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In CPE's 2024 report on urban education, researchers explore the unique challenges and strengths of urban schools. This comprehensive analysis offers insights into demographic diversity, equity issues, and the meaning of high-quality education for every urban student. The report incorporates many data points and best practices at the district level; it is an informative read for educators, policymakers, and anyone interested in the future of urban education.

"Making the Grade analyzes the condition of public school funding in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The current report presents a picture of school funding in 2020-2021, the first full school year of the COVID-19 pandemic and the most recent data available. The report ranks and grades each state on three measures to answer the key question: how fair is school funding in your state? The three fairness measures are: (1) Funding Level -- cost-adjusted, per-pupil revenue from state and local sources; (2) Funding Distribution -- the extent to which additional funds are distributed to school districts with high levels of student poverty; and (3) Funding Effort -- funding allocated to support PK-12 public education as a percentage of the state's economic activity (GDP). The state rankings and grades on these measures provide crucial data to inform advocates, policymakers, business and community leaders, teachers, parents, and students about the equity and adequacy of public school funding in their state. Making the Grade is designed to assist residents working to improve the level and distribution of funding for public school students.

Over the past 10-15 years, there has emerged a growing consensus, supported by high-quality empirical research, that additional funding improves student outcomes (and funding cuts hurt those outcomes), particularly among disadvantaged students. There are, of course, serious and important debates about how education funding should be spent. Yet virtually all potentially effective policies and approaches require investment, often substantial investment. Proper funding, in other words, is a necessary (but not sufficient) requirement for improving student outcomes. Understanding, assessing, and reforming states' funding systems is therefore a crucial part of any efforts to bring about such improvement. This report evaluates the K-12 school finance systems of all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The latest year of data presented pertains to the 2019-20 school year, but it also examines trends in measures going back 10-15 years. The report focuses on three measures: (1) fiscal effort (how much states spend as a proportion of their economies); (2) statewide adequacy (whether aggregate spending is enough to achieve common outcome goals); and (3) equal opportunity (whether adequacy differs between higher- and lower-poverty districts). [This report was co-prepared by University of Miami School of Education and Human Development. For the fourth edition, see ED616520.]

Informed and inclusive charter school authorizing means taking a community-based approach to better understand and meet the needs and interests of the students, families, and communities that charter schools intend to serve. This shift is unfolding in the context of state statutes and regulations and, in some places, local policies or processes that require authorizers to assess "district impact"--that is, the impact of opening a new charter school on traditional public schools or the district as a whole. This brief supports charter school authorizers in making decisions rooted in evidence of local communities' wants and needs as well as analysis and projections about the impact on traditional public schools and the school district as a whole.

The State Indicators Database (SID), which is the School Finance Indicators Database's (SFID) primary product, includes approximately 125 variables, but this report focuses on three key school finance measures: fiscal effort, adequacy, and progressivity. This report discusses how states' systems tend to mediate the impact of economic downturns and offers general guidance as to what can be expected as the impact of the current crisis continues to unfold over the next few years. This report includes recommendations as to how policymakers, journalists, parents, and the public can use this data and results to summarize and assess the performance of state school finance systems. [For the third edition, see ED613617.]

We present an overview of spending adequacy among individual K-12 school districts in the U.S. Our results are from a new database of over 12,000 public school districts that allows users to compare each district's actual per-pupil spending levels to estimates of adequate spending levels--i.e., spending required to achieve the common goal of national average math and reading scores. The data are for the 2017-18 school year. Predictably, we find substantial heterogeneity, with many districts spending well above our estimated adequacy targets and many others spending well below, in some cases shockingly below. Districts with negative (i.e., inadequate) funding gaps are especially prevalent in the southeast and southwest, but they are also found throughout the entire U.S., including in states, such as Massachusetts and Connecticut, which include generally high-spending districts. The sum of these negative gaps across all districts (ignoring districts with positive gaps) is $104 billion, and the average negative gap is $4,254 per-pupil. Conversely, even in states where underfunding is widespread and typically severe, there are numerous districts in which resources exceed our adequate spending estimates. Finally, we show that the extent of funding inadequacy increases with district child poverty rates and with the proportion of Black and especially Hispanic (Latinx) students served by districts. These results illustrate that most states are failing in their job of filling the holes between districts' costs and their capacity to pay those costs, as well as how, even in states that are more successful, many districts slip through the cracks. An effort to rectify these discrepancies could consist of a strategic expansion of the federal role in education finance, as well as a recalibration of how states fund their schools. High-quality district adequacy measures can help guide this process by identifying where resources are needed most.

