The national nonprofit broke down the results of its , which describes trends in state funding to schools in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. in a recent .

“In order to be fair, school funding must be both adequate and equitable,” said Danielle Farrie, Education Law Center research director. “So this means that states provide an overall level of funding that’s sufficient to provide all students with the resources that they need to meet state standards, and that the funding should be distributed so that students in poverty receive more.”

One of the most concerning report findings is the decline in funding to schools with high rates of children from low-income families, compared to schools with more affluent populations, Farrie said. States are progressive if high-poverty schools receive at least 5% more funding in state money than those in more affluent areas. States that do the opposite are labeled regressive. States have a flat distribution of funding if the amount is similar on both sides.

In 2023, 17 states were labeled progressive, reversing a decade-long increase of progressive states that peaked at 28 in 2022. 

Utah was the most progressive state, funneling 60% more funding per-pupil to high-poverty districts than others The most regressive state was Connecticut, which provided 19% less money to high-poverty districts. 

The analysis, which focused on state dollars amid an influx of federal COVID-relief funding,  also found that most states maintained or at least slightly increased per-pupil funding levels from 2022 after adjusting for inflation.

“This is a dramatic departure from the previous year, when high inflation rates basically wiped out most of the nominal per-pupil funding increases in most states,” Farrie said.

Some states experienced significant funding boosts. From 2022 to 2023, California increased its per-pupil funding by 19%. Washington, D.C., and Hawaii jumped 15% while Michigan moved up by 13%. 

The Education Law Center credited California’s positive gains to its more than a decade ago. Even so, school districts have recently called for more state funding as teachers unions have demanded better pay and working conditions. Seven superintendents signed an in February to advocate for “more stable, adequate and predictable funding from the state.”

“Rising housing costs, inflation and everyday living costs are affecting educators and classified staff across California,” the letter says. “Many are making difficult personal choices simply to remain in the profession or continue serving their communities.”

The largest funding loss from 2022 to 2023 was in Louisiana, which declined by 8%, moving its ranking in how well schools are funded from 25th in the nation to 38th.

Overall, 22 states fund their schools above the national average of $17,853 per student. New York is the top state at $29,440, followed by Vermont, Washington, D.C., New Jersey and Connecticut. The lowest state funding level comes in Idaho, which provides $11,085 per student.  North Carolina, Utah, Arizona and Nevada fund at similar levels. 

“In North Carolina, our funding is grossly inadequate, and it’s been the subject of lawsuits,” said Kris Nordstrom, senior policy analyst at the , in the webinar. “It’s inequitable for all student groups and it’s been that way, sadly, for a long time.”

North Carolina has been under fire for more than 30 years because of inadequate school funding. Lawsuits eventually led to the creation of a remedial plan in 2022 for the state to better fund public schools, but it was after appeals were filed to stop payments to districts. The case has since been under the advisement of the North Carolina Supreme Court, which has yet to issue a ruling.

“I think our anticipation is that if we ever do get a ruling that it won’t be a good one,” Nordstrom said. “Our school funding continues to be flat or decreasing once you account for the additional costs facing schools. So it’s pretty bleak.”

The Education Law Center also ranked states based on their funding efforts, which compares funding levels against each state’s gross domestic product. North Carolina is at the bottom of the ranking, providing $12,193 when its GDP per capita is $58,639. The top state is Vermont, which gives schools $27,067 per-pupil while its GDP per capita is $54,318. 

“Obviously in North Carolina, you’ve seen our school funding effort plummet,” Nordstrom said. “But in almost every state, school funding has decreased since before the Great Recession. So the money exists in our economy to provide much more robust funding for schools than we currently are.”

With just months until they have to meet a July 1 deadline to raise teacher salaries to a $60,000 minimum, only about half of Maryland’s 24 school districts have reached the threshold and the rest are scrambling to get there, education officials said Monday.

“We got questions from the LEA [local education agencies] like, ‘Is there a waiver process? How could we get an exception?’” said Rachel Hise, executive director of the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future Accountability and Implementation Board. “And the answer was, ‘No, there isn’t a waiver process. This is a statutory requirement by July 1 of 2026.”

Hise said local school officials are still working on their fiscal 2027 budgets and negotiations with their teacher unions.

“I would say right now we are cautiously optimistic that most, if not all of them, will get there,” she said.

Her comments came ahead of a House Appropriations Subcommittee on Education and Economic Development hearing on the AIB, among other agencies. Hise was joined by Isiah “Ike” Leggett, chair of the AIB, which is charged with overseeing implementation of the Blueprint by the state’s school districts.

The $60,000 minimum teacher salary is one of the many requirements of the Blueprint. According to data from the AIB, the minimum teacher salary during the 2025-26 school year was below $60,000 at schools in all nine Eastern Shore counties, along with Harford, Frederick and Garrett counties.

Hise mentioned one school system, which she didn’t name during the less than 15 minutes of her hearing, that may have the most difficulty in meeting that mandate.

