PPIC School Funding Simulator, 2025

This page contains data and Stata code for the school funding simulator used in the PPIC report Updating California's School Funding Formula: Assessing Alternatives and Trade-Offs by Julien Lafortune, Iwunze Ugo, and Brett Guinan (December 2025).

The data includes district funding, enrollment, and demographic information used for the calculation of district entitlements under the Local Control Funding Formula (LCFF) for the 2024-25 school year. The school funding simulator code reproduces the analyses presented in the report and allows users to simulate alternative funding scenarios by modifying key components of the LCFF formula. Users can modify student counts used for funding (e.g., attendance versus enrollment), base grant levels, base grant modifiers (such as regional cost adjustments), supplemental and concentration grant rates and structures, which student groups are targeted for additional funding, and assumptions about total state funding (variable or fixed cost simulations).

The README file provides additional details on file contents, data sources, and instructions for running the simulator code.

All manuscripts, articles, books, and other papers and publications using the simulator should cite the Public Policy Institute of California as the source of the data and should acknowledge that PPIC bears no responsibility for the interpretations presented or conclusions reached based on analysis of the data.

We would like to thank the Stuart Foundation and the William T. Grant Foundation for their support of this work.

For questions, clarifications, or comments, please contact .

Suggested citation:
Lafortune, Julien, Iwunze Ugo, and Brett Guinan. 2025. PPIC School Funding Simulator, 2025. Public Policy Institute of California.