Trends in Unduplicated Pupil Percentage, Supplemental/Concentration Grant Funding, and Minimum Proportionality Percentage across California School Districts, 2014-2020
By Sean Arseo, Jee Young Bhan, Lucas Fowler, Lindsay Maurer, Shreyan Mohanty, Angelita Repetto, Samuel Snelson, and Jacob Hibel
Key Findings
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Statewide, the average district share of students from higher-need populations was largely stable across the Local Control Funding Formula’s (LCFF) first six years.
- School districts in our sample demonstrated modest growth in per-pupil supplemental and concentration grant funding: the median level of grant funding per enrolled student increased from $1,253 to $1,407 from the 2014-15 to 2019-20 school years. However, there is substantial variation in this trend. More than one-quarter of districts received less supplemental and concentration grant funding in 2019-20 than in 2014-15.
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Districts’ estimated increases and improvements in the services they provide for higher-need students increased over time, a pattern driven in part by districts’ tendency to underestimate the amount of grant funding they would receive during the LCFF’s first years. By 2018 nearly all districts reported accurate grant funding estimates in their annual Local Control and Accountability Plans.
Background
California’s Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) allocates additional funding to public school districts according to their share of enrolled students from certain historically disadvantaged backgrounds: English learners, low-income students, and foster youth. These higher-need students are collectively referred to as “unduplicated pupils” in California education policy and finance circles[1].
To offset the additional costs of serving higher-need students and to address historical disparities in per-pupil funding across districts, the state provides districts with an additional 20% of base funding per unduplicated pupil through “supplemental grants.” For districts in which 55% or more of students belong to an unduplicated pupil category, the state provides an additional 50% of the base allocation for each student above the 55% threshold through “concentration grants.” Combined, supplemental and concentration (S&C) grants provide increased per-pupil funding to school districts serving large shares of higher-need students.
School districts vary in the amount of annual S&C grant funding they receive each year. Similarly, S&C grants produce varying increases in relative funding beyond the base allocation across districts. For example, certain wealthier districts receive less than a one-percent increase in funding via S&C grants, whereas many districts serving higher-need student populations receive 40 percent or greater increases beyond their base allocation through S&C grants. The LCFF refers to this relative funding increase as the district’s “minimum proportionality percentage” (MPP). In addition to capturing each district’s proportionate increase in funding through S&C grants, MPP also quantifies the proportionate increase or improvement in services for unduplicated pupils the district must enumerate in its annual Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP).
In this CalPEPAL Brief Report, we describe trends in unduplicated pupil enrolments, S&C funding, and MPP in a sample of 869 non-charter elementary and unified school districts from the 2014-15 to the 2019-20 academic years, capturing the initial six years of LCFF. To do so, we combine administrative data from the California Department of Education (CDE) with information reported in districts’ annual LCAPs.
Trends in Unduplicated Pupil Percentage
Districts’ unduplicated pupil enrollments are tallied each year by CDE. According to these data, the share of students belonging to one or more unduplicated pupil categories remained stable from the 2014-15 to 2019-20 academic years among school districts in our sample. The typical school district enrolled approximately 60 percent unduplicated pupils over this period, with virtually no change in the distribution of unduplicated pupil percentages over time, as illustrated in Figure 1[2].
California districts demonstrate substantial diversity in their student populations, however. Districts’ unduplicated pupil percentages span the full spectrum, from 0 percent through 100 percent, with one-quarter of districts serving populations composed of more than 80 percent unduplicated pupils, and another quarter of districts serving less than 40 percent unduplicated pupils. Under LCFF, this between-district variation in student need translates to variation in raw S&C grant funding.
In addition to the variation in the size of districts’ unduplicated pupil enrollments, the unduplicated pupil population’s composition varies across districts, as well. As Figure 2 illustrates, the category of “low-income student” predominates among unduplicated pupils, as the distribution of low-income students across districts closely matches that of unduplicated pupils overall. By contrast, the distribution of English learners is highly skewed, with many school districts enrolling fairly low shares of EL students (the median EL student share is 15 percent), while a small number of districts enroll large concentrations of EL students (e.g., nearly 10 percent of districts serve majority EL student populations). As we examine in subsequent CalPEPAL Brief Reports, this variation in the make-up of districts’ unduplicated pupil populations leads to varying types of student needs and school district responses, even among districts with similar UPP.
Trends in Supplemental and Concentration Grant Funding
Because S&C grants are allocated on a per-unduplicated-pupil basis, districts that enroll a greater total number of students tend to receive more grant funding than smaller districts. For example, based on CDE administrative data, the median school district in our sample (i.e., one at the 50th percentile of S&C grant funding) received approximately $1.53 million in grant funding in 2019, whereas some large, urban districts received grants totaling $100 million or more.
When analyzing S&C data, one way to account for this wide variation in districts’ total grant funding is to adjust districts’ funding according to the number of students they serve. We take this approach below, examining over-time trends in districts’ S&C grant funding per enrolled pupil (i.e., S&C funding ÷ Total student enrollment, including unduplicated and non-unduplicated students)[3].
As illustrated in Table 1 and Figure 3, median per-pupil S&C grant funding remained stable across the initial LCFF years, with modest increases in 2018 and 2019, coupled with slightly increased variation (i.e., a widening gap between districts at the 75th and 25th percentiles of per-pupil S&C funding).
