Do Districts Using Weighted Student Funding Formulas Deliver More Dollars to Low-income Students?

Abstract

ABSTRACT School districts have increasingly adopted weighted student funding (WSF) formulas that allocate dollars, rather than staff positions, to schools in the name of equity and flexibility. While research to date has studied equity in some of these districts, there is no research that examines the entire cohort of WSF districts together. This paper examines how equitably 20 WSF districts distribute dollars to their schools measured against a cohort of 20 comparable districts that use a traditional, centralized staffing model. We find that while a majority of all 40 study districts drive more dollars to low-income students, low-income students in WSF districts are more likely than their peers in other districts both to receive additional dollars and to receive a greater share of district expenditures. We also find that WSF districts that have had their formula in place for longer are more equitable than recent adopters.