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Basic Education Funding

Where's the BEF? - A Deep Dive into the BEF Formula

PASBO's 5-year review of basic education funding and the components, mechanics, dynamics, and trends of the new funding formula provides school business officials with the opportunity to learn how to analyze the new formula and visualize your district's data in telling your story.

It is critical for all school business officials to not only be able to advocate to state policymakers about school finance topics but also be aware of state policy and how those policies impact their district, like school funding and basic education funding. For example, Pennsylvania will distribute more than $538.7 million or 8.8% of basic education funding (BEF) through the new student-weighted formula in this school year. In total, the state will distribute more than $6.095 Billion in total basic education funding in 2018-19.

For many school business officials, however, the new BEF formula may seem even more complicated to plan for during the budget development process considering that data for several components are not be updated until the final state budget is enacted or at first look, can not be easily understood. In order to help school district business officials easily navigate past the intricacies of the formula, PASBO hosted a series of professional development workshops on the new basic education funding formula and created this central source for BEF on our website to share the content from our series.

This program is designed to break down the components for each step in the formula. Members will better understand and anticipate, for improved planning and budgeting, how the formula impacts their district. During these workshops, particpiants explore, in detail, the past five years of trends for selected components with analytics that will help participants gain a better understanding of the formula dynamics. All data and calculations were derived from the Pennsylvania Department of Education here.
 

Where's the BEF: PASBO 5-Year Review of Basic Education Funding

* The current presentation (version 0.1) below is being updated and we will change it to version 1.0 when uploaded.
 

BEF Data Tables (coming soon)

* All 2019-20 data will change once the final state budget is enacted as there will be updated 2017-18 ADMs in the formula. Current files with 2019-20 data is labeled as "2019-20 Proposed" data until the "2019-20 Enacted" data is available.
 
Excel PDF
Table 1 - Adjusted Weighted Student Count Table 1.1 - Adjusted Weighted Student Count
Table 2 - Average Daily Membership Table 2.1 - 3-Year Average ADMs and Actual ADMs
Table 2.2 - Change in 3-Year Average ADMs
Table 2.3 - Change in Actual ADMs
Table 3 - Poverty Metrics Table 3.1 - Poverty Metrics
Table 3.2 - Change in Acute Poverty Metric
Table 3.3 - Change in Moderate Poverty Metric
  Table 4.1 - Poverty Weighted ADMs
Table 5 - Median Household Income Index Table 5.1 - Median Household Income Index
Table 5.2 - Change in Median Household Income
Table 5.3 - Change in Median Household Income Index
Table 6 - Local Effort Capacity Index Table 6.1 - Local Effort Capacity Index
Table 6.2 - Change in Local Effort per Household
Table 6.3 - Change in Local Capacity per Weighted Student
Table 6.4 - Change in Local Effort Capacity Index
   
Table 8 - Student Weight Ratios Table 8.1 - 2019-20 Student Weight Ratios
Table 8.2 - 2018-19 Student Weight Ratios
Table 8.3 - 2017-18 Student Weight Ratios
Table 8.4 - 2016-17 Student Weight Ratios
Table 8.5 - 2015-16 Student Weight Ratios
Table 9 - BEF Share Change Table 9.1 - 2019-20 Proposed BEF Formula $ and Change in Share
Table 9.2 - 2018-19 Enacted BEF Formula $ and Change in Share
Table 9.3 - 2017-18 Actual BEF Formula $ and Change in Share
Table 9.4 - 2016-17 Actual BEF Formula $ and Change in Share
Table 9.5 - 2015-16 Actual BEF Formula $ and Change in Share
Table 10 - Annual $ Change and Share of Total Table 10.1 - BEF $ Change and Share of Total Change

PASBO Daily Data Series - Basic Education Funding

Introduction to Basic Education Funding

BEF Poverty Weights

BEF Student Weights

BEF District Factors