For sixty years, someone has stood up at a hearing with a chart showing spending going up and test scores staying flat, and declared that money doesn’t matter for schools. It started with a misreading of the 1966 Coleman Report. It got its scoreboard in the 1980s. It still shows up at state commissions today.

The research moved on a long time ago. So here’s the whole story as a 1970s Saturday-morning civics lesson, with your professor at the chalkboard and a receipt for every line.

Every line has a receipt

Nothing in the song is invented. Every number comes from Does Money Matter in Education? (3rd ed., Albert Shanker Institute, 2025) or from the newer studies collected in last month’s update and its policy brief. The two trend drawings in the video, the “favorite chart” and the long-run earnings curve, are labeled sketches of a shape, not data.

The lyric	The receipt	Source
“In nineteen sixty-six, they did a giant survey, six hundred thousand kids”	The Coleman Report, Equality of Educational Opportunity: roughly 600,000 students in about 4,000 schools.	Money Matters, 3rd ed.
“Your family background matters most… But folks heard ‘schools don’t matter’”	Family background explained more of the variation in achievement than measured school resources. That finding got shortened, over and over, to “schools don’t matter.”	Money Matters, 3rd ed.
“For the kids with less, the role of schools was even bigger”	The report itself found that differences in schools mattered more for minority and disadvantaged students.	Money Matters, 3rd ed.
“Spending went up, and the scores didn’t climb”	The perennial national trend chart: real spending rising, long-term NAEP flat. The video labels its version a sketch, because the point is what the chart can’t show.	Money Matters (Oct. 2026)
“They tallied up the studies… ‘No strong, no systematic link!’”	Hanushek (1986), Journal of Economic Literature, and later vote counts of correlational studies: “no strong or systematic relationship.”	Money Matters, 3rd ed.
“Greenwald, Hedges, Laine said, ‘Let’s run the math today!’”	Greenwald, Hedges & Laine (1996), Review of Educational Research: a meta-analysis of the same literature found consistently positive relationships.	Money Matters, 3rd ed.
“Close elections! Court orders! Formulas with funny kinks!”	The quasi-experimental designs behind the modern literature: close tax and bond elections, court-ordered reforms and formula-driven aid changes.	Money Matters, 3rd ed.
“Ten percent more, all twelve years… seven percent more pay, and three points less of poverty”	Jackson, Johnson & Persico (2016), QJE: +0.31 years of schooling, +7% wages, −3.2 points adult poverty, with larger effects for low-income children.	Money Matters, 3rd ed.
“Thirty-one studies… a thousand bucks for four years”	Jackson & Mackevicius (2024), AEJ: Applied: $1,000 per pupil for four years raises test scores 0.032 SD and college-going 2.8 points.	Policy brief
“The kids who lost a thousand bucks… test scores dipped, fewer went to college”	Jackson, Wigger & Xiong (2021), AEJ: Policy: a $1,000 Great Recession cut lowered scores 0.039 SD and college-going 1.24 points.	Policy brief
“Four hundred thirty-three per kid went flowing down the hill”	Chin & Chen (2026), AERJ: Indiana’s 2011 voucher and charter expansion cost the most-exposed districts $433 per pupil. Class sizes rose, schools closed, and achievement fell for several groups.	Policy brief
“Arkansas raised the floor to fifty K… the biggest raises didn’t want to go”	Zamarro et al. (2026), CALDER WP 336: under the LEARNS Act floor ($36K to $50K), raises over $8K increased district retention 3.1 points.	Policy brief
“Seventeen thousand bond votes… HVAC’s the MVP, point-two standard deviations”	Biasi, Lafortune & Schönholzer (2025), QJE: HVAC projects raised scores by more than 0.20 SD; on average $1,000 of capital spending raised them about 0.05 SD, with the gains concentrated in low-income districts.	Policy brief
“Less crime when kids grow up, and mobility”	Baron, Hyman & Vasquez (2026), REStat (Michigan, adult crime); Biasi (2023), Journal of Labor Economics (intergenerational mobility).	Policy brief
“Four point seven percent more per worker”	Jackson (2026), NBER WP 35755: state finance reforms raised earnings per worker about 4.7% after 30 years. The video’s curve is a labeled sketch of that shape.	Policy brief
“The districts didn’t spend it. They cut taxes on the side.”	Clemens, Hoxie & Veuger (2026), NBER WP 35447: the extra federal aid replaced local property taxes, so spending didn’t rise, and neither did test scores.	Policy brief
“It matters most of all for kids who need it most”	Returns are largest in high-poverty, historically underfunded districts (Rauscher & Shen 2022; Baker 2025).	Money Matters, 3rd ed.

