Appendix C: Pupil Count Adjustments to Account for High Student Cost
Author |
Weighting |
Rationale for Weightings |
Purpose of Research |
| GAO Report 98-36 State and Federal Efforts to Target Funds to Poor Students (1998) |
Students with special needs - 1.3 Weighting. Poor Students - 0.6 Weighting. |
1.3 represents the additional cost of educating special needs
students. 0.6 represents the state median from the study. |
To analyze state and federal targeting of funds to poor students. |
| Paternick, Smerdon, Fowler and Monk (1997) | Students with IEPs - 1.3 Weighting. LEP and at-risk students - 0.2 Weighting. |
Pupil weightings similar to New York State. | Review methods for adjusting per pupil expenditures in order to more accurately measure equity. |
| Parish, Matsumoto and Fowler (1997) | Limited English proficient and poverty students - 0.2
Weighting. Special education students - 1.3 Weighting. |
Poverty Weighting - based on total avg revenue per
student and the Chapter 1 allocation per student. LEP Weighting - based on a cost analysis of alternative programs for LEP students. (0.2 was rounded up from .08 to account for small sample size) |
Multivariate and bivariate analysis to isolate the impact of individual district and community factors on variations in expenditure. |
| Clune (1994) | Pupils in high-poverty schools - 1.0 Weighting. | "Educated estimate"- based on the cost of an effective program - includes remedial instruction, social services, facilities and salaries. | Estimation of the cost of achieving "true adequacy." |
| Levin (1989) | At-risk students - 0.5 Weighting. | Achieving high school completion for at-risk students requires more years of school and more expense for each year of school. (Estimate could be reduced if gap is closed in elementary years.) | Estimation of the cost of educating at-risk students. ("those who lack the home and community resources to benefit from conventional education-poverty, cultural differences, broken families and linguistic differences") |