Improving equity of education funding is a key to addressing social injustices in education. Weighted student funding systems are a relatively novel approach a number of large urban and suburban districts have used to try to improve the equity of school funding. In a weighted student funding (WSF) system, the dollars distributed to schools are…

State policymakers wrestle with long-standing questions and concerns about how to best provide additional fiscal support to rural school districts to ensure their students have access to adequate educational opportunities. In this study, we describe how one state developed empirically based estimates for the additional cost of operating rural…

Policymakers in Texas want to understand the funding levels necessary for community colleges to meet their promise of providing an affordable and accessible pathway to a postsecondary certificate or degree. Regional Educational Laboratory Southwest conducted this study to help leaders at the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board better…

California policymakers have established the expectation that all public school students should have access to a broad course of study, in classes where instruction is consistent with the state's content standards. Further, the state holds schools and school districts accountable for their ability to ensure that all students achieve at a specified…

Over the past 25 years, a small but growing number of school districts have implemented weighted student funding (WSF), a type of school-based budgeting system, as a way to increase school-level autonomy and flexibility and more equitably distribute funding among schools. In these districts, education leaders have implemented policies that…

"Districts' Use of Weighted Student Funding Systems to Increase School Autonomy and Equity: Findings from a National Study. Volume 1," is intended to provide both practitioners and policymakers with detailed information about the design, implementation, and outcomes of weighted student funding (WSF) systems in the United States. Findings…

The Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) is due for reauthorization, and Senator Tom Harkin and Congressman Chakkah Fattah have both proposed revisions to the comparability provision of the federal Title I program. Harkin's proposed legislation requires the use of per pupil expenditures, including actual teacher salaries, to demonstrate…

This article features Strategic School Funding for Results (SSFR) project, a new joint initiative of the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and Pivot Learning Partners (PLP) aimed at improving school finance, human resources, and management systems in large urban school districts. The goal of the project is to develop and implement more…

Using fiscal data provided by the finance office of the school district, and personnel data obtained from the California Basic Education Data System (maintained by the California Department of Education, or CDE), the authors present analyses to provide a foundation for local policymakers that may be used to assess whether there are inequities in…