Why the doubt got buried

The “money doesn’t matter” case was built on two things: correlations that couldn’t separate spending from need, and vote counts that treated every underpowered “not significant” result as a vote against money. When Greenwald, Hedges and Laine pooled the same studies properly, the relationship was positive. When researchers found money that changed by chance, through close elections, court orders and formula kinks, they got the same answer in state after state and decade after decade.

Money matters whether it’s going up or down, and whatever the source. It shows up in test scores, graduation, college, earnings, crime and state economies. It matters most for the kids who need it most. The one recent null result is the exception that proves the rule: when the aid never became spending, nothing changed.

Read the full case

Money Matters. And the Evidence Keeps Piling Up. (Oct. 22, 2026)

Money Matters — and the Evidence Keeps Growing (PDF policy brief)

Baker (2025), Does Money Matter in Education? 3rd ed., Albert Shanker Institute (PDF)

Full lyrics: Money Matters (The Receipts Rag)

[Intro]
Hey kids! Ever hear a grown-up say “throwing money at schools doesn’t work”?
Well, grab your lunchbox. We’re going back… to 1966!

[Verse 1]
In nineteen sixty-six, they did a giant survey,
Six hundred thousand kids, from Boston down to Jersey.
Jim Coleman crunched the numbers, and the numbers seemed to say,
“Your family background matters most in how you learn each day.”
But folks heard “schools don’t matter,” and they ran it up the pole,
Forgot the part that said that for the kids with less, the role
Of schools was even bigger! Hey, that’s a big detail!
But a half-read headline travels, and the whole truth missed the mail.

[Chorus]
Money matters! Money matters!
Whether going up or down!
Money matters! Money matters!
In the city, in the town!
From the courthouse to the ballot box, from Title One to bonds,
When the dollars reach the classroom, why, the kids respond!

[Verse 2]
Then along came the Merchants of Doubt, with a chart and a frown,
“Look! Spending went up, and the scores didn’t climb, so the theory’s falling down!”
They tallied up the studies like a scoreboard at a game,
And said, “No strong, no systematic link!” The headlines did the same.
They blew big clouds of doubt with long-term trends on display,
“Since 1970 we’ve tripled it, and look, the scores just lay!”
But a line that goes up next to one that’s flat
Can’t tell you what a dollar does. A chart can’t settle that!

[Bridge]
But wait! What if you counted those same studies the right way?
Greenwald, Hedges, Laine said, “Let’s run the math today!”
They pooled the very same research, weighed the effects each one found,
And the positive results came out on top, way out ahead of ground!

[Verse 3]
Now scientists got clever. They said, “Let’s find a test,
Where money changes just by chance, then compare it with the rest!”
Close elections! Court orders! Formulas with funny kinks!
Natural experiments: now that’s how a scientist thinks!

Jackson, Johnson, Persico followed kids for decades long:
Ten percent more, all twelve years, and the evidence came on strong.
More years of schooling, seven percent more pay,
And three points less of poverty when they grew up one day!

[Chorus]
Money matters! Money matters!
Whether going up or down!
Money matters! Money matters!
In the city, in the town!
Thirty-one studies, take the average, and here’s the score:
A thousand bucks for four years, and the kids get more!