Somerset County is the only jurisdiction with a minimum teacher salary below $55,000 this year. Its has a budget work session scheduled for March 24.

Maryland State Education Association President Paul Lemle said that with budget talks still going on, “it’s too soon to say whether every district will cross the $60,000 starting salary threshold this year.” But he said that salary gains so far have helped cut the teacher vacancy rate by more than half in recent years.

“We strongly encourage all districts in the state to make school funding a priority and ensure that we are doing all that we can to recruit and retain great educators for our students,” Lemle said in a prepared statement.

State Superintendent Carey Wright, who was in Annapolis for a different budget hearing Monday, said in a brief interview that local superintendents and chief financial officers continue to assess their finances amid tight budgets.

“I think they’re doing the very best that they can to meet the needs of everything that they’ve got going on in their district[s],” she said. “It’s just hard, and you’ve got to make some tough decisions.”

Officials in Cecil County public schools are doing just that.

Denise Sopa, chief financial officer for Cecil County schools, said in a brief phone interview Monday that the county will be able make the $60,000 minimum. But in order to do that and keep its fiscal 2027 budget balanced, Sopa said the school system will have to cut about 85 positions. In an email, she said the cuts will likely include 56 teachers, 19 support staff and 10 administrators.

During the subcommittee budget hearing, the state Department of Legislative Services recommended the Blueprint board should outline what measures can be “taken for any LEAs that did not meet the July 1, 2026, deadline to increase minimum salaries to $60,000.”

Because the salary is required by state law, one step the AIB can take to enforce compliance is to withhold funding for school districts until they meet the salary threshold. Hise said specific criteria, including the possibility of withholding funds, will be laid out in the spring.

Meanwhile, summarized the work of the AIB for the subcommittee and how the Blueprint “is not a one-size-fits-all operation.”

“We are trying to ensure that all the counties are meeting the standards,” he said. “We’re trying to do this within the fidelity that we have, the flexibility that we have … and in order to ensure that many of the counties around the state are responding as appropriately as possible.”

The nonpartisan research organization, NORC at the University of Chicago, continues to work on an interim evaluation of the overall Blueprint plan. An interim report is due to the AIB by Dec. 1, and based on those findings, the Blueprint board must submit a report to the governor and General Assembly by Jan. 15, 2027.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Maryland Matters maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Steve Crane for questions: editor@marylandmatters.org.

The state’s school voucher program has exhibited “a myriad of accountability problems” and caused a funding shortfall for public schools, a state audit released this week shows.

The audit, encompassing the 2024-2025 school year, was presented this week to lawmakers, who are spending the weeks leading up to the legislative session learning the woes of the universal school voucher system in which, contrary to how it was marketed, “funding did not follow the child.”

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Matthew Tracy, deputy auditor general for the state, presented the to each legislative education budget committee Thursday. Tracy’s team recommended the Legislature change the timing of scholarship application windows and provide more financial support to avoid funding shortfalls.

Sen. Don Gaetz, R-Crestview, said that at any given moment the state does not know where 30,000 students are in terms of school categories — traditional public or voucher-supported private or home schools — together worth $270 million in education support.

Gaetz spearheaded an unsuccessful bill last year, , to change various parts of the voucher system.

In 2024-2025, the department paid $655 million to middleman scholarship funding organizations, as statutes prescribe, before school started. That’s part of the questioned accounting practices.

“Any improper payments, any ineligible amounts, you’re paying and chasing those amounts, because the dollar’s already gone out the door,” Tracy said.

Last month, the House held committee meetings during which members asked scholarship funding organizations and the department about miscalculations and processes. Those meetings provided initial numbers of how many students were double-counted or lost in fuzzy accounting. For example, the state’s largest scholarship funding organization sent at least $7 million to families before verifying whether their students were attending a private school or homeschooling.

Earlier this month, legislators approved a $47 million budget amendment to make up for traditional public schools shortchanged by the accounting inaccuracies at the end of the previous fiscal year, even after tapping into $118 million from the education stabilization fund, through which the Legislature can cover voucher-related budget overruns. In the meantime, some districts were caught off guard after education funding from the state ran dry.

Foreseeable for some

Sen. Jennifer Bradley, R-Fleming Island, said the audit showed “a lot of concerning information.”

“I wouldn’t say wholly unforeseeable, given the rapid expansion of the program in the last couple years — which has been a point of concern that I’ve had for many years here — is how are we going to make sure that we track students, have budget accountability, have budget predictability,” Bradley said.

In the past four years, the voucher program has grown rapidly, serving about 500,000 students during the past school year. In 2021-2022, the program had served about 200,000 students. In 2024-2025, the program dished out $3.17 billion in Family Empowerment Scholarship vouchers and recorded another $804.5 million in scholarship programs funded through corporate tax credits, totaling nearly $4 billion dollars.

In some respects, the state went “beyond” state law, but also missed “various opportunities … to further accountability over the use of State education funds and timelier and more effectively identify and halt duplicate payments and recoup ineligible amounts.”

