The 89th Texas Legislative Session starts this week. Education reforms will be a key focus, including enrollment-based funding, a critical initiative we’ve pushed for the last couple of sessions.
Enrollment-based funding is an alternative to our current school funding method. It means funding our schools based on enrollment — the number of actual students served — instead of basing it on attendance (what we do now).
- The system used in Texas — Average Daily Attendance (ADA) — is calculated by adding attendance counts throughout the year and dividing that by the number of instructional days.
- That means if a student misses school, they are not counted for funding purposes that day.
Why It Matters: School districts plan and budget based on enrollment and can rely on this number much more accurately than guessing how many students will miss school on a yearly basis.
- Enrollment-based funding reflects the actual cost to schools since charters and school districts get no cost savings from students being absent. Teacher salaries, utilities, and other expenses do not change based on attendance.
- Attendance-based funding disadvantages districts with high concentrations of low-income students and students with chronic health issues.
- Only six states use attendance-based funding — Texas, California, Idaho, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Missouri.
The Bottom Line: Enrollment-based funding is a worthwhile endeavor that has bipartisan support.
- Texas children are suffering from learning loss, teacher shortages, and cost-cutting measures.
- Enrollment-based funding makes fiscal sense, and it’s the right thing to do for students whether they attend charter, rural, small, or large schools.
Go Deeper: Read ”Count Every Student: Attendance-Based Funding Leaves Too Many Students Behind” by Chandra K. Villanueva, Every Texan director of policy & advocacy, at www.everytexan.org.
Luis Figueroa is the chief of legislative affairs for Every Texan, which offers knowledge, solutions, and tools to help Texans more easily understand, discuss, and make decisions about public policy.