Funding Students, Options and Achievement

Funding Students, Options and Achievement
Originally published April 2013, updated and re-released Summer 2015
Authored by: John Bailey, Carri Schneider, Tom Vander Ark
Download the full paper
In partnership with: Digital Learning Now, Foundation for Excellence in Education

This paper is one of nine in the DLN Smart Series – a collection of interactive papers that provides specific guidance regarding the adoption of higher standards and quality assessments focusing on the shift to personal digital learning.

“Funding Students, Options and Achievement” addresses today’s broken school finance system and provides practical design principles that have been tested in policy and in practice on both the state and district level. This paper suggests that funding should be weighted (to reflect individual student needs), flexible (to keep funds free from restrictions and program designations), portable (to ensure that dollars follow students), and performance-based (to create incentives for performance and completion).

Authors contend that policymakers can build upon design principles to create a student-centered finance system that is better suited to the realities of today’s K-12 education system.

Download “Funding Students, Options and Achievement“