“I’m disgusted; this is another, in eight years I’ve been here, ‘I told you so,’ and they’re just getting more and more expensive,” Sen. Jason Pizzo, NPA-Sunny Isles Beach, said.

The audit found that as of June 30, the end of the last fiscal year, $36 million sat in scholarship accounts unspent as did more than $367 million in scholarship accounts for students with disabilities.

At the end of the 2024-25 school year, nearly 300 accounts for students with disabilities held “excess balances,” or more than $50,000 each in unspent money. The sum of the excess alone was $2.3 million.

Pizzo focused on “float,” the lost value of interest that could be collected on money that is not in state hands when it could or should be.

“Certainly, you could never close out books for a company or an organization the way this is,” Pizzo said, adding that “a bunch of [Department of Education] bureaucrats just don’t understand finance. This is so bad.”

Tracy said it “was not evident that the department had sufficient staff resources to perform its critical duties.”

“I think that this is a cautionary tale to what can happen if you don’t phase things in and you don’t take the appropriate and adequate amount of time with something as transformational as this program truly was,” Senate Appropriations Committee on Pre-K-12 Education Chair Sen. Danny Burgess, R-Zephyrhills, said.

The Department of Education said it has addressed concerns raised in the audit that directly implicate the department.

“We’re trusted with these dollars, and we kept using, ‘Does the department have the authority, the authority, the authority.’ I’m left myself asking, ‘Does the department have the ability to actually reconcile these issues?’” Pizzo said.

Separate silo

Gaetz said he will introduce a bill in the coming days to address these concerns.

His bill, to be co-introduced by Burgess and Committee on Education Pre-K-12 Chair Sen. Corey Simon, R-Tallahassee, would separate the school choice scholarships from the Florida Education Finance Program (FEPF), the mechanism that funds traditional public schools, and would expand the education stabilization fund.

The auditor’s report recommended separating scholarship payments from the FEFP, making it a separate “silo” in the budget.

“The auditor general said in his meeting with the chair and myself that whatever can go wrong with this system has gone wrong,” Gaetz said.

The bill would establish monthly payments to families and schools and provide student IDs to private school students, too, a focus of House committee hearings last month.

“We do not have a perfect bill to introduce, but we have a bill which fixes these issues, which, left unaddressed, will continue to worsen and threaten to disrupt and imperil school choice in Florida,” Gaetz said.

There seems to already be a difference in House and Senate approaches.

House PreK-12 Budget Subcommittee Chair Rep. Jenna Persons-Mulicka, R-Fort Myers, said moving scholarship funding outside of the FEFP “would be a huge mistake and that would end universal school choice in the state of Florida.”

Persons-Mulicka said the problem is not the funding model, but instead the implementation of the program.

“If you change the funding model, create a new funding model, who’s to say there still won’t be implementation problems?” Persons-Mulicka said.

Included in the audit is the Department of Education’s response, which agreed with separating the the school choice programs from the FEFP.

“The Department acknowledges that, while the popularity and growth of the scholarship programs evidence their value and need, the administrative systems supporting these programs must keep pace with their implementation,” Education Commissioner Anastasios Kamoutsas wrote.

Gaetz said the program must be “partially reengineered.”

“We can’t just rearrange the deck chairs, we have to make sure that we change course in the ways that the auditor general has recommended,” Gaetz said.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Florida Phoenix maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Michael Moline for questions: info@floridaphoenix.com.

State funding of private-school vouchers is primarily being used for students attending religious institutions, with nearly 98% of funding going toward Catholic, Christian, Jewish and Islamic schools.

This year, state lawmakers passed a budget that included a request from Gov. Mike Kehoe to supply the state-run K-12 scholarship program, MOScholars, with $50 million of general revenue. Previously, the impact to the state’s bottom line was indirect, with 100% tax-deductible donations fueling the program.

Donations are still part of MOScholars’ funding, but the state appropriation has more than doubled the number of scholarships available.

During the 2024-25 school year, MOScholars awarded $15.2 million in scholarships.

In August alone, the State Treasurer’s Office received invoices for scholarships totaling $15.6 million, according to documents obtained by The Independent under Missouri’s open records laws.

The invoice process is unique to the direct state funding of the program. The nonprofits that administer scholarships, called educational assistance organizations, were the sole keepers of scholarship funds. But now, the State Treasurer’s Office holds scholarship money derived from general revenue in an account previously only used for program marketing and administration.

The invoices contained data on which schools MOScholars students are attending and the scholarship amount.

Of the 2,329 scholarships awarded in August, only 59 went to students in nonreligious schools.

This number did not surprise Democratic lawmakers, who for years have warned that state revenue was going to be siphoned into religious schools.

“We are simply subsidizing, with tax dollars, parents who would already choose to send their kids to a private school,” state Sen. Maggie Nurrenbern, a Kansas City Democrat, told The Independent. “And now we are using public dollars to pay for schools that are not transparent whatsoever in choosing who to educate and who not.”

