Dive Brief:

• A report released Thursday by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities found 35 states spent less per pupil in 2014 than in 2008 — and this year, formula funding indicates 23 states continue to do the same.
• The Washington Post reports Arizona, Kansas, North Carolina, Oklahoma and Wisconsin are among the states with the largest decreases in per-pupil education spending, and one of the contributing factors is they all cut income taxes, decreasing state revenue streams.
• Looking at combined state and local per pupil funding from 2008 to 2014, years for which official data is available, Florida is down 26%, Arizona is down 22%, Idaho 21%, Georgia 20% and Nevada 19%, while North Dakota is at the other end of the spectrum with a 25% increase, followed by Illinois with a 14% increase and Vermont with a 10% increase.

Dive Insight:

The Education Law Center last March released a national report card about the equity of school funding across the nation. Besides finding great disparity across states in average spending per pupil, it also found 14 states have regressive funding formulas, where less funding goes to districts with higher concentrations of poverty.

In the Every Student Succeeds Act, the Obama administration is trying to strengthen the “supplement not supplant” provision of Title I so that districts cannot spend fewer state and local dollars on high-poverty schools, limiting inequities within districts. Teachers unions have been among the fiercest critics of this rule-making, as school districts expect higher-paid teachers will be forced to move to less desirable schools. Alternative options to moving existing teachers includes hiring additional staff members at higher-poverty schools (like teachers aids or social workers) or adding after-school programs to boost relative spending.