According to Washington’s constitution, the state’s paramount duty is to educate its children. In an attempt to meet that responsibility, the state spends more than $6 billion each year on K-12 education. In these challenging economic times, Washington must spend every dollar in a way that maximizes student achievement.

At Partnership for Learning, we believe the state’s goal must be to ensure that each and every student graduates prepared for the rigors of college and the workplace. This means that financial decisions should relate directly to student needs. Student-based budgeting (SBB) does just that, by allocating funding to schools based on the needs of students in the classroom.

In a two-part policy report, “Student-Based Budgeting, Revamping School Funding in Washington to Improve Performance,” Partnership for Learning partnered with Public Impact to assess the state of school finance in Washington and explore the benefits student-based budgeting could provide to our state:

• Part one analyzes how Washington currently allocates funding, explains how the current funding model falls short and proposes an alternative – student-based budgeting – to ensure funding is being well utilized anddistributed equitably and in a mannter that allows for flexibility and innovation at the district level. Read>>
• Part two includes an extensive analysis of the state’s current school finance data and the impact the student-based budgeting model could have on district-level funding. Read>>

Partnership for Learning and Public Impact have also developed two interactive tools to illustrate how Washington currently distributes its funding and how it could be modified to meet student needs:

• Student-Based Budgeting Simulator: This tool allows for users to experiment with a student-based budgeting model by developing their own funding formula. The simulator enables the user to identify which funds to include in the formula, the base funding amount, additional funding factors and a timeline for implementation. Based on the selection, the simulator then calculates how funds would flow to districts.  Explore>>
• Student-Based Budgeting Motion Graph: This tool allows users to visually explore the correlation between multiple variables (i.e. district size, free-and-reduced lunch, student proficiency, etc.), current district funding and changes in funding over time due adoptin of student-based budgeting. Explore>>

If Washington is serious about preparing every student for college, work and life, it must reexamine its current funding model to determine if it is meeting the needs of students. To learn more, read an overview of student-based budgeting across the country, view the answers to frequently asked questions about student based budgeting, and find more about how statewide student-based budgeting differs from the system that was implemented in Seattle Public Schools in the 1990s.