Apples to apples comparison of Brown’s funding formula - by John Fensterwald
Twenty-two of the 50 largest districts in the state would receive more money under Gov. Jerry Brown’s proposed K-12 funding formula when it’s fully funded, potentially in seven years, while 28 districts would do better if additional money were simply divvied up under the current system, with no reforms, according to data provided this week by the state Department of Finance. Of course, glaring problems with the current system would also persist if nothing were done.
Here is a sample of how much the largest 50 districts currently receive in per student revenue (column E), how they’d fare under the Local Control Funding Formula when fully funded (column F) and under the status quo (column G). The difference is column H; positive numbers indicated districts would do better without reforms, negative numbers they’d do better under the LCFF. Districts with high concentrations of low-income and English learners (columns C and D) would get more money under the governor’s plan. Source: Department of Finance. (Click to enlarge.)
Legislators had been waiting for that piece of information – a comparison of how the state’s approximately 2,000 districts and charter schools would fare under Brown’s proposed Local Control Funding Formula versus how they’d do under the status quo – in order to evaluate Brown’s plan for remaking the way K-12 schools are financed. (As it has done before, Finance did not release a spreadsheet with data that could be reworked, but rather provided an unwieldy 52-page PDF document.)
New scorecards show challenges for state’s community colleges - by Kathryn Baron
Students who start community college prepared to take college-level courses have a better than 70 percent chance of earning a degree or certificate or transferring to a four-year college within six years. The outcome is significantly worse for students placed in remedial math or science, with barely 41 percent achieving those goals, according to the first-ever student success scorecards released...