How COVID-19-induced changes to K–12 enrollment and poverty might affect school funding
- Collection:
- Health Policy and Services Research
- Series Title(s):
- Urban Institute research report
- Author(s):
- Blagg, Kristin, author Gutierrez, Emily, author Lee, Victoria, author
- Contributor(s):
- Urban Institute, issuing body.
- Publication:
- Washington, DC : Urban Institute, January 2021
- Language(s):
- English
- Format:
- Text
- Subject(s):
- Poverty Schools -- economics Students COVID-19 United States
- Genre(s):
- Technical Report
- Abstract:
- Most states allocate funding to school districts using prior-year measures such as average attendance, enrollment, and share of students from low-income families. Because of disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, these prior-year measures may not accurately capture school district need for the 2021–22 school year. Policymakers must navigate how to account for declines in enrollment, as well as uncertain levels of student poverty, while facing state revenue declines ranging from 5 to 20 percent. Although additional federal aid could help cushion state budget shortfalls, school districts and policymakers must still answer big questions about how to allocate these scarce resources, as measures of student counts and student poverty will be less reliable as predictors of need in 2021–22. We model the potential effects of enrollment and poverty changes on the progressivity of state and local formula funding allocations if policymakers take no action. We estimate that 2020–21 declines in enrollment and attendance are more likely to harm high-poverty districts by reducing 2021–22 funding. We hypothesize that uncertainty about student poverty levels—driven by pandemic-induced economic shocks and changes in the administration of school meal programs—could affect the efficient allocation of resources for low-income students next year. We also look at the effects of policy changes that policymakers could make to mitigate these effects. These options include a “hold-harmless” policy of using 2019–20 data, the use of averages or weighted averages of 2019–20 and 2020–21 data, and policies that allow higher-poverty districts more weight on their 2019–20 data.
- Copyright:
- Reproduced with permission of the copyright holder. Further use of the material is subject to CC BY-NC-DC license. (More information)
- Extent:
- 1 online resource (1 PDF file (iv, 35 pages))
- Illustrations:
- Illustrations
- NLM Unique ID:
- 9918266199906676 (See catalog record)
- Permanent Link:
- http://resource.nlm.nih.gov/9918266199906676