The State Indicators Database (SID), which is the School Finance Indicators Database's (SFID) primary product, includes approximately 125 variables, but this report focuses on three key school finance measures: fiscal effort, adequacy, and progressivity. This report discusses how states' systems tend to mediate the impact of economic downturns and offers general guidance as to what we can expect as the impact of the current crisis continues to unfold over the next few years. This report includes recommendations as to how policymakers, journalists, parents, and the public can use this data and results to summarize and assess the performance of state school finance systems. [For the second edition, see ED606197.]

In 2019, the Texas Legislature passed House Bill 3 (HB 3) -- an $11.6 billion school finance reform law that dedicated over $6 billion toward investments in education and $5 billion toward replacing school property taxes with state aid. The property tax cut portion of HB 3 is set to expand each year, costing the state more money annually without sending any additional funding into classrooms. While HB 3 makes an ongoing financial commitment to property tax cuts, no similar promises are made to the children of Texas to keep pace with rising future education costs, reform special education funding, or improve funding for the 80 percent of English learners left behind in HB 3. The costly property tax cuts in HB 3 will put a strain on the state's 2022-2023 budget and limit resources available for keeping school funding whole as Texas districts work through the COVID-19 crisis and accompanying instability in enrollment and attendance. The first priority of the 2021 Legislature should be to ensure the state's schools have stable funding throughout this school year and the coming biennium, and add any additional resources needed to combat losses of learning and pivots in service delivery. To accomplish this, the Legislature should freeze the costly and inequitable property tax cuts for the biennium and put the Texas students first.

Long before closures due to the coronavirus pandemic, many Pennsylvania schools faced a different health crisis: unsafe facilities. Crumbling buildings, asbestos, lead, and other school facility health and safety risks plague many schools across Pennsylvania, particularly in low-income districts and those that enroll a high percentage of Black and Latinx students. The Commonwealth's failure to provide adequate facilities funding has created what Pennsylvania school administrators and school business officials have called a "growing disparity between those school districts that can address vital school construction, renovation or maintenance needs and those that cannot." This brief: (1) examines available evidence related to the condition of Pennsylvania's school facilities; (2) reviews past, current, and proposed policies related to how the state funds emergency facilities expenses; and (3) discusses how other states provide for emergency school facilities funding. Four findings are discussed in detail and recommendations are provided for how Pennsylvania can improve current funding policy to ensure safe and healthy school facilities and address disparities in district capacity to do so.

Tennessee's school funding formula does not adequately support the state's schools. This report analyzes the impact of underfunding on staffing levels and the resulting inequities created between high- and low-income school districts. The state's school formula funding, even when supplemented by local funding above the required local share, results in lower staffing levels in poorer districts in nearly every staffing category. Our findings show: (1) Nearly all districts raise more local funds than required. (2) Wealthier districts supplement with local funds to reduce the average state student-teacher ratio of 23:1 ratio to 19-20 students per teacher, while the poorest districts average a student-teacher ratio of 24:1. (3) The English language learner to English as a second language teacher ratio is twice as high in poor districts than in wealthier districts. (4) Many districts have extremely limited access to student support staff such as social workers, counselors, and psychologists.

