Current funding systems are outdated and stifle innovation in classrooms.
The American public education system is plagued by deep funding inequalities. These divides are created by differences in local wealth, and they are often too wide to be bridged with state funds. We need a better solution.
School district borders in America serve two roles. They define not only school systems, but also the local taxing districts that sustain them. Because of growing wealth inequality, funding gaps between affluent school districts and their needier neighbors are widening. States try to close these divides, but state funding, which is often drawn from unstable sources like sales, income, and energy taxes, just isn’t enough. We need a solution that goes beyond trying to patch the hole. We need to eliminate it.
By rethinking the role of school district borders—allowing local dollars to transcend these lines to support kids throughout the county or state—we can bolster funding for nearly 7 in 10 public school students.
State funding formulas drive the distribution of education dollars, and they do much to determine whether funding is adequate, equitable, and supportive of student success. View EdBuild’s model funding formula policies and use this interactive tool to build a state formula.
Every state uses a funding formula to distribute education dollars. State lawmakers and advocates frequently target these formulas for policy debate and legislative improvements. In support of these efforts, EdBuild offers its policy recommendations for each of the core areas of state funding formulas. These recommendations draw on, and build upon, existing state policies, showing how states can strengthen their formulas in line with the principles of adequacy, equity, responsibility, and transparency.
This is a practical guide for those seeking to reform state funding formulas. Use EdBuilder, an interactive tool, to construct your formula from the range of policy options recommended, and read EdBuild’s full recommendations to explore these policies in depth.
School district borders have power. They matter for school funding, home values, and diversity—and they can be drawn to either narrow or widen opportunity gaps. This fifty-state survey of school district border law provides tools to address these borders head-on in pursuit of educational equity.
Because so much of school funding is drawn from the property taxes raised within each district’s borders, those borders do much to determine students’ access to resources. District borders could be drawn to bring about fairer funding. Instead, our district map is the product of specific communities seeking to advance their own interests—affluent areas seceding; financially healthy districts refusing to join with struggling neighbors; and small districts resisting statewide consolidation attempts that would increase efficiency and inclusion.
Divisive borders are incentivized by the school funding system, but they are made possible by the laws that govern school district borders. Those working for educational equity should engage with these laws directly. This report supports that work with a fifty-state survey of school district border law.
The borders of many school districts serve to concentrate poverty in their classrooms and separate their students from resources. This report identifies the borders that create the greatest degree of economic segregation between districts.
The United States is dotted with left-behind places. Many mid-sized cities, especially in the former industrial regions spanning the northeast and Midwest, have struggled in a changing economy; they have seen employers leave and populations decline, leading to higher poverty rates and lower property values. When school district borders are drawn around these communities, poverty is concentrated in their classrooms, and school funding can become scarce. Sometimes, these borders also serve as walls between communities of very different means. On one side, needy students are isolated in a high-poverty school district; on the other, the children of an affluent community learn in a school system supported by a healthy local economy. This report identifies the borders that create the greatest degree of economic segregation between neighboring school districts.
America’s neighborhoods are all too segregated by race and class—and our school district borders mirror, and entrench, these divides.
There are almost 1000 school district borders in the United States that create steep divides: racial differences of 25 percentage points or more and revenue gaps of at least 10%. These borders cut illogically across communities and counties and serve to divide students from resources—and from each other. Along 132 of these borders, the divides are especially great, with racial disparities upwards of 50 percentage points and revenue gaps of 20% or more. And while it is true that predominately nonwhite communities are nationally disadvantaged when it comes to school funding, these divisive borders reveal that much of the reason for this is local, not national. Around the country, many school district borders both segregate students by race and define unequal tax bases that yield different levels of school funding.
FundED is the first interactive web tool to aggregate and standardize information regarding each state’s education funding laws.
FundED is the first interactive web tool to aggregate and standardize information regarding each state’s education funding laws. The intent of this site is to enable better state-to-state comparisons and provide easy access to detailed information related to the funding policies of all 50 states.
FundED provides information related to the most common elements of state funding formulas through national maps and state pages, organized by the general categories below. Explore the tool to see at-a-glance national maps, detailed state comparisons, and downloadable reports.
The vast majority of states leave school district mergers up to local districts, and even the states that have the power to step in do so only under the direst of circumstances, leaving students stranded in underfunded school systems.
