A
new report on school funding formulas released by the Education Law Center finds that many states continue to unfairly allocate education funding relative to the needs of their most disadvantaged students and schools serving high numbers of those students.
The Second Edition of the National Report Card on public school funding, "Is School Funding Fair?," published by the Education Law Center rates every state on the basis of four separate, but interrelated, “fairness indicators”: funding level, funding distribution, state fiscal effort, and public school coverage.
The report provides in-depth analysis of state education finance systems and school funding fairness across the nation. Here are a few of its findings:
- Six states do relatively well on all four funding fairness indicators (IA, KS, MA, NJ, NM and VT);
- Three states are below average on all funding fairness indicators (FL, MO and NC);
- Most states need improvement in at least one funding fairness area, and many do poorly on the indicators most influenced by policy decisions – effort and funding distribution;
- During the years under consideration, the effects of the economic recession were just beginning to be felt, with about half the states experiencing declines in per pupil spending between the two most recent years of available data.
See how your state is ranked and read the full report
here.