Introduction
Against the backdrop of the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts to education, state and local governments are facing instability while continuing to shoulder the main responsibility of funding, providing, and administering K-12 education. While the federal government plays a critical role in improving access to education, ensuring civil rights in the classroom, and providing school grants—which particularly support students with disabilities, English language learners, and students from low-income households—federal spending represents only 11 percent of public K-12 education funding in the United States. This indicates that some of the most impactful reforms to a fractured, underfunded, and inequitable education system could be enacted within state legislatures and local school boards if they are given the resources and federal stability to do so.
However, expanding education programs and spending at the state and local levels is much easier said than done, largely because funding for public schooling primarily comes from income and sales taxes at the state level and property taxes at the local level, which raise more money in communities with higher incomes. Inequities between school districts in wealthier, more affluent areas and those in low-income, working-class communities often persist and even widen in some states because of this model. Districts in areas that cannot afford to raise additional local taxes on families therefore rely more heavily on state and federal funding. Further complicating matters is the fact that each state legislature, state education agency and local education agency (LEA) has its own system for allocating and implementing public education funding.
What reforms, then, could have meaningful, positive impacts across such vastly different school districts, states, and systems? One option is weighted student funding (WSF) formulas, also known as student-based funding.
Why implement weighted student funding?
Weighted student funding formulas have been adopted to varying extents, including hybrid models, by at least 39 states and Washington, D.C., and countless individual school districts. WSF formulas seek to equitably distribute funding by assigning “weights” to individual students or schools based on characteristics that contribute to a need for increased educational spending, such as special education, English language learner status, family income level, rural educational settings, and other factors. This method represents a more local and decentralized approach to education spending compared with the traditional centralized staffing and funding models, which allocate money to LEAs and individual schools based on broader staffing, programming, and student population numbers. In contrast, weighted student funding models often incorporate certain aspects of centralized funding to pay for capital and operational costs such as school building maintenance, classroom resources, and custodial staffing alongside student-specific funding allocations, which follow students throughout their K-12 education and ensure individual needs are met. The states and districts that have seen the most success with WSF implementation are those that have implemented it alongside larger, comprehensive education policy reforms that include increases to school budgets and revenue.
Successes
Adoption of weighted student funding formulas has grown in recent years, largely because research has demonstrated their success. A 2019 national study conducted site visits at nine school districts using weighted student funding formulas and found that among the five school districts with sufficient data, “three showed a more positive relationship between spending and poverty after the adoption of WSF.” A different, multiyear study found that “nearly all WSF districts do spend more on average on schools attended by low-income students than on schools attended by non-low-income students.” Furthermore, the researchers concluded that WSF districts become more equitable over time as the funding formula’s investments in low-income, disabled, English language learner, and rural students are refined. This support is critical as students from low-income backgrounds are more likely to have poor educational outcomes, which can be alleviated by providing a greater targeted financial investment in their access to education and resources. Finally, a 2024 study of a large, urban school district in the southeastern United States using a weighted student funding formula found that “student test scores in math and ELA [English language arts] increased by 0.14 and 0.12 standard deviations, respectively” and cited the flexibility given to principals in the localized, weighted, and student-based funding model as “a key mechanism that improved student outcomes.” The adoption of weighted student funding formulas has been associated with positive academic outcomes, especially when paired with school principal autonomy and involvement in decision-making, reemphasizing the need for local input.
Two states that have found success in implementing weighted student funding are Tennessee and Maryland. Tennessee’s weighted student funding formula mandate was adopted in 2022 under the Tennessee Investment in Student Achievement (TISA) Act, while Maryland adopted its Blueprint for Maryland’s Future in 2021. Both states assign a base per-pupil expenditure to all students before adding weighted funding. However, the states differ in the characteristics to which they assign weight. Tennessee assigns weighted funding to students based on 14 categories—including poverty, special education, and English language learner status—and adopts different tiers of financial support within certain groups based on the extent of student need. Maryland assigns weighted funding based on eight characteristics, seven of which are based on student characteristics including prekindergarten, multilingual learning, and special education status, and also assigns additional tiers of financial support within some categories to address varying student needs. Both states assign extra funding to students based on special education, income, and English language learner statuses, among other qualifying factors.
When Tennessee adopted TISA, it replaced the state’s longstanding Basic Education Program and included “an additional annual recurring state investment of $1 billion” alongside the adoption of WSF, which has only improved the overall transition to the new plan. A memo from the Tennessee State Collaborative on Reforming Education notes that the weighted formula adopted under TISA is more transparent, aligned with students’ needs, and streamlined than the outdated formula it replaced. The memo also highlights additional aspects of TISA that supplement WSF, including support for educator salaries, professional development and training, and the inclusion of a safety net to ensure that no school district loses more than 5 percent in total TISA allocations from year to year.
The adoption of Blueprint for Maryland’s Future was a result of several years of collaboration among legislators, teachers, education advocates, and experts, all of whom sought to address academic attainment and funding issues facing Maryland’s schools. The blueprint increases funding for education over 10 years, with an ultimate goal of increasing annual education funding by $3.8 billion; creates an accountability and implementation board to develop a comprehensive 10-year statewide accountability plan; and invests in college and career readiness, early childhood education, and teacher training and retention programming, all alongside the adoption of WSF. Both TISA and Blueprint for Maryland’s Future represent comprehensive statewide reform packages that go beyond the specific benefits of weighted student funding formulas, illustrating the need not only for targeted funding based on student needs but for greater investments in students, teachers, and schools overall.
