Introduction

      The state of the economy on a global, national and state level has changed dramatically in the past couple of years. The current economic climate in our country and the state of California is a topic of concern to all. California school districts have experienced continued rounds of budget reductions and the current fiscal condition of the state’s budget indicates more revenue reductions in the future.

      In 1883 Machiavelli proffered that the good or bad fortune of leaders depends on whether they are acting “with the character of the times”. (p. 366). The times are changing and K-12 educators may need to seek changes in keeping with the ‘character of the times’. The NEA (2008) study titled A Tale of Two Districts states:

This policy paper will address a brief background of funding for public education and examine an alternative to the traditional full-time equivalent (FTE) funding model for K-12 school district policymakers to consider a future funding approach to support students with the greatest needs.

      The funding of public schools in our nation at the expense of taxpayers has been in place for well over 150 years. Early attempts to fund involved the provision of land up to our current system of state and federal funding support that has become complex and expensive. The financial support for K-12 education has become “one of the nation’s major objects of public expenditure”. (Ladd & Fiske, p. 4) 

      Unlike most national educational funding models, the United States has a decentralized financial model. The 10th Amendment of the Constitution places the primary responsibility for schools with the states. Over the years, the result of this decentralized approach for funding public education has resulted in individual state revenue generation and distribution systems. (Cardak, 2004; Janssen, 2000; Ladd & Fiske, 2008; Odden, 1999) In concert with the state school financing responsibility is an ever-increasing focus of our federal government involvement with school financing and performance as illustrated by the federal No Child Left Behind Act 2001.

      California, like other states, addresses school financing with a state-to-district funding formula. A number of school finance policies and formulas have evolved via activism and legislation to address many inequalities such as lower funding rates from district to district and the increased cost of educating special needs students. (Evans, Murray and Schwab, 1997; Lloyd-Ellis, 2000) School districts in California and across the nation have sought alternative funding formulas to provide greater funds and control at the local site level. (Cardak, 2004; Evans, Murray & Schwab, 1997; Garris & Cohn, 1996; Hancock, 2008; Ladd & Fiske, 2008; Lloyd-Ellis, 2000; Ross & Levacic, 1999)

      Alternative Approaches

      The need to focus on alternative funding formulas to support the education of all students is and will continue to be a concern of school districts and states. The Governor’s Committee of Educational Excellence in California released a report in 2007 proposing major restructuring of California’s school finance system. This report advocates a major restructuring of the current K-12 funding system. The complexity of the current system would be reduced to two funding programs: base program and targeted program. The base program would support the needs of all students and the targeted program would provide extra funds for disadvantaged students. All of the current multiple funding programs would be collapsed into these two programs with simple formulas for allocating revenue. (Reinhard, Rose, Sengupta, Sonstelie, & Public Policy Institute, 2008) This report has not gained great momentum given the current economic crisis but it is a strong indication of state policymakers moving towards a more needs or student-based funding system rather than the current system with a myriad of funding programs and complex revenue formulas.  Districts should heed this move towards needs or student-based funding system and give serious consideration to alternate funding programs, such as weighted student formulas, prior to being legislated by the state.

The Weighted Student Formula

      There are an increasing number of districts embracing a decentralized funding system to support the needs of students. There are a variety of names for these systems such as student-based funding, school-based funding and weighted student formula (WSF). The WSF has been used for years in Canada and Great Britain. Urban school districts in America have started to implement a variety of WSF programs, usually associated with some sort of School Based Management (SBM) program. Although WSF does not require a link to a SBM the research indicates they do compliment each other. A Tale of Two Districts report (Chambers, Shambaugh, Levin, Muraki, & Poland, 2008) compares two such funding approaches used by San Francisco and Oakland Unified School Districts in response to improving adequacy, efficiency and equity for district distributions of funds to schools.

      The traditional school funding allocation formulas are based on the full-time equivalent (FTE), which is primarily determined by the cost of staffing needs for the school sites and/or across the district. The FTE amount per student then becomes the dollars that go to a site per student per the sites average daily attendance (ADA).  The WSF funding program is based on the demographic characteristics of the students within the school. Funding is not averaged across the district’s sites per ADA. Using a WSF funding program the district will determine a base funding amount for students that have the lowest demographic needs (English Language Learner, Special Education, Low Socio-economic qualification, etc.).  Additional funding from the state or federal programs to support different demographic needs is then in part or total weighted and added to the base funding amount for students that have the highest demographic needs.

      The weighted funding formula for a given student may vary by as much as $2,000 depending on the demographic needs of the individual student. Figure 1 below from Petko’s NEA Research (2005) provides a visual comparison example using the WSF funding program. The traditional FTE formula would yield $6,636 per FTE for all students. The WSF based on individual student needs would yield $5,673 for low need students and $7,075 for highest need students.

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      A key element to the WSF is that the money follows the child.  Using the example given in Figure 1, consider the site funding for 100 first grade students having the lowest needs.  Under the traditional FTE funding the site principal would receive $663,600 (100 x $6,636) for the 100 first graders.  The same 100 students funded using the WSF program would yield $567,300 (100 x $5,673) in site dollars.  This results in less dollars going to the sites with less needs students but let’s look at what happens for sites with the highest needs students. Using the same example for 100 highest needs students, the site would receive $707,500 (100 x $7,075) .

      The underlying principal of the WSF is decentralization based on the available dollars following the students with the greatest needs.  The outcome being schools with a high impact of highest need students receive a greater amount of dollars for those students and are capable of making decisions how to use those monies to impact student achievement.  Petko (2005, p. 6) states: “the greatest benefit put forward by WSF proponents is that the funding follows the student directly into the school and that the funding is not determined by an arbitrary formula, a formula that may or may not provide the school with adequate funding to meet a students needs”. He further states: “funding through WSF does create a system where resources are distributed more equitably”. (Petko, 2005, p. 6)

Conclusion

      This paper focused on WSF, one alternative funding model for K12 schools. There are variations to this model being explored by school districts in the state and across the nation. The recent Governor’s Committee of Educational Excellence in California (2007) is strong evidence that K-12 funding will continue to move towards needs based funding programs such as WSF. Districts and their policy makers are encouraged to heed the warning of Machiavelli and review their current system of allocating funds to sites and consider a form of weighted student formula to support the students with greatest needs.  Districts should focus their funding on the four researched based common denominators for WSF funding programs (Chambers et al.; Fry, 2006; Hancock, 2008; Odden, 1999; Petko, 2005; Reinhard et al.):

 

 

       

References