Research suggests students learn better in classrooms that are modern, comfortable, and safe, but the age and condition of school facilities varies widely across the state. According to a recent estimate, California school districts need to spend between $3.1 billion and $4.1 billion annually just to maintain their existing facilities. Further,…

This study examines how California's system of school facility finance, and the level and distribution of funding for K-12 school facilities, has changed over the decade since 2006. This report addresses five broad questions related to the way California finances its school facility needs: (1) How has California's system of school facility finance…

A recent literature provides new evidence that school resources are important for student outcomes. In this paper, we show that school finance reform-induced increases in student performance are driven by those states that had test-based accountability policies in place at the time. By incentivizing school improvement, accountability systems (such…

Recent research demonstrates that the test score gap between relatively advantaged and relatively disadvantaged students is much higher in some school districts than it is in other districts. But measured school quality often varies dramatically within a school district, and therefore it is important to know whether individual schools differ in…

Beginning in 2018, the Texas Commission on Public School Finance, comprised of 13 members inside and outside of the legislature, will begin the task of studying and making recommendations to improve the school finance system. This five-part series prepares readers to engage with lawmakers and the school finance commission by providing background…

Recent causal evidence connects levels of per pupil spending and short- and long-term student outcomes. This evidence further suggests that specific types of spending may mediate the relationship between expenditures and student outcomes. Yet race remains related to funding disparities and schooling experiences in ways that raise concerns about…

Since the implementation of IDEA in 1975, as spending on education has continued to grow, a large portion of that spending has been dedicated to students with special needs. This study uses a panel dataset of local and intermediate school districts to examine the complex special education funding and delivery scheme in the State of Michigan. Using…

This brief assesses trends in access to, enrollment in, and success in Advanced Placement (AP) coursework in relation to school district poverty, racial composition, and urbanicity. It uses data merged from the 2011-2012 Civil Rights Data Collection (CRDC), the 2012 Small Area Income and Poverty Estimates (SAIPE), and the 2010 Decennial U.S.…

This report looks at student achievement levels in Arkansas school districts disaggregated by district poverty and by the district's performance relative to other districts. We estimated district performance statistics by subject and grade level (4, 8, and 11-12) for longitudinal student cohorts, using statistical models that adjusted for district…

This report presents school district leaders' views about staff turnover, hiring, and districts' financial outlooks at the end of the 2020-2021 school year. Based on the survey responses of 292 district leaders from the American School District Panel (ASDP), the authors found that teacher and principal turnover had not increased substantially…

Newly implemented state policy dealing with school finance created several consequences in a school district to include school configuration and restructuring of educational programs. This case describes how a new school finance law changes the entire dynamic of a school district and its newly appointed superintendent. The superintendent…

School districts in the United States are responding to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in significantly different ways. The authors of this report fielded the third American School District Panel (ASDP) survey in June 2021 to discover what changes districts are making to their academic and nonacademic offerings for the upcoming…

Like other states, Michigan has implemented a number of policies to change governance and administrative arrangements in local school districts deem to be in financial emergency. This paper examines two questions: (1) Which districts get into financial trouble and why?; and (2) Among fiscally distressed districts, are there significant differences…

California's school funding system has changed in several very significant ways since the original "District Dollars" report (Loeb, Grissom, and Strunk 2007), so the purpose of this report is to update that analysis and to track the evolution of district finances over the intervening 12 years, as well as to consider a few other issues…

We consider issues of equality and efficiency in two different school funding systems--a state-level system in Michigan and a foundation system in Ohio. Unlike Ohio, the Michigan system restricts districts from generating property or income tax revenue to fund operating expenditures. In both states, districts fund capital expenditures with local…