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The Reality of School Funding

By Stuart Buck, Esq.

In debates about education, you constantly hear the refrain that poor districts get less money than rich districts. Although it's possible to cherry-pick exceptions, that claim is false. Here's a quote from Eric Hanushek & Alfred Lindseth, "Schoolhouses, Courthouses, and Statehouses" (Princeton Univ. Press, 2009): It remains a common misperception that school districts with large numbers of poor children have significantly less money per pupil spent on them than other districts. While that may have been true at points in the past, for the last decade or more school districts serving the most disadvantaged populations, on average, have more to spend on each student than more economically advantaged districts. As shown in figure 3.6, by 2004 the poorest districts -- those in the highest 20 percent of the poverty distribution ...continue to full post

Full post as published by The Buck Stops Here on June 23, 2009 (boomark / email).