Some schools have been criticized for admission requirements that push a moral standard.

Christian Fellowship School in Columbia, which received scholarships for 63 MOScholars students in August, requires “at least one parent of enrolled students professes faith in Christ and agrees with the admission policies and the philosophy and doctrinal statements of the school,” according to its . 

These statements include disapproval of homosexuality.

“The school reserves the right, within its sole discretion, to refuse admission of an applicant or to discontinue enrollment of a student,” the handbook continues.

With around 430 K-12 students enrolled at Christian Fellowship School, according to , MOScholars makes up a sizable portion of its funding. But it is not the only school with a large number of scholarship recipients.

Torah Prep School in St. Louis had 229 K-12 students during the 2023-24 school year. And in August, 197 MOScholars students received funding to attend the school. Torah Prep did not respond to a request for comment.

The high number of students attending religious schools with MOScholars funding is somewhat incidental, somewhat by design.

The MOScholars program allows its six educational assistance organizations to choose what scholarships they are willing to support. 

Religious organizations stepped into the role to help connect congregants with affiliated schools. Only two of the six educational assistance organizations partner with schools unaffiliated with religion.

The Catholic dioceses of Kansas City-St. Joseph and Springfield-Cape Girardeau run the educational assistance organization Bright Futures Fund, which administered nearly half of the scholarships awarded in August.

The educational assistance organization Agudath Israel of Missouri focuses on Jewish education, partnering with four Jewish day schools.

The organization’s director Hillel Anton told The Independent that students are attracted to the program for more than just religious reasons.

“(Parents’) first and foremost concern is where their child is going to be able to be in the best learning environment,” Anton said. “And you may have a faith-based school that is fantastic and is able to provide that.”

The demand for the program has long . Going into August, organizations had waitlists of students eligible for a scholarship but without funding secured.

Agudath Israel of Missouri couldn’t guarantee scholarships for all of the returning students, Anton said, until the state funding was official.

“Because a lot of the funding is done towards the end of the year… we had everyone on a wait list,” he said. “Because we didn’t know necessarily how much funding we were going to have, we weren’t awarding anyone (the funding).”

Because the program was previously powered by 100% tax-deductible donations, the majority of funds poured in around December. But families need the money months sooner, with tuition due at the start of the school year.

Some educational assistance organizations prefunded scholarships, dipping into their savings to front expenses in the fall. Others had schools that would accept students and wait for payment.

The funding from the state, though, has resolved the backlog and allowed organizations to give scholarships to everyone on their wait list.

“Everyone who qualified for a scholarship this year received one,” Ashlie Hand, Bright Futures Fund’s director of communications, told The Independent.

Bright Futures Fund nearly doubled the number of students it serves, from 1,050 to 1,909.

Agudath Israel of Missouri is growing, too. The new funding helped the organization expand from 175 scholarships last year to 277 this year.

Some expect the state funding to continue next year to support this year’s windfall of scholarships. State Treasurer Vivek Malek  that if donations fall short, he will request state funds to support the new students through graduation.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Missouri Independent maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Jason Hancock for questions: info@missouriindependent.com.

Despite having some of the most resources and economic support, a recent national study ranked Indiana’s early education system 42nd in the country — and second-to-last when it came to accessibility.

The , shared earlier this week, is simply the latest confirmation for Hoosier parents that Indiana’s child care market is struggling. Experts, business leaders and politicians agree that Indiana needs more child care, but can’t seem to agree on the best way to meet the moment.

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Facing budgetary pressures and depressed revenue forecasts, state leaders opted to trim funding and narrow eligibility for early learning and child care resources earlier this year. Seats for state-funded preschool, known as On My Way Pre-K, while vouchers for subsidized child care have on a waitlist.

One federal program, Head Start Indiana, hopes to help close the gap left by vanishing state funding, but faces its own challenges with flat federal funding.

“We are the quietest, most successful 60-year old program in the federal government’s history,” boasted Rhett Cecil, the organization’s executive director. “… (our programs) are going to support their families and children. They’re allowing families to work or get job training or further education. And our services — that child care and early education — are free for those families.”

Just under 13,000 families in all 92 counties utilize the program, which receives roughly $181 million in federal funding annually. That budget line was briefly threatened by the Trump administration, which walked back proposed cuts in favor of flat funding — which does mean services will be lost as inflation and other costs eat into the bottom line.

The second-term president also covering Indiana back in April — though the federal Administration for Children and Families announced it would dedicate one-time funding to Head Start locations earlier this week , but not for other programming costs.

Additional federal support could allow it to expand to meet the need following state cuts, leaders hope, and continue employing almost 4,000 Hoosiers.

“Let’s say, hypothetically, we get $100 million more dollars. How many more teachers and classrooms could be opened?” Cecil mused. “How many kids could we serve off that waitlist?”

Importance of child care

Participating in and access to child care resources for young Hoosiers, such as better school readiness skills. Some national research has found that early education may also and could generate .