[Verse 4]
When the Great Recession hit, and the budgets took a slice,
The kids who lost a thousand bucks? Well, they all paid the price.
Their test scores dipped, fewer went to college in the end.
So when you cut, it’s not “efficient.” It’s a harm you can’t pretend.

And out in Indiana, when the vouchers drained the till,
Four hundred thirty-three per kid went flowing down the hill.
Class sizes grew, some schools shut down, and scores began to fall.
Call it “choice” or call it “cuts.” It’s money, after all!

[Verse 5]
Now where’s the money go? Mostly people, that’s the deal!
Like teachers who stay put because the paycheck’s fair and real.
Arkansas raised the floor to fifty K, and what’d you know?
The teachers with the biggest raises didn’t want to go!

And what about the buildings? Is a boiler worth the fuss?
Seventeen thousand bond votes say it is, so listen up to us:
Fix the air and fix the heat, HVAC’s the MVP,
Point-two standard deviations! That’s a learning recipe!

[Verse 6]
It doesn’t stop at test scores. No, it follows you through life:
Less crime when kids grow up, and mobility that’s rife.
Wait thirty years, the whole state’s paychecks start to swell:
Four point seven percent more per worker! Ring that bell!

[Breakdown]
Now one new study found no gain. “Aha!” the doubters cried.
But the districts didn’t spend it. They cut taxes on the side.
No new dollars in the classroom? Then no new gains you’ll see.
That’s not doubt, my friend. That’s proof of the theory!

[Final Chorus]
Money matters! Money matters!
Whether going up or down!
Money matters! Money matters!
Whatever source it’s found!
For the scores and the diplomas, college, jobs and paychecks too,
And it matters most of all for kids who need it most, it’s true!

[Outro]
So when the clouds of doubt roll in, with a chart and a frown…
Just show ’em the receipts…
’cause the doubt’s been buried down.
MONEY… MATTERS!

Every few months somebody walks into a hearing room with a chart showing that high-poverty districts get more money per pupil than low-poverty ones, and declares the school funding problem mostly solved. Dan Losen and I have a new EdWorkingPaper explaining why that chart is, technically speaking, BS. It’s the kind of argument that sounds like a methods footnote, so this time I set it to a 12-bar Chicago shuffle. The short version: a dollar ain’t a dollar when the need ain’t spread the same.

Why Cost Matters (a school finance blues)

The receipts

Every number in the video comes from the paper or from our companion work on school practices. Here they are, verse by verse.

Verse 1: The chart they brought

District type	Relative spending (labor-market avg = 1.0)	Spending as share of adequate (1.0 = enough)
0% child poverty	0.90	1.50
60% child poverty	1.30	≈0.50

• On the “progressiveness” yardstick, the 60 percent poverty district spends about 30 percent more than its labor-market neighbors. Looks great.
• Measured against what it actually costs to get kids to common outcomes, that same district spends about half of what it needs, while the zero-poverty district runs about 50 percent above.
• If the nominal slope were progressive enough, the adequacy slope would be flat. It isn’t. It’s steeply regressive, and it gets steeper as Black and Hispanic enrollment rises, even though nominal spending by race is close to flat.

Verse 2: A dollar ain’t a dollar

Cost models ask how spending varies with student needs, labor costs and scale while holding outcomes constant. That’s the whole trick, and it’s an old one: Duncombe and Yinger laid it out in 1999. In very high-poverty settings, the cost of reaching the same outcomes can be double that of low-poverty settings, and racial isolation adds more on top. A spending comparison that doesn’t price in the finish line can’t tell you whether anybody gets there.

Verse 3: Which yardstick predicts outcomes?