Another method of accounting for the highly skewed S&C funding distribution is analyzing the natural logarithm of each district’s S&C funds rather than the raw dollar amount, an approach that lends itself well to certain types of statistical analysis, like regression modeling. We used regression analysis to better understand the over-time change in each district’s S&C funding from 2014-15 to 2019-20[4]. On average, districts’ S&C funding grew by 1.6 percent with each passing year; a change that, while statistically significant and positive, is rather modest in size. However, we also observed substantial variation across districts in estimated over-time S&C change: estimated S&C funding for some districts, like Merced County’s Ballico-Cressey Elementary School District, shrank by as much as 45% per year, whereas funding for other districts like San Benito County’s Willow Grove Elementary School District and Siskiyou County’s Little Shasta Elementary School District was estimated to grow by 38% per year. In total, we estimated that nearly half of all districts had unchanging or decreasing S&C funding over LCFF’s first six years. Of the districts included in our sample, over one quarter received less S&C funding in the 2019-20 school year compared to 2014-15, according to CDE data.
Trends in Minimum Proportionality Percentage
Table 2 and Figure 4 present the over-time trend of increasing median MPP across California school districts, as indicated in districts’ annual LCAPs. Because MPP represents each district’s proportionate increase in total funding attributable to S&C grants, and because S&C grant funding increased only modestly across the 2014-2020 period, it is somewhat surprising that districts’ MPP estimates demonstrate an upward trend, nearly doubling, on average, between the 2014 and 2018 academic years.
By comparing districts’ estimated S&C funding as reported in their LCAPs to the actual grant funding they received as reported by CDE, however, we observe that districts tended to underestimate their grant funding, and thus their MPP, in LCFF’s first years. The scatterplots in Figure 5 illustrate the alignment of districts’ S&C funding as self-reported in their annual LCAPs (on the horizontal axis) with the funding actually distributed to the district by CDE (on the vertical axis). The diagonal dashed line represents a perfect match between these two values. Districts represented by dots above this diagonal line underestimated their S&C funding (and, as a result, their MPP). As Figure 5 illustrates, this phenomenon was common in the initial LCFF years, but by the 2017-18 academic year, most school districts provided accurate S&C funding estimates. Presumably, this increased accuracy helped districts become better equipped to plan their S&C grant spending and support for their unduplicated pupils as time progressed.
Conclusion
At the state level, CDE reports indicate that districts’ unduplicated pupil percentages have remained relatively stable since the implementation of LCFF. However, within those distributions, the share of unduplicated pupils districts enroll varies considerably, with half of all districts serving between 40 and 80 percent unduplicated pupils. The prevalence of unduplicated pupils across California highlights the need for school districts to adopt effective policies to support students from historically disadvantaged backgrounds, as well as the need for researchers to closely evaluate these policies’ impacts.
Because larger districts generally receive more S&C grant funding, we use per-pupil S&C grant funding to facilitate accurate comparisons across districts and over time. This metric was stable across the first four years after the LCFF implementation and only slightly increased in the 2018 and 2019 academic years. Although both unduplicated pupil enrollment and S&C grant funding remained largely stable over the initial years of LCFF implementation, we found that districts’ self-reported MPPs increased consistently from the 2014 to 2018 academic years before stabilizing thereafter. However, this pattern appears to be largely driven by districts’ tendency to underestimate their S&C allocations (and therefore their MPP) during the early years of LCFF. As a consequence of this underestimation, many school districts may have been inadequately prepared to effectively allocate the S&C funds they received. In a context of greater-than-expected S&C funding, districts would have also faced greater-than-expected MPP, placing a burden on educators and administrators to produce greater increases and improvements in services for unduplicated pupils than they had originally planned. Fortunately, districts’ tendency to underestimate their S&C funding and MPP appears to have been resolved by the 2018 academic year, after which districts’ self-reported estimates closely aligned with the actual funding amounts they received from the state.
In future CalPEPAL Brief Reports, we will describe in-depth examinations of school districts’ plans for supporting their higher-need students with S&C grant funds, paying close attention to how these plans varied across districts and evolved over time. In addition, CalPEPAL researchers are investigating the connections between school district policies for supporting unduplicated pupils and student outcomes, with the goal of identifying policies that are especially well suited to promoting academic excellence and equity in California public schools.
[1] The term “unduplicated” refers to the fact that a student is only counted once, even if they belong to two or more higher-need groups (e.g., a student who is both an English Learner and a foster youth counts as a single “unduplicated pupil” for funding determination purposes). For more details, see https://www.cde.ca.gov/fg/aa/lc/lcfffaq.asp
[2] In the box plots presented here, the solid box represents the middle 50% of observed unduplicated pupil shares: the box’s top edge represents the 75th percentile score, the bottom edge represents the 25th percentile, and the horizontal line inside the box represents the median (i.e. 50th percentile) score. The “whiskers” extending above and below the box represent the range of observed scores above the 75th and below the 25th percentiles.
[3] Note that, although our statistical adjustment for district size divides S&C funds by the total student population, in practice S&C funding is intended to be targeted toward the needs of unduplicated students, specifically.
[4] Specifically, we fit an unconditional linear regression model with district random effects to the distribution of districts’ log-S&C funds during the 2014-15 to 2019-20 period.