A handful of changes in the past year to the way Maine funds its schools is resulting in more money heading to school districts with higher proportions of low-income students. Following years in which leading policymakers have focused mostly on reining in the per-student cost of education in Maine, it’s refreshing to see additional resources targeted to those students who can benefit from them most.
Indeed, Maine should be spending more of its state education funding specifically for the benefit of low-income students. More and more research in recent years has shown that additional spending on poor students makes a difference for them that it doesn’t for wealthier students — both in the short and long terms. It all suggests the state should be tipping the balance even more in favor of its low-income students, and we’re pleased to see some of that happening.
The 2018-19 school year will mark the second year for two funding changes — approved by legislators as part of the two-year state budget that took effect last summer — that will lead to more funding to benefit lower-income students.
The state last year ended a practice of withholding some state money from districts that received additional federal aid because of their large populations of low-income students. Now, districts that receive Title I funds — which are earmarked for poor districts — can receive them without having to worry about a corresponding loss in state aid. That’s $40 million that can remain where it should.
At the same time, the state started directing more resources through the school funding formula to districts with high proportions of low-income students. Districts are required to spend the additional funds — which worked out to $28 million for the current school year — on “extended learning programs” that specifically benefit low-income students, such as after-school and summer programs and tutoring.
A third funding change takes effect this coming fall. It allows school districts to start receiving immediate reimbursement from the state for pre-kindergarten programs, an academic strategy known to help boost the performance of low-income students. The immediate reimbursement makes it easier for school districts to cover the costs of starting up pre-K programs, which has traditionally been the primary pre-K funding-related challenge for Maine schools. To be sure, this policy change won’t only help districts with high proportions of low-income students. But low-income students arguably have the most to gain from pre-K.
A new report from the Education Law Center at New Jersey’s Rutgers University quantifies the reasons why these policy changes are beneficial: It costs more to achieve the same academic outcome for students in poverty than it does for higher-income students, the authors note.
In Maine, the Education Law Center concludes, it costs more than twice as much to produce the same academic outcome in the 20 percent of districts with the highest poverty levels as it does in the 20 percent of districts with the lowest levels of poverty. To reach the national average level of achievement, it should cost the fifth of Maine districts with the lowest levels of poverty $6,353 per student, compared with $12,826 per student for a district in the highest-poverty quintile, according to the researchers.
The Education Law Center actually concludes that most Maine districts, particularly those districts with smaller populations of low-income students, are overspending when it comes to achieving merely the national average. (Of course, Maine should aspire to exceed the national average.)
The point that the research illustrates well is that states — and the federal government — need to make deliberate investments in boosting the academic achievement of low-income students. The Education Law Center research can offer policymakers in Maine a rough guide for future school spending decisions.
In simple terms, low-income students should be top of mind when it comes to making those decisions.
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