Oh, the Thinks You Can Think About School Funds! (Seussical thoughts on “money follows the child”)

More serious posts on this topic: https://schoolfinance101.com/?s=public+goods

In the town of Ka-Boodle by Lake Sneetchy Creek,
The folks all paid taxes each month and each week.
For schools and for sidewalks and fire trucks so red,
And libraries full of good books to be read.

But then came the Chortlers from Voucher Von Vee,
Who shouted, “That money belongs to each wee
Little child with a backpack! It follows them round!
Just stuff it in pockets and spread it around!”

“The money’s the CHILD’S!” cried the Bellowing Band.
“It does not belong to the schools or the land!
Just hand every parent a sack full of cash,
And schools can all scramble and boomity-crash!”

Now the Grickle-eyed Mayor scratched hard at his chin.
“That’s not how public goods work, my dear kin.

When taxpayers gather their dollars in pools,
They build mighty systems — like hospitals, schools.
The money’s not owned by one youngster named Ned
Who doodles green Yoppets and sleeps in his bed.

It pays for the buses! The pipes! The big roofs!
The science lab beakers! The gymnasium hoops!
The playgrounds! The band room! The boilers downstairs!
The nurses and counselors helping with cares!

And some of these things were bought long years ago
With debts that will linger through sunshine and snow.
So taxpayers all — even old Uncle Zed,
Whose children are forty and mostly bald-headed —
Still pay for the schools because everyone gains
From communities filled with smart citizens’ brains!”

“But what about choice?” cried the Chortlers once more.
“Shouldn’t each family shop school like a store?”

“Ah yes,” said the Mayor, “but schools are not socks.
They’re not jars of pickles or purple mail-box locks.
A public good works when folks plan it together,
Through rainstorms and hard times and wild Wumbus weather.

If every last dollar just fled with each child,
Whole systems would wobble and grow rather wild.
You still must heat buildings and run every route
Even when one little Who-zit skips out.”

The Chortlers grew quieter. Some scratched their knees.
One murmured, “Public goods aren’t private fees…”

And down by Lake Sneetchy, beneath truffula skies,
The townsfolk grew slightly more thoughtful and wise.

For schools are not gadgets to auction or trade.
They’re promises communities carefully made.
And taxes, though grumbly, when pooled with some care,
Can build things no single small person could bear.

If Dr. Seuss Opined on Equal Educational Opportunity (a productive use of LLMs)

Alas – I’ve found a use for OpenAI – Converting my deepest theoretical musings on school finance into Seussical prose:

Oh, the Funds You Will Flum!
(A Zany Zoodle on Equity, Adequacy, and Opportunity Gum)

In a flibber-flap land of the Schollaroo Schools,
With Sneetchy-like districts and Yoppity rules,
There lived some young learners (some tall, some quite small),
Some had lots of Zoom-Zooks… some nothing at all.

Now the Board of Big Thinkers (in hats three feet wide)
Said, “Fairness! We’ll fix it!” and puffed up with pride.
“We’ll give EVERY school just the same little stack—
Same dollars! Same books! Same chalk in each pack!”

But the Glumguzzle Kids from the Far Fizzle Vale
Said, “That sameness you’re selling is starting to fail!
For we’ve got more needs than the Zazzberry crew—
Same stuff doesn’t make us equal to you!”

“Oh fiddle-dee-FOOF!” said a Number McNerd,
Adjusting his graphs (which were wildly absurd).
“If fairness is sameness, then sameness we’ll do!”
But the data went BLORP! and the theory fell through.

Then a Wise Whiffling Wonk (with a long curly tie)
Said, “You’re asking the wrong kind of ‘what’ and of ‘why.’
Don’t stare at the STUFF—don’t just measure the pile—
Ask what kids can do at the end of the mile!”

“Set goals!” cried the Wonk. “Let outcomes be king!
A common big target for every small thing!
If all kids must reach the same Zibble-Zoo height,
Then fund them so EACH one can climb it just right!”

“But WAIT!” cried the Snargle from Budget Bay Bog,
“You’re forgetting the Blibbers! The Froons! And the Fog!
Some start way behind on the Great Learning Track—
You can’t just say ‘equal!’ and pat your own back!”

So they huddled and muddled and scribbled in ink,
With equations that wobbled and charts that would clink.
Till they stumbled—KERSPLOOSH!—on a curious rule:
“To be truly fair, you fund not by the school…

But by NEED!” they all shouted. “Yes, NEED is the key!
More Zorks for the Borks! More help for the Wee!
Unequal inputs (now isn’t that neat?)
Are how equal outcomes can finally meet!”

Then in strutted Adequacy (round as a bun),
Saying, “I’ve got a shortcut! A quick way! A fun!
Just set a low bar—call it ‘good enough done’—
And declare every system a marvelous one!”

“Oh NO!” cried the Wonk, with a wobble and squeak,
“That ‘good enough’ thinking is terribly weak!
If some kids zoom high on a rocket of flair,
While others just hover… that still isn’t fair!”

“For school’s not a puddle—it’s more like a race,
Or a ladder, or jungle, or zig-zaggy place!
Where where you land matters (oh yes, it is true),
For jobs and for futures and who gets what who!”

