Study Calls for Education Funding Changes to Better Serve Individual Student Needs
Delaware must update the way it raises and distributes taxpayer dollars for public education to better meet the diverse needs of individual students, according to a new report by the Leadership for Educational Achievement in Delaware (LEAD) Committee. The report analyzes the current funding system and makes 12 recommendations, including:
- Adopting a “weighted” funding formula that addresses the different learning needs of individual students;
- Enabling principals and other school leaders to control more of their funds so they can better meet the learning needs of their schools’ student population;
- Developing a simple, understandable way to track how districts and schools use their funds; and
- Assessing local property values in a fair and timely way to ensure that our public schools have the support they need.
Other proposed changes include:
- Providing charter schools with the opportunity to access state resources for financing their facilities; and
- Distributing state dollars more efficiently to districts and schools for energy and minor capital costs.
Vision 2015 also supports creating a “weighted student funding formula to provide different funding for students with different needs." We consider weighted student funding so important that it has become a top priority for 2009.
In the coming year, we look forward to working with Delaware's educators, elected officials, community leaders, and the numerous organizations throughout the state that have publicly supported weighted student funding. We also will work to implement the recommendations outlined in the LEAD Committee’s Cost Efficiency Study (released in January 2008), which identified up to $158 million of Delaware’s public education budget that could be spent more efficiently each year to directly impact student achievement.
In pursuing the recommendations of both LEAD Committee reports, we aim to address the essential need to overhaul Delaware’s funding system for greater efficiency and fairness. By spending our education dollars “smarter” and improving the way that Delaware schools and their students are funded, we will be closer to achieving our goal of a world-class education for every Delaware student.
Read the LEAD Committee’s Report on Education Funding in Delaware.
View media coverage: "New LEAD report aims at creative ways to fund education of Del. kids," The News Journal, December 4, 2008.
"Panel seeks school funding reforms,” The News Journal, December 4, 2008.
"Study claims education funding in need of major makeover,” The Delaware Business Ledger, December 3, 2008.
Public education funding also has been in the national headlines in recent weeks. A story published in Education Week featured studies that examined our country’s 97,000 K-12 schools and outlined bold steps needed for school finance reform: “Study Calls for Tightly Tying School Funding to Strategic Goals,” December 2, 2008.
