Fixing At-Risk Funding
HOPE FOR SYSTEMIC SUPPORT FOR AT-RISK STUDENTS REDUCED TO TRIAGE
_edited.png)
For years, Educate Nevada Now has warned that Nevada’s new system for determining which students qualify for at-risk funding has serious flaws. The new method has suffered from a lack of transparency, arbitrary eligibility cut-offs unrelated to actual student needs, and unpredictable funding for schools and students.
Under Nevada’s education funding formula, students who are considered “at-risk” receive additional funding on top of the base amount schools receive per student. Similar weights also exist for English Learners and Gifted and Talented Education (GATE) students. Special Education, though funded differently, can also be expressed as a weight.
Recently, Nevada communities felt the problems we identified with the at-risk formula first hand. Districts lost millions of dollars in at-risk funding, with CCSD alone losing $36 million. Thousands of students who previously qualified for support were suddenly ruled ineligible by the complicated, propritery A.I.-driven formula.
A 2025 report created for the Commission on School Funding exposes the shortfalls of the current at-risk model. Though the model appears to identify some students in need, its rigid eligibility, limited number of students served, and reliance on volatile factors mean vulnerable students are still being left behind.
Too Few Served with an Arbitrary Cap
The current model only serves students it deems in the bottom 20th percentile of need. This arbitrary and rigid cut-off means that regardless of a student’s actual need for additional support, if they do not fall under that threshold, they are left behind. This 20th percentile simply ensures the state serves fewer students; it does not serve all at-risk students, only what the A.I. formula deems most at-risk.
ENN supports using Direct Certification, an established method of determining and verifying a student’s economic disadvantage, as a reliable method for determining at-risk eligibility. Not only do many states utilize this method, but research consistently finds economic disadvantage as a reliable proxy for whether a student may need additional resources to succeed.
“House of Cards”
Students that may look stable during a single snapshot in time, but are one life event away from their academic careers being thrown into disarray. For example, one school principal told ENN that they have an unhoused student that they have painstakingly tried to keep on track but who is not eligible under the current formula. Under Direct Certification, that student would receive the additional support they need to stay on track.
Under Direct Certification, approximately 90 to 100 thousand students would qualify for the at-risk weight. Under the current model, about 60 thousand students qualify (and this figure keeps shrinking). The state may not be able to immediately fully fund the weight when adding the additional students, but it could steadily work towards funding all at-risk students.
Punishing Success
One key reason the state moved to weighted funding and away from categorical programs like the SB 178 grant, a program that attempted to identify and fund students struggling academically, is because of the extreme volatility for districts, schools, and students. However, the report revealed that the current at-risk model ended up with the same shortcomings.
Because the current at-risk method relies on a “GRAD Score” that attempts to identify and fund students “least likely to graduate,” once a student begins to see success with the additional resources, they lose their eligibility. The formula uses several risk factors to determine this GRAD Score, and these factors in and of themselves are not the issue. The problem arises with the fuding volatility schools and students experience as they see growth in those factors.
This creates major challenges for schools. At-risk funding is supposed to support programs, staffing, and services for vulnerable students. But when funding changes dramatically from year to year, schools cannot reliably maintain those supports.
Ironically, students can lose access to the very resources that helped them succeed in the first place.
Fluctuating GRAD scores, coupled with the 20th percentile cap, meant that from the 2022/23 to 2023/24 school year, nearly 17,000 students lost their at-risk designation and the funding attached to it because they no longer met the GRAD score threshold. The weights transferred to differen, who in turn will eventually experience the same issue just as they begin to reap the benefits of those resources.
The report to the Commission found the GRAD score led to nearly a 30% swing in resources, while the Direct Certification method was only about 10%. The reduced fluctuation of Direct Certification, coupled with the additional students served, would offer much more stable funding to both districts and schools.
As a teacher, it’s like we are being penalized for doing so good,” said Lilly Kulaszewski, a first-grade teacher at Helen Smith Elementary. “We are being penalized for caring so much and almost making the impossible possible.
Las Vegas Review-Journal
The part that disturbed me about the SB 178 money — it was an arbitrary line that was drawn,” Kuzma said. “We were below it, now we’re above it, so we just lost it.
Principal Kuzma, Rancho High School
I know some of my parents on the (school organizational team) were like, why do we keep trying hard?” she said. “Why don’t we just let it slide a year and get funding back?
Principal Tammy Villarreal-Crabb, French Elementary
Nevada is Unique, but Not in a Good Way
Presentations from WestEd to the Commission on School Funding highlighted another major concern: Nevada is currently the only state that does not allow students to “stack” funding weights. In practice, this means that if a student qualifies for both Special Education and at-risk services, the student only receives the Special Education funding, not both. This approach fails to recognize that multiple overlapping challenges require additional and very different supports.
Nevada is also the only state using the current at-risk eligibility AI-based model to determine state funding. And, this model runs exclusively through a tech company’s proprietary identification system. We can do better.