“So adequacy?” asked a small nervous Nerp.
“Is it useful at all, or just policy burp?”

“Why yes!” said the Wonk. “But don’t let it shrink—
When budgets go BLINK! and revenues BLINK!
That floor must stay sturdy, not sink in the goo,
Or opportunity slips right away from your view.”

Then they built a GRAND GIZMO (with levers and springs),
That balanced these tricky, conflicting things:

One lever for NEED (pull it higher for some),
One lever for GOALS (so all kids can become),
One lever for BASES (tax gaps big and wide),
So poor little districts don’t lag far behind.

The machine whirred and clanked—CLACK-CLUNKETY-CLACK!—
Spitting fairness (at last!) from the back of the stack.

And the children? The children went ZOOMITY-ZEE!
Climbing their ladders as far as could be!
Not all in the same way, not all at the same pace,
But each with a real, fighting, fair-starting place.

So remember, dear reader (with eyebrows or none),
This tale of the Funds You Will Flum when begun:

Don’t trust simple sameness—it’s often a trick.
Don’t settle for “adequate”—that’s far too quick.
Set bold common goals, but fund smartly indeed—
And tilt all the dollars in favor of NEED.

For a system that’s fair (in this wibbly world stew)
Must be stretchy and thoughtful and slightly askew—
A bit Seussian strange, but precisely on track…

Or the whole thing goes SPLOOP!
…and we’re right back to whack.

Florida School Finance Update: Here’s your manageable standard, now fund it!

I’ve had the pleasure of running some new models with updated data in the past few days. I recently produced a lengthy report on school funding in Florida.

I’ve pointed out on several occasions recently that Florida schools have continued their rapid decline in 8^th grade outcomes in reading and math. Florida is one of the reasons why Mississippi’s overall rank improves on national assessments. Yay for Florida.

The thing about Florida is that the state, over the past decade and more, has uniformly crushed the public schooling system and the outcomes it produces. Here’s the distribution of district average performance on reading and math for all FL districts compared to national average outcomes (0- horizontal red line). The vast majority of Florida kids are now below – well below that line.

Not shockingly, relating back to my report linked above, there’s a connection between these performance declines and the inadequacy of funding provided to Florida public schools over the past decade. As I explained in my report – and in several other reports and peer reviewed articles – I have a model based on data for every school district in the U.S. which generates predictions of the spending needed in each school district to achieve different levels of student outcomes (standardized reading/math outcomes).

Here’s where Florida districts stand when comparing their current spending as a ratio to the estimated need for achieving a) national average and b) 1 standard deviation above national average outcomes in reading and math. I actually had to cut off the top part of these graphs to focus in on the bottom and show the spread of Florida districts which are now almost entirely packed into the bottom half.

Now, in my report, I explained how the Florida Supreme Court said there’s really no way to set a manageable standard for what’s adequate anyway, so the legislature should just do whatever it wants. Well, those red horizontal lines aren’t just manageable standards, they are reasonable empirical predictions that could be directly used in guiding the state school finance formula. But, silly me, with my data and models (courts in other states have relied heavily on such evidence for setting such standards).

Florida’s constitution (education article), ratified/revised by Florida’s citizens in 1998 and 2002, requires provision of a high quality system of public schools. We can quibble over whether national averages in reading and math are “high quality,” or merely average. I’d say the latter. What’s clear is that Florida’s school finance system, for MOST OF FLORIDA’S CHILDREN falls short of providing sufficient financing for even that goal – and as a result – most Florida children no longer meet even that modest goal?

This figure shows the distribution of a) current spending with respect to differences in child poverty rate and b) cost estimates for the low (national average) and high (+1 standard deviation) outcome goals. Florida specifically falls well short of providing sufficient funding for children in higher poverty communities to achieve even the modest outcome goal – national average.

Over time, the reality of Florida school funding – actual spending – has slid further and further below these targets – things weren’t actually so bad in 2009 (kinda “meh” but not like they are now).

Here’s another view of the problem. A self-inflicted – excuse me – legislatively inflicted problem. After all, the adequacy of school funding in every state is a responsibility of state elected officials. When it’s good, that’s their accomplishment. When it’s not so good? That’s on them too!

Here, we see the overall relationship, across the US, in 2023, between the relative adequacy of funding to achieve national average outcomes (current spending / spending needed), and, their actual outcomes! Shockingly, or perhaps not, districts (each dot is a district – beige are all districts nationally) with more adequate funding have higher outcomes in reading and math. Districts to the right of the vertical red line spend more than their cost estimate (to achieve national average outcomes). Districts to the left of the vertical red line spend less than their need estimate. Districts above the horizontal red line perform above national average outcomes and districts below the horizontal red line perform below national average outcomes. The worst place to be is in the lower left quadrant – not enough money and poor outcomes. And that’s exactly where most Florida school districts presently sit – with better funded districts performing better and worse funded districts performing, well, worse.

