OKLAHOMA CITY — As state officials in the next fiscal year, lawmakers on Tuesday appeared doubtful of requests to spend millions on Bibles for public schools and salary increases at the Oklahoma State Department of Education.

The agency’s leader, state Superintendent Ryan Walters, again asked for $3 million to purchase copies of the Bible, the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution to place in every public school classroom. He also requested $2.3 million for a 6% cost-of-living salary bump for Education Department employees, who last saw a pay raise in 2019.

Although his total budget request would increase the agency’s funding by $113 million, Walters hinted at “potential staff cuts” to limit the Education Department’s operational expenses during a meeting Tuesday with the Senate Appropriations Committee.

“I​​ do believe we can save $1.3 million in some of the costs that we’ve been able to absorb through rolling positions together, cutting positions that are duplicated in their services,” Walters said during the meeting.

Members of the influential appropriations committee heard Walters’ budget requests for the 2026 fiscal year. The state is required to pay some of the projected expenses, such as an extra $88.6 million for the rising cost of health insurance for public school employees.

Another $4 million would increase the teacher maternity leave fund, which Walters said is growing in popularity. He also asked for $500,000 to offer firearms training to teachers.

Senators of both parties questioned Walters’ request for $3 million to buy 55,000 copies of the King James Version Bible, which they suggested could be donated to schools or found for free online.

House lawmakers last week.

The state superintendent has advocated for more instruction on the Bible to help contextualize American history and the beliefs of the country’s founding fathers. He said he doesn’t intend for schools to preach Christianity to students.

Last year, he to incorporate the Bible into their lesson plans and that would mandate instruction on biblical stories. His agency already spent under $25,000 on 532 copies of Lee Greenwood’s God Bless the USA Bible, which is informally known as the Trump Bible because it has the president’s endorsement.

Walters’ Bible instruction mandate already on church-state separation grounds.

Sen. Brenda Stanley, R-Midwest City, said she never encountered a classroom that didn’t have a Bible available to students during her 43-year career in education.

Sen. Dave Rader, R-Tulsa, encouraged Walters to exhaust all resources for Bible donations before having the Legislature consider spending $3 million.

“We could take the $3 million elsewhere, if somebody is willing to make those available to us at no cost,” Rader said during the hearing.

The Senate committee also appeared dubious of funding a COLA increase for over the past two years. Walters told the committee the Education Department employed 520 people when he took office in January 2023 and that it now counts 460 employees.

“If you have decreased your (full-time employees), it would appear to me that there are already dollars inside your operating budget to offer salary increases,” Sen. Kristen Thompson, R-Edmond, told Walters during the hearing.

Walters disagreed that staff departures would be enough to fund the increase. A complicating factor is the large number of federally funded salaries at the agency, he said.

The department has considered reducing its staff even further after the state Board of Equalization in the 2026 fiscal year, Walters said.

The projection is preliminary, and the Board of Equalization will meet again this month for updated numbers.

“After the last Board of Equalization meeting, we really went in and tried to do a deep dive into can we continue to see cuts, and we believe that we do need to be able to do that,” Walters said.

Legislative leaders are preparing to limit expenses in light of the budget projections, especially as Gov. Kevin Stitt , flat agency budgets and “eliminating wasteful government spending.”

The governor suggested no funding increases to public schools nor to the state Education Department in .

House Speaker Kyle Hilbert, R-Bristow, said Monday that he shares many of the governor’s priorities “as we seek to tighten our belt fiscally this year.” Senate President Pro Tem Lonnie Paxton, R-Tuttle, echoed Stitt’s tax-cut message when he endorsed “improving the lives of Oklahomans by allowing them to keep more of their hard-earned money.”

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oklahoma Voice maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Janelle Stecklein for questions: info@oklahomavoice.com.

With Oregon’s public schools staring down a fiscal cliff this school year as the historic federal investment from the last few years expires, Gov. Tina Kotek is proposing changes.

She’d like to help schools keep up with rising costs in the years ahead by updating the way schools are funded. She estimates that those changes would bring a $515 million boost to the State School Fund during the 2025-27 school years.

The state’s 197 school districts have spent nearly all of their portions of the $1.6 billion in federal COVID relief money awarded to the state since 2020. The money expires in September and with it, some of the services, programs and staff that it has paid for.

“Across the country, school districts are facing budget shortages caused by the expiration of federal pandemic relief dollars, declining enrollment, increasing costs due to inflation and many other factors,” Kotek said in a news release Wednesday announcing the changes.

They come amid growing calls for funding help from districts. After teachers in the state’s largest district, Portland Public Schools, went on strike for more than a month last fall – in part because of low pay and poor working conditions – Kotek vowed she would review school funding and compensation issues in Oregon.

Leaders in other big districts also issued warnings about their dire budget predicaments following the strike, and in May, several superintendents released a video calling school funding in the state a “crisis” as they explained their decisions to cut hundreds of jobs to keep schools solvent.

They implored the Legislature to increase education spending.

“This is a terrible and devastating, heartbreaking moment for us,” Salem-Keizer Public Schools’ Superintendent Andrea Castañeda said in the video, “and it is not one we’re using to levy blame. It’s one that we’re using to ask for help.”

Officials from various education groups in Oregon expressed relief and gratitude over Kotek’s announcement.

Morgan Allen, deputy executive director of the Coalition of Oregon School Administrators, said it was “hugely positive.” Emielle Nischik, interim executive director of the Oregon School Boards Association, called it a good start.

“The essential work we do for students has to be tied to adequate and reliable funding,” Nischik said in an email. “This doesn’t fix our funding challenge, but it will facilitate a more honest State School Fund debate in the Legislature.”

Years of underfunding

During the long legislative session in 2023, lawmakers passed a $10.2 billion school funding package, the allocated in Oregon. Of that, more than $8.8 billion went to the State School Fund, which pays for the bulk of district budgets.

But school leaders afterwards said that was still not enough following years of underfunding and rising costs due to inflation. Legislators have historically the amount recommended by the state’s Education Quality Commission, which is tasked with ensuring Oregon operates “a system of highly-effective schools” and presents a proposed budget to the governor and the Legislature every two-years.

Oregon school funding has further been stymied by two voter-approved ballot measures passed in the 1990s that have capped the state’s ability to tax property to fund schools. School funding from property taxes dropped by two-thirds in the following years, with the Legislature drawing a greater share of funding from the state’s general fund, which is needed for myriad services in the state.

Sen. Michael Dembrow, D-Portland, chair of the Senate Education Committee and the Statewide Educator Salary Task Force formed by the Legislature in 2023, said improvements to the State School Fund are desperately needed. But he said he’s concerned about where the additional money will come from with no new tax increases or revenue streams proposed alongside them.

