School Finance 101: Filling our Nation’s Funding Gaps | National Education Policy Center

School Finance 101: Filling our Nation’s Funding Gaps | National Education Policy Center

School Finance 101: Filling our Nation’s Funding Gaps

Big Education Ape: Getting School Finance Indicators Right – School Finance 101 - https://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2021/01/getting-school-finance-indicators-right.html

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Big Education Ape: The Adequacy and Fairness of State School Finance Systems (second edition) | School Finance Indicators Database - https://bigeducationape.blogspot.com/2020/02/the-adequacy-and-fairness-of-state.html

School Finance Indicators Database - Home

Mark Weber, Matt Di Carlo and I have a new report, with data and visualizations available over at schoolfinancedata.org. For that project, we take advantage of two major data sources to estimate a “cost model” for public school districts in the United States – specifically with the goal of estimating the per pupil costs (spending, controlling for differences in efficiency) to achieve a common outcome goal. We set that common outcome goal at the very modest level of existing national average outcomes on state assessments of reading and math achievement, grades 3 to 8. Yes, these are limited outcomes. Yes, this is a low bar. But, our main point here is to evaluate the disparities that exist across states and districts in the funding available, relative to the predicted costs, of achieving this modest target. Education cost analyses of this type have helped us better understand two things:

1. It costs more to achieve higher outcomes than lower ones; and
2. It costs more to achieve any given level of outcomes in some settings, with some children, than others!

State school finance systems state accountability systems for schools have historically been disjoint. On the one hand, we use state assessment data and other outcome measures to declare schools or districts good or bad – exceptional or failing. But rarely do we design and implement school funding systems that are actually built upon estimates of a) the costs of achieving the desired outcome levels, on average, or b) how those costs vary from one setting and child to the next. That is, we don’t design state school finance systems to deliver the funding that would provide each school or district with equal opportunity to hit the targets we set in state accountability policies. Thus, we necessarily create an unfair playing field. This is true in every state, though some more than others. We’ve rarely even considered how these disparities play out across states. That is, whether children in Mississippi should have equal opportunity to achieve outcomes similar to children in Massachusetts, and what that might cost.

Here’s what those funding gaps look like with respect to costs to achieve national average CONTINUE READING: School Finance 101: Filling our Nation’s Funding Gaps | National Education Policy Center

Teacher Tom: What the Evidence Tells Us We Should Be Doing in Our Schools

Teacher Tom: What the Evidence Tells Us We Should Be Doing in Our Schools

What the Evidence Tells Us We Should Be Doing in Our Schools

According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Economic Forum, and Unicef (and according to the dubious measurement of standardized test scores) Finland has the best schools in the world. They have achieved this status by building their educational system on evidence. The US languishes around the middle of the pack, often falling into the bottom half according to some measures. We have achieved this lack of success by relying upon the busy-body guesswork of policy makers, billionaire dilettantes, and administrators who listen to them.

It shouldn't be surprising that the system based on evidence, on research, on reality, would outperform the one based on the fantasies and feelings of people who are not professional educators. In Finland, they do not try to teach kindergarteners to read because the evidence tells us that formal literacy instruction should not start until at least the age of seven and that children who are compelled into it too early often suffer emotionally and academically in the long run. In the US we are forcing kindergartners, and even CONTINUE READING: Teacher Tom: What the Evidence Tells Us We Should Be Doing in Our Schools

Jersey Jazzman: The Fiscal Impact Of Charter Schools on School Districts: Thoughts on My New Report

Jersey Jazzman: The Fiscal Impact Of Charter Schools on School Districts: Thoughts on My New Report

The Fiscal Impact Of Charter Schools on School Districts: Thoughts on My New Report

If you follow me on Twitter, you probably noticed a few comments about a new report I have out with the Fordham Institute: Robbers or Victims? Charter Schools and District Finances. I'm putting my thoughts here so you know they are mine and mine alone. Hopefully, I can shed light on what the report finds and what I believe that means.

