Show America’s Future the Money: All Needy Students Are Not Created Equal

_{A group of students walk back to their classroom after finishing their afternoon snack at Kingsley Elementary School Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2015, in Los Angeles. Many of the students at the school in a low-income neighborhood of Los Angeles eat breakfast and lunch provided by the school. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)}

RCEd Commentary

Your kindergarten teacher lied to you: while she told you that fair and equal are synonymous, equal does not actually translate into fair.

Students from low-income families have different needs, depending on their family background, their academic ability, and their school environment. And yet, our country’s school finance system fails to differentiate between low-income students. But with the most significant federal education law up for reauthorization, Congress has an opportunity to finally fund schools in a way that helps our neediest students.

Recently, Republicans in the House and Senate proposed to make funds attached to a civil rights-based federal program portable or allow them to “follow the child.” At first glance, portability seems the same as weighted student funding, a separate innovative and widely supported approach to restructure the typical school funding model, which is already used in Oakland, Baltimore, New York City, and other districts nationwide. But while both approaches allocate school funding on a per pupil basis, the similarities end there.

In the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, or ESEA, Title I is the key lever for the civil rights mission behind the law: to ensure that all children have a fair, equal, and significant opportunity to obtain a high-quality education. Title I provides states and districts with additional federal funding for low-income students to compensate for often inequitable state and local funding systems. While Title I allocates additional funds on a per-pupil basis for each low-income student attending an eligible school, these per-pupil funds are also targeted to the schools and districts with the greatest need -- those with the highest concentrations of low-income students. With limited federal dollars, prioritizing funding is critical: low-income students face much greater challenges when the majority of their classmates share their socioeconomic background.

But while Title I funding is a bandage for the current inequities in our school finance system, weighted student funding can be the cure by fundamentally restructuring how we fund schools. Weighted student funding, which is used to direct state or local funding streams, starts with a foundation of funding for every student and then provides more money for students with greater needs. When implemented well, weighted student funding is a systemic fix for the inequitable system of school funding that we have in this country.

Typically, school budgets are based on teacher salaries; as a result, schools with veteran teachers who have higher education levels -- often the wealthier schools -- receive more state and local resources. This is where Title I funding just tops off existing state and local allocations with federal dollars to supplement schools and students with greater need. Weighted student funding, however, puts students first, by shifting state and local funding based on need from the very beginning. Critically, weighted student funding provides money for each identified student need: for example, a low-income student who is also an English Language Learner would bring more funds to their school than a wealthy student who is also learning English.

In the absence of a more equitable school finance system, Title I is integral to the achievement of low-income students. But earlier this year, Senate HELP Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-TN), proposed a bill that dismantled the targeting of federal Title I dollars. Instead, states would be able to opt out of the current system of Title I funding for schools. States could choose “portability,” which allows states to provide schools and districts with the same flat funding for every low-income student – regardless of their school environment.

Portability sounds like good, clear, commonsense policy, but its impact can be insidious. Chairman Alexander’s proposal wipes out any consideration for the magnitude of student need, which is greater in schools and districts with concentrations of low-income students. Under portability, wealthier school districts, which typically receive less federal funding but have more political capital, would receive the same amount as any other district for every low-income student enrolled. With a limited number of federal dollars, every dollar that goes to a wealthy district is taken away from a low-income one. In other words, Detroit Public Schools would lose $50 million dollars while its wealthy suburbs would get even more money.

Portability and weighted student funding are fundamentally different school finance policies, and yet, even education policy experts can’t tell them apart. With ESEA reauthorization upon us, we must make the stakes clear: while portability dissolves the impact of federal funds for low-income students, weighted student funding can amplify the impact of state and local funds to better serve the students with the greatest need.