School Funding: Opportunity Gaps and How They Harm Our Students
School funding matters because of its connection to student success. For decades, scholars debated whether money makes a difference in providing a high-quality education for students. Scholars now agree that money spent well impacts students and their educational experiences and outcomes. As one scholar explains, “It is clear (and obvious) that increased dollars do not magically transform themselves into greater learning. But it is just as clear (and just as obvious) that money can make a difference if spent on. . . investments known to be effective.” Scholars also generally agree that schools need sufficient financial resources to hire and retain staff and purchase the necessary materials to educate current and future students. Left with few other options for relief, families sometimes initiate litigation to try to secure greater funding for their children.
This report is paper one in a two-part series dedicated to school funding.
This paper asks:
- Why does school funding matter?
- What are the opportunity gaps along lines of socioeconomic status, race, and geography that occur because of inadequate and/or inequitable school funding?
- What litigation strategies have been used to attempt to address inadequate and inequitable school funding?
The next paper asks:
- What are potential state and federal reforms to better promote fair school funding?
- What federal resources exist to help districts and states address school funding opportunity gaps today?
- What law and policy reforms would help to prevent, reduce, or close school funding opportunity gaps moving forward?
This report details the importance of school funding as a critical foundation for ensuring equal educational opportunities for students. The first section focuses on the unfortunate reality that far too many states and districts systematically perpetuate school funding opportunity gaps along lines of class, race, and geography and discusses why these gaps matter. We then describe the ways that upcoming school funding changes may exacerbate these gaps. For these sections, we rely heavily on the literature and research of prolific scholars in the field as well as recent empirical publications that use national data sets to analyze funding trends and gaps. In the next section, to better understand current school funding disparities, we cover a brief history of the court cases that challenged school funding systems.