In Indiana, the shortage of child care options costs the state an estimated , over a quarter of which is linked to annual tax revenue lost.

The 2024 study from the Indiana Chamber of Commerce emphasized the need to free up parents, mostly women, who’ve left the workforce “as a direct result of childcare-related issues.”

“There’s some data out there that one in four Hoosier parents leave their job over child care gaps, and it really impacts talent and workforce,” said David Ober, the chamber’s vice president of taxation and public finance. “It’s hindering economic momentum in the state and so it is a huge deal for us.”

For the last few years, tackling the state’s child care crisis has been a top legislative priority for the organization, which represents the interests of thousands of Hoosier employers. Ober said the chamber is working to plan a child care summit later this year to identify potential solutions.

According to Brighter Futures Indiana, average full-time weekly care costs families — with even higher prices for infants and toddlers. That doesn’t factor in type of care or quality, and prices vary by community.

Families can spend more on their young children’s care than on a college education — if it’s even available in their communities. Rather than pay the price, many Hoosier parents simply drop out of the workforce at the same time that employers are scrambling to hire talent.

Ober highlighted recent legislative efforts to expand child care, including one that expanded a tax credit for employers directly providing their employees with child care resources. Other bills have tweaked staffing ratios and created a pilot program for so-called microcenters.

But workforce remains a challenge, even for Head Start centers, earning its own legislative study carveout. Over 20% of Indiana’s child care workers left the field during the pandemic — a shock that “has not really fully healed,” Ober said.

“If you ask any provider in the state, workforce is the hardest problem,” Ober said. “… How do you get educators and keep them? There’s so much more work to be done there and it’s challenging.”

Traditional market forces struggle to balance affordability for parents against costs for child care, a gap sometimes covered by government subsidies.

But Ober insisted that “child care is infrastructure,” especially for the businesses reliant upon employees who are parents. Changing funding is “going to just exacerbate underlying problems,” he added.

“Those numbers are pretty stark,” Ober said. “And then when you add in changes at the state and the federal level, it creates new problems that we all have to come together and work on,” he concluded.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com.

A proposal to steer state dollars for K-12 public school students to private schools of their choice advanced Thursday from the Louisiana Senate, a week after members forced its author to sideline the measure.

In response, Republican Gov. Jeff Landry starred in a television ad campaign and asked citizens to contact state senators and tell them to vote for the LA GATOR education savings account (ESA) program. The governor was on the Senate chamber sidelines, taking time to talk to multiple lawmakers, before was approved in a 24-15 vote.

“I don’t feel like it’s a big win for me,” Landry told the Illuminator after the vote. “I think it’s a big win for the kids of Louisiana, for parents out there who overwhelmingly, irrespective of party affiliation or economic means, have said in poll after poll after poll that the money should follow the child.”

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In addition to the governor’s influence, sizable changes to the proposal’s financial framework were made Thursday. The updated version shifts the task of figuring out how much state funds will be needed for the ESA program from legislators to the state Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE). Once that amount is calculated, it will still be up to lawmakers to decide how much public money to put into the program.

“Let (BESE) do that, you know, then you don’t chip it in stone,” said Sen. Kirk Talbot, R-River Ridge, who authored the amendments approved Thursday. “… I’d rather give BESE the flexibility to determine how much they think that money should be.”

For the time being, there is a question mark over how much education savings accounts will cost the state once they are made available to all students, regardless of household income.

The bill still calls for the program to be launched for the 2025-26 school year, meaning the Legislature would have to determine during next year’s session how much money they want to put into ESA.

The initial participants will be current voucher recipients in the Student Scholarships for Educational Excellence Program in addition to special education students and public school students from families that earn less than 250% of the federal poverty level. Based on federal poverty standards as of March, the qualifying income for a family of four would be under $62,400.

The Educational Excellence Program, enacted in 2008, provides private school tuition vouchers for students from low-income families who attend poor-performing schools. Some 5,500 students received the vouchers in the 2022-23 school year, and the program will lapse once LA GATOR is operating.

In year two of the program, the qualifying family income threshold will be 400% of the poverty level, which is below $124,800 for a family of four.

Education savings accounts would be made available to all families in year three, when the associated cost is projected to soar.

In the bill’s original version, the ESA program would have cost the state $260 million annually once any student could take part, according to the Legislature’s fiscal staff. An independent projection from the Public Affairs Research Council placed the amount closer to $520 million annually.

That uncertain yet sizable sum made some fiscal conservatives, who otherwise support the idea of school choice, wary of voting for the legislation.

“The dollar amount is still a concern,” Talbot said. “That’s our fiduciary responsibility to the state. That never goes away.”

Those cost concerns, along with an unwanted school accountability amendment, led the bill’s author, Sen. Rick Edmonds, R-Baton Rouge, to temporarily shelve his measure last week. But Talbot’s changes included removing a stipulation that any student who uses an ESA be administered the same high-stakes testing required of public school students.

