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Title: External Cost Adjustments for the Wyoming School Funding Model

Citation Type: Miscellaneous

Publication Year: 2011

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Abstract: In 2005, Lawrence O. Picus and Associates provided the Wyoming Legislature with a roadmap to educational adequacy. Their report used an evidence based approach to identify the personnel, instructional materials, and other real resources each school and district needed in order to provide “the basket” of educational goods and services every child in Wyoming should receive (Picus et al. 2005). Their report also advised the Legislature on the level of educational funding school districts needed to be able to purchase the specific mix of educational resources the consultants recommended. One of the important recommendations of the 2005 report was that an external cost adjustment (ECA) “should be used to reflect the changing costs of resources in the interim years between full-model recalibrations” (Picus et al. 2005, p 164). ECAs are crucial to the long term viability of any cost-based funding recommendation. Without ECAs, inflation will erode the purchasing power of school districts, potentially leaving them unable to provide the necessary educational resources. There are a number of existing price indices that could be used to measure year-to-year changes in the cost of education, but none of them reflect all of the inflationary pressures facing Wyoming school districts. Rather than applying one of the existing cost indices to the recommended funding level as a whole, Wyoming should consider adjusting each major resource component separately using the most appropriate cost index for each component. If Wyoming chooses to adjust each major resource component separately, it will need to identify the most appropriate cost index for each component. Reasonable indices are available for the professional staff, nonprofessional staff, utilities, and educational materials components of the cost-based allocation model. This report identifies those indices and describes their recent patterns of growth. All of the recommended indices indicate that the inflationary pressure on school districts has eased recently. However, they also indicate that inflationary pressures may be greater in Wyoming than in most other states. It is reasonable to anticipate that inflation will continue to impact the necessary funding allocations and plan accordingly. On the other hand, it is important to note that ECAs serve only to maintain the status quo. Their use in the Wyoming funding model presumes that the model is based on accurate baseline measures of resource costs. If the baseline estimates overstate actual costs for one or more funding components, then applying an ECA to those funding components would simply perpetuate that overfunding, and the most appropriate policy response could be to forgo applying an ECA to those funding components until costs and funding converge. Similarly if a baseline estimate understates actual costs for a funding component, then applying an ECA to that baseline estimate would only perpetuate the underfunding, and further action would be needed to ensure that districts are able to provide the necessary resources.

Url: https://www.wyoleg.gov/2011/Interim Studies/Taylor_ExternalCostAdjustments2011Final.pdf

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Authors: Taylor, Lori

Publisher: Texas A&M University

Data Collections: IPUMS USA

Topics: Gender, Race and Ethnicity, Work, Family, and Time

Countries: United States