Digging into District Spending in a Dozen States
March 5, 2019
Burnette reports that states are beginning to report spending data as required by ESSA, but that this is “one of the most difficult pieces of the law to comply with and has gotten fierce pushback from district officials who complained that breaking out school spending amounts would only cause more paperwork and unnecessary friction between school board members, administrators, and parents.” According “to an analysis by Edunomics, a school finance think tank at Georgetown University, at least 14 states now have published school-by-school spending amounts.” Prior to ESSA, most districts have reported “average overall per-pupil spending, but civil rights advocates have long complained that those numbers mask how districts take their funding and then divvy up spending between schools.”