Although statewide academic successes cannot be attributed to funding alone, both Tennessee and Maryland have seen improved educational outcomes in the years following their adoption of WSF. In Tennessee, statewide test scores have steadily improved in both reading and mathematics. The Tennessee Department of Education has said that 2025–2026 test scores reflect improved proficiency for 86 of its 147 school districts compared with 2024–2025 scores and for 118 school districts compared with 2023–2024 scores. When more money is invested in education, and when that money is distributed through an equitable formula that takes into account the needs of individual students, student outcomes improve.
In Maryland, test scores have improved as well. Scores on the Maryland Comprehensive Assessment Program hit a five-year high in ELA and mathematics in 2025–2026. The 2025 Education Scorecard found that Maryland is among the states making the strongest academic recovery, ranking third in reading recovery and fifth in mathematics recovery. The same report ranked Tennessee fourth in reading recovery and second in mathematics recovery nationally. Education policy leaders in both states have attributed these successes to TISA and the Maryland Blueprint, respectively, citing the financial investments made in recent years as a key factor in score improvements. As schools across the nation continue to recover from educational disturbances caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, Tennessee and Maryland provide two strong examples of the positive role education policy reforms, including the adoption of WSF, can play in advancing academic success.
Challenges
The benefits of using WSF to determine education spending have been widely demonstrated, but administering them has proved challenging. At the local level, allocating funding based on specific school and student needs puts the burden on school principals and administrators to communicate with state education agency professionals regarding what funding they need and how they would implement it. In a 2020 report from the Edunomics Lab at Georgetown University, researchers noted that, of the principals they surveyed, about 37 percent said they did not receive financial training from their current district, and more than half said they did not receive financial training in their certification program. To effectively implement weighted student funding locally, school principals need to be trained in budgeting processes and trusted with the autonomy to make or weigh in on larger spending decisions. Beyond including principals in this work, districts must commit to allocating a significant portion of their overall budget through the weighted funding formula in the first place so that spending can have the most meaningful impact.
Funding allocation challenges persist at the state level as well, indicating a broader problem with scalability. Although at least 39 states and Washington, D.C., have adopted a version of weighted student funding, the extent to which it accounts for a state’s overall education budget differs, as do the specific weights each state prioritizes. One reason for these differences is the lack of large-scale, comparative research that provides clear analysis of best practices with WSF scaling and implementation. Scaling weighted student funding requires political consensus, state and local education agency coordination, and additional federal and state revenue to maintain long-term sustainability. As federal funding challenges loom in the background, even states that have successfully implemented WSF are under strain. Legislators in Maryland are continuing to debate the future of the blueprint implementation and assess how to continue to pay for the reforms that have already helped to elevate test scores and make education more accessible. Since federal pandemic relief funding expired, state education budgets have become tighter, creating a “fiscal cliff” for states. In addition to this cliff, more funding cuts have been proposed in the Trump administration’s fiscal year 2027 budget request. The administration’s attempts to eliminate countless federal education grants further complicate states’ ability to effectively fund K-12 education. If states are struggling to fund basic operational, staffing, and per-pupil expenses previously supported through Department of Education grant money, they will certainly be unable to afford the additional weights necessary to support low-income, disabled, English language learner, rural, and other student groups. States should not have to raise taxes on working families to make up for the federal government’s withdrawal from public education, despite their joint responsibility to ensure equal access to it. Weighted student funding only works if states have the revenue necessary to effectively implement it in a way that meets individual district, school, and student needs, and federal funding cuts will add an additional layer of challenges to this.
Conclusion
As students, educators, and state governments continue to navigate the modern educational landscape, adjustments to funding reforms are undoubtedly on the horizon. In order to ensure that all students receive a quality, accessible education, each level of government must remain committed to investing in and supporting school districts and their students regardless of where they live. At the federal level, government must continue to invest in public education, and federal grant programs should continue to be fully funded to ensure stability and growth for the American K-12 education system. At the state level, legislatures must provide sufficient revenue to effectively implement weighted student funding across their states. At the local level, local education agencies must actively include principals and district leadership in budgeting decisions and provide them with the autonomy and training to effectively implement WSF and allocate resources based on students’ needs. Finally, in order to protect, expand, and standardize the adoption of WSF at the state level, future research should analyze different states’ approaches to implementation, evaluate the most impactful weighted funding metrics, and explore alternate routes to raising revenue that do not harm working families and students. This research should be supported by the Department of Education’s Institute of Education Sciences to provide a large-scale comparative analysis relevant to states across the country. States such as Tennessee and Maryland, which have adopted comprehensive reform packages inclusive of weighted student funding, have seen positive results. Comparative state education funding formula and policy research could help other state legislatures and education agencies better understand potential reform options and provide guidance to all states on how to adapt to proposed federal spending cuts as they work to meet every child’s needs in the classroom.
* Author’s note: The author would like to thank Weadé James and Paige Shoemaker DeMio for their valuable contributions to this piece and for their mentorship throughout the research, writing, and editing processes, and Viviann Anguiano, Veronica Goodman, Sara Partridge, and Madison Weiss for their support and guidance.