| The following is a report published by Claire Suggs, the Georgia Budget and Policy Insitute's Senior Education Policy Analyst. |
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Georgia's effort to overhaul the formula it uses to split about $8.5 billion per year in state money among its 180 school districts is gaining momentum despite important omissions.
A study committee of the governor-appointed Education Reform Commission seems primed to recommend a new funding method that leaves issues critical to students' success unaddressed. It locks in $466 million in austerity funding cuts even as school districts already struggle to bring down class sizes that ballooned and provide the elective classes they once did. It also lacks a careful implementation plan that connects funding reform to broader instructional and organizational reforms.
Georgia's Quality Basic Education school funding formula stood for 30 years in part because it is so difficult to reshape it into something clearly better. A new GBPI report details several issues for Georgia policymakers to consider before cementing changes that could last another three decades.
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