One upside for Florida districts is that they generally sit on or above the diagonal line which might be interpreted as representing average efficiency in producing outcomes. Florida school districts are efficiently producing the outcomes they produce – getting better than expected outcomes. By the way, that’s what actual efficiency analysis looks like – not the DOGEY BS we keep hearing about. It’s about rigorously evaluating the quality of output of a business or government entity, given the inputs, and NOT about creating faux outrage over some anecdotal line item on an expense sheet.

Florida school districts just don’t have the resources to do much better, and as a result, aren’t doing better. The solution one can derive from this image is to push Florida districts up that slide – that diagonal – from lower left to upper right! That is – to provide more adequate funding, and particularly to those furthest in the lower left – which tend to be districts serving higher poverty student populations.

But, rather than push districts from the lower left to the upper right, the state has instead, let districts slide from the middle/upper right to the lower left. This is a problem that can be fixed. And the solution is rather transparent – Adequate funding. And funding progressively distributed to schools and districts serving higher need student populations.

The solution is adequate funding. At least for Florida – here and now. And yes, Florida can afford that solution. Florida is near last in the country on the share of its economic capacity spent on K12 schooling. As a result, Florida school districts actually spend less, in adjusted dollars, per pupil than they did in 1993 and now spend less than Mississippi. Woohooo. Yay for Florida again. As I point out in my report linked above, even if Florida merely spent the same share of state GDP on public ed now as in the mid 2000s, the state would spend nearly 30% more than it does now. That would close a significant portion of the funding gap toward moving the state back to average outcomes. Still not high. But not falling off the cliff they have been for the past several years.

Time to start having the right conversation about school finance in Florida to ensure that all children in Florida have access to “a uniform, efficient, safe, secure, and high quality system of free public schools that allows students to obtain a high quality education…”

All that hiring while enrollments plummet? Unsustainable!?

Preserving another thread from X and BlueSky: Just the facts (Public Use Graphs)

Enrollments & Staffing Download

Another quick picture book story time – About those unsustainable “huge” staffing increases while public schools bleed enrollments. First – those enrollments (overall)

[LEA summed and School Summed enrollments from NCES Common Core]

Now by Locale (aggregating urban centric locale codes):

[seems like around 2013, some areas that had been rural were consumed by sprawl and reclassified]

What about all of those huge staffing increases while enrollments plummet (even if they aren’t)? Here’s the aggregate for staff per 100 pupils – mostly teachers – not growing!!!!! Some reclassification shifts & drift in those tiny categories at bottom:

by locale:

Some follow up:

On Miracles in Mississippi

Here’s a quick summary of a thread I recently posted on both BlueSky and X.

Storytime – for those who want to push some “southern” miracle in public schooling – using Mississippi as their exemplar, and implying “red state” strategies are the policy solution:

First – Mississippi doesn’t catch Massachusetts or New Jersey. NOT EVEN CLOSE

But states like Arizona and Florida fall to and even blow Mississippi in some cases on 8th grade NAEP performance (a better indicator of the cumulative effects of a system on student learning than 4th grade assessments).

Notable in these graphs are the continued large declines in Arizona and Florida while others are stabilizing or rebounding from 2022 to 2024 (AZ stabilizes in math, but not FL).

Unlike Florida or Arizona, Mississippi does not have (or has not during this period) universal vouchers (but does have large private enrollment share).

Mississippi has a very small share of kids in charter schools, whereas charter enrollments (and voucher enrollments) have exploded in Florida and Arizona:

What has Mississippi done? Well, unlike Florida or Arizona, Mississippi has maintained effort to fund its schools and has actually surpassed Florida and Arizona on labor cost adjusted per pupil spending:

AMONG LOW SPENDING STATES (in labor cost adjusted 1999$)

Just some food for thought. And while not a rigorous causal analysis, certainly more rigorous than most of the conversations I’ve seen/heard on this topic.

Short term plan to Un-Florida Florida’s Public Schools

A Two-Year Plan for Reforming Florida Public Education Finance & Governance

In a recent report on public education in Florida, I made the following recommendations:[1]

Recommendation 1 –Financing a Uniform System of High Quality Public Schools
- Phase 1: Engage in the work of setting a manageable standard of “high quality” public schooling for Florida’s children by engaging in analyses of the costs associated with providing each and every child in Florida with equal educational opportunity to achieve high education outcomes.
  - Establish a statewide commission on school funding.
  - Engage stakeholders in setting standards of excellence for Florida children.
  - Engage experts to estimate the costs associated with meeting those standards, applying appropriately rigorous methods.
- Phase 2: Guided by those estimates, reform the school finance formula and increase state aid to schools so as to provide them with the necessary resources for all children to have equal educational opportunity to achieve high education outcomes. That is, meet the constitutional standard ratified by Florida voters in 1998 and 2002. This should include estimates of commensurate funding for charter schools, based on needs and costs.
  - Take eliminating or reducing property taxes off the table. The most effective form of property tax relief is increased state aid, as would occur under implementation of this recommendation.
Recommendation 2 – Charter School Reset
- Part 1: Impose a moratorium on charter school expansion, including the Schools of Hope Program. The existing charter school sector in Florida is compromising equity, eroding efficiency and producing poor educational outcomes for those it serves.
- Part 2: Establish new regulations for evaluating existing charter operators and vetting new charter operators to ensure improved equity in the distribution of students by their needs across schools. Adopt and enforce stricter regulations pertaining to student outcomes.
- Part 3: Adopt updated charter school legislation to ensure that charter schools are sufficiently “public,” required to operate as if “state actors,” protecting children’s constitutional rights and abiding by all relevant federal statutes.
Recommendation 3 – Voucher Freeze & Reallocate
- Freeze expansion of the voucher program to free up state resources to support a fully funded, overhauled public school finance formula, to provide a uniform system of free public schools.

