INDIANA – Indiana State Board of Education announced the release of the Center for Evaluation & Education Policy (CEEP) School Finance Report for the 2015-2017 biennium. The board is required by the Indiana legislature to commission CEEP each year to perform a relevant study.
This report describes analyses of publicly available enrollment data. These analyses were conducted to areas changes in student enrollment in Indiana’s public school corporations, including charter school;s. The results of this report indicate that state funding continues to increase on a per-pupil basis from the lowest levels in 2011 and 2012.
However, shifting Average Daily Membership (ADM) presents potential challenges in a large number of traditional school corporations that resulted in lower total state revenue in 2017, compared to 2009, even in current dollar terms. Higher current dollar funding per-pupil should improve unintended effects that might occur from variable costs.
The primary findings provided in the Executive Summary report:
ADM is projected to decline modestly in the state’s school corporations in 2017, compared to 2009, with larger declines in traditional school corporations.
Findings from the analyses of Indiana’s school funding formula indicate that the state’s public corporations experienced substantial changes in state funding between 2009 and 2017.
Total Tuition Support and Basic Funding are projected to increase through the end of the 2015-2017 biennium; however, the increases in funding are not sufficient to fully restore funding to pre-2009 levels in terms of constant dollars (inflation adjusted).
Regression analyses suggest that current funding formula policy improved horizontal and vertical equity throughout the study period, and projections indicated high levels of equity will be achieved in 2017.