Weighted Student Funding Research Articles

OPTIMIZING WEIGHTED STUDENT FUNDING: IMPROVING EDUCATIONAL EQUITY FOR ENGLISH LEARNERS AND STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES

This research examines the impact of Weighted Student Funding (WSF) on educational outcomes for English Learners (ELs) and students with disabilities under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). Using data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), we applied Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) and Monte Carlo simulations to assess how variations in funding affect the provision of services and academic performance for these populations. The findings reveal a significant positive correlation between increased WSF allocations and improved outcomes for ELs and students with disabilities. The research fills a critical gap in the literature by providing robust empirical evidence on how targeted funding improves equity in education, offering concrete recommendations for policymakers based on the results

Unpacking the Principal Strategies in Leveraging Weighted Student Funding

Weighted student funding (WSF) systems have been implemented in various countries to give schools more autonomy over how to allocate their funding. School principals use funding to maintain school operations and foster innovation for achieving educational goals. However, despite the importance of this process, scholarly research has largely overlooked how principals make decisions about allocating their financial resources. Accordingly, this study seeks to provide practical insights into the strategies used by one school by highlighting their staff’s perceptions about using their WSF to maintain school operations and spur innovation. Using a case study approach, we investigated a principal who effectively used a school’s WSF to transform a failing school into an innovative one. The findings revealed that the principal strategically implemented financial management mechanisms in a way that inspired teachers to consider more profoundly how a school’s WSF can help achieve educational goals. The principal fostered consensus on the school’s direction, encouraged innovation through hands-on experiential learning and strategic planning, and facilitated funding for innovative teachers by guiding proposal development. In the final section of this article, insights into the shifting cultural and practical landscape of financial resource utilization within schools are discussed.

Missed Opportunities: Weighted Student Funding Systems and Resource Equity

Improving equity of education funding is a key to addressing social injustices in education. Weighted student funding systems are a relatively novel approach a number of large urban and suburban districts have used to try to improve the equity of school funding. In a weighted student funding (WSF) system, the dollars distributed to schools are “weighted” to provide more dollars to schools enrolling high-need students, such as those who are economically disadvantaged, English learners, or students with disabilities. Using an interrupted time series approach, we examined trends in equity over time in four WSF districts to examine whether equity improved following WSF implementation. We find that equity of resource distribution improved meaningfully as measured by both the progressiveness of funding with respect to poverty and the predictability of funding in only one of the four districts examined in the longitudinal analysis. We performed several follow-up analyses, including simulations of WSF formulas, to understand why we did not observe improved equity in WSF districts. We show that distributing dollars outside of the WSF system, charging schools average rather than actual salaries for teachers, the use of weights that reward lower-poverty schools, and the provision of extra funding to magnet schools or other lower-poverty schools with specialized academic programs can all work to erode equity gains in WSF systems.

Weighted Student Funding and Outcomes: Implementation in 18 School Districts

ABSTRACT Over the last 20 years an increasing number of districts have implemented weighted student funding (WSF) policies that distribute resources to schools in ways that more accurately reflect the level students may require and provide principals with expanded flexibility in the use of funds. This study uses an event study model to examine whether student academic performance trends for a sample of 18 districts between 2009 and 2016 outpaced those in districts that did not implement WSF. We find a positive relationship overall between the implementation of WSF and increased math and ELA test scores for the total student population, specifically for ELA in the first year after WSF implementation. We find similar results for black students. We also see that WSF implementation is related to a decline in the disparity in ELA and math scores between white and black students. These trends, however, are a continuation of results these districts had prior to the policy.

Do Districts Using Weighted Student Funding Formulas Deliver More Dollars to Low-income Students?