The justification for each of these recommendations is thoroughly documented in the cited report. The next step is to lay out an action plan for policy advocacy for the next two years, and next two Florida legislative cycles.

Two year Plan

Following are my recommendations for that two -year action plan:

Year 1 (2026 Session, fy2027) – Pause, Reset & Evaluate

Repeal and rethink Schools of Hope (SoH)

The Schools of Hope legislation and regulations which have been fast tracked over the past year are an ill-conceived patchwork with little potential to solve systemic problems in Florida public education. But, conversations around that program have revealed three key issues worthy of consideration.

First, the SoH plan acknowledges that Florida’s existing charter sector is not strong and that recruiting proven providers from other states might be necessary.
Second, the SoH plan includes substantial additional funding (nearly $5k) per pupil to ensure that designated schools could be successful.
Third, the SoH plan acknowledges the importance of and costs related to operations and maintenance of capital – land and buildings needed for providing quality education.

Presumptively, a taxpayer financed school of choice shouldn’t exist to begin with unless it provides some element of “hope.” Hope for better student academic outcomes, while maintaining children’s and taxpayers’ rights. Empirical evidence in my report indicates that the charter sector on average in Florida, does not advance “hope” for better academic outcomes for Florida’s children. The purported need to create a special class of charter schools (ones that do offer “hope”), requiring access to free capital and substantial additional funding in order to be “successful” is indicative of the systemic problem state legislators have failed to address.

My report explains that Florida public schools, inclusive of charter schools lack the funding needed to achieve high performance. Still, they perform quite efficiently with the funding they have. Florida public district AND charter schools would benefit from that same boost in funding (approximately 50% increase to annual operating expenditures). But the proposed SoH plan instead, taps into the operating expenses of district schools to offset costs for charter schools (for operations and maintenance of facilities), giving district officials little control over that allocation, while also boosting revenues for designated SoH charter operators. This plan is grossly inequitable, applying non-uniform treatment across schools and usurping constitutional authority of local boards of education to efficiently operate a system of high-quality schools. The plan as currently proposed must be repealed.

Revisit charter schools and charter sector statutes and regulations

The U.S. Supreme Court may soon rule that charter schools under most state charter school laws do not operate as “state actors” and thus are not compelled recognize children’s constitutional rights to free speech, free exercise of religion, due process in cases of disciplinary action, or equal protection. Thus, it will fall on states to rewrite their charter school legislation to ensure that the protections available to children in charter schools are equal to those attending public district schools.[2]

A second issue that must be addressed is the evaluation of a) current charter operators and their reauthorization and b) the vetting of potential outside providers. The state must tighten statutory and regulatory requirements – and apply existing ones – to ensure that providers of schools of choice are a) not having detrimental economic or demographic segregative impact on local neighborhoods and schools and b) are provided quality education as measured by relevant outcomes compared against schools serving similar student populations and with equitable resources. Outside providers wishing to be authorized should validate that they have been successful serving a representative population with respect to the spaces in which they plan to operate locally.

A third issue that must be addressed is the equitable distribution of and cost-sharing for capital space. The SoH plan essentially provides squatters rights to recognized charter operators and then pushes the costs onto local districts. My previous writings have asserted that it may be reasonable to provide access to publicly owned and maintained capital for charter operators, rather than have them use tax dollars to acquire land and buildings for private ownership.[3] Publicly owned and operated schools are governed under the constitutional authority (in Florida) of local boards of education. The state may develop guidance for local boards of education to collaborate with charter operators for access to under-used district capital. Local boards can/should submit plans for such collaboration. This approach is favorable over selling those assets to affiliates of charter operators via 3^rd party transactions wherein tax dollars are used to buy – via revenue bond debt, a facility that the public owns – and after buying that facility a second time, the public no longer owns it.[4]

A fourth issue is the equitable financing of district and charter schools according to reasonable estimates of the costs associated with differences in student populations served, and with separate consideration of equitable cost sharing for capital space. On the first, point, a study conducted for the State of Maryland provides insights on the complexities of “commensurate” funding (e.g. “uniform” in a Florida context) for district and charter schools. [5]

A final issue that must be addressed is transparency and thoroughness of financial reporting including reporting on and regulation of related party transactions of contractual services and for capital acquisition.[6] The latter can be mitigated by public oversight of access to publicly owned capital. Recent reporting by CBS News exposed the complex web of financial relationships between charter management companies and contracted service providers, most of which under current law, remain permissible, however suspect and opaque.[7] These issues can be fixed.[8]

