New Report Finds States Have Deprived Schools of Hundreds of Billions of Dollars Since 2016

WASHINGTON-Forty-two states devote a smaller share of their economies to their K-12 public schools than they did 20 years ago. This decrease in education "effort" represents a loss of nearly $600 billion in state and local K-12 revenue between 2016 and 2023, according to the latest "Adequacy and Fairness of State School Finance Systems" report, released today by the Albert Shanker Institute, University of Miami, and Rutgers University.

The damning new numbers come as student achievement in math and English continues to flatline with evidence pointing to declining investment in public education as a principal cause. The report finds Black students are three times more likely than white students to live in "chronically underfunded" districts.

Co-author Bruce Baker, a University of Miami professor, describes this as a "permanent disinvestment" in K-12 public schooling: "Over much of the past two decades, states' economies have grown but their school funding has lagged behind. It's no accident that student achievement has stagnated during this period."

Baker, Matthew Di Carlo of the Albert Shanker Institute, and Mark Weber of Rutgers University use a unique approach to evaluate the K-12 finance systems of all 50 states and the District of Columbia. In addition to fiscal effort, the authors judge states based on statewide adequacy and equal opportunity.

"Our 'Adequacy and Fairness of State School Finance Systems' report reveals that kids' futures are being eroded by the decade-long drain of K-12 funding at the state level," says AFT President Randi Weingarten, who is also president of the Albert Shanker Institute board of directors. "Money matters and it matters a lot. 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? 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. If we don't want to see our country fall even further behind, states must redouble their effort and commit to investing in the schools that 90 percent of kids attend."

The authors' primary measure of statewide adequacy ranks states based on how many of their students attend schools in districts with funding below estimated adequate levels. They also identify "chronically below adequate" districts, which are the 20 percent of the nation's districts in which actual funding is the furthest below adequate levels. Roughly 2 of 3 of the nation's students who are in these chronically underfunded districts are in just 10 states. Yet these states-Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Texas-serve only about 1 in 3 of the nation's students.

The report's final measure of education finance is equal opportunity, which evaluates whether states fund their affluent districts more adequately than they do higher-poverty districts that serve the most vulnerable students. And the report finds that opportunity is unequal-higher-poverty districts are funded less adequately than their lower-poverty counterparts-in every single state, but the size of these "opportunity gaps" varies quite dramatically.

The largest gaps are found in states, such as Connecticut, New York and Massachusetts, where statewide adequacy is relatively high, but where wealthier districts contribute copious amounts of local property tax revenue to their schools, creating chasmic gaps in adequacy between the "haves" and "have nots." The authors recommend that states should narrow these adequacy gaps by targeting additional state aid to higher-poverty districts with less capacity to raise revenue locally.

The opportunity gaps are not solely determined by economics but also by race and ethnicity. The report finds African American students are twice as likely as white students to be in districts with funding below estimated adequate levels, and three times more likely to be in "chronically underfunded" districts. The discrepancies between Hispanic and white students are smaller but still large.

According to Baker, "states with large opportunity gaps are essentially inequality factories, with affluent districts funded to achieve higher student outcomes than lower-income districts, year after year. In other words, states' funding systems are designed to reproduce achievement gaps."

The authors conclude with a set of general recommendations for improving the design of states' systems, including the need for states to apply more rigorous methods of setting district funding targets, and increasing revenue (particularly state aid) to bring all districts up to those targets minus a "fair share" local revenue contribution by each district. They also propose that the federal government step up to help states that, due to high poverty and small economies, cannot meet their students' needs even when their effort levels are high.

"The Adequacy and Fairness of State School Finance Systems" is an annual report by researchers from the Albert Shanker Institute, University of Miami School of Education and Human Development, and Rutgers University Graduate School of Education. The report is also accompanied by 51 one-page profiles that summarize the performance of the K-12 finance systems of each state and the District of Columbia.

The Albert Shanker Institute, endowed by the American Federation of Teachers and named in honor of its late president, is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization dedicated to three themes - excellence in public education, unions as advocates for quality, and freedom of association in the public life of democracies

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The AFT represents 1.8 million pre-K through 12th-grade teachers; paraprofessionals and other school-related personnel; higher education faculty and professional staff; federal, state and local government employees; nurses and healthcare workers; and early childhood educators.