Policy

We will drive additional funds to students at the greatest risk of academic failure. This approach is consistent with a large body of research showing that students who are struggling in school require additional supports to succeed.

In general, we believe that the best way to identify students with greater need is to look at their past achievement. Therefore, to the extent possible, we will rely on student achievement data—results on State math and English Language Arts exams—to identify students eligible for additional funding. We will provide additional funding to schools with struggling students.

At the same time, funding students based on their test results could create perverse consequences. For example, if two schools enroll students with low levels of achievement, and if one school gets great results and the other Departments not, a system that bases funding on student test scores will cut funding for the school that achieved great results. That would be counter-productive.

Based on these considerations, the Department has adopted the following policies:

• Students receive additional weights based on their achievement at entry to a school. A school will receive additional funding for enrolling struggling students, but will not lose money for success in educating them.
• In schools where we do not have any data regarding students’ achievement before they enter a school, we do not use achievement data to determine funding because we do not want perverse incentives. As the regular citywide first testing occurs in 3rd grade, we can use test data only for schools starting after that grade (i.e., in 4th grade or later).
• Students who attend a school that is funded with the achievement weight (instead of the poverty weight), but did not enter the school with test score data (i.e., they transferred from another state or country), can receive the weight based on special eligibility criteria.
• For schools beginning before 4th grade, we use a proxy for low achievement. The best proxy for achievement is poverty. Particularly in the elementary grades, there is a very tight correlation between poverty and achievement. More than 90 percent of “Level 1” students are low-income.

Eligibility for Poverty Weight

Students enrolled at schools that begin before grade 4 (e.g., all K–5, K–8, and K–12 schools) qualify for the poverty weight if they also qualify for free lunch and/or receive public assistance, according to data provided by New York City’s Human Resources Administration. These are also the criteria for Title I eligibility.

The poverty student count used in the FSF formula represents poverty data as of December 31, 2007, for the students on a school’s register on October 31, 2007.

At Universal Free Lunch (USM) schools, where the concentration of students meeting the Title I criteria is above a certain threshold and forms are not collected annually, the weight is calculated by multiplying the total number of students on the 2007–08 school registers at the school by the school’s most recent poverty percentage under Title I.

Eligibility for Achievement Weight

At schools beginning in 4th grade or later (e.g., all 6–8, 9–12, and 6–12 schools), students receive additional weights based on their achievement upon entering the school. There are two funding levels—a higher achievement weight for students “Well Below Standards,” and a lower one for students who are below grade level, but closer to proficiency (“Below Standards”). As with the grade-level weights, these intervention weights are higher in grades 6–8 than in grades 9–12. Qualifying English language learners and special education students are also eligible to receive the academic intervention weights.

Students are considered “Well Below Standard” if they:

• Score Level 1 (“Not Meeting Learning Standards”) on both the State’s English language arts (ELA) and math exam;
• Score Level 1 on the ELA exam and Level 2 (“Partially Meeting Learning Standards”) on the math exam; or
• Score Level 2 on the ELA exam and Level 1 on the math exam.

Students are considered “Below Standards” if they:

• Score Level 1 in math or ELA that do not fall within the categories in the first tier (e.g., students who score Level 1 in math and Level 3 or 4 in ELA); or
• Score Level 2 on both the State’s ELA and math exam.

In circumstances where one or more scores for a student are missing:

• Students who score Level 1 in ELA or math with a missing score in the other subject will be considered “Well Below Standards.”
• Students who score Level 2 in ELA or math with a missing score in the other subject will be considered “Below Standards.”
• Students who have no scores will be allocated weights in proportion with the rest of the school. For example, if a school with 10% of students who are “Well Below Standards” and 20% “Below Standards” has 10 students missing scores when they enter, the school will receive a “Well Below Standards” weight for one of those students and a “Below Standards” weight for two of those students. This is a change from last year’s formula when students with missing scores did not receive any weight.

Scores are based on the last result before the student enters his/her current school.