Call for ‘Weighted’ Student Funding Gets Bipartisan Stamp of Approval

The United States needs a fundamental change in the way it allocates money to public schools—something that will not be easy to achieve even though it is desperately needed, a bipartisan, philosophically diverse group of policy leaders is contending.

The ad hoc group—including three former U.S. secretaries of education, two prominent former governors, and many other well-known policymakers—says that schools’ budgets should be based on per-pupil allotments that are weighted according to students’ educational needs. And it rejects the widely promoted “65 percent solution,” an approach that calls for districts to spend at least that percentage of their budgets in the classroom.

In its manifesto arguing for what is called weighted-student funding, which its leaders dub the “100 percent solution,” the group says the method differs from prevailing budget practices that often shift resources away from the schools...