Question

What evidence leads to the conclusion that there is a "crisis" in K-12 education? Please explain in details. Thank you

Answer 1

Due to dramatic revenue losses, state funding for K-12 education fell sharply after the Great Recession, and despite experiencing one of the longest recoveries on record, most states have funding levels that continue to lag behind. In fact, most states are still spending less per pupil than they were in 2008.

On average, 47 percent of K-12 education funding comes from state revenue, while local government provides 45 percent, and the federal government provides the remaining 8 percent. Because schools depend on state funding for about half of their revenue, they must drastically cut spending when states provide less—especially when local districts cannot cover the gap. Over the past decade, states with the steepest funding declines have seen one-fifth of state education funding vanish.

Some of these cuts, particularly those made immediately following the recession, were a result of economic forces outside of states’ control. Once revenue began to rebound, however, many states enacted massive tax cuts that deprived state governments of revenue needed to increase education spending. In recent years, seven of the 12 states that have made the deepest funding cuts since 2008 chose to cut taxes rather than reinvest in education: Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, Michigan, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Oklahoma. Notably, in spring 2018, three of these seven states—Arizona, Oklahoma, and North Carolina—experienced teacher walkouts in protest of insufficient education funding and low teacher salaries. The first state to have a walkout, West Virginia, had not made tax cuts but still had some of the deepest funding cuts in the nation.

Although the federal investment in education has always provided a small proportion of overall funding compared with state and local investments, the Trump administration has nonetheless sought to disinvest in education. In its budget requests for fiscal years 2018 and 2019, the Trump administration attempted to decrease federal spending for K-12 education. In the FY 2019 budget request—and just after enacting significant tax cuts for the wealthy—the administration suggested slashing funding for teachers and after-school programs, essentially requesting that teachers and students foot the bill for the tax cuts in the form of increased class sizes and canceled extracurricular and enrichment programming

For years, some policymakers and conservative education advocates have argued that spending more money on education does not necessarily improve results—and they have used this claim as an excuse to cut funding. Recently, however, more and more evidence is casting serious doubt on this position. Indeed, money matters a great deal, particularly for students from low-income families.

Historical increases in education spending—especially during the 1990s, when many states changed their school finance formulas—are associated with improved educational outcomes. A study on the effect of court-ordered increases on per-pupil spending, for example, found a positive correlation with student graduation rates. Court-mandated reforms tended to increase spending in higher-poverty districts and allocate more resources to districts based on observable indicators of student need, such as free lunch eligibility and the enrollment of students of color.

There are large differences among states in educational spending and quality, with the highest-performing states tending to have high spending. The states ranked highest on Education Week’s 2017 Quality Counts K-12 achievement index have per-pupil spending well above the national average of $11,454. Even when accounting for cost of living, most of these states are still spending far above the national average—with the exception of Maryland, where the high cost of living means that spending is still above, but closer to, the national average. Although high spending does not always translate into high performance or vice versa, spending tends to be much lower among the lowest-performing states on the Quality Counts index.

Declining salaries and underfunded schools may be one explanation for the precipitous drop in the enrollment numbers of teacher preparation programs since 2008. While the exact cause of the decline is not yet known, enrollment in these programs is down 39 percent since 2008. Over this time period, schools have made not only recession-related funding cuts but also significant layoffs that have disproportionately affected new teachers.