Equal Opportunity for High Quality Schooling Commission

The tacit acknowledgment in the SoH proposal that schools in Florida need more money – a lot more money – if we expect them to succeed, at high levels, while serving the state’s most disadvantaged communities – is a good starting point. As I noted in my report, funding matters for the quality of student outcomes that can be achieved. [9] Funding matters more in higher poverty, previously lower spending settings. Further, well designed state school finance policies are guided by outcome goals, wherein funding levels are calibrated with respect to the costs to achieve the desired outcome goals. Those costs vary across children and settings, to achieve comparable outcome goals.[10]

The legislature should establish commission and engage the public in setting those goals and then working with qualified experts in determining the costs to achieve those goals across children and educational settings in Florida. Those analyses may guide a comprehensive reform of school funding for Year 2 of this plan.

The back of the napkin spending increases proposed for Schools of Hope may be a useful guidepost for year 1 increases for the state’s highest poverty schools and districts, where those increases are just under $5,000 per pupil. Figure 26 of my report shows that if the state were to recapture even 70% of the budgeted school voucher funds for the current year, per pupil funding could be increased by just under $5,000 per pupil for the highest poverty quintile of school districts and $2,000 per pupil in the second highest poverty quintile. Per the relevant research on return on investment of education spending, this would be a far more productive and efficient allocation of those same dollars. District and charter schools would equally/uniformly benefit.

Resist any and all reductions or limitations on major tax revenue sources

On average, tax and expenditure limits have long run detrimental effects on public service quality including the quality of public schooling measured by students’ outcomes or by the quality of inputs to schooling including class sizes and teacher compensation.[11] Florida district and charter schools are already suffering a lack of sufficient funding to produce high outcomes. As illustrated in my report, Florida’s local public school districts are highly efficient at producing outcomes with the resources available.

At the same time, Florida school districts have become more dependent on local property tax revenues to maintain current levels of service. While the share of revenue from property taxes has increased over the past 30 years, current spending per pupil has remained stagnant. Eliminating, cutting or capping property taxes either inclusive of school property taxes or not will place undue strain on local county and municipal budgets that will either directly or indirectly squeeze public and charter school resources for both operations and capital. The appropriate approach would be for the state to identify new tax revenue sources and use those sources to increase state aid to municipalities and school districts, taking pressure off local property taxes. State aid is the best form of property tax relief, permitting the services to be provided at the level of quality desired with less burden on local taxation to cover the costs of those services.[12]

Year 2 (2027 Session, fy2028) – Overhaul School Funding Formula & related Governance

Overhaul (replace) the School Finance Formula

Adopt a comprehensive school finance formula designed to cover all annual operating costs of schools, with the exception of transportation and capital. That school finance formula, unlike the present formula, should be calibrated to ensure that every district and school statewide has the resources necessary for all children to have equal opportunity to achieve the desired outcomes (as vetted through the public engagement process in year 1).

That formula must include appropriate adjustments for the costs of serving children from different backgrounds and attending school across different settings. This includes but may not be limited to a) children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, b) English learners, c) children with disabilities. Geographic and location factors should include but may not be limited to a) very small schools in remote, sparsely populated locations, b) differences in labor costs (associated with recruiting/retaining teachers of comparable qualifications across locations).
That formula should be inclusive of uniform funding for charter schooling, with potential exclusions (or charges applied) for services provided to charter students through the host district.
Separate, equitable formulas must be developed for a) the financing and allocation of capital (educational spaces) for district and charter enrolled students, and b) the financing centralized planning of transportation services.

Phase down (and out) funding of any new cohorts of voucher students

This should free up substantial resources to support the first recommendation above, but additional revenues will likely still be needed.

Reorganize/reconstitute charter operators that do not contribute positively to equity or efficiency

Florida has far too many charter operators that underserve children with disabilities, English learners and children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, and yield poor academic outcomes for those they do serve when compared to district regular and magnet schools serving similar student populations.

Using policy tools (legislation and regulations) developed in year 1, the state should begin the process of reconstituting these schools. Decisions should be based both on whether a school (or operator of many schools) contributes to or erodes equity with respect to students served versus those served in surrounding schools and residing in surrounding neighborhoods, in addition to performance metrics based on the population served. Any changes to or closures of schools should consider the least disruptive option for those currently enrolled.

NOTES

[1]Baker, B.D. (2025) Financing a High-Quality System of Free Public Schools for Florida’s Children https://schoolfinance101.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/florida_school_finance_12.02.25.pdf

[2] Green III, P. C., & Eckes, S. E. (2024). All Aboard!: Making Charter School Boards All-Purpose State Actors under the Supreme Court’s Amtrak Case. Drake L. Rev., 71, 562.

