After months of arduous negotiation and partisan squabbling, states across the country have produced budgets for the new fiscal year that in many cases will bring deep cuts to state spending, including money for schools. The budget blueprints adopted by numerous states were postscripts to divisive legislative sessions that saw newly elected…

Amid a still-shaky economy, a troubling reality is starting to set in for states and school districts: The budget situation may get a lot worse when the federal economic-stimulus spigot runs dry. The hope of the Obama administration and Democrats in Congress has been that the $787 billion in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act--including…

Governors and state lawmakers are poised to kick off their toughest legislative sessions in years, with the hope of sparing K-12 education from deep budget cuts in the face of mounting deficits--a far cry from the more typical push for new policy initiatives and school programs. Simply holding the line may prove difficult. Together, 31 states face…

With his state flush with cash, Gov. Michael F. Easley of North Carolina can have the best of both worlds. Sitting on a $1 billion surplus in an operating budget of $17.4 billion, the second-term Democrat last week proposed a politically popular 13 percent spending increase for K-12 education, while also asking the legislature to block scheduled…

Many state budgets are reaping the benefits of tax revenues that are rising faster than at any time since the economic slowdown ended. Overall tax collections by states rose by 11.7 percent in the first quarter of 2005, giving the legislatures extra cash to shore up school aid, increase teacher pay, and finance new initiatives such as full-day…

Despite rosy economic news, highlighted by the 8.2 percent surge in the nation's economy in the third quarter of 2003, state coffers aren't growing at pace to meet the needs of schools and other high-priority programs such as Medicaid and prisons. Last month, many states started issuing estimates of how the money they'll have to spend in the 2005…