“It’s an open question as to what else in the budget might have to be cut in order to bring in this extra half a billion dollars,” he said. “Personally, I worry that it could come from higher education, which is already very much underfunded.”

Proposed changes

The first change Kotek proposes to the State School Fund is to give schools 49% of their allocated budget in the first year of the two-year budget cycle, and then the remaining 51% in the second year, rather than splitting them evenly each year. She said this would help boost funding in subsequent two-year budgets since they are based on the amount allocated for the second year of the previous education budget. This would also help schools cover expenses that might be higher by the second year of a two-year budget. This change would give districts at least $217 million more in their 2025-27 budgets, Kotek’s advisers estimate.

The second proposed change would involve data the state uses to project future compensation. By narrowing the data the state uses for its projections – using the last 10 years of salary data instead of 20 – about $500 million would be added to the money available to schools to hire teachers and classified and administrative staff in the 2025-27 budget.

Lastly, Kotek proposes that the Legislature incorporate annual changes in local property tax revenues. Historically, the Legislature has only taken into account revenue from the first year of a biennial budget when considering what to allocate in the next budget. This limits the state’s ability to send schools more money if property tax revenues rise during a year that’s not counted.

By accounting for local revenue changes every year, state officials could bring in an additional $55 million to the State School Fund for the 2025-27 school year, Kotek’s office estimated.

“The governor said she was committed to this, and she is showing that she is,” Dembrow said of the latest changes. “Looking at how this gets funded in her budget, which will come out in December, will be really interesting to see, because obviously that’s where the proof in the pudding will be.”

Strangely, the subject of revenues and expenditures is never addressed in A Nation at Risk (ANAR). That omission makes the cascade of calls to increase funding for schools, often justified by reference to the message of urgency in ANAR while disregarding use of funds, ironic. By ignoring the role of funding and budgeting, the recommendations from the US National Commission on Excellence in Education are untethered from any grounding in choices and trade-offs that all public policy required. On the other side, the calls for funding that are divorced from ideas of how the funds are to be used are equally problematic.

Spending on schools is frequently used as a summary statistic of the quality of schools. And in discussions of how to make schools better and more equitable, the first order of business is frequently the necessity of increasing our investment in schools—in other words, our spending on schools. Unfortunately, history has not been very supportive of this strategy.

A conventional perspective is that legislatures and school districts should decide how much to spend based on the trade-off between the expected benefits of school spending and the taxes required for any given revenue. Once the revenue is determined, school districts would make budget allocations in order to produce the best student outcomes.

However, this picture is complicated in the case of schools, since states—which have primary responsibility for schools—are concerned not only with overall student outcomes but also with the equity of public provision. Two factors enter into the equity discussions. First, education is not entirely a function of schools but has components of families and circumstances that enter into student outcomes. Thus, children from more educationally disadvantaged households, English language learners, and children with various handicaps need more from the schools if they are to pull even with students not facing such difficulties. Second, because local funding is heavily reliant on local property taxes, the size of the district tax base will directly influence the ability of a school district to raise revenues. Students who happen to reside in districts where the value of residential property and the presence of commercial and industrial properties are high have an advantage in raising revenues for their schools.

The legislature in each state is charged with making political decisions about both the level of spending and how statewide education and funding differences are addressed. How to reach decisions that weigh the underlying trade-offs is vigorously debated, and every state has its own solution to this.

Legislatures are not the only actors in these discussions. Various parties who have not liked the legislative outcomes have gone to the courts to try to change the legislative decisions. Starting in California in 1968, courts in all but two states (Hawaii and Utah) have had litigation about school funding. The early cases in the 1970s and 1980s focused on equity issues largely related to differences in property tax bases and spending differentials across school districts, but the cases evolved throughout subsequent decades to focus more on the overall adequacy of funding to meet educational objectives.

The largest difficulty with the pattern and outcomes of revenue decisions is, however, the lack of a clear relationship between added spending and student outcomes. In simplest terms, the division of decisions between how much to spend and how to spend it has historically led to highly variable and quite disappointing results in terms of student outcomes. Specifically, it appears that how funds are spent is crucial—and generally more important than how much is spent. This does not say that more resources are never important for student outcomes. Nor does it say that more resources cannot be important for improved student outcomes. It does say that divorcing decisions on “how much” from “how” has not been successful within the current structure of school decision-making.

This chapter documents these overall conclusions. It then discusses alternative perspectives on funding for schools.

A short history of funding

In order to frame the school finance discussion, it is helpful to describe briefly the nature of financing of schools in the United States. The overall picture of enrollments, structure of the schools, and funding shows significant changes over time. Further, the aggregate picture hides significant variation across the states. The variety provides an important backdrop both for the analysis of school finance issues and for decision-making in the schools.

An overview of U.S. schooling

Public school enrollment in the United States, while rising during the 1990s, reached fifty million students in 2013 and stabilized there until the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020. The full impact of the pandemic is not yet known, but public school enrollment fell by 3 percent from fall 2020 to fall 2021 and remained at the lower level through fall 2022.

These students are spread very unevenly across states and, within states, across separate local school districts. At the state level, Vermont had a total of 82,000 students while California had six million. The prime operating level is the school district, of which there were 13,452 in 2019, down from 117,408 in 1940. Moreover, the states are broken up into widely varying numbers of local districts. While Hawaii and the District of Columbia each have only one school district, five states had more than one thousand districts.

But even these aggregate variations understate the degree of heterogeneity in the schools, because the growing importance of school choice leads to even more decentralized operation of education. The public school district is the prime operating unit, but it does not cover the full provision of education services. Charter schools were first established in Minnesota in 1991, and the model spread across the country. Charter schools are public schools that operate with varying degrees of autonomy, depending on the state. Typically, they are free to operate outside of many of the education regulations in a state, and importantly, they can set their own requirements for teacher preparation, salary schedules, and personnel rules independent of local teachers’ unions. They receive public funding, and they are almost always required to take all applying students or to randomize admissions if more students apply than they can accommodate. They are also required to participate in the state student assessment systems.

Students can also attend private schools or be homeschooled. While this is changing, private schools almost always receive no direct public funding, as is the case for homeschooling. These parts of the system are generally very unregulated, and they can set their own curricula, standards, and hiring rules. They generally do not participate in state student assessment systems, and little is known about their performance except as indicated by parental choices.

Figure 1 shows the substantial changes in the structure of US schools in the twenty-first century in terms of parental choices that interact with school finance. There has been a steady rise in charter school attendance with relatively stable homeschool attendance and some decline in private schooling. The private school attendance is one-quarter nonsectarian and three-quarters religious based, with the religious component evenly split between Catholic and other denominations.

Note, however, that these data are pre-pandemic. With the pandemic, traditional public school attendance fell, while the other choice options increased. Within the public school sector there was also a shift from the traditional public schools to charter schools. The longrun distribution of students remains unclear at this time.

