HARRISBURG, PA — Legislators on both side of the aisle praised the new Pennsylvania State Education Funding Formula created by a bipartisan task force over the past year, although many Democrats have said it can’t be effective unless education funding cuts imposed under former Gov. Tom Corbett are reversed.

The lack of a permanent state funding formula for education has provided an unbalanced distribution of state funding to school districts and does not match the needs to educate students in some districts, according to a statement from the Basic Education Funding Commission.

The new formula, unveiled on June 18, takes into account several student-based factors, including student count, which is the average of the most recent three years of Average Daily Membership (ADM); poverty; English language-learners; and charter school enrollment. The formula assigned weights to each category to help determine the degree to which each factor drives up the cost of educating a student.

A statement from the commission said, “The goal of the commission was to create a funding formula that would be a significant improvement over the current system for how Pennsylvania distributes state dollars toward education. We believe we have laid out a plan that will succeed in doing that.”