In 2025, Alabama passed the Renewing Alabama’s Investment in Student Excellence (RAISE) Act into law, directing more than $600 million in additional flexible funding over the next several years, primarily to support students with specific, additional learning needs. The legislation passed unanimously, showing state legislators’ strong support for putting students first. But behind that headline is a complex story about what it takes to change a K-12 school funding system.

Prior to the RAISE Act, Alabama’s school funding formula was nearly 30 years old — and it showed. Less than 2% of funding was directed specifically toward students in poverty, students with disabilities, or English language learners. Districts had very limited spending flexibility to meet student needs because the formula was built around inputs, not students.

A+ Education Partnership (A+), a statewide advocate for education reform in Alabama, knew this had to change. In 2022, A+ began exploring ways to modernize the state’s education funding formula to drive student success and received encouragement from Senate budget chairman Arthur Orr. A+ partnered with Bellwether to build the research and analytical case through a rigorous look at Alabama’s school funding data, an accounting of the formula’s gaps and benchmarking against other states, and a set of models for what a new approach could look like.

From Big Ideas to Policy Solutions

While the headline may sound simple, “more money for schools, based on the students they serve,” the effort behind this policy win was complex and many years in the making. For more than a year before any legislation was introduced, A+ met with key stakeholders across Alabama — including the governor’s office, finance director, state superintendent, education groups, and legislative leaders — to build a shared understanding of what the problems were and what was possible. 

That groundwork paid off. During the 2024 legislative session — when lawmakers were focused on an education savings account bill — key elected officials were already making the case for public school funding reform on the floor, echoing what they had learned from A+. 

By April of that same year, both chambers passed joint resolutions to establish a legislative study commission, led by the budget chairmen Sen. Arthur Orr and Rep. Danny Garrett. That commission, facilitated by A+ with additional support from Bellwether, produced recommendations in early 2025 that gave legislators a clear path forward.

A Compromise to Move the Needle for Students

The legislature ultimately landed on a hybrid model: keeping the existing foundation program, but layering weights targeting student-need on top — for students in poverty, special education, English language learners, gifted students, and charter school students.

While the final result wasn’t the most comprehensive reform possible, it was a compromise that made meaningful progress toward better alignment with students’ learning needs, earned broad policymaker support, maintained stability in district budgets, and kept the door open for expanding the weights and pursuing deeper reform down the road. Allocating more state dollars based on students’ needs was the goal, and the hybrid model represented a consensus approach that achieved it.

Factors Driving Alabama’s Success

None of this work happened quickly or easily. It stretched nearly two and a half years and required partners willing to stay the course. 

Alongside work with legislators and the commission, A+ built the Every Child Alabama (ECA) Coalition, a statewide network of organizations united around better schools for every student. By the time the 2025 legislative session opened, ECA partners were in the statehouse having conversations that no single organization could replicate on its own. When those conversations came from constituents and a range of trusted messengers, they landed differently.

Another key factor in the success of Alabama’s work was the education reform already taking hold. The passage of other recent legislation, including the Alabama Literacy Act and Alabama Numeracy Act, had led to measurable gains in student achievement. The “Southern Surge” was getting national attention as states including Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and Tennessee were leading in student achievement gains, which gave lawmakers the confidence to accelerate those initial gains with additional resources. Policy windows like this are essential, rare, and fleeting, and advocates had to be ready to push for further policy reform when the opportunity presented itself.

Today, A+ is in implementation mode, sustaining additional investment over time, and supporting local education leaders towards realizing the full potential of this new money. Bellwether documented how implementation is going in a recent publication, and A+ hosted a RAISE Act webinar series and released a comprehensive toolkit, both developed in partnership with Bellwether, to support local implementation of the legislation. The goal of these materials is to equip school district leaders and education advocates to support RAISE student groups through effective use of new, flexible funds. 

Helping Other States Move Forward

Alabama’s story offers a practical template — and it reflects the kind of success that’s possible when a state truly invests in student success. State school finance reform is technically complex, politically demanding, and deeply important to both schools and taxpayers. If you’re proposing to reshape how millions or billions of dollars of public money is allocated and used, you will need to build the case and sustain the push over years, not weeks. 

Bellwether works with state advocates, policymakers, and education leaders to build the analytical foundation for change, translate data into language that resonates with legislators and communities, and stay engaged through the long arc of the policy design and implementation processes. That might mean developing funding model simulations, supporting a legislative commission, facilitating a coalition for advocacy, creating tools and resources, or providing expert guidance in key rooms at key moments.

Every state’s context is different. What stays constant is the goal: building education funding structures that enable and accelerate student success.

For more information on Bellwether’s school finance and resource allocation work, contact Bonnie O’Keefe at bonnie.okeefe@bellwether.org.

For more on Bellwether’s work with A+, watch our webinar or read the case study.