Let me start by saying I don't think a have a false sense of my place in the ongoing debate about education policy: I'm a teacher and blogger who went and got a PhD in the field, who continues to teach K12 (but also teaches grad students in education policy part-time), and has a bit of following on social media (although not nearly as large as others). My blog is full of posts that call out what I believe is bad research in support of education "reform" -- especially charter schools. I also put out reports now and then for a variety of groups that have cast doubt on charter school "success" stories.

Given this, it was a surprise to me when I got an email last year from Fordham, asking about a working paper based on my dissertation. Fordham is well known as a supporter of charter schools, and regularly produces research supporting their expansion. Why would they want to work with me? Did they know who I am and what I've done?

It turns out they did. They were considering doing a study very similar to what I had done CONTINUE READING: Jersey Jazzman: The Fiscal Impact Of Charter Schools on School Districts: Thoughts on My New Report

BRUCE BAKER, ROB COTTO AND PRESTON GREEN: Fixing Connecticut school finance: The time is now

Fixing Connecticut school finance: The time is now

Fixing Connecticut school finance: The time is now

The COVID pandemic has laid bare the extent of inequalities across Connecticut’s cities, towns and school districts and the children and families they serve. Connecticut has long been one of our nation’s most racially and economically segregated states, while also one of the wealthiest. In the past decade those inequities have worsened along both economic and racial lines. In 2021, Connecticut continues to face the interrelated challenges of segregation and school funding equity and adequacy.  Connecticut must do better.

In two recent articles we showed that Connecticut school funding continues to systematically disadvantage students in schools and districts serving predominantly Latinx communities. This finding is not new, with districts like Bridgeport, Waterbury and New Britain recognized in numerous national reports as being among the most financially disadvantaged school districts in the nation. For a period, Connecticut appeared to do somewhat better on behalf of predominantly Black school districts, but this was largely a function of additional aid directed specifically at magnet school programs in Hartford and New Haven, and not by the design of the general aid formula. In a forthcoming article, we find that Black-white disparities in state and local revenues and in property taxation are among the largest in the nation and have worsened in recent years.

Inequities in property taxation, fueled by a long history of exclusionary zoning and racial discrimination, are major contributors to the state’s school finance problem, and cannot be ignored. Municipal fiscal dependence is also a problem. Having a system in which local public schools rely on city and town budgets, where those budgets are based on prior taxing and spending behavior rather than current needs exacerbates the unevenness of school funding, hitting especially hard, schools in cities like Bridgeport.  Above all, however, the state’s general aid program for schools – The Education Cost Sharing Formula (ECS) – falls short of addressing these inequities, and has never been CONTINUE READING: Fixing Connecticut school finance: The time is now

Shanker Blog: One Page Summaries of Your State's School Finance System | National Education Policy Center

Shanker Blog: One Page Summaries of Your State's School Finance System | National Education Policy Center

Shanker Blog: One Page Summaries of Your State's School Finance System

For the past few years, the Shanker Institute has been collaborating with Bruce Baker and Mark Weber of Rutgers University to publish the School Finance Indicators Database (SFID), a collection of finance and resource allocation measures for policymakers, journalists, parents, and the public. 

The State Indicators Database (SID), the primary product of the SFID, is freely available to the public, but it includes about 125 variables. So, even if you know exactly the types of measures you are looking for, compiling the data for a state or a group of states might present a challenge. While we have tried to make the data accessible for non-researchers, we realize that it can still be difficult for a lot of people. 

We have therefore just published 51 state school finance profiles (with help from ASI fellow Lauren Schneider), which pull together a digestible amount of information into one place for each state (and D.C.). You can download the profiles individually or as a group.

As with our annual report, the profiles present SID data for three "core" measures, which together offer an effective overview of the fairness and sufficiency of each state's finance system: 

1. Effort: how much of a state’s total resources or capacity are spent directly on public K-12 education;
2. Adequacy: whether states provide districts with resources sufficient to meet common outcome goals;
3. Progressivity: whether states allocate more resources to districts serving larger proportions of disadvantaged students. CONTINUE READING: Shanker Blog: One Page Summaries of Your State's School Finance System | National Education Policy Center