Historically, Minnesota school districts with apparently different needs have competed for funding from the state. P.S. Minnesota believes that it is better for Minnesota’s students and districts to work together toward a funding formula that is rationally tied to student achievement and need.

The Need for Education Funding Reform

In 2006, several Minnesota education and parent groups united to form P.S. Minnesota, an unprecedented non-partisan coalition of organizations with a shared goal of educating Minnesota’s students for the 21st century. We agree:

• It’s time to fund public schools in a way that honors Minnesota’s constitutional commitment to educate all students.
• It’s time to fund public schools in a way that allows districts to meet state and federal standards as well as community expectations.
• It’s time to fund public schools in a way that rationally accounts for the real costs of meeting the needs of individual students and individual districts.

The P.S. Minnesota Funding Formula

The P.S. Minnesota coalition hired national school finance experts Augenblick, Palaich and Associates, Inc. (APA) to Estimate the Cost of an Adequate Education in Minnesota, based on Gov. Tim Pawlenty’s 2003 education reform task force findings.

To estimate the cost of an adequate education, the APA report focused on two key costs:

1. A base cost per-student, calculated at the actual cost of delivering services.
2. Additional cost "weights" for students with special needs, including at-risk and special education students and English language learners.

Using two different research-based methods of analysis, the report concluded that a $1 billion annual additional investment will educate our children to today’s performance standards. Two billion dollars in annual additional investment is needed to educate our children to tomorrow’s standards.

Examples of how the funding formula applies to both a large and a small school district are given in the APA Phase 2 report.

It is clear from the APA research that if Minnesota is to continue to progress toward ensuring that all students meet federal and state performance expectations, we must significantly increase our investment in education. While the report doesn’t make specific recommendations for sources of funding, it is important for the Minnesota Legislature’s Education Finance Reform Task Force as it works toward reforming Minnesota’s education funding system.