School-funding changes over the last decade have created funding inequities for Indiana's students from low-income communities, students with disabilities, English language learners, and students in public charter schools--inequities which will likely be exacerbated by COVID-19. Students of color are disproportionately impacted by these funding gaps. This report examines what caused these inequities, including 2008 property tax reforms and a 2015 change to Indiana's funding formula. We propose solutions to ensure all students in Indiana receive their fair share of funding: (1) Differentiate state aid based on local wealth; (2) Create more equitable funding for students from low-income households and English language learners; (3) Create a fairer system for special education funding; and (4) Share local funding with charter schools. [This report was written with contributions from Lisa Chu.]

A growing number of states have policies that positively address resource equity in school construction, distributing capital resources based on district wealth (although as addressed in this brief, these policies are not always implemented with actual funding), but almost no states require any consideration of diversity or segregation in their school construction decision-making processes, even though this is a major factor affecting educational equity. This report/analysis provides an overview of the historical relationship of school construction and school segregation, including evidence of school construction policies in key desegregation court cases. It then describes the state role in local school construction today, highlights key trends and themes of this role, and provides two case studies that help to showcase examples of state participation in school construction, including successes and challenges. It ends by providing recommendations for states to better leverage their influence over local school construction to avoid perpetuating school segregation, and actively support school diversity.

Facing legal challenges and public pressures, Connecticut needs an objective and rigorous study of its public education costs. This study is the first to estimate the cost function of Connecticut public K-12 education and to evaluate the equity and the adequacy in the state's school spending based on regression-estimated education costs. It finds large disparities across districts in education costs and cost-adjusted spending. Districts with the largest enrollments, the highest school-age-child-poverty rates, or the least amount of property wealth, on average, have the highest costs and the lowest cost-adjusted spending. A large percentage of the state's public school students are enrolled in districts where spending is inadequate relative to the predicted cost of achieving a common student performance target, which contributes to student underperformance. Thus, school districts, especially the high-cost ones, need a large amount of additional spending to improve student performance. The research approach used in this paper can be generalized and applied to other states.

The goal of state special education funding should be to equitably distribute funds that are adequate for all schools to meet their legal obligation to provide a free and appropriate public education to students with disabilities. Unfortunately, inadequate state special education funding is growing more common in Philadelphia schools. In this report, the Education Law Center--PA (ELC) and Research for Action (RFA) examine Pennsylvania's Special Education Funding (SEF) formula and find that it does not accurately account for district poverty. As a result, state special education funding does not fulfill its intended purpose of addressing funding disparities resulting from differences in local wealth. However, the SEF can be improved during the 2019-2020 legislative session. We find that updating the Special Education Funding formula -- by replacing the current metrics used to measure district characteristics with the newer metrics already used in Pennsylvania's Basic Education Funding formula -- would create a more equitable distribution of the state funding available for students with disabilities. In addition, we describe one simple approach that would prioritize new spending toward the districts that the updated formula identifies as the most inequitably funded, while ensuring that all other districts maintain current funding levels.

Resource exposure is believed to be a key mechanism linking patterns of racial segregation and student outcomes during the Brown v. Board of Education era. Decades later, literature suggests that past progress on school desegregation may have stalled, raising concerns about resource equity and associated student outcomes. Are recent trends in segregation associated with racial disparities in school resources? Drawing on national data from the School Funding Fairness Data System and the Common Core of Data, this study examines the partial association between contemporary patterns of segregation between districts within a state and racial disparities in school district revenue over time. We find that increases in racial segregation, net of racial socioeconomic segregation and other racial differences between districts, are associated with racial disparities in revenue. These findings suggest that purportedly race neutral funding formulas and policies may not be completely race neutral and could be reproducing social inequality.

