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.- Presentation: PASBO 5-Year Review of Basic Education Funding (Version 0.1)
- White Paper: Where's the BEF? A Deep Dive 5 Years Into Basic Education Funding
- Data Analytics: Impacts of "Full Formula" on School Districts
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.PASBO Daily Data Series - Basic Education Funding
Introduction to Basic Education Funding
- January 14 - What are state revenues to school districts?
- January 15 - What is basic education funding?
- January 16 - How is basic education funding distributed?
- January 17 - What are the student-weighted factors in the BEF formula?
- January 18 - What are 3-year average ADMs?
BEF Poverty Weights
- January 21 - What are the poverty weights?
- January 22 - How is moderate poverty calculated?
- January 23 - How is acute poverty calculated?
- January 24 - How is concentrated poverty calculated?
- January 25 - Putting the poverty weights together.
BEF Student Weights
- January 28 - What is the English language learner component?
- January 29 - What is the charter school component?
- January 30 - What is the sparsity size adjustment?
- January 31 - What is Weighted Student Count?
BEF District Factors
- February 5 - What are the formula "multipliers" in the BEF formula?
- Special Edition - What is the BEF formula dollar increase in the Governor's proposed budget for 2019-20?
- February 6 - What is median household income?
- February 7 - What is local effort capacity index?
- February 8 - What is adjusted weighted student count and the "share" concept?