Revenues for U.S. education

The structure of the education sector and the attendance patterns that were highlighted relate directly to school finances. Because private schools and homeschooling are not publicly supported (to any significant degree), any increased attendance in these sectors relieves state and local governments of resource demands.

Figure 2 traces revenues for the public schools from 1960 to 2019. The bulk of funding comes from state and local revenues, which each correspond to roughly 45 percent of per-pupil funding. The federal share, which began rising in the 1960s as the federal government assumed a larger role in financing schools for disadvantaged students and subsequently for special education students, rose around the 2008 recession and then returned to its historic levels. While not shown, the federal government also contributed large additional amounts of temporary funds with the onset of the pandemic in 2020.

The steady increase in per-pupil funding over the entire period puts public school revenues per student in 2019 at more than four times that in 1960 in real terms. In fact, except for the dip in school revenues after the end of federal support for the 2008 recession, real per-pupil spending (i.e., adjusted for inflation) has risen continuously for more than one hundred years.

State revenues come from a variety of sources that differ across the fiscal structures of the different states. At the same time, with few exceptions, property taxes are the dominant source of local revenues.

Public school spending incorporates both traditional public schools and charter schools. For a variety of political and institutional reasons, charter school spending is systematically below that for traditional public schools, although there is debate about the exact magnitude of differences.

The aggregate revenue data hides the wide variation that is seen at the state level. States differ significantly in how revenues are raised and in the level of spending. Table 1 shows the extent of compositional differences in school funding. Typically, most of the revenue is derived from state and local sources with the federal government contributing a smaller portion, but the federal share across states differs from 4 percent to 15 percent of funding because the federal revenues are driven largely by poverty rates and special education classifications that differ across states. States like Hawaii, with its one district, and Vermont provide almost all funding at the state level, while funding for schools in Washington, DC, is provided almost entirely at the local level. For Alaska schools, 15 percent of the funding comes from the federal government, the highest percentage of all states.

Figure 3 illustrates the distribution of state per-pupil spending levels in the 2018–19 academic year. Northeastern states spend more than $15,000 per student, significantly higher than the $9,000 to $11,000 per pupil spent by the majority of southern states.

Student performance

The United States has reliably assessed student performance with the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), otherwise known as the Nation’s Report Card. The long-term trend (LTT) assessment of NAEP makes it possible to get representative national data for math and reading performance of students aged nine, thirteen, and seventeen since the 1970s. Beginning in 1992, a second version of NAEP, called Main NAEP, was started with testing of math and reading in grades four and eight.

Table 2 provides data on NAEP testing results both in terms of changes in standard deviations (SD) and in terms of these changes relative to school expenditure. The pre-pandemic results fall into two distinct clusters. There are strong gains in the level of math performance for younger students—age nine (grade four) and to a lesser extent age thirteen (grade eight). But there are much more modest gains for age seventeen math and for reading at all ages.

The scores cover different periods of time, so it is also useful within this discussion to place them in comparison to the spending on schools. When normalized by spending over the relevant time periods, the younger cohort math gains are all greater than 0.07 SD per 10 percent larger spending, while the remaining gains are all less than 0.03 SD per 10 percent larger spending.

The results were, unsurprisingly, dramatically altered by the COVID-19 pandemic. The MainNAEP had testing in spring 2019 (included in Table 2) and spring 2022. In math and reading for both grade four and grade eight, average scores fell dramatically with the largest declines being recorded for math performance (Table 3). Grade eight (grade four) gains from 1990 through 2022 were down to 0.33 SD (0.72 SD). For reading, virtually all gains since 1992 were erased by the pandemic; the 1992–2022 gain was 0.01 SD for grade eight and 0.02 for grade four. It is of course difficult to know how to interpret the scores after the pandemic. Clearly, the substantial added funds over the pandemic period were insufficient to overcome the learning disadvantages of the pandemic period.

The achievement gains in Table 2 are unconditional changes in student performance. In interpreting this performance data, it is important to note that, because achievement is a function not only of schools but also of parents, peers, and neighborhoods, the data do not indicate the causal impact of schools or spending, but they do provide an important backdrop to finance discussions.

One related pattern that does consider some of the nonschool factors is the historical evolution of achievement gaps by socioeconomic status (SES). Concerns have been raised that the widening of the US income distribution led to expanding SES achievement gaps (Reardon 2011). That concern is unfounded because test information that is linked over time shows a slow shrinking of gaps for birth cohorts born between 1961 and 2001 (Hanushek et al. 2022).

Court involvement

While the federal courts were involved in school funding issues for a while after the school desegregation ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, the US Supreme Court in 1973 declared school finance outside the federal role (Rodriguez v. San Antonio), effectively moving all litigation to state courts.

Litigation in the state courts is filed under the state’s equal protection clause or the state’s education clause as covered by individual state constitutions (see Hanushek and Lindseth 2009). The equity cases under the equal protection clause argue that state efforts to ameliorate either cost of education differences (e.g., for English language learners) or differences in property tax bases are insufficient. The adequacy cases under state education clauses argue that the current level of funding is insufficient to meet the constitutional obligations of the state.

The judicial branch has been asked to assess the level and pattern of school spending in 205 separate court cases adjudicated across forty-eight of the fifty states. There is no distinct geographical pattern to where these court cases have been found. The prevalence of cases is almost evenly split between below-average and above-average spending states, but the success of defendants in maintaining the existing finance structures is relatively greater in low-spending states. Perhaps surprisingly, decisions in cases focused on adequacy tend to be more successful in states that are already at above-average achievement levels as measured by NAEP.

Interestingly, while the court cases are focused on school spending, there is no overall relationship between spending growth and either decisions that favor the plaintiffs or the number of cases in any state. States with mandates from the courts to increase spending average somewhat larger immediate growth (within five years of the decision) than states where there is no such court mandate, but these short-run changes do not lead to differences in long-term growth of spending. Thus, the school finance litigation has occupied the attention of state legislatures across the country, but it has not changed the overall funding outcomes across the states.

The spending-achievement dilemma

Since the first major study of school resources and student achievement (Coleman et al. 1966), there have been questions about the strength and consistency of any relationship between the two. This very influential study, the Coleman Report, suggested that school resources were not closely related to student outcomes; instead, families and peers had the primary influence. While the study was not well executed by current scientific standards, it evoked a huge response, with many researchers pursuing related questions about the determinants of student achievement.

The early research confirmed the doubts about whether strong impacts on student achievement would follow added spending (Hanushek 2003). But the early research was marked by studies of highly variable quality, and many would not meet current empirical standards. There are a variety of problems faced by this research, but the main problem is that insufficient attention is given to finding the “causal impact” of added funding. In other words, the correlations of resources and achievement could well be affected by other unmeasured factors that bias any empirical analysis.