• Relative spending explains about 5 percent of the variation in district outcomes, and the sign runs the wrong way: higher-spending districts score lower. That’s the chart people use to argue money doesn’t matter.
• Spending adequacy explains about 40 percent, with the sign you’d expect.
• 85 percent of majority Black and Hispanic districts are both underfunded and below U.S. average outcomes. For majority white districts, it’s 6 percent.
• Nationally, Black students are about twice as likely as white students to attend districts funded below adequate levels, and about three times as likely to attend chronically underfunded ones.

Verse 4: Looking in the wrong place

Title I comparability looks within districts. But in the Northeast, about 91 percent of the Black–white gap (and 97 percent of the Hispanic–white gap) lies between districts (Bifulco & Souders, 2024). And in some cities there’s nothing left to redistribute:

District	All students	Black students	Hispanic students
Syracuse, NY	93%	94%	96%
Buffalo, NY	88%	90%	91%
Rochester, NY	85%	85%	87%
Mt. Vernon, NY	81%	82%	81%
New York City	73%	88%	83%
Paterson, NJ	60%	69%	61%
Newburgh, NY	58%	59%	60%
Newark, NJ	35%	41%	32%
Jersey City, NJ	11%	15%	13%

You can shuffle every dollar in Syracuse and still no school’s doing fine. That’s the state’s bill, not the district’s.

The bridge: what underfunding does inside schools

These numbers come from a companion analysis with Dan Losen and Ramon Flores (in progress), linking cost-adjusted adequacy to the Civil Rights Data Collection (2017–18 and 2021–22).

• Districts below 80 percent of adequate funding have a lost-instruction rate due to suspension of about 42.5, versus 14.3 in districts above 120 percent. Three to one.
• AP math enrollment runs about 3.7 percent of high schoolers in underfunded districts versus 6.9 percent in well-funded ones. With school-level adequacy the gap is wider: 4.2 versus 10.3 percent in New York.
• But hold the money steady and the color gap’s still there: in districts with the same adequacy and demographics, Black students lose roughly 28 more days of instruction than white students and enroll in AP math at lower rates.
• So it takes both. The state owes the dollars. The district owes the keys: fair discipline and open doors to advanced coursework.

The slide deck

Here’s the 20-minute version, with the conceptual framework, research questions and all the numbers above.

The lyrics

Why Cost Matters (full lyrics)

Verse 1
They brought a chart to the hearing room, all bar lines climbing high,
Said “the poor kids get thirty percent more, so who are you to cry?”
Ninety cents on the dollar out in the leafy cul-de-sac,
A dollar thirty in the city, so they figured they were on track.

Verse 2
But a dollar ain’t a dollar when the need ain’t spread the same,
Kids who walk in hungry play a whole different game.
You can’t price the finish line by countin’ at the start.
Show me what it costs to get there, or I’ll tear your chart apart.

Chorus
‘Cause it’s cost, cost, that’s the only line that’s true,
Spending over what it takes, that’s the measure, not the view.
Your per-pupil progressiveness, your comparability fuss:
It’s bullshit if it don’t ask what it takes to get to us.

Verse 3
Now the suburbs run at one-fifty, half again of what they need,
While the sixty-percent-poverty district gets half, and that’s the deed.
Put relative spending on the axis: five percent, and the sign is wrong.
Put adequacy there instead: forty percent, it’s been there all along.

Verse 4
Title I says “look within,” so they audit school by school,
But ninety-one percent of the gap is between, and that’s the rule.
Up in Syracuse, ninety-three percent sit below the line.
You can shuffle every dollar there, and still no school’s doin’ fine.

Bridge
Stretch the teachers thin enough, the hallway turns to stone,
Forty-two days lost to suspension, kids sent walkin’ home.
Fund it right, it’s fourteen. Count it, that’s three to one.
And the AP calc room’s double full where the money’s really done.
But hold the money steady and the color gap’s still there,
Twenty-eight more days for Black kids. That ain’t the budget, that ain’t fair.
So fund the cost, then watch the door. It takes the both of these:
The state owes us the dollars; the district owes us the keys.

