Policy that influence public school funding

Elementary and secondary education is funded through a complex mix of federal, state, and local dollars. Local and national economic changes, legislative decisions, and, in many cases, court orders, have all affected school district funding over time. This tool examines where education funding has changed the most and where it has not.

To understand how education funding has changed, we look at the level of school district funding over time and at the changes in funding progressivity, or how much more is spent on educating low-income students relative to nonpoor students. (Our default is to compare states using dollars that are cost-adjusted based on the salaries of college graduates in each district, but you can turn that adjustment off using the checkbox below.) Though education funding has generally increased since the 1990s, overall progressivity has largely been flat, and states vary widely in how much money they spend on education and how they distribute that money.

Below, you can explore how local, state, and federal funding have changed over the past two decades. The chart to the left shows the national average; clicking a state will add its trend line to the chart. To look only at one type of funding (e.g., from the state government) turn the different funding sources on or off.

Overall, school district funding is about as progressive today, on average, as it was in 1995. In most states, progressivity has changed only slightly. More states experienced an increase in progressivity than a decrease.

We measured the progressivity of school funding as a ratio. A ratio of 1.0 means funding is equal for poor and nonpoor students; a number above 1.0 means funding is progressive; a number below 1.0 means funding is regressive. An estimate of 1.1, for example, would imply that on average poor students attend districts that receive 10 percent more in per-student funding than the districts nonpoor students attend.

We measured the progressivity of school funding as a ratio. A ratio of 1.0 means funding is equal for poor and nonpoor students; a number above 1.0 means funding is progressive; a number below 1.0 means funding is regressive. An estimate of 1.1, for example, would imply that on average poor students attend districts that receive 10 percent more in per-student funding than the districts nonpoor students attend.

We measured the progressivity of school funding as a ratio. A ratio of 1.0 means funding is equal for poor and nonpoor students; a number above 1.0 means funding is progressive; a number below 1.0 means funding is regressive. An estimate of 1.1, for example, would imply that on average poor students attend districts that receive 10 percent more in per-student funding than the districts nonpoor students attend.

We measured the progressivity of school funding as a ratio. A ratio of 1.0 means funding is equal for poor and nonpoor students; a number above 1.0 means funding is progressive; a number below 1.0 means funding is regressive. An estimate of 1.1, for example, would imply that on average poor students attend districts that receive 10 percent more in per-student funding than the districts nonpoor students attend.

We measured the progressivity of school funding as a ratio. A ratio of 1.0 means funding is equal for poor and nonpoor students; a number above 1.0 means funding is progressive; a number below 1.0 means funding is regressive. An estimate of 1.1, for example, would imply that on average poor students attend districts that receive 10 percent more in per-student funding than the districts nonpoor students attend.

We measured the progressivity of school funding as a ratio. A ratio of 1.0 means funding is equal for poor and nonpoor students; a number above 1.0 means funding is progressive; a number below 1.0 means funding is regressive. An estimate of 1.1, for example, would imply that on average poor students attend districts that receive 10 percent more in per-student funding than the districts nonpoor students attend.

We measured the progressivity of school funding as the ratio of two weighted averages of each district’s per-student revenue: (1) weights are the number of poor students; and (2) weights are the number of nonpoor students. For example, an estimate of 1.1 would imply that, on average, poor students attend districts that receive 10 percent more in per-student funding than the districts nonpoor students attend.

Both progressivity and funding levels are calculated using data on regular public school districts that are based on geography (i.e.,we exclude districts that only contain charter schools and education service agencies). We calculated these measures using data on federal, state, and local revenues from the US Department of Education’s Common Core of Data Local Education Agency Finance Survey (F-33) for 1994–95 through 2013–14 and the US Census Annual Survey of School System Finances for 2014–15 (we refer to academic years using the calendar year in which they end, e.g. 2015 is 2014–15). We merged the finance data with district-level poverty data from the Census Bureau’s Model-based Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates. We adjusted districts’ funding amounts for differences in the costs they face using a measure of the salaries of college graduates who are not teachers in the district’s labor market.

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