AP Photo/Rogelio V. SolisLawmakers, lobbyists and education and community activists provided a standing room only crowd in the Supreme Courtroom of the new Capitol in Jackson as they listen as Rebecca Sibilia, CEO of EdBuild, a New Jersey non-profit education consulting firm, outlines their suggestions for directing more tax dollars into the classroom of public school during a joint meeting of the House and Senate Education and Appropriations committeeson Jan. 16, 2017. 

As Mississippi lawmakers weigh a sweeping rewrite of how schools are funded in the state, a national look at public school funding shows that 28 other states are already using a similar model of the formula currently under debate.

House Education Committee Chairman Richard Bennett, a supporter of the legislation pending before lawmakers, extolls the formula as good for Mississippi students.

 

“The formula is entirely student-based, which means that the single most important consumer of our public school system — the student — is the fundamental building block of the new formula,” Bennett wrote in a recent op-ed.

He calls the state’s current formula, the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, too complex and focused on programs instead of students. The new formula would make funding more transparent and direct the state’s dollars to students who need them most, he wrote.

Weighted student funding, or student-centered funding, establishes a base per student amount that is required to educate a general education student — one without special circumstances or needs. Weights, or additional funding, are then added to that amount depending on individual students’ characteristics.

But not all states have a perfect base amount, and opponents of Mississippi’s new plan have pointed out the current legislation does not require a periodic recalculation of the base student amount.

In Mississippi, the proposed base student cost in pending legislation is $4,800, which is less than the per pupil amount of $5,381.52 called for under the state’s current MAEP funding formula this year. However, that full amount was not appropriated this school year. In fact, the MAEP formula has been fully funded only twice since its adoption in 1997.

The new $4,800 base student cost was proposed in the January 2017 recommendations of private research firm EdBuild, which stated that the $4,800 amount “will exceed the current effective base funding by $164.” Mississippi Department of Education officials told Mississippi Today that they are not able to calculate a per pupil amount from this year’s overall state appropriation.

 

The proposed $4,800 base student amount would be in line with surrounding states: more than the $2,425 per student in South Carolina, close to the $4,203.95 in Florida but less than the $6,713 in Arkansas.

But Kentucky, for example, recalculates its base student cost every two years while Arkansas lawmakers use a formula called a “matrix” that determines an adequate level of funding each year. For example, the base student cost was $6,584 per student in fiscal year 2016 and $6,646 per student in fiscal year 2017, according to the Arkansas Department of Education’s school finance manual.

 

Public education advocacy group The Parents’ Campaign urges their members not to support the bill for several reasons, one of which is it “contains no objective formula for determining base student cost; does not require that funding keep pace with inflation; and makes no provision to consider a recalculation for seven years.”

The idea behind student-centered funding is that the dollars will reach the students who need it most: low income, English learners and special education students, to name a few.

But in reality, many states instead adapt their school funding formulas to the amount they can afford to spend.

“In most cases, the dollar amount per student is what the state can afford,” Mike Griffith, school finance strategist at the Education Commission of the States, said specifically of how states set the base student cost. (Gov. Phil Bryant is the current chair of the Education Commission of the States.)

Formulas look different and are funded at varying amounts across the country, and research on statewide implementation of student-centered funding is limited.

 

 

 

U.S. Department of Education pilot project

A new pilot project initiated by the federal government could indicate an increasing trend toward student-centered funding mechanisms.

 

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos recently announced a pilot program for 50 school districts across the country to create their own student-centered funding formulas and combine certain federal, state and local funds and allocate resources with more flexibility. Districts that want to qualify for the 2018-2019 school year must submit their applications by March 12.

“The flexibility will allow school districts to combine eligible Federal funds with State and local funds in order to allocate resources to schools based on the number of students and the corresponding level of need,” the press release announcing the program stated. “This type of system, often called ‘student-centered funding’ or ‘weighted student funding,’ is widely considered to be a modern, transparent and quantifiable way to allocate resources to the students most in need.”

“This is a great opportunity to put students first,” DeVos said. “Instead of relying on complex federal rules to allocate funds, local leaders can use this flexibility to match funds — local, state or federal — to the needs of students.”

However, critics — including those in Mississippi — speculate that DeVos’ support of such a funding method shows how weighted student funding can facilitate charter schools and vouchers. DeVos is an advocate of ‘school choice’ issues such as charter schools and vouchers.

Assigning a more expensive amount to individual students, and the money potentially following those students in a ‘school choice’ program, could lead to charter and private schools siphoning more money from public education, opponents say.