School district borders define both which students will be served by a district and where those schools get their dollars. When states rely on local taxes to support schools, borders can be drawn to provide a deep well of resources for all of the community's children—or they can segregate those children along lines of opportunity and wealth.
When shifting conditions leave a school district without enough local resources to get by, it may seek to improve its financial health by consolidating with a better-off neighbor district. But in most states, that's all but impossible. In thirty-nine states, consolidation is purely voluntary, and struggling districts are likely to be turned away by their wealthier neighbor districts. In twenty-five states, there are financial incentives meant to encourage mergers, but they are rarely successful at bringing about consolidations for the districts that truly need them. In fact, only nine states have mechanisms that allow the state to mandate a merger, even in the direst of circumstances.
Every policy that increases funding equity, though it improves the overall picture, leaves some voters worse off. This report explores the stories of three states that beat the odds.
Every policy that increases funding equity, though it improves the overall picture, leaves some voters worse off. This report explores the stories of three states that beat the odds.
When property tax revenues are kept for the districts in which they are raised, wealthier neighborhoods can amply fund their schools at lower tax rates. When the state moves to equalize funding for districts of different wealth levels, it must either raise more state money or order the sharing of local revenues. Either course inevitably increases tax bills in those more affluent areas.
The increases create a challenge for policymakers and place political and economic constraints on the process of increasing the equity of the school finance system. In each instance, the state took on a larger role in school funding and decreased the amount of interdistrict variation permitted in the system.
High-poverty school districts enroll half of America's schoolchildren, and often, children in affluent, neighboring districts benefit from greater resources. This report highlights the country’s most segregating borders and considers how this situation has come to pass.
Income-based segregation between school districts is rising. Today, high-poverty school districts enroll half of America's schoolchildren. Often these high poverty districts neighbor wealthier school systems where children have access to greater resources. Because property taxes play such an important role in school funding, affluent communities have an incentive to establish school district borders around their neighborhoods in order to ensure that the benefit of their wealth is reserved for their children alone. When the families with means isolate themselves in wealthy districts, low-income children are left behind and income segregation between school districts increases.
This report presents the results of EdBuild’s analysis of the degree of income segregation across America's school district borders. In particular, it highlights trends among the 50 most segregating borders, and tells the stories of Detroit, MI; Birmingham, AL; Clairton, PA; Dayton, OH; and Balsz, AZ, whose borders with wealthy neighboring districts are the most segregated in the country.
Detroit needs a systemic fix. Overhauling state funding may be a starting point.
The ongoing teacher protest in Detroit has drawn public attention to the horrific physical conditions in many of the city's public schools. Photos have circulated of toxic mold, mushrooms growing out of walls, evidence of infestation, and gym floors too warped to stand, much less run, on. Each one is a window into a complex tragedy of multilayered government neglect and a funding system that traps children in under-resourced schools. These conditions call out not just for emergency aid, but systemic reform.
“How much money we spend on education doesn’t matter; it’s how we’re spending it that’s important.” Right?
We often hear this phrase in public education: “How much money we spend on education doesn’t matter; it’s how we’re spending it that’s important.”
While it’s true that our national average funding per student has increased significantly, what matters much more is the picture when we zoom in: who’s making the investment, who receives the funding, and which students need it most?
Pennsylvania is currently experiencing an implosion of its education system as schools across the state struggle to keep their doors open.
Pennsylvania is currently experiencing an implosion of its education system as schools across the state struggle to keep their doors open. For the third straight month since the initial June 30th deadline, the state house has failed to pass a budget.
Hardest hit by this crisis are schools and students in low-income communities, which rely on state funding far more than their wealthier counterparts.
A new blog is floating around attacking EdBuild and mischaracterizing our work. It's time to set the record straight.
There’s a new blog post floating around attacking EdBuild that blatantly (and bizarrely) mischaracterizes what we’re up to. It touches on some important policy areas, so it’s worth correcting the facts.
The last time most states updated the way they fund schools was in the 80s. A lot has changed since then.
When a school or district wants to try something new, it needs to find the money to do so. Many state education finance systems, though, weren’t designed with 21st-century innovations in mind. State funds are often tied up in inflexible spending categories or are allocated in ways that disincentivize changes to the status quo.
Our recent map used poverty data instead of FRL. Learn about the difference in this post.
Recently, EdBuild launched an interactive map that highlights student poverty in every school district across the United States. After receiving a number of inquiries about our methods, we created this guide to help answer common questions.