On the record with Arlene Ackerman, incoming CEO of the Philadelphia School District

She explains "weighted student funding" and how she has implemented it in three other cities.

Interview by Dale Mezzacappa on April 29, 2008

What is the point of weighted student funding?
The weighted student formula is a fiscal methodology designed to determine how to allocate funds in an equitable way to schools based on specific student characteristics that are developed, and identified, and agreed upon by school districts. Those student characteristics vary from school district to school district.

And how are those decisions made? What characteristics?
What I’ve done [in Seattle, Washington, DC and San Francisco] and would do here is to put together a committee of parents, teachers, principals, and representatives of the various stakeholder groups. I think we had one or two high school students. But mainly it’s adults, and mainly it’s staff people in the academic area, as well as the finance people, and principals, and teachers. The people who have to implement it are really important to help us shape the formula in a way that’s going to benefit the schools. So, it’s really important that we have principal representatives from all kinds of schools: large schools, small schools, schools that do well, schools that don’t do well, schools that have parents that are really involved, schools that don’t have parents involved.

They decide what characteristics to weight, like poverty and English-language learners. And then what happens?
People [say] if you just put in a weighted student formula, all of a sudden you’ll see student achievement get better in the district. But all the weighted student formula does is assure that there is an equitable way of distributing the money. What happens next is the most important part of this process. The schools decide, based on data, their academic plan. Then they align that academic plan with the budget, determining the staffing, determining the resources they will need to support their plan. And then they implement the plan and we evaluate the plan. So, this is an ongoing process. It starts with data and--I’m sorry, I left something really important out—not only looking at the data but the district providing academic performance outcomes for every school. So, they know, going into this process, that we’ve set targets for them. And they’re based on data from that school, not comparing that school to another school. So, we’ll look at data, for instance, for three years for—give me a school—Ben Franklin. And we’ll say, based on your performance over the last three years, Ben Franklin, here are your targets for this year.

These are targets for progress?
Performance targets.