Dive Brief:
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Forty-two states in 2022-23 dedicated a smaller portion of their total funding to K-12 public schools compared to two decades ago, representing a loss of nearly $600 billion in state and local funds between 2016 and 2023 alone, according to a report released Tuesday by the Albert Shanker Institute.
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Black students were twice as likely as their White peers to attend districts with less than adequate funding levels, and three times more likely to be in chronically underfunded districts, according to the study by the University of Miami and Rutgers University.
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About 2 in 3 of the nation’s students enrolled in chronically underfunded districts are disproportionately concentrated in just 10 states, the institute found. Yet these states — Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas — serve only about a third of the nation’s students.
Dive Insight:
States' K-12 funding contributions have decreased despite the concurrent growth of their economies, according to the research.
The report ranked 47 states based on federal data from 2022-23 according to three indicators:
- How much of the states' total resources were spent directly on public education.
- How many students were in districts funded adequately enough to meet outcome goals.
- How funding was distributed among lower- and higher-poverty districts.
Alaska, District of Columbia, Hawaii, and Vermont were not ranked due to a variety of factors like missing data, having unique costs, or being single-system states or territories.
New Jersey ranked first among the 47 states in those measures, with Wyoming, New Hampshire, Maine, and New York trailing behind in that order — meaning these states put the most effort into the wellbeing of their K-12 finance systems, according to the weighted average of the three measures. North Carolina was ranked lowest, with Nevada, Florida, Texas and Mississippi rounding out the lowest five states.
Some of the states with the lowest rankings also have robust school choice programs, such as North Carolina, Florida and Texas.
“Why would the opponents of public education be on this campaign to divert taxpayer funds meant for public schools to vouchers and other privatization efforts?," said Randi Weingarten, president of the Albert Shanker Institute board of directors and also president of the American Federation of Teachers, in a March 10 statement. "While we know that poverty and screens and social media also have a real effect on academic achievement, the lack of consistent financial support is a real problem — particularly for already disadvantaged districts.”
States that had the greatest “opportunity gaps” were Connecticut, New York and Massachusetts, where wealthier districts contribute copious amounts of local property tax revenue to their schools.
These states "are essentially inequality factories, with affluent districts funded to achieve higher student outcomes than lower-income districts, year after year," said Bruce Baker, a University of Miami professor and co-author of the study, in a statement. "In other words, states’ funding systems are designed to reproduce achievement gaps.”
Baker and the other authors recommend that states audit and reform funding formulas and targets, distribute federal K-12 funding based on both need and effort or capacity, and increase local revenue contributions where need and capacity are high.
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