Query: funding for schools

title: Australian Government funding for schools explained March 2013

title: Patrolling Public Schools: The Impact of Funding for School Police on Student Discipline and Long term Education Outcomes
abstract: As police officers have become increasingly common in U.S. public schools, their role in school discipline has often expanded. While there is growing public debate about the consequences of police presence in schools, there is scant evidence of the impact of police on student discipline and academic outcomes. This paper provides the first quasi experimental estimate of funding for school police on student outcomes, leveraging variation in federal Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grants. Exploiting detailed data on over 2.5 million students in Texas, I find that federal grants for police in schools increase middle school discipline rates by six percent. Further, I find that low income students and Black and Hispanic students experience the largest increases in discipline. I also find that exposure to a three year federal grant for school police is associated with a 2.5 percent decrease in high school graduation rates and a four percent decrease in college enrollment rates.

title: E learning funding for schools: a policy paradox?
abstract: The rise in UK government funding for information and communications technologies (ICTs) since 1997 has created a large capital infrastructure, which schools are required to support with their own funds. Simultaneously, both nationally and internationally, the model of self managing schools gathers momentum. In the UK, the government supports the key principle of local management of schools, which points towards the leadership team and governors as the body best placed to make decisions on how funding will support school improvement. The complexity of policy formation with respect to e learning funding in schools is further compounded by the requirement to address the needs of a range of stakeholders in the state and commercial sectors. This goal of this paper was to explore this potential paradox between centralised funding of school ICTs and local planning and decision making. Five possible funding policy models were suggested and discussed, and key questions in relation to policy formation were identified.

title: Sources of funding for schools.
abstract: Public school finance mechanisms differ from state to state, and they are often extremely complex. Most commonly, the federal government contributes about 7% of the total school budget, and the remainder is split fairly evenly between local contributions (primarily raised through local property taxes) and state contributions (primarily raised through state income taxes and sales taxes) The average amount of money provided per pupil varies greatly from one state to another. The method of distributing the state contribution to school districts is equally complex, often involving some combination of basic funding (which guarantees a minimum level of general purpose support per student) power equalization (which guarantees that a certain level of local taxation will yield a given level of per pupil funding) local option (higher levels of taxation approved in some school districts, not equalized by the state) and categorical funding (supplemental state and federal funds, earmarked for specific needs such as special education or compensatory services to schools with a concentration of poverty, or to meet state dictated priorities, such as reducing class size or purchasing state approved textbooks) This complexity often leads to significant variation from district to district in the percentage of funding received from federal, state, and local sources and wide disparities in the level of support for the educational program. Typically, wealthier districts provide more of their funding from local taxes, while lower income districts are more heavily dependent on state and federal sources.

title: Fairer funding for schools

title: Imperatives in schools funding: equity, sustainability and achievement
abstract: AER 60 takes the 2011 Gonski Review of Funding for Schooling as a vantage point, from which to consider the national funding of schools in Australia, past and future.  Section 1 outlines the educational values and perspectives that have underpinned school funding policies and programs and describes major themes in the evolution of schools funding quality, equity and choice providing a general guide for subsequent analyses. Section 2 provides a policy history of schools funding 1964 2011, during which time the Commonwealth government emerged as a significant funding partner. It analyses the political forces and recurring themes, policy issues and tensions that have affected the distribution of resources within and between the school sectors providing context for an examination of the Gonski Review. Section 3 concerns the Gonski Panel's Report: a substantial summary and analysis of its findings and recommendations, and stakeholder responses to it. The distinctive nature and characteristics of schools funding policy in Australia are then analysed in Section 4, in the light of the Gonski Report's recommendations. The authors argue that cumulative political compromises have left Australia with a hybrid school system which is inequitable and unsuited to Australia's changing social and economic circumstances. The review paper makes the case for a new schools funding architecture to be developed in the context of the federal system. The authors urge that it should be one with clear priorities in regard to a greater coherence between the provision of public funding and the achievement of educational goals for all children.