Final chorus
‘Cause it’s cost, cost, Duncombe and Yinger knew,
Ninety-nine was long ago, and still they’re comin’ through.
So take your nominal ratios and leave ’em on the bus.
It’s bullshit if it don’t ask what it takes to get to us.

(spoken) Spending divided by cost. That’s it. That’s the whole song.

Lyrics by me. Music made with Suno. The guy pointing at the BS is me, more or less. The rubber stamps are editorial. The numbers are not. Spending and adequacy figures are from Baker & Losen (2026); “up to double” refers to cost differences between very high- and low-poverty settings in the cost models; suspension and AP figures are from work in progress with Dan Losen and Ramon Flores and may be revised. These are associations, not proof that any one funding change causes any one result.

Read the real thing

• Baker, B. D., & Losen, D. J. (2026). Unpacking Racial Disparities in School Spending: Why “progressiveness” and “comparability” are not enough. EdWorkingPaper 26-1558, Annenberg Institute at Brown University. doi.org/10.26300/erbj-7k94
• School Finance Indicators Database (SFID) and the National Education Cost Model
• Baker, Di Carlo & Weber, The Adequacy and Fairness of State School Finance Systems
• Duncombe, W., & Yinger, J. (1999). Performance standards and educational cost indexes: You can’t have one without the other. In Equity and Adequacy in Education Finance. National Academy Press.
• Toward a Consensus Approach to Evaluating State School Finance Systems! (and dumping the others!)
• Incompatible Policy Preferences: Comparability & Expanded Choice
• Seventeen Years of Roza-Tinted Glasses
• Money Matters. And the Evidence Keeps Piling Up.
• New Report: Why most international comparisons of spending & outcomes are total BS! (a theme, apparently)

Last week I told the story of the Whittler. This week, the same story set to music. Two songs, two settings, one set of receipts. The first is for the beach at Crandon Park. The second is for a street party on Calle Ocho. Every number in both videos comes from my own work and the reporting it cites, and every one is listed below.

Wastin’ Away in Charter-Voucherville

¿Dónde Está la Plata?

The receipts

A state that quit putting in its share

• Florida ranks 46th in fiscal effort. K-12 spending fell from 2.6% of the state’s economy in 2013 to 2.2% in 2024, against a U.S. average of 3.1%. (America’s Worst States for Education; SFID, 8th ed.)
• Had Florida kept its 2006 effort, schools would have had about 29% more revenue over 2016-23. The money is there. The state chose not to spend it on schools.
• Average teacher pay ranks 50th in the nation. (WUSF, citing NEA data)
• 64 of 67 districts spend less than it would cost to reach national-average outcomes. The statewide shortfall was $15.7 billion in 2024. Districts average 70% of adequate, and the highest-poverty fifth averages 63%. (The Red State Miracle That Wasn’t; National Education Cost Model data)
• The 37 districts in the poorest fifth, including Dixie, Gadsden, Hamilton, Putnam, DeSoto, Bradford, Suwannee and Madison, run at about 65 cents on each adequate dollar. About 683,000 students attend them. (Short term plan to Un-Florida Florida’s Public Schools)
• Cost-adjusted spending per pupil in 2024 was $6,425 in Florida and $6,627 in Mississippi. Grade 8 reading fell 10.5 points from 2019 to 2024, 48th of 50 against expectations. (There Is No Alabama Miracle; NAEP)

The charter company store

• A charter school with a “nonprofit” board can rent its building from the founder’s LLC and pay a management fee to the founder’s own firm. Public money comes in, and the books going out are often private. (The Charter Money Trail; The Charter School Company Store, Revisited)
• Five Florida charters paid two firms more than $30 million over four years.
• One virtual school’s payments to its vendor went from about $1.1 million (2023) to $2.1 million (2024) to $15.7 million budgeted this year.
• No charges have been filed, there is one civil suit, and nothing has been found illegal. That is the point: it’s all allowed. (Tampa Bay Times and Miami Herald reporting, via The Company Store Goes to Tallahassee)