A more recent body of research has developed that emphasizes careful identification of the causal impact of resources on student outcomes. The ideal approach to investigating the causal impact of resources is a randomized controlled trial where some group of schools is randomly chosen to receive more resources while another group does not. Such a research design is, of course, not really feasible with schools (or in many other circumstances). As a result, a variety of other approaches that are designed to mimic randomized controlled trials have been developed. These approaches have two common elements: the existence of a change in resources that is not correlated with other factors that affect student outcomes and the availability of a control group that can indicate what would happen in the absence of the added resources.

Finding circumstances that meet the requirements for these quasi-experimental approaches is not easy. Observations of most actual school operations do not meet these stringent requirements. In fact, the relevant scientific conditions are relatively unusual. But over the past two decades a number of such circumstances have been uncovered by researchers, lending the possibility that evidence on the causal impact of added resources can be more thoroughly investigated.

The studies falling into this category come from a variety of circumstances, ranging from added funding that results from court decisions in finance cases to the impact of budget decreases following the 2008 recession. Because these studies reflect such a wide range of circumstances, it is difficult to provide a direct comparison of the various estimates, but there are now two reviews of the work over the past two decades (Jackson and Mackevicius 2021; Handel and Hanushek 2023b).

Two general conclusions come from the recent studies:

• With high probability, adding resources to schools has a positive effect on student outcomes.

• The estimated impact of resources is highly variable and depends on the context and constraints on the spending.

The first conclusion largely underscores the contentious political nature of the research in this area. Nobody believes that adding resources to schools is likely to harm students and learning, but because parts of the research enter directly into legislative and judicial decisions about funding, there has been some effort to make this the focus of attention. By phrasing the issue as “does money matter?” the intent is to set the low hurdle of “no harm.” Of course, rational public decision-making would not fund all public programs that don’t harm the recipients.

The second conclusion of the research is much more relevant. The estimates of spending impacts range from too small to reject the possibility of no impact to very large effects on both student achievement and attainment of more schools. The small estimates would not justify added public expenditure because the costs would exceed the social benefits. The large results, on the other hand, would justify considerable commitment of added public funds.

Table 4 provides a summary of the results from the separate studies of student outcomes that meet modern empirical standards for estimating the causal impact of funding. All estimates represent the expected improvement in outcomes for a 10 percent increase in funding. The preferred estimates relate to achievement test scores. While most are positive and nine of sixteen are statistically significant, they vary widely. Part of the variation just represents normal sampling errors that are present in all studies, but most of it represents true differences in the underlying impact of funding. The estimates for test scores range from a reduction in achievement of −0.24 SD (not statistically significant) to +0.54 SD (statistically significant). This large range leaves substantial uncertainty in what can be expected from added funding. Clearly, averaging across these estimates to get a predicted impact would be misleading: in addition to having a small number of estimates in the sample, we could not be confident that they are typical of the full set of funding decisions that have not been measured.

While all of the results for school attainment (high school graduation, not dropping out, and continuing to college) are positive, they also cover a very wide range. They, too, have the same challenges for interpretation.

The major difficulty is that it has not been possible to describe when funds are particularly effective or ineffective (Handel and Hanushek 2023a). The estimated impacts of resources, as noted, come from very different circumstances. They do not reflect differences in the underlying methodology, in whether funds are targeted at a particular group such as disadvantaged students, whether they come from court directives, or whether they reflect differences across states in policies. To date, little headway has been made in describing the features of the particular contexts or the particular use of funds that yields significant learning gains.

In many ways, it is not surprising that the underlying methodology does not provide clear information about the underlying structure of effectiveness. The appeal of randomized controlled trials and quasi-experimental designs is that it is possible to provide causal impact information without knowing or being able to specify the full range of factors that enter into determining the outcomes. But this does not mean that the specific impact estimates are unaffected by the circumstances or even the design of the specific use of resources. The combination of the use of resources and the context within which they are applied is in how funds are used. The current research underscores the importance of how funds are used if student achievement is to be improved.

An ideal funding policy

Education policy has two broad goals: reach high levels of achievement and do this in an equitable manner. The way that we fund schools should clearly relate to meeting these goals. The overall level of funding is a political decision, not a scientific decision. Legislatures decide on funding levels on the basis of both their judgments about reaching the desired learning standards of the state and their views on the trade-offs with other public expenditures and with private expenditures (as related to tax rates). But because the outcomes of the funding depend on how the funds are used, the education policy surrounding any funding cannot be ignored.

A fundamental problem is that we do not have a set of simple policies that can be put in place and that have a high probability of successful impact on student achievement. We know some things that have an impact, but it is often not clear how they can be put in place at scale.

For example, there is extensive information about the importance of effective teachers (e.g., Hanushek 2011; Chetty, Friedman, and Rockoff 2014; Bacher-Hicks and Koedel 2023). Knowing how important teachers are is different from having a clear set of policies that can be legislated and put into place. There are examples of the application of teacher policies that work in some locations, such as Washington, DC (Dee and Wyckoff 2015, 2017) and Dallas (Hanushek et al. 2023). It is nonetheless difficult to legislate adoption of these complex plans that have been honed to the circumstances of the individual areas.

There are institutional structures that tend to promote better achievement—and that are likely to work in part through promoting better teachers. For example, recent evidence points to good overall performance results from allowing the greater flexibility and parental choice that come with charter schools (see CREDO 2023). Yet the details remain difficult to legislate.

In discussing guiding principles for an effective funding system, Hanushek and Lindseth (2009) proposed seven general principles:

• If the objective is to improve outcomes, the system should focus on outcomes. Accountability for performance should be substituted for restrictions on local decision-making. 

• The system should reward those who contribute to success—that is, those who bring about high achievement.

• Rewards should be based on each person’s contribution to success and not on external factors such as the education inputs of families and neighborhoods.

• School funding formulas should minimize unproductive “gaming” by avoiding rewards for things that are easily manipulated by school personnel.

• School funding policies must recognize the underlying heterogeneity of students and their education challenges and ensure that all schools have the means to succeed. 

• School authorities must gather relevant programmatic and performance data and use it to refine and improve performance. 

• New policies or programs should be introduced in a manner that enables direct evaluation of their results.

These principles can, of course, be filled in a variety of ways, but they revolve around setting up incentives so that the decision-makers take actions that lead to better student outcomes. An example of the application of these principles is what Hanushek and Lindseth (2009) call “performance-based funding.”

The central elements of such a system, building on what has previously been successful, include a strong accountability system with incentives and direct rewards for successful performance, empowered local decision-making by both schools and parents, and an ongoing information and evaluation system. This would all be built on a rational and equitable base of funding that provides basic support and that recognizes both different abilities of districts to raise revenue and different costs for educating individuals (e.g., for children from poor families and for students with special needs).

