Adequately Funding Low-Income Students: Options for Michigan Policymakers. An Essay for the Learning Curve

Michigan policymakers and advocates are calling on the state to adopt a new school funding formula that provides additional funding to students with greater educational need, such as students with greater economic need. For Michigan students who have been identified as economically disadvantaged, at least a 35 percent weight is necessary for schools and districts to support those students' academic progress and material and social-emotional well-being. Yet some of these low-income students face greater economic need, and districts with the highest concentrations of economic disadvantage serve many more students in poverty and deep poverty. A poverty-based measure would require new administrative data linkages to implement, but it would most directly target the highest-need students. If policymakers prefer to more heavily target funds at the highest-poverty districts (or if linking tax and education data is not feasible), a concentration-based measure is an alternative. In either case, a fully funded high-need weight is necessary to ensure adequate funding for these students. There are other considerations for Michigan policymakers as they specify a high-need weight in its framework: (1) policymakers should calculate the total costs of a new funding formula with a high-need weight included; and (2) states need to identify individual students' household incomes. Finally, in addition to a new high-need measure, the state could use existing indicators that clearly signal greater economic need. Students identified as being homeless, being a migrant, living in foster care, or being in a family receiving Temporary Assistance for Needy Families benefits could be automatically identified as high need, as these all directly indicate adverse economic experiences.