Results from the tests would have measured whether schools that accepted ESA students were spending state money effectively, with substandard private schools no longer being allowed to accept state money.

Sen. Katrina Jackson-Andrews, D-Monroe, authored last week’s amendment and objected to its removal Thursday.

“I’ve never understood why someone would be afraid of accountability for a great idea,” Jackson-Andrews said, adding that the lack of testing might signify doubts among ESA supporters in the program’s potential for success.

In place of Jackson-Andrews’ accountability provision, the revised bill allows — but doesn’t require — private schools to test ESA students on math and English language arts. The Louisiana Educational Assessment Program test public school students are required to take includes sections for English, math, science and social studies.

After her week-old amendment was removed, Jackson-Andrews submitted a proposal to align ESA accountability standards with the system in place for current voucher recipients. She excluded any punitive measures for schools whose ESA students perform poorly on assessments.

Edmonds argued that existing standardized tests at private schools will sufficiently measure the progress of ESA students. Jackson-Andrews maintained that private schools shouldn’t be allowed to pick their own assessments, but her amendment was rejected.

A blunted third attempt from Jackson-Andrews to insert accountability measures into the bill was successful. It calls for any assessment standards the state education department adopts to apply to every school in the state, but it doesn’t single out ESA students for separate evaluations.

Although lawmakers won’t make funding decisions on the ESA program until next year, they might help decide where the money might come from sooner. The 144 members of the Legislature and 27 appointees by the governor will take part in a constitutional convention from Aug. 1-15, based on organizing legislation that awaits Senate approval.

Landry and proponents of the event haven’t provided agenda specifics, but removing constitutional protections from certain funding streams is expected to be a priority.

The Minimum Foundation Program (MFP), which provides funding for Louisiana’s K-12 public schools, is one of those protected sources, but Landry has said it wouldn’t be touched during the constitutional rewrite.

The state will provide nearly $4.1 billion to public schools next academic year based on lawmakers are supporting.

Piper Hutchinson contributed to this report.

is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com. Follow Louisiana Illuminator on and .

School districts hoping to use the summer months to catch students up before fall have been left by the state Legislature to do less with less, officials said.

For the past two years, Oregon school districts and community-based organizations such as the YMCA and Boys & Girls Club have received millions in public funding for summer learning programs from the Legislature: a record high of $240 million in 2021 and $150 million in 2022.

This summer lawmakers gave them no additional funding. As a result, both small and large districts have pared back their offerings this summer, according to interviews with the Capital Chronicle. Some community groups have cut field trips and the number of hours of classes each day. Some groups have cut their programs entirely.

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The lack of options has affected thousands of students across the state, according to a survey from the nonprofit Oregon Afterschool & Summer for Kids Network. It’s especially detrimental to students who’ve suffered setbacks and are still catching up from lost class time during the pandemic. It’s also deprived students of much-needed social and emotional resources.

Administrators and community group leaders say that legislators must think students only needed two summers to catch up from the pandemic.

“This idea of unfinished learning that is a result of the pandemic is not a one and done thing,” said Suzanne West, who leads Salem-Keizer school district’s summer programming. “The young people, especially our youngest students, they’ll be in our system matriculating for the next 10 to 11 years. I’m not suggesting that it’s going to take that long to get them caught up, but it isn’t something that you can resolve in a summer or two for many of these young people.”

Salem-Keizer is on track to serve several thousand more students this summer than in years prior, but will not be able to offer popular robotics and science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, courses that they had in the past two years.

“I think our legislators need to have more of a long-term viewpoint on what it’s going to take for the state in particular, but also locally, just to really address the unfinished learning that resulted from the pandemic,” West said.

During the recent Legislative session, Sens. Michael Dembrow, D-Portland, and Sara Gelser-Blouin, D-Corvallis, attempted to get funds for summer programs passed for this year through , which moved to the Senate Ways & Means Committee in late February and never left. By early May, then-director of the Oregon Department of Education, Colt Gill, sent a letter to district leaders telling them summer learning money was unlikely to come. State leaders were concerned about a tight state budget, with little idea that by May 17, they’d learn the state revenue forecast was nearly $2 billion higher than anticipated. Despite Democratic leaders in the House and Senate backing record funding for schools via the state school fund in June, it was too late by then to direct such funds to summer school. Most smaller districts need to finish their planning by April, and most larger districts start planning as early as October.

Six-week walkout

District administrators and community group leaders who talked with the Capital Chronicle said the six-week walkout by Senate Republicans over bills to protect reproductive rights and access to gender-affirming care played a role in losing summer learning funds.

“I think it was just the disruption in the session that caused this and other bills to fail,” said Marisa Fink, executive director of the Oregon Alliance of YMCAs.

Brent Barry, superintendent in the Phoenix-Talent School District said he and other school leaders watched the session tick down to a “point of no return” when it came to funding summer school programs.

“Obviously, the legislative session was crazy,” he said.