Perhaps the key idea, however, is recognizing and rewarding success. Today many public funding programs actually do the opposite: they reward failure. For example, if a school shows poor performance from its students, more funds are provided; if the school shows improvement, funds are reduced. In other words, they provide an incentive for failure, not for success.

Policies based on incentives for outcomes do not call for completely understanding what works and why. They implicitly acknowledge that there might be alternative ways to achieve the same outcomes and that the choices might reflect both differing demands and differing capacities of schools.

Headwinds

An incentive-based funding program faces headwinds from a variety of sources. Perhaps the largest is simply the inertia in the system: “That is not how we do it.” There is a long history of approaches to funding that avoid policies offering direct positive incentives. This history is deeply embedded in both state policies and local decision-making—and leads to a majority of personnel in the current system being happy with the overall structure. Moreover, public views remain supportive of the institutional structure of the public schools. As a result, the system itself resists attempts at alteration.

The strongest force of resistance to change is the teachers’ unions. They, as a matter of principle, push back against any attempt to make policies based on differential performance (Moe 2011). As part of this, they resist accountability of schools and of personnel in general, and they resist linking resources to good performance.

At the same time, the unions do not stand alone. This is perhaps easiest to see in states that do not permit collective bargaining and that still resist changes in terms of accountability and incentives. It is also seen in the fact that right-to-work states do not systematically perform better.

COVID-19 brought new challenges to schools, and it has been common to blame all concerns and policy challenges on the pandemic. In reality, NAEP scores began falling after 2012 and simply continued their slide during the pandemic. The prior falls in scores have hit minorities and disadvantaged students exceptionally hard. The COVID cohort as a group has been seriously harmed by learning losses that accrued during the pandemic (Hanushek 2023). Just getting schools back to their 2020 levels appears to be a major challenge in a range of schools. But if we just get back to 2020, the COVID cohort will be permanently harmed. Eliminating the learning losses for this generation is a major policy challenge, but as described, it is far from the only challenge facing the schools. COVID underscores the urgency of the situation but does not provide a long-run solution.

In another matter that affects budgets but is not closely related to student outcomes, many schools are facing significant budget overhang from their retirement programs. The impact of the retirement system varies widely, depending on state rules on funding and depending in part on the character of prior contract negotiations. Most of these issues are beyond the scope of this discussion—with one exception. There is now evidence that schools tend to put too much teacher compensation into retirement plans that are valued by the teachers as having lower value than salary dollars (Fitzpatrick 2015). Thus, the state funding formula must be sensitive to the incentives sent to districts when they negotiate contracts.

See the full Hoover Institution initiative: . 

Boards are charged with approving the budget. In doing so, they authorize the district’s investments —  and cuts. Furthermore, board members serve as a conduit between districts and communities, and it’s their job to bring the community along during difficult budget tradeoffs. When done well, it means that they’re helping communities understand the district’s financial outlook in advance and soliciting input on a range of budget-cutting options before final decisions are made. Board members then weigh in on budget drafts, seeking to leverage available dollars to do the most for students. Once the board signs the budget, members keep working with the community to share its rationale and the implications for students and staff.

The challenge is that most school boards have no experience with deep budget cuts. The typical district has seen a decade of solid budget growth, capped off with a hefty infusion of federal relief funds. But this fall brings a , when relief funds dry up as and districts must sort through commitments they made to new staff and inflation-era pay hikes.

As this budget season gets underway, that inexperience has been evident in many of the 200 school board budget meetings our team has observed as part of a federally funded research project.

Too often, we’re finding that the majority of trustees in these meetings aren’t engaging on budget discussions beyond a generic “let’s protect students and classrooms” statement or a “hearty thanks to the CFO for the presentation.” Too rarely do trustees investigate different budget options, weigh tradeoffs or explore expected impacts using student data.

Some boards use most of their time to dwell on the district’s lack of revenues or declining birth rates — neither of which is under their control — instead of using their time to decide how to spend what they do have. In one meeting, a trustee asked why even discuss the budget at all.

Sometimes there is deliberation, but often the back-and-forth reflects a lack of understanding of the major cost drivers and tradeoffs at play. A call for bigger pay hikes comes without an understanding that with a tight budget, higher salaries bring even more staff reductions. A request that any cuts come from the central office may not take into account that the needed cuts are bigger than all central staff salaries combined. A directive to avoid job reductions will mean gutting tutoring contracts and after-school programs, regardless of whether those are adding value for students.Sometimes trustees will and wait until the final hour to engage. When a motion to cancel a cut during the final hearing doesn’t come with an offset, it can mean wiping out reserves and jeopardizing the district’s financial health. Who gets blamed when a district faces insolvency? The board.

Financial training can help.

Blaming board members for budget choices may not seem fair when few trustees have had meaningful training on budgeting with scarce resources. We believe state education agencies should for their financial responsibilities.

At Edunomics Lab, we’ve seen how a little training can go a long way toward equipping trustees with the skills needed to digest financial forecasts and budget-cutting options, deliberate using data and explain their choices. That’s why we’re offering a virtual workshop in April, designed to help leaders meet the budgeting challenges of this moment. (You can .)

This year’s budget season will be a trial by fire for many board members. Deciding which investments stay and which must go is a tremendous responsibility. This year especially, boards will be in the hot seat as districts grapple with cuts that will affect those in their community. Today’s and tomorrow’s students depend on leaders to navigate this perfect storm to keep their district on solid financial footing while maximizing value with the dollars at hand.

GILBERT — Gov. Henry McMaster is asking legislators to put about $40 million next year toward K-12 school safety upgrades, more officers, and technology that helps emergency responders know where to go once they’re on campus.

The governor announced his school safety priorities while celebrating a law that established a training center where law enforcement, teachers, bus drivers and other school employees can practice how to respond to a shooter on campus in an actual school setting.

The center, run by the State Law Enforcement Division, is at the former Gilbert Elementary School, which Lexington One closed several years ago. The ceremonial signing at the school came six months after McMaster actually signed the bill into law.

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“(Children) have to not only be safe, they have to know they’re safe,” McMaster said. “If they have to look over their shoulder and worry the whole time they’re in school, they’re not going to learn. They can’t be distracted, particularly by that.”

2nd year of safety grants?

McMaster said his budget recommendations for 2024-25 will include $20 million for school safety upgrades to make classrooms safer, such as internal door locks, bulletproof glass and security film for windows.

It would represent the second year of grants for such upgrades.

In the current state budget, legislators allowed the state Department of Education to spend up to $20 million of $120 million allocated for K-12 school construction on safety upgrades. The agency awarded the full $20 million after receiving $38 million worth of requests, according to the agency.