Every school district in New York spends more per student than the national average. Yet, there are variations among districts -- largely depending on communities' relative wealth to help fund their school district. State aid attempts to equalize local wealth capacity among districts, which is evident by the fact that more than 72 percent of the state education aid increase goes to the neediest districts, while a little more than 5 percent of the increase goes to the wealthiest districts. Even with spending disparities among districts across the state, every school district in New York spends more per student than the national average. Within districts, however, is aid distributed equitably to individual schools? In 2018, districts must report individual school-level data to the New York State Division of the Budget and State Education Department if they have four or more schools and receive more than 50 percent of their total revenue from state aid or they are located in a city with a population of more than one million. A total of seventy-six school districts are required to submit detailed spending data this year. In 2018, individual school-level data was made available for the Big 5 school districts: Buffalo, New York City, Rochester, Syracuse, and Yonkers--allowing for an apples-to-apples analysis into the hundreds of individual schools within these districts. Preliminary findings, as highlighted in this report, suggest that more needs to be done at the district level to equalize per-pupil funding within the districts, especially when dealing with the highest-poverty schools.

This study examines how California's system of school facility finance, and the level and distribution of funding for K-12 school facilities, has changed over the decade since 2006. This report addresses five broad questions related to the way California finances its school facility needs: (1) How has California's system of school facility finance evolved over the last 10 years; (2) How has the level of school facility funding in California changed over time and how does it compare to the level of funding in other states; (3) How is funding for new school construction and modernization distributed across school districts; (4) Are disparities in school facility funding systematically related to school district property wealth, income, the share of disadvantage students and the racial/ethnic composition of school districts; and (5) How has school facility funding for charter schools changed over the last decade and how does facility funding for charter schools in California compare to other states? [For the related research brief, see ED588343.]

Research suggests students learn better in classrooms that are modern, comfortable, and safe, but the age and condition of school facilities varies widely across the state. According to a recent estimate, California school districts need to spend between $3.1 billion and $4.1 billion annually just to maintain their existing facilities. Further, the total amount of facility funding needed for California schools during the next decade for modernization and new construction is expected to be about $117 billion. Meanwhile, many observers raise concerns about the state's current policies related to school facility funding. They cite disparities in school facilities conditions and revenues across districts, and argue that the state's school facilities funding system does not target aid toward districts with the greatest facility needs. This study explains California's approach to financing public school facilities and examines the level and distribution of state and local school facility funding since 2006, including facility funding for charter schools. [This brief summarizes the Getting Down to Facts II technical report, "Financing School Facilities in California: A 10-Year Perspective" (see ED588344).]

California's K-12 school facilities require significant new and ongoing investments. Funding for facilities comes mostly from local sources, and depends crucially on local property wealth. The state provides some funding for facilities through the School Facility Program (SFP), which usually requires local matching contributions. The authors begin this report by examining historical trends in SFP funding and then look at differences in SFP funding across districts and student demographics. Next, they calculate how much certain student groups are targeted by facility improvements within districts. They estimate the relationship between SFP funding and current facility conditions, examining differences in the level and timing of funding across school sites in the same district that ever received SFP funding. The authors conclude this report with a brief discussion of policy implications and recommendations. [The authors received research support from Joseph Herrera. For the Policy Brief, see ED617948. For the technical appendices, see ED617950.]

Our 32nd annual report analyzing data from southeast Wisconsin's public school districts finds progress on some college readiness indicators and largely positive showings on district report cards. Those results are offset, however, by discouraging results on standardized tests and continued substantial achievement gaps between students of different races and socioeconomic backgrounds. Key findings: (1) Second year of state accountability report cards delivers good news. For the second year in a row, 68 districts in the region were rated as exceeding or significantly exceeding expectations. For the first time since the inception of state report cards, no districts failed to meet expectations, and only three were rated as meeting few expectations; (2) Proficiency levels in math and English Language Arts (ELA) remain alarmingly low. At every grade between 3rd and 8th grades, the share of the region's students who demonstrate proficiency or higher in either math or ELA is well below 50%. This stubborn trend has persisted since 2011 as measured by three distinct statewide assessments (WKCE, Badger, and Forward); (3) News mixed on college readiness indicators: The composite ACT score for the region in 2015-16 was 21.1, a slight uptick over 2014-15 and a point higher than the statewide score of 20.1. Meanwhile, participation in AP exams continues to grow (to 19.6%), though the pass rate fell by 2.3 percentage points to 63.8%. Graduation rates in the region declined for the second year in a row to 83.2%; and (4) No regional progress on achievement gaps. Gaps in proficiency levels for 3rd and 8th grade math and ELA have not budged since 2015-16, ranging from 40 to 47 points between African American and white students, and a somewhat narrower range between Hispanic students and their white peers (26 to 33 points). Racial and income-based achievement disparities in graduation rates (16 to 30 percentage points) and ACT scores (2.6 to 4.9 points) also are large and persistent. [Concordia University Wisconsin (CUW) is a sponsor of this research. For the 2015-2016 report, see ED591319.]

