Funding Formulas

EDLD 5342 Funding Formulas- Week 1-Part 2

The state of Texas has struggled to create a system of education that is equitable and provides adequate funding to education for all students in the state of Texas. One thing that effects the funding for each district is the WADA, or weighted average daily attendance. Districts receive funds for student attendance and those numbers are based on the number of students in attendance but also in different special programs like GT, special education, etc. Districts often encourage campuses to work on attendance rates to increase funding. Also impacting funding formulas for each district is the state's effort to redistribute funds to property poor districts and how these efforts sometimes clash with reality when the economic and socioeconomic realities in each district do not always line up with the original intentions of equalizing funding. For example, you may have a large city with a very diverse and poor student population having to send back money to the state for redistribution simply because the property values in the district show them to be wealthy because of the "big business" in the area, or you could have a wealthy bedroom community sending money back for the same reason. And because of the issues with property tax rate caps and the hold harmless provisions, you could also have a district being effectively penalized for keeping the tax rate lower of the years and one that was at the cap receiving additional funds, resulting in huge discrepancies in per pupil expenditures from district to district.