Education Finance and the Education Cost Sharing Formula in Brief

The Education Cost Sharing (ECS) grant is the largest state funding program for K-12 education in Connecticut. The ECS formula, the tool used to allocate ECS grant funds across school districts, equalizes spending by targeting more money to poorer districts, and seeks to improve educational equity by adjusting for differences among school districts in terms of student need and district wealth. This brief provides an overview of the formula, how it is calculated, and problems with the measures used to calculate state aid. For instance, the “foundation” has been frozen at an insufficiently low amount by statute.