Reader beats Dr. Wong to the answer

By John McDaid | Friday, 5 March 2010

Thanks to feedback submitted anonymously, we may now know the problem with the GoogleDocs spreadsheet on the education funding formula. Unfortunately, I can't fix it since RIDE did not provide the appropriate RADM number — I used the one from their handout on the formula.

Your RADMs are wrong, because the RADM for a district when calculating EWAV includes the students from that district that attend charter schools. Also, the EWAV numbers adjust the negative communities up to 0 before entering the quadratic mean. I don't have the accurate RADM numbers, but I assume these two issues are your main errors.
— Anonymous e-mail

Thanks, kind and helpful reader!

Tags:

Localblogging, 02871, Schools, funding formula

Comments

Viking

Fri, 03/05/2010 - 11:22pm

Permalink

Help with the Obtuse

John, really I am quadratically up to here with the whole thing. I learned long ago that just because someone with fancy academic credentials says something, the fact that I don't understand what they're saying is no proof that they really know what they're talking about. Take Allen Greenspan, for example. Everyone was so impressed with his sooth-saying wisdom, and now he admits that most of what he said for public consumption was intentional gobbledygook.

When it comes to figuring out how "they" figure out how to apportion tax dollars to school districts, I will defer to you as one with greater math skills than I can even dream of. Just remember, though, that if you're really having trouble making sense of all of it, it may be because its all smoke and mirrors. For some reason I can't escape the feeling that when you adjust the negative community to zero, you might just be left with nothing.

John McDaid

Sat, 03/06/2010 - 8:30am

Permalink