[3] Baker, B. D. (2016). Exploring the Consequences of Charter School Expansion in US Cities. Economic Policy Institute. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED588750.pdf

Baker, B., & Miron, G. (2015). The Business of Charter Schooling: Understanding the Policies That Charter Operators Use for Financial Benefit. National Education Policy Center. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED574733.pdf

[4] Baker, B.D. (2015) We bought it twice but we nolonger own it. School Finance 101. https://schoolfinance101.com/2015/07/21/we-bought-it-twice-but-we-no-longer-own-it-is-co-location-the-better-option/

[5] Levin, J., Baker, B., Atchison, D., Brodziak, I., Boyle, A., Hall, A., & Becker, J. (2016). Study of funding provided to public schools and public charter schools in Maryland. American Institutes for Research. https://marylandpublicschools.org/stateboard/Documents/01242017/TabG-CharterPublicSchoolFundingStudy.pdf

[6] Green III, P. C., Baker, B. D., & Oluwole, J. O. (2018). Are charter schools the second coming of Enron: An examination of the gatekeepers that protect against dangerous related-party transactions in the charter school sector. Ind. LJ, 93, 1121.

[7] https://www.cbsnews.com/video/florida-charter-school-company-gop-figure-parents-frustrated/

[8] https://theconversation.com/charter-schools-exploit-lucrative-loophole-that-would-be-easy-to-close-111792

[9] Baker, B. D., & Knight, D. (2025). Does money matter in education? Albert Shanker Institute. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED671888.pdf

[10]Atchison, D., Levin, S., Levin, J., Kolar, A., Blair, D., Srikanth, A., & Salvato, B. (2024). Equity and Adequacy of Colorado School Funding: A Cost-Modeling Approach. https://www.cde.state.co.us/cdedepcom/schoolfinancecostmodelingadequacystudyreport

D. Atchison, B.D. Baker, J. Levin, S. Fatima, A. Trauth, A. Srikanth, C. Herberle, N. Gannon-Slater, L. Junk, K., Wallace, L., & Baker, B. (2023) Assessment of Delaware Public School Funding. https://education.delaware.gov/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/23-22933_1_Delaware_Full_Report-FMT-ed103023-Version-2.pdf

Atchison, D., Baker, B.D., Levin, J., Kearns, C. (2020) New Hampshire Commission to Study School Funding, Final Report. https://carsey.unh.edu/sites/default/files/media/2020/09/20-12685_nh_final_report_v10.pdf

Brooks, C., Levin, J., Baker, B., & Salvato, B. (2025). Understanding the Cost of Providing Adequate Educational Opportunity in Oregon. https://olis.oregonlegislature.gov/liz/2025R1/Downloads/CommitteeMeetingDocument/291280

[11] Downes, T. A., & Figlio, D. N. (2012). Tax and expenditure limits, school finance and school quality. In Handbook of research in education finance and policy (pp. 395-410). Routledge.

[12] Baker, B. D., Di Carlo, M., & Oberfield, Z. W. (2023). The Source Code: Revenue Composition and the Adequacy, Equity, and Stability of K-12 School Spending. Albert Shanker Institute.

Financing a High-Quality System of Free Public Schools for Florida’s Children

Press Release

Full Report

Slide Deck

Executive Summary

The report that follows draws on a) literature on how and why money matters for improving school quality and the quality of education systems as a whole, b) frameworks for understanding and evaluating state school finance systems, including systems for financing schools of choice, and c) data from national and state sources, on states across the nation, Florida school districts in the context of their national peers and Florida district and charter schools in their local contexts. The data summarized herein illustrate the following.

First, regarding long term trends in Florida school funding, adequacy and efficiency:

Florida schools have been squeezed by declining state aid since the early 2000s as the state has pursued a race to the bottom on taxpayer financing of public elementary and secondary schools, ranking near the bottom among all states in recent years.
That squeeze has resulted in declining competitiveness of teacher wages over time and even more so, declining staffing ratios in schools, increasing the workload on those that remain.
Adjusted for labor costs over time, school spending per pupil in Florida and in Miami-Dade specifically, is less than it was 30 years ago.
Florida school districts have responded by producing achievement levels beyond expectations given the resources they’ve been provided. Florida school districts are efficient when compared to school districts nationally, accounting for differences in costs.
But because of the long slow reduction in effort, spending, staffing ratios and competitive wages, student outcomes in Florida have continued to decline, dropping among states and dropping in recent, post-COVID years as other states and the nation, on average, have begun to rebound.
As the state has reduced its share of funding for public schooling, local districts have been forced to make up the difference with increased property taxes, to mitigate further damage to student outcomes by slowing the erosion of competitive wages for teachers.

Second, regarding providing equal educational opportunity to all children in Florida:

The state school finance system provides no discernable support to schools serving students with greater educational needs, outside of additional support for children with disabilities.
The state’s charter school sector exacerbates inequality across student populations by operating within low-income neighborhoods, but serving far fewer children from low-income families, fewer children who are English learners and fewer children with disabilities.
The state’s charter school sector also yields poor educational outcomes on state assessments when compared to traditional district schools or district magnet schools serving similar populations within the same district.

Finally, regarding spending for the greatest return on investment:

The state has currently budgeted $3.8 billion dollars to be spent on students attending private schools, approximately 70% of which will likely be spent on children from higher income families who had not previously attended public district schools. That 70% of $3.8 billion would likely yield far greater return on investment and greater public benefit, based on existing research, if invested in public district schools in high poverty settings.