ABSTRACT School districts have increasingly adopted weighted student funding (WSF) formulas that allocate dollars, rather than staff positions, to schools in the name of equity and flexibility. While research to date has studied equity in some of these districts, there is no research that examines the entire cohort of WSF districts together. This paper examines how equitably 20 WSF districts distribute dollars to their schools measured against a cohort of 20 comparable districts that use a traditional, centralized staffing model. We find that while a majority of all 40 study districts drive more dollars to low-income students, low-income students in WSF districts are more likely than their peers in other districts both to receive additional dollars and to receive a greater share of district expenditures. We also find that WSF districts that have had their formula in place for longer are more equitable than recent adopters.

Variation is the Norm: A Landscape Analysis of Weighted Student Funding Implementation

School districts increasingly rely on weighted student funding (WSF), yet there is little research on this allocation model. This study collects more than 70 measures on each of 19 districts using WSF in 2018 for a landscape analysis of formula features and implementation practices. While districts report common reasons for adopting WSF (equity, flexibility, and transparency), we find no standard WSF model. Homegrown formulas and nonformula features and exemptions reflecting local context are the norms, resulting in substantial differences. Nearly all districts continue to budget with average salaries (likely limiting equity) but grant principals flexibility on staffing, stipends, and contracts.

Would weighted-student funding enhance intra-district equity in Texas? A simulation using DEA

We use data envelopment analysis to model the educational production function, and then explore how a shift to weighted student funding using the student weights embedded in the Texas School Finance Formula would alter the allocation of inputs and potential outputs. School outputs are measured as value-added reading and math scores on standard achievement tests. We find that if school districts allocated their resources efficiently, then they would not allocate their resources to campuses according to the funding model weights. Policies that promote greater efficiency would also enhance equity in educational outcomes.

The Challenges of Advancing Fiscal Equity in a Resource-Strained Context

Weighted student funding (WSF) is a multifaceted school finance, management, and governance reform that is gaining attention. While WSF has a number of goals, its primary objective is to redress intra-district funding inequities. This article draws on a mixed-methods study of WSF in Prince George’s County Public Schools to examine the initiative’s impact on the distribution of financial resources to the 180 schools that were affected by it. Our findings indicate that WSF was not a robust mechanism for advancing equity and illustrate how technical, economic, and political factors can undermine the ability of WSF to realize its equity goals.

Weighted student funding in the Netherlands: A model for the U.S.?

AbstractAlthough a relatively new idea in the U.S., weighted student funding (WSF) for individual schools has a long history in the Netherlands. This country of about 16.5 million people has been using a version of WSF for all its primary schools (serving children from age 4 to 12) for 25 years. In this article we describe and evaluate the Dutch system and explore what insights there might be for the U.S., taking into account the very different cultural and normative contexts of the two countries. We find that, compared to those with few weighted students, Dutch schools with high proportions of weighted students have almost 60 percent more teachers per pupil as well as more support staff per teacher. Even these large resource advantages, however, are not sufficient by themselves to eliminate all quality shortfalls in the high‐weight schools, where quality is measured by school policies and practices. We conclude that weighted student funding for schools within districts in the U.S. is not likely to deliver the same highly progressive funding patterns as in the Netherlands because of the complex, multilayered U.S. education system and the absence of a political consensus in favor of generous weights. © 2011 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.

The Dutch Experience with Weighted Student Funding

The Netherlands' centralized school funding, long-term stability of education policies, and extensive social services contribute to its success. Weighted student funding might not translate well into the U.S. system.

Within-district resource allocation and the marginal costs of providing equal educational opportunity: Evidence from Texas and Ohio.

