Tennessee lawmakers adopted a new school funding formula in 2022, moving from a staffing-based to a per-pupil-based model with the intent of directing more state dollars to students who need them most. A recent report looks at the first year of implementation— 2023–24—to see if this aim was achieved.
The new model is weighted based on characteristics of student need. It begins with a base amount for every student—roughly $6,900—and provides additional funding for those who are poor, English learners (EL), or have special needs, as well as students in schools and districts that are small or located in sparsely populated areas, among other attributes. The weighting for each category varies, but here are three examples: Economically disadvantaged (ED) students receive 25 percent of the base amount added on; EL students receive between 20 and 70 percent add-on, depending on fluency level; and special education students receive between 15 and 150 percent add-on, depending on the intensity of support their learning challenge requires. Students in multiple categories can receive each additional amount for which they qualify on top of the base.
Analysts projected funding levels for each district based on the new categorical allocations and accounting for student and school demographics. Researchers compare these projections to the actual funding received in 2023–24 to see how well the system was functioning: Did it direct more resources to high-poverty students (meaning more progressive in nature)—or did the plans on paper not match up to reality?
Results show that the base amount accounts for the majority of funding dispersed under the formula—75.6 percent—and that, outside that base, the largest category is for ED students, whose needs account for 6.3 percent of total funding. Students with language needs account for 4.4 percent, while the various special education needs together account for 5.7 percent. The different add-ons for district and school attributes account for the remaining 8.2 percent of the total.
On paper, the formula intended a funding advantage between ED and non-ED students of $1,715 per pupil. But analysis of the distribution of funds at the start of the 2023–24 school year—capturing the difference in real-life exposure to per-pupil funding—finds the actual advantage was just $299, a mere 17.4 percent of the formula-intended difference. That reduction was driven by the blend of poor and non-poor students within districts. That particular mix depends on a combination of factors, such as segregation by income, district boundary lines, and how districts are distributed by size—and of course, these are complex interactions.
We’ve long hand-waved away such complexities, in part because we didn’t have better data. But knowing how districts allocate funding to schools and how schools allocate funding to students would help us better account for the aforementioned mix of students within districts—and how that mix interacts with intended funds. Those data tracking efforts are thankfully underway.
This is, of course, not the first time that a well-intended legislative fix did not work out as planned. School funding is subject to geographical, political, and bureaucratic contexts that have long proven difficult to adjust for in a formula. But it is worth the headache to figure it out. This study gets us another step closer.
SOURCE: Christopher Candelaria, Ishtiaque Fazlul, Cory Koedel, and Kenneth Shores, “Weighting for Progressivity? An Analysis of Implicit Tradeoffs Associated with Weighted Student Funding in Tennessee,” Annenberg Institute (October 2023).
