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Contact:
Amy Schwartz, (212) 998-7461, amy.schwartz@nyu.edu
Dan Quinn, (517) 203-2940, dquinn@greatlakescenter.org

Illinois Funding Report Flawed

Review finds that a recent report fails to support claims

EAST LANSING, Mich. (Nov. 21, 2013) – A recent report from the Illinois Policy Institute claims that Illinois' education finance system is fundamentally flawed and should be replaced by a system where "parents control the flow and distribution of money." An academic review released today finds little evidence to support its claims or preferred solution.

Understanding Illinois' broken education funding system: A primer on General State Aid, authored by Ted Dabrowski, Josh Dwyer, and John Klinger, claims that Illinois' school funding system benefits a few districts in northeastern Illinois at the expense of others. Amy Ellen Schwartz, Professor of Public Policy, Education, and Economics and Director of the Institute for Education and Social Policy at New York University, and Sarah Cordes, a doctoral candidate at NYU and an IES Pre-doctoral Interdisciplinary Research Training Fellow, reviewed the report for the Think Twice think tank review project. The review was produced by the National Education Policy Center (NEPC) with funding from the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.

The report contends the formula for state aid uses capped property values in Cook and Collar Counties and excludes from calculations growth in property wealth in certain areas, ultimately leading to higher levels of state aid than would expected in the absence of these policies. The authors further attack the state's method for allocating poverty grant aid, which also tends to flow to districts in those counties.
 
The review credits the report with providing some potentially helpful background on the Illinois General State Aid system. However, the review finds that the report falls short in providing evidence to support the claims and its proposed remedy – turning over state aid "subsidies" to parents.

The report suggests that parents should control the flow and distribution of school funds to "hold schools accountable." Despite this, no evidence in the report suggests that parents would do a better job allocating resources for student success.

Furthermore, the review finds that there is little in the way of evidence to point to any real "flaws" in Illinois' current funding system. Schwartz and Cordes find that the report does provide a number of government generated statistics to support its claims, but the report is thin on other relevant literature.

Schwartz and Cordes say, "Thus, the report's usefulness for evaluating the current education finance system in Illinois is limited." More analysis is needed to fully evaluate Illinois' school funding system.

Find this Think Twice Review on the Great Lakes Center website:
http://www.greatlakescenter.org

Find Understanding Illinois' broken education funding system: A primer on General State Aid on the web:
http://illinoispolicy.org/wp-content/files_mf/1380814767Ed_finance_1.pdf

Think Twice, a project of the National Education Policy Center, provides the public, policymakers and the press with timely, academically sound reviews of selected publications. The project is made possible by funding from the Great Lakes Center for Education Research and Practice.

The review can also be found on the NEPC website:
http://nepc.colorado.edu

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