While the establishment of the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) in 2013 has led to improved academic achievement in high-need districts, continued disparities in student outcomes and other challenges with the formula have persisted.
As a result, discussions about modifying various aspects of the LCFF have increased, with some policymakers and advocates questioning “whether high-need students could be better identified and targeted, whether to fund student enrollment rather than attendance, whether to adjust for differences in regional costs across districts, and whether current funding levels are adequate to cover basic educational services, especially for districts that are neither low- nor high-income,” according to a recent report from the Public Policy Institute of California (PPIC).
“Despite the LCFF’s improvements to California’s school funding system, lagging test scores, rising achievement gaps, and stubbornly high chronic absenteeism suggest something more is needed,” the report continues. “To some, this is evidence that the level of funding growth thus far has been inadequate, while others cite these facts as evidence that funding alone will not be enough to address the state’s challenges and that state allocations or district practices should be changed.”
Currently, districts receive base-level funding, as well as supplemental and concentration funds for every unduplicated student identified as low-income, homeless, an English learner or in the foster care system.
Researchers considered several adjustments to LCFF — as well as the tradeoffs associated — that they said could address some of the major concerns held by policymakers and stakeholders while bringing the funding system closer to some of the stated goals that motivated the original reform. These include:
Funding by enrollment
LCFF allocations are currently based on students’ average daily attendance, which is often lower among those student groups identified by the state as needing additional support, and has been drastically lower since the pandemic. According to PPIC, basing funds on student enrollment rather than attendance would benefit higher-need districts, although most districts would see changes of about $250 per student.
Consider duplicate needs
Providing additional funding for students with overlapping needs (e.g. a student who is both low-income and an English learner) would direct more resources to more high-need districts. According to PPIC, boosting funding for these students would increase revenues for most high-need districts by about $279 per student on average.
Factor in regional costs
Noting that the high cost of living in urban and coastal regions makes it difficult to recruit and retain educators (an issue that challenges rural LEAs as well, albeit for different reasons), some have called for an adjustment to the LCFF’s base grant to account for geographic differences in competitive teacher wages. However, such a change would actually provide the average high-need district with less funding per pupil, with rural LEAs receiving significantly less and urban and suburban districts seeing only moderate per-pupil increases. According to the report, some rural districts could face a decrease of $400 per student while coastal districts with higher housing costs would gain an average of only $50 per student.
Addressing high-need threshold
The current formula includes large funding increases for LEAs with the highest concentrations of high-need students — those with an enrollment of more than 55 percent unduplicated students. Tweaks to the formula could “smooth” the cutoff and continue providing substantial increases for the highest-need districts while also ensuring additional resources for LEAs with 45 to 65 percent high-need students. Those LEAs could receive an average of $669 more per student.
None of the examined factors should be considered lightly, researchers noted. “The stakes of these design choices are substantial. Even small changes to the LCFF could shift the distribution of billions of dollars across California’s more than 1,000 school districts serving nearly 6 million students,” the report states.