Vouchers for kids who were already there

• Florida made vouchers universal in 2023. They now cost about $5.0 billion a year (2025-26). (Time to Rein in Vouchers)
• Their share of the state’s main school formula went from 12 cents on the dollar to 24 cents in four years.
• 69% of new voucher users were already in private school. The state picked up a tab families were already paying. (An Economically Conservative Approach to Deciding Whether to Adopt or Expand Vouchers)
• A state audit found about $270 million the program had trouble tracking. (Florida Phoenix; Spectrum News)

What was promised

“…a uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools…”

Florida Constitution, Art. IX, § 1, as revised by voters in 1998

The Legislature is back this spring. Fill a chair at the school board. Call your legislator. Ask for the 2006 share back. You’re here.

---

Lyrics by me. Music made with Suno. The pelican and the gator are fictional. The numbers are not. These are trends and associations, not proof that any one officeholder caused any one result. Florida is in the bottom five on effort but not literally last; North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada put in a smaller share. The full report: Financing a High-Quality System of Free Public Schools for Florida’s Children.

Fine print

• The gator and the pelican are invented, and their lines are not quotes from anyone. Reported facts appear on the receipts, with their sources.
• Florida is in the bottom five, 46th on effort, and not literally last. North Carolina, Arizona and Nevada put in a smaller share.
• The pencils use K-12 spending as a share of gross state product. The rank uses state and local revenue, which is why Florida’s 2.19 percent appears as 2.2 here.
• These are trends and associations, not proof that any one officeholder caused any one result. Legislatures and courts share the pen.

Read the real thing

Reports and data

• Financing a High-Quality System of Free Public Schools for Florida’s Children
• The full Florida report (PDF)
• The Adequacy and Fairness of State School Finance Systems, 8th ed. (PDF)
• School Finance Indicators Database: download the data, including the National Education Cost Model
• NAEP, the Nation’s Report Card
• Florida Policy Institute on voucher growth
• Education Law Center on Florida voucher costs
• Florida Phoenix on the state voucher audit

Florida’s funding and outcomes

• Florida School Finance Update: Here’s your manageable standard, now fund it!
• Short term plan to Un-Florida Florida’s Public Schools
• America’s Worst States for Education (2026 Edition)
• The Red State Miracle That Wasn’t
• Red State, Blue State, Round Two
• There Is No Alabama Miracle (But There Is a Lesson)
• Money Matters. And the Evidence Keeps Piling Up.

Vouchers

• An Economically Conservative Approach to Deciding Whether to Adopt or Expand Vouchers
• Experimenting With Our Children
• Time to Rein in Vouchers
• The Post-Espinoza End Game

Charters and the company store

• The Company Store Goes to Tallahassee
• The Charter School Company Store, Revisited
• The Charter Money Trail
• Edu-Grift Top 5
• We Bought It Twice, But We No Longer Own It
• The Business of Charter Schooling (with Gary Miron)
• Are Charter Schools the Second Coming of Enron? (with Preston Green and Joseph Oluwole)
• Florida Bulldog’s reporting

Elections

• Elections Matter for Education
• Elections Matter: Part 2

School funding is set in state capitols, and governors write the first draft. Over three decades of school finance data, states’ standing on how hard they try to fund schools rose and fell with the people they elected.

Public schooling is, in most states, the largest single expense and responsibility of state government. It is also the only state function with consistent constitutional standing as a positive right: every state constitution obligates the state to provide a system of public schools. So we can reasonably judge state political leaders by how well they do on public education.

This post uses the School Finance Indicators Database to rank the 48 contiguous states on spending, fairness, effort, wages, adequacy and outcomes in 2024. It then asks a narrower question: in each state, whose watch saw the steepest drop in fiscal effort for schools?

