definitions.html

The overarching goal of school funding is to provide equality of educational opportunity for all of Minnesota’s children

The following are the definitions of the five key school finance system components needed to reach this goal:

1. Adequate: Provides sufficient revenues without local referenda for the average school to teach the average student to state-developed high performance standards, and provides sufficient additional revenues for the extra help that students with special needs require to achieve to those same performance levels.

   • To meet high student performance standards, quality teaching is one of the most important single factors.

   • To attract and retain high quality teachers, funding must enable school districts to develop a teacher compensation system, which reflects the teacher’s knowledge and skills brought to the classroom.

   • The funding formula has a built-in increase that maintains sufficient funding for areas that can be controlled by local districts and respond to costs which exceed normal inflationary increases.

   • Resources provided by funding formulas to achieve an adequate educational program must recognize documented cost differences such as: (1) costs of supporting student learning for those impacted by poverty and mobility or who are English Language Learners (ELL); and provides the extra help costs of instructing and supporting students with special needs; (2) demographic cost differences including pupil sparsity, declining enrollment and increased transportation costs; (3) market-based operating cost differentials.

   • New mandates for programs or services shall be accompanied by sufficient revenue to implement and sustain them.

2. Equitable: Provide all students an adequate educational program regardless of the district’s property tax base.

   • Funding formulas must recognize that different levels of resources will be required from district to district to ensure that students with equal needs are treated equally.

   • The property tax effort required to offer students an adequate educational program, as defined above, shall be equal for all taxpayers within each classification.

3. Sustainable: Provides an adequate revenue stream that is stable, predictable, and timely.

   • Revenue sources are sufficiently broad based to minimize the effects of fluctuations in state revenue.

   • Predictable sources of revenue are known prior to districts making decisions required to prepare the annual budget.

   • A sustainable funding system creates the confidence and trust families and schools need to support quality educational programs.

   • A sustainable funding system allows school districts to complete long-range planning that enhances efficiency, effectiveness, and accountability.

4. Financially Accountable: Insures that when the State provides adequate tax dollars, those funds are spent effectively and efficiently in local school districts to support world-class learning for all of Minnesota’s students.

   • A finance system's accountability is measured by its ability to recognize the important role education plays in our state's continued economic growth and competitiveness and to provide the resources needed for higher student achievement.

   • The finance system must be easy to understand and explain to the public.

   • The finance system must clearly relate dollars expended to student achievement.

   • The finance system must provide clarity and consistency in financial reporting across all districts. (Ex. Standardized chart of accounts for tracking expenditures)

   • The finance system must clearly delineate between actual new resources and those that are simply shifted from other sources and do not result in actual funding increases at the district level.

   • The finance system must clearly identify those areas were local district spending is impacted by state or federal statues or mandates.

5. Academically Accountable: Establishes measurable and accepted high academic standards against which student performance can be evaluated.

   • School districts, administrators and teachers are accountable for student performance as measured by Basic Standards Tests and for satisfying the requirements of the Profile of Learning. Schools should be accountable for those conditions under their control.

   • Local school districts, administrators, teachers and the State must jointly be held accountable and responsible for improving instruction and academic achievement for Minnesota students.

   The purpose of academic accountability is to:

   • Monitor student progress to ensure that students are making progress and are on track to meet the basic skills and Profile of Learning requirements to graduate from high school

   • Diagnose students’ educational needs and facilitate adjustments in curriculum / instruction to meet those needs

   • Facilitate continuous improvement—Measure progress of individual students over time (as opposed to comparisons of different cohorts of students); identify and support specific behaviors / actions by school districts, schools, teachers, parents, students, etc. that have a demonstrated impact on the progress of individual students over time.

   • Strengthen the partnership between parents and schools.

   Academic accountability requires assessment that:

   • is valid and reliable for students at different levels of learning

   • tracks individual student progress across a broad range of indicators

   • is not duplicative

   • limits the amount of time taken away from regular instruction and learning

   • uses strategies and tools built on current best practices in local school districts

   • provides continuous, data-driven district and school tools and resources

   • provides significant support to schools in the integration, analysis, and interpretation of data

   • provides training, technical assistance, software, and a “best practices network” for student accountability

   • surveys community, parent, and student satisfaction with their local schools

   • is designed to support improved individual student achievement, not penalize or sort schools