These findings lead to a clear set of policy recommendations. As shown in this report, the state has the economic capacity to pursue these recommendations. Even at the state’s own prior (2000s) education effort, funding for public schools would be 28% higher than it is presently. Add to that, more efficient allocation of funds currently being diverted to the school voucher program, and much of the state’s public education adequacy gap could be eliminated. As such, we propose the following recommendations:

Recommendation #1 – Phase 1: Engage in the work of setting a manageable standard of “high quality” public schooling for Florida’s children by engaging in analyses of the costs associated with providing each and every child in Florida with equal educational opportunity to achieve high education outcomes.

Establish a statewide commission on school funding.
Engage stakeholders in setting standards of excellence for Florida children.
Engage experts to estimate the costs associated with meeting those standards, applying appropriately rigorous methods.

Recommendation #1 – Phase 2: Guided by those estimates, reform the school finance formula and increase state aid to schools so as to provide them with the necessary resources for all children to have equal educational opportunity to achieve high education outcomes. That is, meet the constitutional standard ratified by Florida voters in 1998 and 2002. This should include estimates of commensurate funding for charter schools, based on needs and costs.

Take eliminating or reducing property taxes off the table. The most effective form of property tax relief is increased state aid, as would occur under implementation of this recommendation.

Recommendation 2 – Part 1: Impose a moratorium on charter school expansion, including the Schools of Hope Program. The existing charter school sector in Florida is compromising equity, eroding efficiency and producing poor educational outcomes for those it serves. New York’s Success Academies have no proven track record of serving children like those they’d be called upon to serve in Miami-Dade, having served very few English learners and underserving Latino communities in New York. Like Miami-Dade’s current charter sector, they have also underserved low-income populations and children with disabilities. Introduction of Success Academies in Miami-Dade will likely exacerbate equity concerns that are already significant.

Recommendation 2 – Part 2: Establish new regulations for evaluating existing charter operators and vetting new charter operators to ensure improved equity in the distribution of students by their needs across schools. Adopt and enforce stricter regulations pertaining to student outcomes.

Recommendation 2 – Part 3: Adopt updated charter school legislation to ensure that charter schools are sufficiently “public,” required to operate as if “state actors,” protecting children’s constitutional rights and abiding by all relevant federal statutes.

Recommendation 3: Freeze expansion of the voucher program to free up state resources to support a fully funded, overhauled public school finance formula, to provide a uniform system of free public schools.

Florida_School_Finance_12.02.25_PressRelease Download

Florida_School_Finance_12.02.25 Download

Florida.School.Finance_Dec.2025 Download

What’s up with New York State School Finance?

Full Report

Press Release

Slide Deck

Executive Summary

In this brief, I draw the following conclusions regarding New York’s Foundation Aid formula:

Conclusion 1: The current iteration of the Foundation Aid formula does not rationally determine what districts need to spend, or what they actually spend, in order to achieve adequate outcomes;
Conclusion 2: The foundation formula has continued to drift further, over time, from funding even its own (inadequate) hypothetical sound basic funding level;
Conclusion 3: Standards, goals and context of the education system have changed, with both broader and higher expectations and greater needs and cost pressures across the state.

These conclusions are supported by a series of calculations using publicly available data, showing that the foundation aid formula was built on measures and calculations that could never fully fund districts’ spending needs to meet desired outcome standards, even at the time of adoption. Failure to update the Foundation Aid base with respect to changes in instructional spending for successful, efficient school districts has led to increasing gaps between formula calculations and actual instructional spending needs.

The Foundation Aid formula requires both short term fixes and a longer term overhaul, driven by cost analyses to determine the spending levels needed to achieve today’s outcome standards, for all children across all districts and settings.

Short term fixes derived from the analyses herein include:

Increasing base aid to better reflect general instructional expenditures of successful, efficient districts. The minimum increase justified herein would be 10.75% above next year’s inflation adjusted base. Were that to have been implemented for fy2026, the base would be $9,162 (10.75% above the adopted base of $8,273).
Noting that adjustments for student needs were never based on any empirical analyses, and drawing on related work,[i] I would suggest adding and increasing adjustments for student needs, including adjustments for children from homeless, foster care and migrant families, and increasing weighting for English learners, with each weight being adopted or moved toward 1.0 additional funding.

In the longer term, over the next year and a half, with intent to reform Foundation Aid for fy2028, the state should conduct a rigorous analysis of the spending required to achieve current desired outcome goals for all children. That analysis must identify a comprehensive spending measure – not merely general instructional spending – with appropriate adjustments for student needs and regional cost variations. Both the base and each adjustment should be grounded in rigorous empirical analysis, which was never done previously. Only by conducting such analysis to inform the calibration of a modern school aid formula can the state be confident that the formula meets the needs of all students, here and now.

