Giving Compass' Take:

· Writing for Urban Institute, Kristin Blagg analyzes how Massachusetts, Nebraska, Texas, and Virginia allocate funding for low-income students and how it affects outcome. 

· How do states measure low-income students for education funding? What are the qualifications? 

· Low-income students face a number of disadvantages throughout their academic careers.

Most states use an education funding formula to allocate state and local dollars to school districts. Most funding formulas attempt to account for student poverty, among other factors, in distributing funds. But there are several ways to count low-income students and even more ways to tie dollars to these student counts. Increases in school district funding could have a substantial effect on student outcomes—including high school graduation rates, postsecondary enrollment, and earnings—so it is important to understand if formula provisions actually direct more dollars to districts with more low-income students.

I describe how four states—Massachusetts, Nebraska, Texas, and Virginia—allocate funding for low-income students in their formula and to what extent the results of this formula are associated with a common measure of student poverty.

I find that funding levels are more strongly associated with the share of low-income students in urban districts, relative to rural districts. Although each state has a provision for increasing funds for low-income students, other formula factors introduce substantial variation into the relationship between low-income students and district funding.

Read the full article about low-income students by Kristin Blagg at Urban Institute.