Dive Brief:

• Mississippi has hired consultants from EdBuild, a New Jersey-based nonprofit, to craft a new K-12 spending formula and remove inequities across wealthy and poor districts.
• The Hechinger Report writes the current formula, established in 1997, factors in average daily attendance, a base student cost and the local contribution, and it leaves wealthier districts to spend significantly more per student because of higher local contributions.
• In other states, EdBuild has supported a weighted student formula that sends more money to schools serving high concentrations of disadvantaged student populations and otherwise equalizes spending across districts, which has been controversial.

Dive Insight:

Fourteen states have regressive school funding formulas that send more money to wealthier districts, rather than the other way around. In Illinois, for example, while the state increased per-pupil spending between 2008 and 2014 more than any other state but North Dakota, it did so under a regressive funding formula, which still provides local student advocates reason to demand more money for schools. In Connecticut, a judge recently demanded the state overhaul its funding formula to improve equity and Washington state has been arguing over the same requirement for years.

The federal government has no lever to control state spending across schools, but the Obama administration is trying to limit inequities within individual school districts with the Every Student Succeeds Act. Its proposed rules are still not final, but the administration is expected to strengthen the “supplement not supplant” provision and require schools to factor teacher salaries into the total school spending when considering whether Title I schools get at least the same amount of state and local funding as their non-Title I counterparts. This, too, has been incredibly controversial.