In a text message, Dembrow, who chairs the Senate Education Committee, said lawmakers were not able to get more funding. He said he hoped that this summer, districts would use any remaining COVID-relief funds they had from the U.S. Department of Education on summer classes, as well as Student Success Act money from the state for programs that serve traditionally underserved students, as well as providing counselors and emotional support staff.

Sen. Suzanne Weber, R-Tillamook, vice-chair of the Senate Education Committee, was adamant that it was not the Senate Republicans walking out of the Legislative session that tanked summer school funding. But Weber, who joined the walkout, declined to address why the lawmakers could not get summer programs funded.

She said that as a retired teacher, she didn’t harbor illusions about recovering from pandemic learning losses in two years.

“I know that it takes longer to catch up after something as catastrophic as COVID was to our kids,” she said.

State Rep. Courtney Neron, D-Wilsonville, who heads the House Committee on Education, said she shares the disappointment that district officials feel about the funding.

“We know these programs work. We need to provide our schools with stable, strategic investments,” Neron said via text message.

‘Double whammy’

In Portland Public Schools, Oregon’s largest school district, the number of “hub sites” offering summer programming across the city has shrunk from 25 last year to 17 this year. The district is serving about 400 fewer students this summer than the last one,, according to Darcy Soto, who oversees the summer learning programs. Soto said the district is using its temporary federal COVID-relief dollars to fund summer learning this year. That money must be used by September 2024, and is the last of the federal funding districts will receive to help with pandemic recovery.

“We’ve created a bridge,” she said, “but the road on the other side of the canyon is not yet built, and we are really hoping that the Legislature will come in on that.”

She and other school district leaders said they need the Legislature to commit to consistent funding.

“It needs to be decades-long support,” said Barry of Phoenix-Talent. “Especially with us, still dealing with the fire. We have a double whammy,” he said, referring to the 2020 Alameda Fire that displaced hundreds of students and their families in the district in southern Oregon.

Last year, more than 400 kids participated in summer programs in the Phoenix-Talent School District. This summer, 180 students are participating, Barry said.

In the 12 districts served by the Malheur Education Service District in eastern Oregon, summer programming has reverted to more spare, pre-pandemic options, said Superintendent Mark Redmond. Programs are mostly geared at students who qualify for support under the federal Migrant Education Program, which aims to ensure that kids in highly mobile families that move seasonally for work earn a high school diploma.

Some summer school programs that used to be a month long are now a week long.

“It’s clearly not as robust as it was the last few years from those that additional funding,” he said.

In Roseburg in southwest Oregon, Superintendent Jared Condon said the lack of summer school funding was not only a loss for students but for their families as well.

“Families in our rural community struggle to find child care and activities for their children over the summer, and I know many were disappointed not to have this additional resource,” he said.

Community groups

For community groups, some of which have received six-figure grants from the state to offer programming during the last two summers, the cuts have been deeper. Some weren’t able to offer anything this summer.

The nonprofit Oregon Afterschool & Summer for Kids Network recently surveyed leaders from community groups that received state funding for summer learning last year.

About 20% of respondents said they’d be unable to offer any programming this summer due to the loss of state funds. Three-quarters said they anticipated offering fewer programs than last year and more than half said they’d be unable to maintain current staffing levels. All-in-all, they anticipated serving about half as many of the 120,000 youth as they had the summer prior.

Summer learning programs provided by the YMCA in Milton Freewater, Albany and Tillamook County all scaled back some options for students, even if they were serving larger numbers of students. According to correspondence among local directors and Fink, the head of the Oregon Alliance of YMCAs, some cut back on field trips and resource-intensive projects.

In Tillamook, each week of summer programming has always had a special theme, according to Emily Critelli, operations director for the Tillamook County Family YMCA. The lack of state funding has stretched the limits of their budget and imaginations.

“Staff have really had to get creative,” she said.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Oregon Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Lynne Terry for questions: info@oregoncapitalchronicle.com. Follow Oregon Capital Chronicle on and .

Indiana lawmakers gave charter schools major funding boosts in the after advocates ramped up lobbying efforts in the 2023 legislative session to extend more benefits to the traditional public counterparts.

New appropriations for charter schools are part of a $1.487 billion . Much of that was shadowed, though, as Republican legislators touted new dollars to fund a nearly universal expansion of the state’s Choice Scholarship voucher program — which allows families to receive vouchers to attend private schools.

Charter schools, specifically, are set to see about the same tuition support increase as traditional public schools.

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But the for fiscal years 2024 and 2025 makes three significant changes to charter finances.

It increases the bonus Charter and Innovation Network School Grants they can get to $1,400 per student — up from its current level of $1,250.It includes $25 million in new capital grants for brick-and-mortar charter schools to access for facilities costs.It funnels a portion of property tax operations funding growth to charter schools in Marion, Lake, Vanderburgh and St. Joseph counties.

In addition, lawmakers drew the greatest pushback from Hoosier school officials and traditional public education supporters with a provision in that would force school districts in those four counties to also share referendum funding with charters.

