I'm glad we have Flypaper to vent our internal disagreements, as I take umbrage with Ben's Gadfly discussion of Weighted Student Funding. In his review of an AIR report examining WSF in San Francisco and Oakland, Ben is far too dismissive of WSF as a reform (it "adjusts the inputs in a field where outcomes are what really matter"). Of course that's true at an abstract level, but it's a big oversimplification.
First, rearranging school funding so that the poorest schools are funded on par with wealthier schools may indeed be an adjustment of inputs, but it's an important one. The Education Trust, Marguerite Roza, and others have long documented the startling funding disparities that exist among districts, and among schools within districts. If we want great results from schools with underprivileged students, step one involves leveling the playing fields on which they compete.
But second, a more importantly, WSF is intended to change the way schools work, so they can produce great outcomes. It is meant to give principals greater autonomy, so they can tailor their school's offerings to meet the needs of their particular students. It is meant to give them greater say over the teachers who teach there, so that the poorest schools aren't always stuck with the newest or the cheapest teachers. And it is meant to respond to, and enable, the realities of 21st??century schooling, in which students are mobile (so their funding should be as well) and choice options are proliferating.
When we released Fund the Child, arguing for WSF, a terrific list of education leaders agreed.
Of course, it's important that AIR is evaluating its actual implementation, and the results should be taken seriously - they did not find as many changes in the resource allocations, staffing, or school-level offerings as they expected. But they did find some, and I think they would have found more if purer forms of WSF had been implemented. So we should still be optimistic about the powerful potential of WSF.