This study explores within-district fiscal resource allocation across elementary schools in Texas and Ohio large city school districts and in their surrounding metropolitan areas. Specifically, I ask whether districts widely reported as achieving greater resource equity through adoption of Weighted Student Funding (WSF) have in fact done so. I compare Houston Independent School District (a WSF district) to other large Texas cities and Cincinnati (also using WSF) to other large Ohio cities. Using a conventional expenditure function approach, I evaluate the sensitivity of elementary school budgets to special education populations, poverty rates, and school size. Next, I estimate two-stage least squares cost functions across schools to evaluate the relative costs of achieving average outcomes with respect to varied poverty rates within and across school districts within metropolitan areas. I use these estimates to evaluate whether urban core schools on average spend sufficient resources to compete with neighboring schools in other districts in the same Core Based Statistical Area. I find first that widely reported WSF success stories provide no more predictable funding with respect to student needs than other large urban districts in the same state. I also find that in some cases, resource levels in urban core elementary schools are relatively insufficient for competing with schools in neighboring districts to achieve comparable outcomes.

The Politics of Off-the-Shelf School Finance Reform

This article summarizes and evaluates two Off-the-Shelf school finance reforms that gained then waned in popularity over the past several years. The 65 percent solution claims that requiring all public school districts to allocate 65 cents of every education dollar “to the classroom” would drive substantial additional resources to children without increasing total spending, therefore improving the efficiency of public education systems. The 100 percent solution promotes a combination of decentralized school-based governance and budgeting, coupled with a district-to-school budget allocation strategy called Weighted Student Funding. We begin by evaluating the life cycles of these two reforms, concluding that the 65 percent solution has run its cycle, but that the 100 solution remains viable, mainly because it contains potentially more substantive reform elements. We point out that the research literature on productivity and efficiency of public schooling is far from decisive with respect to either shares of dollars allocated to the classroom or decentralized governance, despite bold claims of proponents of the solutions. Finally, we provide a series of empirical analysis and discussions of related research raising additional questions about the central claims of the reforms, including the claim that Weighted Student Funding is a panacea for funding inequities that persist across schools within large urban districts.

Reflections on Equity, Adequacy, and Weighted Student Funding

Within the context of the school finance literature, the concepts of equity and adequacy raise a number of complex definitional and pragmatic issues. The purpose of this article is to clarify those issues and to use those concepts to evaluate the recent policy proposal called weighted student funding (WSF). Though WSF contains some equity-enhancing elements, it could fall short of its equity goals because of imperfect weights. This approach also fails to take full account of the concentrations of challenging-to-educate students and their effects on the distribution of teachers. In addition, the WSF proposal can be faulted for paying no attention to adequacy, potentially stigmatizing individual students, and placing so much focus on individual schools. A more complete evaluation of WSF would require a broader institutional perspective that extends beyond the equity and adequacy considerations of this article.

Equality, Adequacy, and Educational Policy

In this article I argue that the distinction between an adequate education and an equal education has been overdrawn. In my view, a certain type of equality—civic equality—is internal to the idea of educational adequacy. An education system that completely separates the children of the poor and minorities from those of the wealthy and middle class cannot be adequate for a democratic society. Educational adequacy should be tied to the requirements of equal citizenship. I also argue that my conception of adequacy in education has advantages over competing frameworks. I contrast its implications for a recent policy proposal that argues for weighted student funding (WSF) with the assessment of this proposal from an equality framework. While weighting in favor of the least advantaged students is important, the critical issue is whether or not such weighting is sufficient for bringing all students up to adequacy's high bar. This means that to be adequate, WSF must be placed in a larger policy context.

Equality of Opportunity and School Finance: A Commentary on Ladd, Satz, and Brighouse and Swift

This article discusses issues of justice concerning school finance with a focus on the development of a conception of equality of educational opportunity. Emphasis is put on discussing the views of the other contributors in this symposium. The main conclusions of the discussion are that (1) equity and adequacy are not inconsistent views because they address fundamentally different questions; (2) adequacy sets a floor under the education that the state owes to all children, but it does not relieve the state of the obligation to provide whatever additional education it chooses to provide equally; (3) equality of opportunity may be limited by conflicting rights; and (4) weighted student funding (WSF) is theoretically attractive because it emphasizes the funding of students rather than districts and is sensitive to relevant differences among them, however the level of theoretical agreement and empirical knowledge required to implement WSF in a nuanced way is not available.