Verbatim Mac

Solvency – progressive funding structures

SQuo disincentivizing state funding – need reforms that would encourage funding equity and effort

Boser & Brown, 15, Vice President of Education Policy at American Progress [Ulrich & Catherine; 7-7-2015, American Progress "5 Key Principles to Guide Consideration of any ESEA Title I Formula Change," Center for American Progress, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/reports/2015/07/07/116696/5-key-principles-to-guide-consideration-of-any-esea-title-i-formula-change/ ; RJC]

3. Leverage funds to incentivize evidence-based state funding formulas

The United States is one of just three Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, countries that provides fewer resources for educating students living in poverty than their peers. Educational outcomes in the United States, which differ significantly by socioeconomic status, reflect this approach. Title I reform could help rectify that problem by providing a greater incentive for states to create progressive funding structures.

Today, the EFIG formula, one of the four Title I formulas, factors in whether states fund Title I and non-Title I schools equitably. Unfortunately, this approach has the perverse effect of disincentivizing states from investing more significantly in schools serving low-income students. A funding formula truly aimed at closing the student-achievement gap should send a clear and unambiguous message to states that they should implement progressive funding systems—such as weighted-student funding systems that allocate resources on the basis of student need—which provide more money to students with greater needs.

The Title I formula should also include a fiscal effort factor. In other words, the formula should include a measure of whether states invest more state and local funds in education. This approach does not disadvantage poorer states because the measure evaluates on the amount of money that states invest relative to other fiscal priorities. As part of a reauthorized ESEA, both priorities—funding equity and effort—should be incorporated into the base formula or required in order for states to retain their administrative funds.

Solvency—increase Per-Pupil Funding

Requiring states to increase progressive funding to title I school – solve resource disparity and increases education

CAP Education Policy Team, 2015

(Center for American Progress, “A Fresh Look at School Funding”, May 18, 2015, https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/education/reports/2015/05/18/113397/a-fresh-look-at-school-funding/, accessed 7/3/17, GDI-JG)

School funding is a necessary condition of a high-quality education. Despite this, investments in education vary wildly across the country, and many states and districts fail to provide enough money to meet this minimum threshold. In the 2011-12 school year, for instance, some 300 school districts spent less than $7,500 per student after adjusting for cost of living and student needs. In unadjusted figures, these low-spending districts generally spend between $5,351 and $8,233; on average, they spend around $7,130 per student.∂ For a number of reasons—ranging from weak funding systems to tax cuts—some states have not demonstrated that they provide all of their districts and schools with an adequate amount of school funding. As a result, there is a role for federal government to set clear expectations for school funding via a minimum spending threshold for districts to be eligible to receive Title I funds. CAP recommends that the federal government establish a national per-pupil spending minimum of $7,500 per student after adjusting for differences in cost of living. Even after making cost-of-living adjustments, $7,500 per pupil annually is a minimal amount to spend on a child’s education.∂ As a benchmark, this figure is clearly reasonable. A few years ago, some of the country’s leading experts in school finance estimated that to educate effectively, a district should spend at least $10,980 per pupil in 2012 inflation-adjusted dollars. In short, this minimum figure is thousands of dollars less than what some experts estimate, and it should therefore be a reasonable benchmark to identify only the districts with the most needs. The cost to provide an adequate education varies across states, but this amount is consistent with base funding levels established in several states. For example, in their state funding formulas for fiscal year 2015, North Dakota and Rhode Island each allocate districts at least around $9,000 per pupil.∂ Using data from 2012—the most recent data available—CAP found that there were 19 states where at least one school district spent less than the $7,500 mark. Among these states, there were five—Arizona, California, Idaho, Texas, and Utah—where more than 10 percent of districts spent less than $7,500 per student, even after adjusting for cost of living. In Utah, almost 40 percent of school districts spent less than $7,500 per pupil, while 26 percent of districts in California spent below the threshold. Many of these low-spending districts are rural, but some are in suburban or urban areas, such as Cypress-Fairbanks Independent School District on the outskirts of Houston and Burbank Unified School District outside Los Angeles. Nevertheless, it is important to note that California’s new state education funding formula was enacted in the year after these data were released. Known as the Local Control Funding Formula, California’s approach would allocate each district around $7,600 per student, on average, almost certainly putting a great many of the state’s districts above the $7,500 threshold after adjusting for differences in cost of living.∂ To address this issue, CAP recommends that all states with a district below the minimum threshold should have to provide a plan to ensure that all districts in the state meet this threshold within three years. States would have an opportunity to request a waiver of the minimum threshold from the secretary of education if they could show that their districts had sufficient funding to meet the needs of all students. This waiver authority is important, since CAP’S adjustments for cost of living might not adequately adjust for all differences in cost. Under this proposal, the secretary also would have the ability to adjust the minimum threshold, given changes in economic conditions.∂ The U.S. Department of Education would review and approve these plans. If a state could not demonstrate that all of its districts were meeting the minimum-spending threshold after three years, the state would forfeit its Title I administration funds. The recaptured funds would then be distributed directly to high-need school districts based on the Title I formula.∂ This proposal would require a significant increased investment in public education in many districts. By establishing this spending floor, however, the federal government would make clear the expectation that all districts, regardless of their demographics, have enough resources to provide all children with a high-quality education.

Increase in per-pupil funding leads to reduction in likelihood of grade repetition and school penalties- lessens risk of criminal involvement

Johnson, University of California, Berkeley professor of public policy, 15 (Rucker C., "Follow the Money: School Spending from Title I to Adult Earnings", The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences, 12-17-15, www.rsfjournal.org/doi/full/10.7758/RSF.2015.1.3.03, 7-5-17, GDI-EC)

To examine intermediate educational outcomes leading up to high school graduation, looking beyond overall years of education reveals a similar pattern of significant results for the likelihood of grade repetition and other school-related outcomes. Among poor children, 20 percent repeated a grade at some point, and 28 percent were suspended or expelled from school. Among nonpoor children, 11 percent were held back and 17 percent were suspended or expelled. The results presented in table 4 indicate that a $100 increase in per-pupil Title I funding leads to a 2 percentage point reduction in the likelihood of grade repetition (column 1, marginally significant), a 2 percentage point increase in the likelihood of placement in an advanced or gifted class (column 2), and roughly a 2 percentage-point reduction in the likelihood of ever being suspended or expelled from school (column 3, marginally significant). These results are particularly noteworthy because, as mentioned, grade repetition and suspension or expulsion from school are often early antecedents to high school dropout and behavior problems. They are also key risk factors for subsequent criminal involvement among individuals raised in high-poverty, high-crime neighborhoods. The final column of table 4 shows that a $100 increase in per-pupil Title I funding is significantly associated with a 0.44 percentage-point reduction in the likelihood of ever being incarcerated by age thirty-five, which corresponds with about a 10 percent reduction in the risk, on average, for poor children. Recall that a $100 increase in per-pupil Title I funding corresponds with about an $800 increase in Title I funding per poor child for the average district.