Poorer school districts now get more money, not lessEquity in K-12 School Spending

The old picture of American school funding, where local property taxes guaranteed rich districts more money per pupil, no longer holds: since the 1990s, high-poverty districts have been getting more, not less.

For decades the standard complaint about American K-12 schooling ran like this: schools are paid for mainly out of local property taxes, so districts in expensive neighbourhoods collect more and spend more per student. Poor districts lose out.

The payer changed

State governments now put in roughly as much as districts raise locally, and the federal government adds a share. Both of those pots are tilted towards low-income students.

So the total no longer rises and falls with local house prices. Decades of repeated rewrites to state funding formulas have loosened the link between a school's budget and the wealth of its surroundings.

Inside a state, poor districts get more

Between 1976 and 2021, spending rose across the board. In 2020, the highest-poverty districts spent $2,371 more per pupil than the lowest-poverty ones, as long as you compare within the same state.

Nationally the picture scrambles. Poor districts tend to sit in poor states, and states differ enormously: about $9,000 per pupil at the bottom, almost $30,000 at the top. That gap swamps the within-state effort.

New York City is the extreme case. Decades ago it spent less than its own state average; by the 2010s it spent far above it, and the state average was already nearly double the national figure.

Whose budget survived the crash

During the Great Recession, low-poverty and predominantly white districts were shielded from cuts. High-poverty and predominantly non-white districts had the least protection.

The report does not say whether these schools have enough money, or whether more would raise achievement. It answers a plainer question: who spent more, and who spent less.

So next time you hear that poor schools get the least, ask which comparison is being made, the one inside a state or the one across the country.