A Review of Hawaii’s Weighted Student Formula 2006-07, a new study by Bruce D. Baker, Assoc. Professor, University of Kansas and Scott L. Thomas, Associate Professor, University of Georgia, tackles the question of “how can government get the right amount of funding to schools?” Tasked with evaluating the fairness and effectiveness of the DOE’s weighted student formula (WSF), the researchers found that:

• The DOE included very low funding in the weighted formula for Limited English Proficient (LEP) and high poverty students.

• The BOE’s plan to phase in WSF will thwart efforts to provide “vertical equity” -- more money to educate higher needs students.

• The uniform salary schedule and other contractual constraints on teachers’ work time and instructional minutes prevent true site-based control.

In 2004, Act 51 SLH 2004 mandated WSF and the decentralization of 70 percent of the DOE’s operating budget to individual schools where school community councils have the flexibility to design curriculum and financial plans.

Act 51 mandated a Committee on Weights to develop a formula that would determine how much money a school needed based upon its student composition and its needs. Instead, the Committee on Weights shortchanged schools by $420 million, including only $780 million in the formula out of a $2 billion total budget, providing schools with $4,292 per student and leaving little discretionary funding for programs to educate higher-needs children.

Consequently, the study finds that the weights for Limited English Proficient and high poverty students to be much lower than those in other cities and districts using a weighted formula. Special education funding, a large chunk of the Department’s budget, isn’t even considered in the funding formula and is retained by the central DOE.

The Committee on Weights’ inadequate funding proposal caused a political backlash when many schools – especially rural and small schools – discovered that they would lose a large portion of their budgets as well as critical staff. Many blamed their representatives for a plan that actually hurt schools, instead of helping public education as promised.

Legislators then scrambled to add $20 million to the DOE’s budget as a one-time fix to avoid an election-year fallout. The Board also reacted with a 10 percent phase in of the plan. However, the WSF study finds that “political and financial constraints over reducing funding may severely limit the Board’s ability to target funding to the highest need areas.”

Now, instead of implementing WSF based on per pupil needs, the Superintendent has been charged with distributing the $20 million arbitrarily to schools based on what they claim to need. Researchers say that if the goal of WSF is to determine cost per pupil needed to achieve student outcomes, it would be foolish to give a school more money just because it is not achieving expected outcomes.

Ironically, the study states that there is no evidence that a decentralized budget -- or even greater spending -- will improve student outcomes if inefficiencies of the system are not eliminated.

To truly decentralize the system and give local school control, the teachers’ contract would have to allow principals to offer teachers differing pay. Higher need schools need highly-skilled and even a greater quantity of teachers. Principals must have the flexibility to determine their staff.

More talk on the Committee on Weights II is not the answer to decentralizing the statewide education budget.

• The BOE must include the full amount of funding required by law;
• Tthe DOE must implement reasonable weighted amounts and track the effectiveness of need-based allotments.
• This top-down budgeting process must be combined with an actual analysis of all current school site expenditures. In this way, the BOE can evaluate how outside factors such as geographic location, teachers’ contract and school or district size affect the system as a whole.

If the BOE and DOE do not have the political courage to implement WSF as required under Act 51, the Reinventing Education Act of 2004, a decentralized education budget may be achieved with the hammer of a gavel at the Board level and a decision to abolish hundreds of arbitrary categorical programs in favor of block grants right down to the schools. Surely individual communities will then be able to decide how best to allocate resources to educate their children.

References: Review of Hawaii’s Weighted Student Formula 2006-07

To see the study, go to: Review of WSF

Laura Brown is the education reporter and researcher for HawaiiReporter.com and the education policy analyst for the Grassroot Institute of Hawaii. She can be reached via email at mailto:laurabrown@hawaii.rr.com