Abstract
School funding systems in most states are highly complex. They include state aid funding formulas designed to achieve multiple goals, including weakening the link between per pupil property tax bases and per pupil spending, and assuring that school districts are guaranteed sufficient resources to provide all their students with an adequate education. The primary purpose of this paper is to calculate for three states, two statistical indicators that will assist policy-makers in determining whether their school funding system has achieved its stated goals. Drawing on an extensive literature on the costs of education, I calculate for each school district within a state its cost-adjusted spending per pupil. To assess the success of states in reducing the linkage between per pupil property wealth and per-pupil spending, I calculate benefit-effort ratios, which are defined as cost-adjusted spending divided by each district’s property tax rate. Funding equity is greater in states with smaller variations in benefit-effort ratios. The results show that while cost-adjusted spending per pupil and student academic performance is higher in Massachusetts than in Texas and Wisconsin, within-state variation in both cost-adjusted spending per pupil and in benefit-effort ratios are larger in Massachusetts than in the other states. The paper concludes with suggested reforms to the state funding systems in the three states.
Information
- Series: La Follette School Working Paper No. 2024-003
- Authors: Andrew Reschovsky