Additional Resources

Folder with All AIR Report Briefs

Foundation Brief_8-18-2025 Download

Foundation Brief_8-18-2025_PressRelease Download

NYSCS.Oct_2025 Download

[i] https://cee.tc.columbia.edu/media/centers-amp-labs/cee/publication-pdfs/AIR-Report-2–Student-Outcomes-and-Student-Need—Final-10-29-24-1-1.pdf

ICYMI: Reforming New Jersey School Funding in 2026

Mark Weber’s Summary Post at NJPP

Full Report

Summary

Report Finds New Jersey Must Recalibrate School Funding Formula to Meet Modern Educational Needs

Miami, FL — A comprehensive new study concludes that New Jersey’s two-decades-old school funding formula no longer reflects the costs of educating today’s students to the state’s higher standards—and requires a substantial recalibration to restore equity, adequacy, and effectiveness.

The report, Estimating the Costs of an Adequate Education in New Jersey: Recalibrating the School Funding Reform Act for the Next Decade, authored by Bruce D. Baker, Professor at the University of Miami, provides the first fully data-driven statewide cost model built using school-level expenditure and outcome data from 2019–2024.

Despite New Jersey’s longstanding reputation as a national leader in public education and school funding effort, the study finds that the School Funding Reform Act (SFRA)—enacted in 2008 using cost assumptions built from 2004 data—no longer aligns with current student needs, academic standards, or district demographics.

Key Findings

Higher standards and changing student populations have outpaced the funding formula. The current SFRA weights do not reflect the actual costs of meeting today’s academic expectations, especially for students experiencing poverty, multilingual learners, and students with disabilities.
Funding progressiveness has eroded dramatically. After two decades of rising equity, New Jersey’s funding distribution is now flatter than in the 1990s, leaving high-poverty districts without the resources needed to match the outcomes of their peers.
Many districts operate below the funding levels required to achieve statewide average outcomes. Cost modeling shows substantial gaps between what districts spend today and what is needed to achieve adequate outcomes—particularly in high-poverty communities.
Current spending patterns do not match need. The report finds only weak alignment between present school-site spending and the needs of economically disadvantaged students, multilingual learners, and others requiring additional support.
A modern cost model identifies the factors that drive the true cost of equal educational opportunity. These include poverty concentration, neighborhood conditions, disability incidence, English learner status, district size, competitive wage variation, and the effects of charter and private school market share.

Major Recommendations

The report outlines several pathways for recalibrating SFRA:

Short-Term (FY 2027)

Update and expand student need weights, particularly for economic disadvantage and multilingual learners.
Adjust base costs to reflect the actual spending required to achieve current outcome benchmarks.
Address underfunding in districts below adequacy.

Mid-Term (FY 2028–29)

Overhaul the economic disadvantage measure using a new Economic Disadvantage Index that more accurately captures the relationship between poverty and outcomes.
Revisit special education cost structures using updated disability prevalence and placement patterns.
Incorporate geographic cost adjustments based on modern wage data.

Longer-Term

Strengthen the Education Adequacy Report process to require rigorous, recurring cost analyses.
Ensure transparency and public access to data used in calculating formula adjustments.
Reassess the structural implications of school district size, population density, and charter expansion on efficiency and equity.

A Call to Action

“New Jersey’s students continue to be among the highest-performing in the nation,” said author Bruce Baker, “but the state’s commitment to equitable, adequate school funding has slipped. The data clearly show that to maintain excellence—and extend it to all children—New Jersey must realign its school finance system with the realities of today’s classrooms.”

The report urges state leaders to use this modeling framework to guide the 2026 Education Adequacy Report and upcoming legislative deliberations on school finance reform.

About the Author

Bruce D. Baker is a national expert in school finance and a professor at the University of Miami. He has led school funding adequacy and cost modeling studies in Vermont, New Hampshire, Delaware, Colorado, Oregon, and Texas, and is co-author of multiple national reports on educational resource equity.

Revisiting Deceitful Claims about School Funding and Outcomes (a thread)

I’ve had enough. This has to stop. I’ve explained on at least a few occasions that there exists a cottage industry for whom their bread and butter is telling state legislatures and judges that money simply doesn’t matter for schools (Merchants of Doubt): That public schools all have more than enough to do what they need to do and they all just need to do better with what they have – especially those over-funded schools in high poverty settings.

I’ve also explained that the two most disingenuous junk analyses oft used to “display” that money doesn’t matter are various forms of the “long term trend” graph (money went up, outcomes were stagnant or went down, so money can’t matter) and the “clouds of doubt” graphs (with money on the X and outcomes on the Y, there’s no apparent relationship). These bogus assertions and deceitful illustrations should have died a long time ago. Why? because they are bogus and deceitful and because those who now insist on continuing to use them have been informed, over and over again. So they are bogus and INTENTIONALLY deceitful. Period. Full Stop. (and not this author’s first offense by any means)

Dumbest completely fabricated (but still serious?) graph ever! (so far)

On the Real Dangers of Marguerite Roza’s Fake Graph

School Finance through Roza-Tinted Glasses: 5 School Funding Myths from a single Misguided Source

So, here’s a BlueSky thread from a short while back:

The link: https://www.educationnext.org/could-disappointing-2017-naep-scores-due-to-great-recession/

Here are those graphs – for Oregon, because we had to spend a stupid amount of time explaining why the Edunomics analysis was garbage to policymakers in that state: