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Compounded Inequities: Assessing School Finance Equity For Low-Income English Language Learners, David S. Knight, Jesus E. Mendoza

Working Papers

School districts face different costs to produce the same level of educational opportunity because of differences in student population, geographical costs of living, and district size. However, in many states, the school finance system fails to take these factors into account when distributing funds to school districts. Most prior analyses of state school finance systems focus on the relationship between district funding and the percent of low-income students in that district or the percent of emergent bilinguals, who are typically classified as English language learners (ELLs).

We present the first longitudinal descriptive evidence of the extent to which state school …

Assessing The Educational Opportunity Of Emergent Bilingual Students: Why Are Some State School Finance Systems More Equitable Than Others?, David S. Knight, David E. Dematthews

Working Papers

Despite the rapid increase in enrollment of students who speak a language other than English at home, little prior research examines whether school districts receive adequate funding for instructional programs for emergent bilinguals. We show that prior to the Great Recession, districts with greater proportions of students classified as English language learners (ELL) received approximately 10 percent more funding than otherwise similar low-ELL districts. However, recessionary budget cuts disproportionately impacted high-ELL districts, effectively removing resource advantages. Cross-state analyses suggest that states using direct reimbursement methods and those with smaller ELL student weights in their formula funding tend to have less …