title: The implications of the National Norms and Standards for school funding policy on equity in South African public schools
abstract: The government's educational reforms since 1994 have focused on equity and redress. Redressing historical imbalances and achieving equity are fundamental policy mechanisms in attempts to restructure South African education. This aspiration is demonstrated in many education policies including the National Norms and Standards for School Funding (NNSSF) policy. While inequalities in resource allocation from the state have been removed, inequalities persist due to the inability of the state to provide free education to all, parents' inability to pay user fees, the unavailability of qualified teachers in rural schools and unfavourable learner teacher ratios. A quantitative research was conducted to investigate the implications of the NNSSF policy on equity in public schools in the Tshwane West District of the Gauteng Province. Based on the three first order factors derived from the first analytic procedure, namely, "The effective financial management" "The management of equity issues" and "Access to educational resources" it was found that despite substantial government interventions in the education system, equity has not been fully realised. Keywords access, equity, financial management, funding, inequality, National Norms and Standards, no fee schools, policy, school fees, social justice

title: Weighted Student Funding for Primary Schools: An Analysis of the Dutch Experience. Working Paper Series. SAN09 02.
abstract: In recent years, policy makers and educators in the U.S. have begun to show considerable interest in the concept of weighted student funding as a means of financing primary and secondary schools. Weighted student funding (WSF) has three main elements. Money follows students on a per student basis to the schools they attend, the per student amount of the funding differs with the educational needs of the student, and schools have the flexibility to use the money in whatever way they wish. Although a relatively new idea in the U.S. weighted student funding has a long history in the Netherlands. The Dutch program is impressive not only because many disadvantaged students bring with them almost twice as much funding as regular students, but also because the system has sustained political support over a long period of time. Our analysis of the Dutch system shows that schools with high proportions of weighted students in the country's four big cities have access to substantially more resources than schools with few weighted students. In particular, the high weight schools have 57 percent more teachers per pupil on average as well as almost twice as many additional support staff per teacher. These additional resources notwithstanding, we find that weighted student funding does not assure equal quality schooling, which we take as the minimal goal of such a policy. In particular, the quality of education in the high weight schools, as measured by the standardized evaluations of the Dutch Inspectorate of Education, on average falls short of that in the low weight schools. This basic finding about school quality, as well as other considerations, suggests that although weighted student funding has the potential to generate some major equity gains over the current U.S. system of funding schools, it is not the "100 percent solution" as claimed by some of its U.S. supporters. Moreover, there is no guarantee that any significant movement in the direction of student funding in the U.S. would be accompanied by the highly progressive weights that are central to Dutch system.

title: Having it Both Ways: How Charter Schools Try to Obtain Funding of Public Schools and the Autonomy of Private Schools
abstract: This Article discusses how charter schools have used their hybrid characteristics to obtain the benefits of public funding while circumventing state and federal rights and protections for employees and students that apply to traditional public schools. The first Part explains how charter schools have emphasized their "public" characteristics to withstand state constitutional challenges that they are ineligible for public funding because they are private schools or fall outside of a system of public schools.The second and third Parts of this Article explain how charter schools have emphasized their private characteristics to avoid having to comply with state and federal protections that protect employees and students. Specifically, the second Part discusses how privately run charter school boards and EMOs have evaded state union election laws by arguing that they are private entities that are covered by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) a federal statute that governs private sector employment. The third Part discusses how charter schools have attempted to evade federal constitutional and statutory protections for employees and students by arguing that they are not state actors pursuant to 42 U.S.C. SS 1983, a federal statute that establishes a cause of action for deprivations of federal constitutional and statutory rights under the color of state law. These Parts also point out that attempts to circumvent state and federal protections for students and employees may have unintended consequences, such as inviting federal involvement in charter school labor policies, or causing state courts to revisit the question of whether charter schools are public schools eligible for funding under state constitutional law.

title: Governance and Funding of Voluntary Secondary Schools in Ireland
abstract: This Study was commissioned by a number of Trustee bodies of voluntary secondary schools in Ireland. We are extremely grateful to the members of the Advisory Group, drawn from the Trustee members, for their on going support and feedback on the research. We wish to thank the principals, as well as key stakeholders (Trustee members and educational stakeholders) who participated in the study. We also acknowledge the role of Amarach Research in conducting a survey of second level school principals and chairpersons of boards of management of all se level schools. Finally, our condthanks go to the Director of the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) two internal ESRI referees and an external referee for their comments on earlier drafts of this report.