Matthew Joseph is a Senior Policy Advisor at ExcelinEd.
For our third new resource on supplemental funding for low-income students, ExcelinEd is releasing a brief on how states can maximize the impact of these extra resources to achieve positive student outcomes.
The good news is that new analyses by researchers across the ideological spectrum have found that increasing overall funding for schools can indeed improve student achievement, particularly for low-income students. However, the growing consensus is that strategic state policies are needed to substantially increase the size of the impact of additional funding. Consider these experts’ comments:
“To be most effective… spending increases should be coupled with systems that help ensure spending is allocated toward the most productive inputs,” said Kirabo Jackson, Rucker Johnson and Claudia Persico. Similarly, Danielle V. Handel and Eric Hanushek echoed this view: “The new evidence on spending impacts…indicate[s] that simply adding more resources without addressing how the resources will be used provides little assurance that student achievement will improve.”
Our recommended state policies would ensure the following: student-centered funding that directs new resources to students who have the greatest needs; accountability for student outcomes; incentives for using proven strategies; competition and choice; and enabling schools to learn from one another. Along with this new brief, ExcelinEd is providing a diagnostic tool for states to learn more about these policies and determine which ones they can most readily adopt.
As ExcelinEd previously reported, nearly all states are currently providing supplemental funds for low-income students, averaging nationwide at 22 percent above base funding. We received some great feedback on that report, and we’ve reposted it with several updates. Arizona has a new low-income funding weight, and Minnesota and North Carolina’s weights are larger than we thought.
The 50-state survey accompanies our brief on how states are using new methods to better identify low-income students, including using neighborhood indicators to increase resources for students most in need.
Together, these policy resources are designed to help states consider how much supplemental funding they should provide for low-income students, how best to identify those students and what policies can maximize the impact of these additional funds on student outcomes.
