Picus Odden and Associates completed an evidence-based Michigan 2018 Adequacy Study under contract with Augenblick Palaich and Associates in early 2018. The report includes a new base expenditure per pupil figure and pupil weights for poverty and ELL students.
On August 31, 2017, Illinois adopted a new school funding formula based on our firm’s Evidence-Based (EB) adequacy model. In Spring 2016, the state’s governor appointed a school finance task force comprised primarily of legislators. Michelle Mangan, an associate professor at Concordia University and an Allan Odden advised Ph.D. graduate of the University of Wisconsin who had worked with us in several states, provided technical advice to the Task Force on the EB model. The new funding formula includes all the core EB model elements, including the additional tutors, extended day, summer school and counseling resources for at risk students. Though it will take several years for full implementation, Illinois becomes the 6th state with the EB model as the basis of its school funding structure.
In mid-November, Larry Picus and Allan Odden presented to the Wyoming Interim Committee on School Finance Recalibration the firm’s final report titled, 2015 Wyoming Recalibration Report, which reviewed all elements of the state’s Evidence-Based school funding model.
On December 7-8, 2014 the Picus Odden and Associates’ adequacy study prepared for the Kentucky Council for Better Education, a consortium of 168 Kentucky public school districts, was released at the winter conference of the Kentucky Association of School Superintendents. Though the study calls for increased funding, Tom Shelton, Chair of CBE and a Kentucky superintendent, said the importance of the study was that, “It is a model of what it takes to have a successful school. This is about improving the investment Kentucky makes in its public schools.” Shelton, and Mike Goetz, senior associate with Picus Odden and Associates who conducted the study, also briefed legislators, the governor and other Kentucky policy makers on December 9.
The study was mentioned in two press articles:
http://www.kentucky.com/2014/12/09/3584821_proposed-new-formula-for-funding.html?rh=1
An article in the Park City Kentucky Daily News on Kentucky school funding refers to the Picus Odden and Associates forthcoming Kentucky adequacy study, to be released in December, as well as previous work the firm has conducted on school finance in Kentucky. http://www.bgdailynews.com/news/state-th-worst-in-public-education-cuts-study-says/article_125b583e-df17-5045-aedf-7ba7dbdc4eba.html
At its final meeting on October 15, 2014, the North Dakota Interim Education Funding Committee approved a bill to provide the largest increase in K-12 education funding in the state’s history, drawing on recommendations from the Picus Odden and Associates 2014 Recalibration Report conducted for the Committee. The bill would hike the state’s foundation per pupil amount by $390 to $9,482 for 2015-16 and another $390 to $9,766 in 2016-17. The bill would increase funding for at risk students in grades K-8, and all ELL students, as well as provide up to $225 million for school construction to provide space for the state’s growing student population. The bill needs approval by the 2015 Legislature, but with rapidly growing revenues from the oil and gas boom in the state, the money is in state coffers.
Picus Odden and Associates partners Larry Picus and Allan Odden, together with Scott Price, the new chief financial officer of the Los Angeles County Office of Education, presented a ‘”2014 Arkansas Desk Audit” of the Arkansas school funding system to a summer meeting of the House and Senate Education Committees.
Picus and Odden helped Arkansas develop the current funding system in a 2003 project with an Interim Committee responding to court mandate to create an “adequate” funding structure. With that study as the foundation, the legislature enacted a new funding system in 2004. The legislature then had Picus and Odden recalibrate the funding structure in 2006.
On June 18, the Maryland Department of Education approved a contract with APA Consulting to conduct a comprehensive school finance adequacy study. Picus Odden and Associates partnered with APA on this project and is a major subcontractor. Our firm will conduct an Evidence-Based adequacy analysis for the state, and use the results, in conjunction with the results of two other adequacy methods, to propose a new “base” foundation expenditure per pupil level, together with weights for students from poverty, ELL students and students with disabilities. The project also will conduct studies of improving schools in multiple contexts.
On June 2, 2014, Picus Odden and Associates’ Principal Partner Allan Odden met with the Interim Education Funding Committee of the North Dakota Legislature to present the final report on the recalibration of North Dakota’s funding formula.
Of many findings in the report, the recommendations include increasing the Foundation Per Student number (the base adequacy level) from $8,810 to $9,247 and increasing the at-risk student weight, to provide extra help to struggling students from poverty and ELL backgrounds, from 0.05 to 0.20 plus a summer school weight of 0.6.
During the last week of March, Picus Odden and Associates’ lead partners, Lawrence O. Picus and Allan Odden, met with a dozen school business officials and superintendents in each of two meetings in Bismarck and West Fargo, North Dakota.
The purpose of the meetings was to garner local feedback on several technical issues related to the firm’s recalibration work: pupil weights for at-risk students, ELL students, students with disabilities, summer school and home school supervision. The groups also discussed an appropriate fringe benefit rate for staff benefits and the district portion of employee health care costs, school staffing focusing on instructional coaches, and small district adjustments.
The input will be included in a final report that will be discussed by the Legislative Interim Committee on Education Funding in Grand Forks, North Dakota on June 2, 2014.