More than 50 school districts are receiving at least part of their request, with the smallest grant of less than $3,000 going to Horry County schools (which requested $1.4 million). Five districts received the top award of $1 million: Darlington County, Florence 2 (Hannah-Pamplico), Laurens 56 (Clinton), Marion County, and Marlboro County, according to an agency spreadsheet.

McMaster’s $20 million recommendation echos the education for more safety grants.

Maps and officers

He and the education agency are also seeking $5 million for school mapping, which creates digital models of school buildings that can be updated in real time to help first responders find their way around in a crisis.

The governor’s also requesting $13.4 million to hire 175 additional officers in schools to put a certified officer in every school, fulfilling a campaign pledge McMaster made in 2018 following the mass shooting at a high school in Florida.

Of South Carolina’s 1,284 public schools, 86% have a certified officer; 431 of them are funded by the state. McMaster’s request will cover the rest, said Robert Woods, director of the Department of Public Safety.

State schools Superintendent Ellen Weaver said she frequently hears from teachers who are concerned about safety along with pay. Addressing both is important for teacher retention, she said. Her budget request seeks $137 million to raise the state’s minimum pay for teachers by $1,500.

“That again speaks to the need to have an ‘all of the above’ strategy,” she said. “It’s not just the issue of teacher pay, it’s about creating environments where teachers feel valued, and they feel safe.”

The Center for School Safety and Targeted Violence at the old Gilbert elementary school is another aspect of creating safe schools, Weaver said.

The school had already been used in law enforcement training since 2017 but needed some upgrades, said SLED Chief Mark Keel.

The work should be completed within six months, he said.

Any law enforcement agency in South Carolina can use the facility for training at no cost, and classes will be offered for educators, firefighters and emergency medical personnel as well as parents and other residents.

“Recent events across the country show us we must do all we can to prepare law enforcement, school personnel, students, parents and the community for unimaginable events,” Keel said. “I can’t think of a more important mission than keeping our kids safe.”

McMaster will release his full budget recommendations for the fiscal year starting July 1 next month.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. SC Daily Gazette maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Seanna Adcox for questions: info@scdailygazette.com. Follow SC Daily Gazette on and .

Carvalho, who nearly two years ago assumed leadership of the nation’s second largest school district, said LAUSD is in relatively good financial standing and that enrollment declines are slowing.

But, he said, California’s most populous city “is not out of the woods yet” when it comes to tight budgets and closing schools.

The headwinds facing Los Angeles public schools are by no means unique to that city. Districts around the country are facing the expiration next year of more than $190 billion in federal funds meant to help schools remain open during the pandemic and aid in the recovery of students.

Carvalho, who previously served as Miami’s superintendent, said LA Unified has avoided the fiscal “Armageddon” he warned of more than a year ago. 

He said a reorganization of the district conducted over the past two years, to streamline school support services has netted LAUSD “dozens of millions” in savings, putting the system in good financial shape. 

But the district is still developing a plan for roughly 1,800 teachers, counselors and other staffers hired during the pandemic whose salaries have been paid for using the one-time federal aid. Carvalho said “strategically essential positions” will be kept. “We need to ask the question,” he said. “Is the need still there and is this the right position? 

To make up for the end of federal aid, he said, LAUSD has imposed a targeted hiring freeze, deciding on a case-by-case basis which of the employees who leave their jobs to replace. 

It will use the funds from jobs that are not filled to pay for those federally funded jobs it decides to keep. 

“We’re going to bank on [attrition] as a key solution” to make up for the loss of federal aid, he said.

A more complicated challenge now facing Los Angeles schools is a historic enrollment decline which has been ongoing for decades but was exacerbated by the pandemic.

While many school districts have experienced large enrollment declines since the pandemic began, several factors make the declines in Los Angeles more dramatic.  

First, Carvalho said, rising housing costs have forced many families to leave Los Angeles. The average price of a single-family home there is now nearly $1 million, according to Zillow, up by more than a third from five years ago. Local with rising costs.  

“The high cost of living has, over the years, pushed a lot of families out,” said Carvalho. “It’s not a function of individuals leaving the school system going to private schools or going to charter schools.”

Enrollment in LA schools for pre-K through twelfth grade from 566,604 in the 2012-2013 school year to 422,276 in the 2022-2023 academic year.

But Carvalho said the exodus may be slowing. show the number of students enrolled this year was down about two percent from the previous year.

The city’s has helped bolster enrollment, Carvalho said. LAUSD stats show 6,471 students are now enrolled in the district’s pre-K programs, up from 5,687 in 2021.  

Whether this is enough students to keep each of the city’s schools in operation, the superintendent said, remains an open question. 

The district is not “making decisions specific to consolidation or closure of schools based on a dire financial position,” said Carvalho.

But, at some point, shrinking schools may become too small to function, he said.   

“It has nothing to do with the finances,” Carvalho said. “It’s actually something to do with the type of offerings we provide our students. At a certain point a very small, secondary schools cannot offer the elective programs that kids need.”

“It certainly is a tool in the toolbox,” Carvalho said of closing or consolidating schools. “But it’s one that is used as a measure of last resort, and we are nowhere near that point.”    

Still the district is looking at high schools with less than 300 students as possible candidates for closure or consolidation, he said.  

High schools that enroll fewer than 300 students struggle to muster a variety of classes and extracurricular activities to adequately serve their communities, said Carvalho, adding that LAUSD has few schools of that size, and is still developing a plan for them.   

Decisions to close or consolidate schools are almost always unpopular. But for Los Angeles, it’s not a question of if, but when, said Pedro Noguera, dean of USC’s Rossier School of Education.

“People have these traditional attachments, but schools that serve 1,000 kids do much better than two schools serving 500 kids a piece,” Noguera said. “The challenge will be, not just to shrink, but to shrink and get better simultaneously, so people don’t feel like they’re losing.”

Noguera said he’s encouraged by steps he’s seen Carvalho take, but declining enrollments and the need to make academic progress systemwide are still the big issues facing the district.   

On the academic front, Carvalho said gains in math scores on state and show the district is making progress. He also pointed to rising attendance rates as a sign LAUSD is on the upswing. The system’s average daily attendance has risen from 83% to 93% during his tenure, Carvalho said. 

The superintendent also provided a few additional updates on the district in his exclusive interview with the 74:

• Carvalho said he has created a draft version of a controversial, new policy to limit the colocation of charter schools in certain buildings, and that next month he will present the policy as a recommendation to the district’s board. 

• He said LAUSD is working on a plan to reinforce its efforts to promote literacy after showed a third straight year of declining rates of reading proficiency. 

• Carvalho, who previously turned down an offer to lead New York City’s school system, said he intends to stay on as LA’s education boss for the foreseeable future. “There will be no additional superintendency for me… beyond Los Angeles,” he said.“There’s something to be said about stable, sustainable leadership.”

