This brief is part of Education Law Center's "Tracking State Aid Cuts in the Pandemic" series. Against a backdrop of significant underfunding even before the pandemic, the Texas Education Agency announced in June that federal Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act funding would be used in place of the final payments…

These technical appendixes accompany the study, "Funding California Schools When Budgets Fall Short." The study explores how the Great Recession impacted funding for California's K-12 system, how prepared districts are for potential funding cuts, and what policy choices could forge a more financially resilient system. Using data on…

The State Indicators Database (SID), which is the School Finance Indicators Database's (SFID) primary product, includes approximately 125 variables, but this report focuses on three key school finance measures: fiscal effort, adequacy, and progressivity. This report discusses how states' systems tend to mediate the impact of economic downturns and…

The COVID-19 pandemic is creating a crisis in state and local budgets, potentially leaving many schools to face budgetary declines even as they've had to transform the way they serve their students, particularly those who are most vulnerable. Bruce Baker, Mark Weber, and Drew Atchison offer four recommendations for mitigating the looming fiscal…

A growing number of states have policies that positively address resource equity in school construction, distributing capital resources based on district wealth (although as addressed in this brief, these policies are not always implemented with actual funding), but almost no states require any consideration of diversity or segregation in their…

Facing legal challenges and public pressures, Connecticut needs an objective and rigorous study of its public education costs. This study is the first to estimate the cost function of Connecticut public K-12 education and to evaluate the equity and the adequacy in the state's school spending based on regression-estimated education costs. It finds…

Focusing on rural school superintendents in New York State public school districts, this study examined the nexus between their leadership behaviors and the academic achievement levels of students within their districts. The study used a causal-comparative research design, also called an "ex-post facto design" (Isaac & Michael,…

California's K-12 school facilities require significant new and ongoing investments to address aging infrastructure, changes in educational programs, and federal and state regulations. Funding for facilities comes mostly from local sources and depends on local property wealth. The state provides some funding through the School Facility Program…

This paper uses data from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education to study various input data and their effect on student outcomes. The data pulled were related to school district, local, and personal wealth; student demographics; classrooms and classroom teachers. A multi-factor regression was then completed to assess which…

Large achievement gaps exist between students educated in schools in high-poverty areas and those educated in low-poverty areas. Research indicates this issue is due to many barriers that hinder student achievement in high-poverty schools (Borg, Borg, & Stranahan, 2012; Hersi, 2010; Walsh et al., 2014). Despite this normal occurrence, there…

We examine the relationship between district level student achievement and teacher average salary in Ohio from academic year 2013-14 to academic year 2018-19. Utilizing panel data, the following district level characteristics were controlled for: average teacher experience, average teacher degree-level, student socioeconomic status, race, student…

Informed and inclusive charter school authorizing means taking a community-based approach to better understand and meet the needs and interests of the students, families, and communities that charter schools intend to serve. This shift is unfolding in the context of state statutes and regulations and, in some places, local policies or processes…

The goal of state special education funding should be to equitably distribute funds that are adequate for all schools to meet their legal obligation to provide a free and appropriate public education to students with disabilities. Unfortunately, inadequate state special education funding is growing more common in Philadelphia schools. In this…

State and district policymakers have difficult decisions ahead in their efforts to balance budgets, maintain school services, and prioritize safety amid the COVID-19 recession. While California's finances are stronger today than after the Great Recession a decade ago, funding for the school system is still volatile, and K-12 schools could face…

This study examined the correlation between student achievement, the financial health of a diverse sample of public Illinois elementary school districts, and their local wealth. Research suggested that the wealth of the district within itself does not affect student performance. Specific possible associated factors included instructional methods,…