The Evidence-Based Funding Implementation Study, provides a look into the factors impacting public school funding after the adoption of the Evidence-Based Funding legislation and examines the challenges and opportunities legislators and education leaders must take to ensure the Evidence-Based Funding Formula is fully funded overtime and the…

In 1993, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts dramatically overhauled its K-12 education system and created a new school finance formula, building an educational accountability structure to ensure every child has access to a high-quality education. The Massachusetts Education Reform Act (MERA) established academic standards in core subjects, mandated…

For 25 years, starting in the early 1990s, Pennsylvania had no fair funding formula for distributing state school funding based on the number of students in each district and other factors that research shows impact the cost of delivering a quality education that meets state standards. Basic education funding in Pennsylvania remains both…

Americans are dissatisfied with the public school system--and student academic outcomes have fallen to historic lows. Increasingly, state lawmakers are responding by giving parents more options for their children's education. Some of these new opportunities, such as in Arkansas and Iowa, allow every child in the state to apply. Policymakers also…

For more than a quarter century, Michigan public schools have been financed under a structure commonly known as Proposal A. This funding system's greater dependence on using state revenue to finance an enrollment-based funding formula has led to greater parity among districts over time and fueled more publicly supported schooling options for…

Five years ago, Baltimore City Public Schools seemed on the brink of a breakthrough. The district had been freed from mayoral control after more than a century, and a high-energy superintendent was leading bold moves to de-emphasize central administration, give schools greater autonomy, and engage families in a revitalized portfolio of educational…

Ten years have passed since New York's highest court ruled in the landmark school-funding and educational-rights case, "Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) v. State of New York," that the state was violating students' constitutional right to the "opportunity for a sound basic education" and ordered significant reforms of the…

This report documents the second year of implementing Cycle-based Budgeting at Jefferson County Public Schools (Louisville, KY). In addition to aligning another $24.3 million new spending with the district's strategic plan, $20.3 million of existing spending was rolled into the process. Next, the challenges faced by the district to review 105…

This report documents the first-year of implementing Cycle-based Budgeting at Jefferson County Public Schools (Louisville, KY). To address the limitations of incremental budgeting and zero-based budgeting, a Cycle-based Budgeting model was developed and implemented in JCPS. Specifically, each new program needs to submit an on-line budget request…

In 2008 the San Francisco Unified School District (SFUSD) confronted a problem that has been growing for decades. It boasted the highest academic performance of any large urban district in California, yet its achievement gap was widening, as too many African American, Latino, and low-income students fell far behind their classmates. The…

California educates more than six million children in its K-12 public schools. More than half of these children are economically disadvantaged, and almost a quarter are not native English speakers (compared to less than one in ten nationwide). California is working to address these challenges, in part by adopting a new, simplified school finance…

This document contains the following nine appendixes of the main report, "What Does It Cost to Educate California's Students? A Professional Judgment Approach. Technical Report. Getting Down to Facts II": (1) Professional Judgement Panel General Instructions; (2) Professional Judgement Panel. Task Instructions; (3) School Resource…

There is no fixed rule about how financial resources must be directed to the education sector. It is quite clear that the size of investment in the sector well defines the quality of education students are offered. It is highly important to define the amount of money, which is needed for effective functioning of schools and it is also important to…

When the Connecticut State Department of Education published its first district report cards in 2003, it was obvious that the Hartford Public Schools district was struggling. Fewer than half of its students were proficient on the state reading exam. Math performance was better, but 63 percent of 10th-graders and 43 percent of younger students…

Superintendent Andres A. Alonso arrived in Baltimore in 2007 with a vision for improving the city's struggling schools. His vision included empowering school leaders and creating accountability for student learning through a series of reforms that center around a new system for giving resources to schools, called Fair Student Funding (FSF). FSF…