(CAPITOL CITY NOW) – Ten years in, evidence-based funding has been a success for Illinois public schools. So says Robin Steans, president of the education interest group Advance Illinois. The law pumps another 350 (m) million dollars a year into K-12 education. And – hopefully – more spending translates to better results.

“We do have ways of knowing that,” said Steans. “The bill requires every district to submit a spending plan to say, here is how I plan to use my EBF dollars, including: they have to spell out are they going to use them on these evidence-based factors which are driving the formula in the first place. Then they have to file another report that says and here is how I actually spent those dollars.”

Pointing to District 186, “Springfield absolutely has benefited from EBF. They’ve gotten millions and millions of additional new dollars that are flowing their way every year,” said Steans. “However, some number of districts got a short-term infusion of dollars,” such as during covid. Steans says those dollars being temporary, districts should have spent them on things which are temporary, or one-time expenditures.

Steans says the decade of EBF has eliminated one category of schools: the financial worst of the worst. “When we first passed it, there were (more than 160) districts that had less than sixty percent of what they needed. We no longer have any districts that are below sixty percent of adequacy. That’s huge, and we should feel really, really good about that as a state.” However, some schools still are short of seventy percent adequacy.