resources, deciding which districts should get what, and figuring out how to distribute money in a way that will spur academic achievement is tricky. While there’s a strong chance that states such as Maryland and Texas are likely to see major changes to state spending patterns as a result of decisions made this legislative season, others, such as Idaho and Nevada, have had a hard time getting funding formula replacement efforts off the ground. Here’s a snapshot of some of the most animated political battles this legislative season to replace, update, and legally grapple with school funding formulas.

Illinois’ new evidence-based school funding model is effectively driving added funding to the state’s neediest school districts, but the state must double its annual added investment in the formula if districts are to reach funding adequacy in a timely manner, according to a report released Wednesday by the bipartisan Center for Tax and Budget Accountability. For the state to make up a $7.35 billion education funding shortfall and meet adequacy levels within 10 years as specified in the legislation, CTBA President Ralph Martire said, the actual annual funding increase would have to be closer to $779 million.

The Texas Commission on Public School Finance recently recommended investing $800 million more annually in college readiness and third-grade reading proficiency. Both my personal experience and the academic evidence strongly suggest that outcomes-based funding can result in significant student gains. The key is whether the system is properly designed. Texas’s proposal is just that. Districts will receive at least $1,450 for each student proficient in third-grade reading. If the student comes from a low-income family, the district will receive $3,400. That’s a 24 percent increase to base funding for literacy instruction that will become a permanent component of the overall system. But perhaps the most beneficial element of this proposal is the size of the weights for at-risk students, which are used for allocating additional funding above base funding levels to categories of students who are shown to cost more to educate to state standards. For both third-grade proficiency and postsecondary success, the Texas proposal includes more than 200 percent additional funding for successful at-risk students — almost 10 times the 22 percent typically spent by states on these students.

Senators are making a last-ditch run to pass an end-of-session bill addressing Idaho’s K-12 funding formula. The bulk of the bill would define student groups — at-risk students, economically disadvantaged students, special education students, English language learners and gifted and talented students. Under a new formula, which bases funding on enrollment numbers, these student groups would be “weighted.” In other words, schools would receive additional funding to teach students who fall into these groups. If the state rewrites its funding formula — in 2020, or some future year — payments to school districts and charter schools would hinge on these definitions.

When the Hawaii Department of Education turned to a new “weighted student formula” to fund schools, a pressing concern was how that model might negatively impact geographically isolated schools with low student enrollment. Hana High and Elementary, a K-12 school on Maui’s east side, has seen its budget reduced by a third from nearly $3 million in the 2008-09 school year to $2 million in the 2016-17 school year… “It works for 98 percent of schools,” Hana’s recently retired principal, Richard Paul, said of the weighted student formula. “But it doesn’t work for us.” In the seven years since the formula took effect in Hawaii in 2006-7 to 2012-13, the total amount of dollars allocated to public schools increased by 11.3 percent, from $655.4 million to $729.7 million, according to a June 2013 assessment of the weighted student formula done by the American Institutes for Research. But some argue the system hammers the smallest schools, which sometimes don’t receive enough money through total pupil head count to afford to have someone teach just one subject or even supply textbooks.