Bipoc News

Research finds California’s funding overhaul worked as designed for those getting the most money

Fourth/fifth grader combination class at Redwood Heights Elementary School in Oakland, Calif., Wednesday, May 17, 2017.

Photo by Alison Yin for EdSource

A UC Berkeley labor economist this week offered a California answer to the persistent question of whether more money matters for K-12 education.

Rucker Johnson, who researched the state’s decade-old school finance overhaul known as the Local Control Funding Formula, concluded it does matter, especially for the highest needs students targeted for help by the equity-based funding. 

“The findings provide compelling evidence that school spending matters and providing additional resources to support high-need students pays dividends,” wrote Johnson, a professor of public policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley. 

Those students’ performance rose significantly on a range of measures, Johnson wrote in “School Funding Effectiveness: Evidence From California’s Local…

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