When legislators at any level adopt new laws or regulations, they have to try to envision the potential consequences, not just whether the new policy will actually address the problem they’re trying to remedy but also whether there could be some unintended results.
In the first months of a new, more generous funding formula for public schools in Mississippi, already some concerns are surfacing as to whether school districts will try to game the system in order to increase their state appropriation.
When Republican majorities in the Legislature began working toward replacing the nearly 30-year-old funding formula for the state’s K-12 schools, they said it was because the Mississippi Adequate Education Program was not “adequate” in addressing how much more difficult it is to teach students who come to the classroom with handicaps, such as poverty, learning disabilities or a language barrier.
MAEP included a 5% funding bump for low-income students, but GOP critics made a good argument that the bump was both too limited and too modest.
The new formula, the Mississippi Student Funding Formula, is much more aggressive in allocating extra funding for schools that have students with disadvantages beyond their control. For poverty, the per-pupil funding can see an increase of 30% to 40% above the base student allocation. For those learning English as a second language, the bump is 15%. For special education students, the increase ranges between 60% and 130%.
The worry is that with those kinds of funding differences, school districts might be tempted to classify more students in one or more of these “bonus” categories.
The biggest risk might be in creating an incentive to push academically marginal students into special education classes, or throwing students with marginal learning disabilities into the same grouping as students with major ones. With funding increases ranging from $4,000 to almost $9,000 per student in special education, the temptation could be there.
When asked recently about this risk by Magnolia Tribune, the chairmen of the Senate and House education committees recognized that the situation bears watching. One of them said that concerns had been raised about the potential for such abuse while the Mississippi Student Funding Formula was being crafted into law.
Recognizing the potential for abuse is the first step. The next is having procedures in place to discourage and catch it.
Providing this oversight will unfortunately add to the regulatory headache with which school districts deal. But when it comes to money, you can’t operate simply on trust.