Ohio schools will go backward under Governor Kasich's funding proposal, which does not keep up with inflation. Funding for the Ohio Department of Education from all state sources, including the General Revenue Fund, casino revenues and tax reimbursements, increases by just 3.2 percent in the governor's proposal for fiscal years (FYs) 2018 and 2019 compared with the current, two-year budget, below the level of inflation projected by the Ohio Legislative Service Commission. This means Ohio's schools will not be able to maintain even current levels of service, let alone restore services lost over the past decade. Further, many schools face an actual loss of funding due to other policy changes. To better fund school districts in this budget, this report recommends adding additional funding to the budget. Enough funding should be allowed to increase investment across the system. For a more sustainable and equitable funding model, the state should determine the real cost of educating students and provide additional funding for students in low-income communities. School districts cannot do more with less and neither can the state. Ohio needs to boost tax revenue, so K-12 education can be appropriately funded. [Support for this report was provided in part by the EMA Foundation.]

Our 31st annual report analyzing data from southeast Wisconsin's public school districts finds that while 68 of the 92 school districts are exceeding or significantly exceeding expectations on our new state report cards, there are large achievement gaps across the region on state assessments for low-income students and students of color. Key findings: (1) Regional enrollment decline quickens. School district enrollment in southeast Wisconsin declined by 1.2 percentage points in 2015-16, a loss of 3,576 students. This follows a 0.8-point decrease in 2014-15; (2) Student diversity increases. Students of color comprise 43.3% of enrollments in regional school districts, up from 42.7% in 2014-15. Hispanic students continue to increase in numbers, while African American and white student enrollment decreased in the past year; (3) College readiness measures are stagnant or declining. The composite ACT score for the region and state showed no change in 2015-16. More students participated in AP exams, though the pass rate fell 1.6 percentage points. The high school graduation rate in southeast Wisconsin is 83.9%, a decrease of 0.6 points, and trails the state average graduation rate of 88.4%; and (4) Higher student attendance, but also higher truancy. Districts in the region posted a 95.4% attendance rate, up 1.3 percentage points in the past year. However, the region also saw truancy rates tick up 0.4 points to 2.1%. [Concordia University Wisconsin (CUW) is a sponsor of this research. For the 2014-2015 report, see ED570116.]

This is the first in a series of reports based on a research study, Developing Effective Professional Learning Communities in Catalyst Schools, conducted between February 2015 and June 2016. "Catalyst schools" were elementary- and secondary-level schools selected to participate in a pilot project intended to explore how best to support implementation of the Learning School approach to teacher professional learning. There were two cohorts of catalyst schools, the first beginning in the 2014-2015 school year and the second in 2015-2016; by the end of the pilot project there were 28 participating schools located in 23 districts. The Learning School approach was developed by Learning Forward, a national professional association focused on improving the professional learning of educators. The Learning School approach is based on seven Learning Forward Standards for Professional Learning (PL Standards), which were adopted by the West Virginia Board of Education (WVBE) in 2012. As such, implementing the Learning School approach was seen as a fitting way to build the capacity of schools to become more self-directed in their use of professional development aimed at improving student learning. The project was spearheaded by the WVBE and implemented by the state's eight regional education service agencies (RESAs), with help from the West Virginia Department of Education (WVDE). Ultimately, the WVBE's aim is to improve professional learning by decentralizing decision making back to the school level. The main strategies for accomplishing this shift are in the following areas: funding decisions; scheduling time; and school capacity. The catalyst school research study had four research questions. This brief report reviews findings for one of them: What are feasible approaches for statewide implementation of a decentralized, school-driven approach to professional learning? This study of the catalyst schools employed both quantitative and qualitative methods to provide useable information for leaders in the catalyst schools, as well as for planners and leaders involved in scaling up the program for statewide implementation. Stakeholders were involved in data collection and interpretation in order to maximize the usefulness and use of the study findings. [For more information about methods used in this study, see "Catalyst Schools Research Study: Technical Report" (ED569935).]

