It’s too early to tell what if any of the recommendations the Mississippi Legislature will implement from the consulting firm hired to look at the state’s funding formula for public education.
One EdBuild suggestion lawmakers should definitely incorporate would change the way the state calculates how poor a school district’s student population is.
Presently, the gauge used is the percentage of students on free or reduced-price lunches. That might have been a sensible measuring stick when the Mississippi Adequate Education Program, the state’s funding formula, was adopted in the 1980s. Since that time, however, the federal government has changed the lunch program rules, allowing schools to declare 100 percent of students eligible for meal assistance if just 40 percent are eligible for other needs-based programs.
This has lumped school districts that are seriously impoverished with ones that are moderately so, making them equally entitled to extra MAEP money.
EdBuild has recommended that the state instead use the U.S. Census Bureau’s poverty estimates to measure need. That would be more accurate.
