Recommendations for funding changes in Connecticut lack supporting evidence

Contact:
Bruce Baker
(732) 932-7496, x8232
bruce.baker@gse.rutgers.edu

William Mathis, NEPC
(802) 383-0058
William.Mathis@colorado.edu

BOULDER, CO (April 14) – A new report from the Connecticut organization ConnCAN calls for funding based on a formula it claims will account for the greater needs of low-income students. But according to a new review, the report fails to document a problem and then fails to offer a sound solution to any problem that may in fact exist.

The Think Twice review was written by Rutgers University professor Bruce Baker, who finds the ConnCAN funding formula simplistic and lacking in evidentiary support. Baker, a school finance expert, cautions that it is of little use to policy makers.

The review is published by the National Education Policy Center, housed at the University of Colorado at Boulder School of Education.

The report, titled Spend Smart: Fix Our Broken School Funding System, asserts that Connecticut’s current Education Cost Sharing formula is “broken.” It recommends replacing the current system with one using weighting student funding, whereby different categories of students are funded at different levels, with that funding following the student to whichever school she or he chooses to enroll.

However, the report’s authors offer unsound assertions about current funding and current costs, according to Baker. And, to support a push for increased funding for charter schools, they offer additional weakly supported claims about charter performance and current funding.

The solution to the asserted problems with the current funding system is equally problematic. A significant body of research suggests weighted student funding formulas don’t necessarily improve transparency or equity, but this research is ignored by the report. As Baker points out, “weighted student funding formulas are merely one approach to financing schools or districts, and what the report never acknowledges is that this approach is equally as susceptible to political distortion, excessive complexity and reduced transparency as other alternatives.”

As a result of these deficiencies, Baker concludes that even though some of the report’s conclusions are “broadly on target” and some of its proffered solutions may have promise, it lacks the sort of serious evidentiary base necessary to make it useful for guiding policy.

“There may in fact be legitimate concerns over the equity and adequacy of funding to Connecticut schools as a result of significant problems with Connecticut’s Education Cost Sharing Formula,” Baker writes. Unfortunately, the ConnCAN Spend Smart report provides little or no evidence to support the claim that the system is broken or to demonstrate how the proposals would be an effective solution if it indeed is in need of repair.

Find Bruce Baker’s review on the NEPC website at:
http://nepc.colorado.edu/thinktank/review-spend-smart

Find Spend Smart: Fix Our Broken School Funding System, published by ConnCAN, on the web at: http://tinyurl.com/452sveu

The Think Twice think tank review project (http://thinktankreview.org), a project of the National Education Policy Center, provides the public, policy makers, and the press with timely, academically sound, reviews of selected publications. The project is made possible in part by the support of the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.

The mission of the National Education Policy Center is to produce and disseminate high-quality, peer-reviewed research to inform education policy discussions. We are guided by the belief that the democratic governance of public education is strengthened when policies are based on sound evidence. For more information on NEPC, please visit http://nepc.colorado.edu/.

This review is also found on the GLC website at http://www.greatlakescenter.org/