This report presents school district leaders' views about staff turnover, hiring, and districts' financial outlooks at the end of the 2020-2021 school year. Based on the survey responses of 292 district leaders from the American School District Panel (ASDP), the authors found that teacher and principal turnover had not increased substantially beyond pre-pandemic rates in most districts. They also found that a majority of school districts have increased or are trying to increase their number of staff--especially for substitute teachers and mental health staff--for the 2021-2022 school year. District leaders also reported budget concerns. Four in ten district leaders anticipate a fiscal cliff around the time coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) federal aid expires in September 2024, and over half of the districts that anticipate a funding increase from federal stimulus funds are concerned about their ability to spend the money, even though virtually all district leaders said that they have some level of discretion in how to spend those funds. Although districts' reported impacts have not led to much-feared budget and staffing crises for their school districts, these survey findings suggest systemic problems that could outlast the COVID-19 pandemic. [For a related report, "Technical Documentation for the Third American School District Panel Survey. Research Report. RR-A956-6," see ED615291.]

The onset of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has prompted school districts in the United States to offer remote schooling options for their K-12 students. The authors of this report fielded the third American School District Panel (ASDP) survey in June 2021 to assess districts' plans to offer both temporary and more-lasting remote instruction options starting in fall 2021. The key ASDP findings presented in this report draw on the responses of 292 district leaders after weighting those responses to make them nationally representative. Results from the June 2021 ASDP survey suggest that K-12 remote instruction will outlast the pandemic. Remote instruction can be delivered in various forms, however, and the survey questions delved into three: a temporary option for fully remote instruction in fall 2021, fully online courses, and standalone virtual schools. The authors explore differences in districts' pre-pandemic offerings and plans to offer multiple remote instructional modes in the 2021-2022 school year by district type. Virtual schools have had the most marked growth. Only 3 percent of surveyed districts ran a virtual school before the pandemic began. Since the pandemic began, however, the number of districts running virtual schools has grown ninefold. And nearly one-quarter of surveyed districts that had no plans to operate a virtual school in the 2021-2022 school year had at least some interest in operating a virtual school sometime in the future. [For a related report, "Technical Documentation for the Third American School District Panel Survey. Research Report. RR-A956-6," see ED615291.]

School districts in the United States are responding to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic in significantly different ways. The authors of this report fielded the third American School District Panel (ASDP) survey in June 2021 to discover what changes districts are making to their academic and nonacademic offerings for the upcoming 2021-2022 school year, and whether parental demand has played any role in prompting districts to make these changes. In this report, the authors summarize key ASDP findings based on the responses of 292 district leaders, after weighting their responses to make them nationally representative. Survey results suggest that while public schools are expanding their nonacademic offerings, much of their academic offerings for 2021-2022 remain the same. The authors examine differences between pre-pandemic and 2021-2022 offerings among district subgroups in the areas of summer programming, tutoring, grade retention practices, technology-related services, student health and weekend meals, academic recovery measures, and scheduling. The authors also found that most district leaders did not perceive a strong parental demand for changes to their children's schooling; however, there were some notable exceptions among leaders of urban, suburban, and majority--students of color districts, even though the correlation between perceived demand and district provision is currently weak. Parents' demands may still change public education in the long run, but the authors did not find evidence for this thus far. [For a related report, "Technical Documentation for the Third American School District Panel Survey. Research Report. RR-A956-6," see ED615291.]