Where states stand in 2024

Democratic-leaning states average an overall rank of about 18th; Republican-leaning states average about 28th. I ranked states on seven groups of indicators: (a) wage-adjusted current spending per pupil, (b) progressiveness of spending and of state and local revenue, (c) fiscal effort, (d) teacher wage competitiveness, (e) adequacy overall and in high-poverty districts, (f) equal opportunity, and (g) NAEP outcomes adjusted for family income and for starting point.

The split is not one-sided. Blue states lead by wide margins on spending, effort, wages and adequacy, including adequacy in the highest-poverty districts. Red states rank better on the progressiveness ratios and on equal opportunity, but much of that edge comes from underfunding low-poverty districts too: median adequacy in their lowest-poverty quintile is 0.88, against 1.25 in blue states. Red states also do better on income-adjusted NAEP levels and on NAEP gains since 2003, led by Mississippi, Tennessee and Louisiana.

Why effort is the place to look

Effort is the indicator elected leaders control most directly. It measures how much of a state’s economy goes to its schools: state and local education spending as a share of gross state product, and state and local revenue as a share of personal income. In 2024 the 48 states ranged from 2.2% to 5.6% of personal income, with a median of 3.6%.

Effort is not destiny, but it sets the ceiling. Across states in 2024, effort as a share of income correlates at 0.66 with wage-adjusted spending per pupil and at 0.45 with overall adequacy. It correlates only 0.22 with adequacy in the highest-poverty districts, because how a state distributes its money matters as much as how much it raises. Still, a state that lets effort slide has few ways to keep spending, wages and adequacy from sliding with it.

Effort is also a choice in a way that spending levels are not. A wealthy state can spend a lot while trying little; a poor state can try hard and still spend little. Effort asks what a state chooses to do with what it has, and that choice runs through governors’ budgets and the tax policy they sign.

Whose watch saw effort fall

In 16 states, effort rank fell 13 or more places across a single governor’s budgets, and 13 of those 16 governors were Republicans. I credited each year’s change to the governor in office when that year’s budget was adopted. I used rank, not raw effort, because recessions and booms move every state’s effort at once.

Some of the falls were steep in raw terms too. Under Mitch Daniels, Indiana went from 5.56% to 4.34% of personal income. Under Mark Gordon, Wyoming went from 4.68% to 3.53%. Under Asa Hutchinson, Arkansas went from 4.05% to 3.23%.

This is not a one-party story. Tom Carper in Delaware, Tom Vilsack in Iowa and Mike Lowry in Washington all presided over double-digit drops. Across all 48 states, the steepest decline came under a Republican in 29 states, a Democrat in 17 and an independent in 2. Republicans held 136 of the 262 governorships in the period, so they are overrepresented, but many of these states had few Democratic governors to compare.

A few states held their ground. No governor in Illinois, New Jersey, Vermont, Tennessee or California saw the state lose more than two places in effort rank.

The last eight years

Recent budgets show both directions. Ranking states on effort and adequacy combined, and crediting each change to the governor whose budget it was, 2016–2023 budgets produced these falls and gains.

Nine of the ten largest falls came under Republican governors; Republicans held 57 of the 97 tenures in the window. Iowa under Kim Reynolds and Nebraska under Pete Ricketts lost the most on adequacy, with overall adequacy down 0.17 and 0.20. In Arkansas, Texas and Delaware the decline was mostly effort.

Seven of the ten largest gains came under Democratic governors, three under Republicans. New Mexico under Michelle Lujan Grisham stands out on every measure: effort rose 0.64 points of income and high-poverty adequacy went from 0.49 to 0.80. Those budgets followed the 2018 Yazzie/Martinez ruling, so the court shares the credit. In Nevada, Colorado and Vermont, adequacy rose even as effort as a share of income fell.

