This Weekly Reader is about Fair Student Funding—an important Children First reform. I have written in the past about where the money for the DOE as a whole comes from. Fair Student Funding concerns how that money gets allocated to schools.
School districts have typically allocated resources to schools, rather than dollars. For example, based on the number of students a school has, a school might get, say, x number of teachers, x number of counselors and other staff, and this or that particular program. Decisions often have been based on immediate concerns rather than on a set formula. Over time, these kinds of allocations can result in some schools getting significantly bigger dollar budgets than others. Here at the DOE, for example, we have an example of one high poverty school receiving almost twice as much per student as another school with a similar poverty level.
Many school districts are now moving away from this type of school funding to a way of allocating money to schools that is perceived as much more fair and transparent. In our system, the Chancellor calls it “Fair Student Funding.” Some also call this type of system “weighted student funding.” Under Fair Student Funding, money for a school is based on the needs of its students. Each student has a weighted funding allocation, based on his or her educational needs. Schools that have higher need students, such as a high percentage of English language learners, get higher allocations. Schools with similar types of students are thus treated alike. There is a great explanation of our Fair Student Funding initiative at:
http://schools.nyc.gov/Offices/ChildrenFirst/FairStudentFunding/default.htm
I think one section from that document is especially important. One of the biggest challenges in implementing Fair Student Funding is how to treat teacher salaries. Here’s a description of how the DOE will approach that difficult issue:
Most of Fair Student Funding concerns the way we allocate money to schools, but there also is one issue about the way we charge schools for staff. The issue is whether schools should be charged the actual costs for their teachers or should be charged only an average cost. Teacher salaries vary widely, from a starting salary around $45,000 to a top salary more than twice that amount excluding fringe benefits). Although our current method of charging schools for teachers is very complicated, for the most part, we now charge schools an average cost. This means that schools get a fixed number of teachers, whatever those teachers cost. Two schools are allocated 20 teachers, for example, and they get enough money to pay those teachers, regardless of the teachers’ salaries. (There are some exceptions, including the treatment of teachers paid with categorical dollars.)
There are good reasons to take the actual costs of teachers into account in school budgeting. For one thing, it’s more accurate. If school budgets are going to show the real investments in each school, they need to show the cost of the teachers in those schools. More important, it’s fairer. Today, less experienced teachers are more likely to teach at the highest-poverty schools. Because these teachers earn less, these schools can have lower budgets. That means they have less money to spend on meeting the needs of kids who need help most — whether by providing more after-school help, reducing class size, or providing additional training to (generally more junior) teachers in that school. If the high-poverty school were charged actual teacher salaries, it would have additional resources left over to meet its students’ needs.
Although these are powerful arguments, we also recognize that charging schools for actual teachers right away would be disruptive for schools with high proportions of senior teachers. One of our core principles is to maintain stability and bring gradual change that preserves critical programs for all our students. So we reject the extremes: either ignoring the actual costs of teachers or charging schools for actual salaries immediately. Instead, we propose a solution in the middle ground, along these lines: When it comes to Fair Student Funding, schools should not be asked to pay the actual costs of teachers who are already on their budgets. However, when hiring teachers into their schools for the first time, principals should be asked to pay actual costs. An approach of this kind builds on the current treatment of teachers paid for with categorical dollars. It will protect schools that already have many high-cost teachers and will also encourage greater fairness and transparency over time.
As in most educational matters, reasonable people differ. Here’s a good blog entry that sets forth some arguments for and against weighted student funding.
http://www.edspresso.com/2006/11/november_27_december_1_maisie_1.htm
I think Fair Student Funding, accompanied by a phase-in period for teacher salaries, is a fair and reasonable way to address resource disparities. As with most difficult resource allocation issues, there is no easy answer. The way I see it, if this were easy, we’d have figured it out a long time ago.