It's argued that Weighted Student Funding (WSF, aka Fair Student Funding) is no panacea among education reforms. And that's true, of course-allocating funds rationally and fairly and then empowering principals to control their schools are merely means to an end, the ends being better-run schools; parents more satisfied with how schools meet their kids' needs; and, ultimately, students learning more. But still, it's nice to hear that WSF is helping move a district in the right directions. Education Week describes the impact in Baltimore:
Two years ago, only 150 students attended Holabird Elementary, then a K-5 school in the southeastern corner of this city. Competition from charters and from regular public schools in nearby Baltimore County had drained families from Holabird, a chronic underperformer.So when Andr??s A. Alonso, the chief executive officer of the Baltimore city schools, began last year to allocate money to schools based on their students' needs, Holabird stood to be hit hard. Achievement had started to rise, but its small roster put the school at risk of losing six teachers unless more students enrolled.
Principal Lindsay Krey, about to start her second year as the leader of the school, decided to knock on some doors.
"We were worried about how much we could lose, but it became a rallying point for our staff and our parents," says Ms. Krey, now in her third year at Holabird. "We were starting to see some real progress, so our parents went door to door to tell others what was happening."
The door-knocking campaign worked: Fifty new students enrolled for the 2008-09 school year, sparing Holabird from budget cuts. And it gave Mr. Alonso a powerful example of how his "fair student funding" model could inspire hustle and creativity from principals, who under the new model are in control of most of their budgets.
The article continues, discussing Alonso's thoughts about Baltimore before he took the job:
...the CEO also described the district as "bipolar" because of what he saw as huge gaps in the quality of school leadership and the types of innovative approaches that principals and teachers were using to improve student outcomes. Those inequities, he decided, could be fixed in part by pushing most of the budgeting authority out of district headquarters and down to principals, and redistributing money across schools based on the characteristics of the students in them: Poor children, those with special needs, and English-language learners, for example, are assigned additional dollars, or "weights."But it was putting the budget decisions squarely on principals and holding them responsible for their results that was the most radical change.
Under the old staffing model, principals would "inflate their numbers to get more money," but still had virtually no say over what programs were in their buildings, said Matthew Hornbeck, the principal of Hampstead Hill Academy, a pre-K-8 charter school that until 2004 had been a traditional district school. "It was a game everyone played, and it was wrong and unfair," said Mr. Hornbeck, who helped Mr. Alonso lead the effort to change the funding formula.
It would be a stretch to say these changes caused the rising test scores Baltimore is experiencing--they were also on the rise before Alonso arrived, and he has instituted many more reforms than just WSF--but whatever the reasons, it's worth acknowledging the results: the district has moved out of Maryland's "corrective action" status, and, in the words of Maryland state sup. Nancy Grasmick, "Dr. Alonso is building a high level of confidence in the school system."