The Portuguese immigrant, who worked his way up from washing dishes and stints of homelessness to become one of the nation’s most celebrated educators, has already done much to earn the gratitude of his adopted home on the west coast, said Ana Ponce, executive director of GPSN, a local advocacy group.

“He’s earned the respect of educators and families,” said Ponce. “We’re all rooting for his success.”

Like other educators in Los Angeles, the CEO of Magnolia Public Schools is awaiting the unveiling of a new policy limiting the use of nearly half the city’s school buildings by independently run charter schools.

But with LAUSD superintendent Alberto Carvalho on the verge of issuing the new policy, Rubalcava is not sure where he’ll be holding classes next year.

“It’s weighing on me,” said Rubalcava, who has submitted six requests for space in LA Unified school buildings. “We don’t know what’s coming.”

LAUSD’s school board in September gave Carvalho a directive to craft a policy barring charter collocations in schools in three categories providing special support to students, including social services and resources for Black students. The board is expected to discuss the issue Tuesday. 

The board’s directive was a dramatic escalation of a longstanding fight over the use of the district’s school space by charters. A 2000 state law compels districts to provide space for charters, which are publicly funded and operate tuition-free.

But experts are questioning the need for the policy at a time when LAUSD enrollments have shrunk drastically leaving empty and underused classrooms. Carvalho has suggested some schools might have to be closed if the trend isn’t reversed. Charter schools in Los Angeles but not as dramatically as district schools.   

It’s all about money, experts said.  

Morgan Polikoff, an associate professor of education at the University of Southern California Rossier, pointed out both district and charter schools are funded by the state on a per-pupil basis. Shrinking enrollments mean shrinking school budgets.

“If the district passes a policy that makes it more difficult to operate for charter schools, in the grandest of terms. that’s good for the district,” Polikoff said. “If fewer kids enroll in charter schools and those kids instead enroll in the district schools, they’ll get more money to operate. They’ll be able to hire teachers or not lay off teachers.” 

But Polikoff questioned whether the policy is centered on “who’s actually serving kids the best. We would like to think that’s what is always driving policy, but isn’t.”  

Margaret Raymond, director of Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes, said the school board’s decision to prevent the collocation of charter schools is best understood as a tactic to preserve market share.

“This roughly goes under the heading: ‘you can’t play with my toys.’ It’s what happens when monopoly providers are facing serious competition,” said Raymond.

“It’s an assumption that somehow the current local education agency is the only legitimate user of public investments in facilities,” she added.

Raymond also questioned whether the policy is about what’s best for students. 

“When you prioritize survival of institutions over the outcomes of the customers they serve,” said Raymond, “you’re taking a very, very short run calculus that has desperate long run consequences.”

But parents and educators in LAUSD buildings that are co-located said conflicts over space in schools are significant.

Maria Mikhail, whose son is a junior at Westchester Enriched Sciences Magnets high school, said charter programs in the building have consumed valuable space needed by the district school, depriving students of classrooms and outdoor space.

“Our kids are losing classrooms,” Mikhail said. “We don’t have a lot of enrollment, we’re losing kids. And I feel like there should be plenty of room for everyone to share.”

Mikhail’s husband, Peter, said charter programs in the Westchester campus have benefitted from renovations and new paint, while spaces occupied by the district school have not.

“It’s disheartening for the kids, because the kids see this happening,” he said. “They just don’t really have a voice.”

Angelica Solis-Montero, whose two children attend Gabriella Charter School in Echo Park, worries the new policy will worsen the situation by pitting charter school families and educators against those from district schools.

“My concern is that this resolution will make it harder to have workable conversations,” about sharing school buildings, said Solis-Montero. 

The placement of charter schools in district buildings is a common feature of large, urban districts like Los Angeles. New York City engages in the practice as well, and conflicts over space there have recently intensified after years of battles over classrooms. 

Teachers’ unions in Los Angeles and New York have sought to limit the practice, arguing districts should instead invest in existing school programs rather than offer space to independently run charters. The teachers’ union in Los Angeles urged the passage of the board’s resolution. 

Marguerite Roza, director of the Edunomics Lab and Research Professor at Georgetown University’s McCourt School of Public Policy, said LAUSD is under financial pressure from dropping enrollment funding as well as the loss of federal pandemic aid. 

Data collected by Roza’s team found staffing levels at LAUSD have continued to grow in recent years, even as enrollment plummeted. Reasons for declining enrollment include a declining birthrate and outflow of families from the city, she said, and a host of other factors beyond the district’s control. 

Public school enrollment is plunging nationwide, with cities such as Chicago, New York and San Francisco also experiencing declines, Roza said.  

Roza said she was sympathetic to the district’s efforts to keep its space and make itself attractive to families that might otherwise choose charter schools or other schooling options.

“I think it’s not unreasonable for the district to try to keep kids so that they have fewer disruptions in finances,” Roza said. “At the same time, another way to keep kids is to give them choices that they prefer.”

Arelia Valdivia, executive director of Reclaim Our Schools LA, a coalition of community and labor groups supporting the policy, said it will protect valuable programs serving the city’s most vulnerable students.

“We want to make sure that there is a process to ensure that our public schools are first able to serve the students that are already enrolled before offering the space to collocating charters,” she said.

Valdivia said the district has made a huge investment in programs like the Black Student Achievement Plan and the Community Schools Initiative over the last few years. “We want to ensure that those programs are allowed to succeed and thrive,” she said.

A meeting of the board’s charter school committee last Tuesday to collect community input on the policy was dominated by charter school educators who pleaded with the board to reconsider the change.

Keith Dell’Aquila, who is Vice President, Greater Los Angeles Local Advocacy for the California Charter Schools Association, said at the meeting that the district had not responded to requests for consultation with the superintendent.

Dell’Aquila said his group is ready to take legal action if the new policy violates the state law compelling districts to provide charters with space. “The preferred option is always to work with this district and build partnership,” he said.

David Tokofsky, a former board member who testified at Tuesday’s meeting, called it “a shame” that the district, which has so much empty space, has not figured out a way to house both charters and district schools, and maximize the return from unused classrooms.

“It’s wasting a lot of energy and not bringing enough creativity to the table,” Tokofsky said.

Gov. Andy Beshear wants the legislature to fund an 11% pay raise for all Kentucky school personnel, which is the highest increase he’s backed since becoming governor.

The Democratic governor, who is seeking reelection, unveiled some of his education priorities as part of his “Education First” plan for the 2024-26 state budget Wednesday morning. He said such a pay raise was needed because of reports that ranked Kentucky 44th in the country in starting teacher salary, with an average of $38,010.

Under his proposal their pay would rise to $42,191, pushing the state’s ranking to 24. Overall teacher pay would see the state’s ranking jump from 40th to 25th, according to the NEA data. Beshear has previously asked for for all school employees.