On the ballot Tuesday

Thirty-four of the 48 states in this analysis elect a governor on November 3. Alaska and Hawaii also vote but are outside the data. In 16 states the incumbent is running, and the record shown is theirs. In the other 18, the seat is open, and the record is the departing governor’s: the record of the party now holding the office. Rhode Island is listed as open because Gov. Dan McKee lost his primary.

Governors first elected in 2022 have only one budget in the data, too few to judge. Among incumbents with longer records, Phil Scott (R, Vermont) took his state from 6th to 1st, and JB Pritzker (D, Illinois) from 7th to 5th. Greg Abbott (R, Texas) shows the largest fall among incumbents on the ballot, from 35th to 45th. Ned Lamont (D, Connecticut) and Brad Little (R, Idaho) held their states’ rank. Kelly Ayotte (R, New Hampshire) and Larry Rhoden (R, South Dakota) took office after 2023, so their predecessors’ records are shown.

Among open seats, the largest gains came under Michelle Lujan Grisham (D, New Mexico, 34th to 10th), Kay Ivey (R, Alabama, 43rd to 34th), Gretchen Whitmer (D, Michigan) and Gavin Newsom (D, California). The largest falls came under Kim Reynolds (R, Iowa, 12th to 20th), Mike DeWine (R, Ohio), Tony Evers (D, Wisconsin), Mark Gordon (R, Wyoming) and Kevin Stitt (R, Oklahoma).

A departing governor’s budgets say something about the party that wrote them, not about the nominee who would inherit the job. Nominees who have not served as governor have no record in this data. Rhode Island’s Republican nominee is shown as Aaron Guckian, who led a close September primary.

What this does and does not show

These are associations in time, not proof that any one governor caused a decline. Four things deserve weight before anyone reads too much into a single name:

• Governors share the pen. Legislatures write and pass budgets, and in some states the legislature is the stronger hand. Courts also order or block funding changes.
• The economy moves the denominator. Effort is spending relative to income or GSP, so an energy boom (North Dakota in the 2000s, Wyoming more recently) can push effort down even when spending holds steady. Rank nets out national cycles, not state-specific ones.
• Ranks are relative. A state can lose places because others raised effort, not because it cut.
• Short and partial terms. Governors in office before 1993 are judged only on later budgets, and a few tenures cover just one or two budgets.

What the pattern does show is that effort is not fixed. It moves, sometimes sharply, within a single administration. That makes it something voters can hold leaders to.

Elections matter

When a governor’s budgets let effort slide, the state gives up the main lever it has over spending, teacher pay and adequacy. Indiana under Mitch Daniels and Wyoming under Mark Gordon each fell from 3rd to 18th in effort.

Voters can ask concrete questions of anyone running for governor or the legislature. Will they hold or raise the share of state income going to schools? Will new money go first to the districts furthest from adequate? Will tax cuts be paid for by cutting school funding effort?

Public education is the largest thing most states do and the one their constitutions promise. How leaders treat it is a fair test of how they govern.

Data and methods

• Data. School Finance Indicators Database state panel, 1993–2024, for the 48 contiguous states (Alaska, Hawaii and DC excluded). Adequacy uses the National Education Cost Model; NAEP covers grades 4 and 8 reading and math.
• 2024 ranks. Each indicator is ranked 1–48. The overall rank averages within-year percentiles across groups a–g. NAEP enters as scores adjusted for family income (non-linear where cross-validation favored it) and gains since 2003 adjusted for starting score.
• Political lean. 2025 Cook Partisan Voting Index; D-leaning means D+1 or more, R-leaning R+1 or more.
• Effort and governors. Effort rank averages within-year percentiles of state and local education spending as a share of GSP and of state and local revenue as a share of personal income. The change into data year t is credited to the governor in office on July 1 of year t−1. Governor terms come from Jacob Kaplan’s governors dataset, extended through 2023 and corrected for December inaugurations and mid-year transitions.
• Interactive version. Rank tables, state best years and every governor’s effort record are on the Red-Blue School Finance Ranks dashboard.