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Beshear estimated the salary proposal, which also includes bus drivers, janitorial staff and cafeteria workers, would require a $1.1 billion investment.

“When all you do is raise the starting salary it creates compression and you lose teachers that may have three, four, five, six or seven years of experience when they’re paid almost the exact same thing as someone who is brand new,” the governor said.

Beshear’s opponent, ’s education plan, released Tuesday, called for raising new teachers’ starting base rate to $41,500, but did not include raises for current teachers. He also wanted funding for a tutoring program for students outside of school hours to improve student performance, which suffered because of virtual learning during the coronavirus pandemic.

Joined by Lt. Gov. Jacqueline Coleman in his press conference Wednesday, Beshear also renewed a call for funding . Such a program would improve reading scores by making sure every child is ready for kindergarten and is an opportunity to screen children for learning challenges, he said.

Beshear also called on the legislature to fully fund student transportation. Bus driver shortages have created problems for school districts, and made headlines last week when were forced to close following the first day of school because of the lack of drivers.

“The General Assembly’s refused to give districts what it costs to bus our students, and they’ve refused to give a big enough salary increase to attract more bus drivers,” Beshear said. “So, if you don’t fund what it costs to bus our students, and you don’t have competitive salaries to have enough bus drivers, yes, you are going to have problems.”

Some other education proposals Beshear made are to:

• Fully fund teachers’ pensions and medical benefits and make no increases to health insurance premium increases for school employees.
• Support a student loan forgiveness program for teachers that gives a maximum of a $3,000 annual award for each year of employment as a Kentucky public school teacher.
• Provide funding for professional development
• Allocate funds to replace textbooks and other instructional materials
• Assemble staff at regional institutes

Kentucky Board of Education Chair Lu Young said at the press conference that Beshear’s plan is “boldly addressing the compensation for teachers and school employees, along with shoring up pensions, providing high quality, professional development, affordable health insurance, and childcare.” Young was appointed to the board by Beshear in 2019.

“Investing in Kentucky public schools is an investment in the future of the Commonwealth, in our workforce, but most importantly to me, it’s an investment in the future of our children and youth,” Young said.

Following Beshear’s press conference, House Education Committee Chairman James Tipton issued a statement through the Republican Party of Kentucky that said Beshear was trying to “catch-up” to Cameron and gave support to the attorney general’s plans instead.

“For years, Andy Beshear has made empty promises to teachers, parents, and students. He inflicted historic learning loss on a generation,” Tipton said. “And now he suddenly cares about education? He nor any member of his office has reached out to me to discuss any plan. Daniel Cameron has.”

When state lawmakers return to Frankfort in January, they will begin a 60-day session to pass the state’s next budget.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kentucky Lantern maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jamie Lucke for questions: info@kentuckylantern.com. Follow Kentucky Lantern on and .

Teachers are underpaid.

We don’t spend enough on public schools.

Teachers are retiring and leaving the profession in droves due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Approval of labor unions is at an all-time high.

These and other commonly held beliefs are part of the conventional wisdom of American public life. If you don’t think so, experiment by arguing the opposite on social media. But that’s not what I want to do here.

The question isn’t whether any of these statements is right or wrong, but what people actually know about those issues.

Americans are continually polled on all sorts of matters, but rarely are they asked to demonstrate their knowledge of the topic upon which they are being asked their opinion. On the occasions when it happens, we learn something important about how new knowledge sways opinions.

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Like many organizations and media outlets, Education Next conducts an . Unlike most organizations and media outlets, the publication includes one unique and laudable twist to a couple of questions.

On queries regarding teacher salaries and school spending in its 2021 survey, respondents were split into two equally sized, randomly selected groups. One half was told the current levels of teacher pay and school spending in their area; the other was not.

Fifty-seven percent of the uninformed group wanted increased school spending, and 67 percent wanted higher teacher salaries.

Support in the informed group was 39 percent and 53 percent, respectively.

In previous years, Education Next has used this respondent split on questions about charter schools and the No Child Left Behind Act, discovering each time that some people hold strong opinions on things about which they admit knowing very little.

The question of what we actually know has arisen regarding school reopening policies and staff vaccinations. Teachers union representatives have repeatedly stated that somewhere in the vicinity of 90 percent of their members are vaccinated.

This claim is based on self-reported surveys they have done, but when the about staff vaccination status, only 4 percent were requiring disclosure, and 28 percent were collecting no information at all.

The National Education Association commissioned a survey of its members at the end of August and disclosed that . But a previous survey the union conducted, in May, revealed that 86 percent were vaccinated. Have so few been inoculated in the last three months, or should we doubt either or both of those numbers?

A question on the recent NEA member survey leans into the dilemma of perception versus knowledge by asking, “Since the pandemic started, do you think you have seen more educators retiring or leaving education than before the pandemic?” Seventy-nine percent said yes.

This response tends to support the union’s message that teachers are quitting the profession, further exacerbating a national shortage. But we don’t have to ask NEA members what they think they have seen. We have statistics.

The federal Bureau of Labor Statistics collects job turnover data every month. For state and local education jobs for the 15-month period from January 2019 through March 2020, the average monthly “other separations” rate, which is mostly retirements, was 0.2 percent. For the 15-month period from April 2020 through July 2021, it was 0.3 percent. .

The average monthly quit rates for the same periods were 0.9 percent and 1 percent, respectively. .

The latest NEA survey tells us that 37 percent of respondents say they are more likely than they were before the pandemic to leave the profession or retire. But the actual numbers after 15 months don’t support that alarming claim.

Finally, every Labor Day, the Gallup organization conducts a public opinion poll on labor unions. Except for one year, a majority of Americans expressed approval of labor unions every year they’ve been polled since 1937. This year, , the highest since 1965.

A dive into Gallup’s demographic data reveals that of the people who approve of labor unions, only 10 percent actually belong to one. Among subgroups, the greatest amount of support (77 percent) came from those in the 18-to-34 age bracket. Only 5 percent of those young supportive respondents belong to a union. Half of the union members who responded to Gallup were 55 or older.

Obviously, you don’t have to belong to a union to support unions. But the Gallup survey suggests that public opinion of unions is not based on personal experience or knowledge of them.

The problem for policymakers is that they have to address both reality and perception. Balancing the two isn’t easy and might even be mutually exclusive. You can develop a school reopening policy based on the assumption that 90 percent of teachers are vaccinated, but if only 65 percent are inoculated, you might have to make some serious adjustments.

On the other hand, if you set school budgets based on the assumption that people know what you’re already spending, you may find yourself at political odds with the uninformed. Many will find it more expedient to just go along with public perception rather than take on the thankless task of setting the record straight.

It’s no secret that both the informed and the uninformed vote. It’s a rare, and likely unsuccessful, politician who will seek the approval of the former and disregard the latter. Usually, it’s the other way around. That’s how we get the policies we get.