Slice of referendum revenue goes to charter schools

Gov. Eric Holcomb has until Monday to sign or veto the Senate bill or the measure will automatically become law.

The bill requires school districts in the four counties to provide a proportional share of referenda adopted after June 30 with area brick-and-mortar charters. In other counties, sharing those funds would remain optional, at least for now.

Debate on the bill late Thursday night noted that Allen County was left out of the sharing.

Republican lawmakers who supported the bill maintained during public testimony that those counties were chosen because, collectively, that is where a “majority” of the state’s charter school students are located.

Indiana charter schools with enrolled students who live within the boundary of school districts that get voter approval for an operation or safety referendum would receive a per-student share of the local property taxes collected.

School districts that are distressed units are exempt, per the legislation. Currently, that means the Gary Community School Corporation would not be subject to referenda sharing.

Indiana’s nonpartisan Legislative Services Agency that school districts in the four counties received $210.1 million in school operating or safety referenda revenue in 2022. If Senate Bill 391 had been law, those districts would have been required to distribute about $23.9 million to charter schools.

About 29,000 and 29,700 non-virtual charter students are expected to be enrolled in Indiana in fiscal years 2024 and 2025, respectively.

Separately, Senate Bill 391 extends Indiana charter schools’ authorization up to 15 years. Current law allows charters to be approved by the state for up to seven years.

GOP proponents pointed to new “accountability” and “transparency” requirements that are also laid out in the bill.

For example, charter schools that take part in a district’s referendum would be required to support the campaign and promotion to get it to pass. And charters would also have to hold a public hearing on its annual budget before it is adopted and submitted to the state.

The bill further provides that school corporations that share referenda with eligible charter schools are not subject to Indiana’s existing “$1 Law,” which requires public school districts to sell or lease vacant or unused instructional buildings for a single dollar to public charter schools.

Increased per-student funding

Under Indiana’s current school finance system, state tax dollars are used to provide comparable per-pupil funding to district and charter schools.

Traditional public school districts can also levy local property taxes to pay off debt and for their operations funds. But charter schools can’t, putting them at a disadvantage for paying for certain expenses, like transportation or facilities costs.

Under the new budget requiring operations sharing, school corporations are estimated to lose $9.3 million to charter schools in 2025, and another $12.5 million in 2026, according to a . Over time, as levies increase, the amount school corporations transfer to charter schools will increase more.

The state also gives charter schools an extra $1,250 per pupil to compensate for their lack of property taxes.

Bumping that amount up to $1,400 per student is expected to by an estimated $4.5 million — up to $6.0 million — in both the 2024 and 2025 fiscal years.

Still, charter school critics have long argued that such schools are not obligated to serve every student in a given community — unlike those in traditional public school districts. That’s because capacity limits student enrollment.

The public charters also have private boards and are therefore not accountable to voters, opponents say.

“School choice” supporters maintain that parents deserve the right to more flexibility and customization in their children’s education. Doing so requires , but also public charters.

is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Indiana Capital Chronicle maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Niki Kelly for questions: info@indianacapitalchronicle.com. Follow Indiana Capital Chronicle on and .

But if the family wants to move their child to better schools in the nearby Elwood, Union or Manhattan districts they would be hard-pressed to find housing in that price range. 

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These invisible boundaries are what researchers at Bellwether Education Partners call “border barriers” — lines between districts that frequently keep low-income families out of higher-quality schools. The Chicago area, the authors write, has 45 such divisions, where families in low-income housing brush up against districts with more resources and better schools but few, if any, affordable rental units. 

Bellwether explores these differences in “Priced Out of Public Schools,” released last week that adds a new layer to our understanding of how closely housing and education are intertwined. Districts with out-of-reach rental prices spend, on average, at least $4,600 more per student — the result of higher property taxes. While states’ school finance formulas aim to equalize funding across districts, they don’t make up the gap. 

“As we think about what we need to do moving forward, it’s not just an education solution alone,” said Alex Spurrier, co-author of the report and a senior analyst at Bellwether Education Partners, an education think tank. States, he said, should consider multiple policy levers to address “what is a very thorny challenge.”

The report comes as continue to rise and many low-income families , long delays for federal rental assistance funds and landlords who reject . When families relocate to more affordable housing, their children often must leave not only their schools, but their districts as well — especially in states like Texas, California and Illinois, where metro area maps are dotted with dozens of small school districts. The authors label the phenomenon “educational gerrymandering,” the creation of smaller, exclusive districts that cater to higher-income, less racially diverse student populations. While the report recommends multiple approaches to address the disparities, experts note that altering district boundaries is politically risky: People with money are likely to vote against those who meddle too much.

“People who have wealth are willing to use it to get high-quality schools.” said Nat Malkus, a senior fellow and the deputy director of education policy at the conservative American Enterprise Institute. “The rules of the game do produce some inequities.” 

Mergers and secessions

Some of those rules date back to nearly a century ago when the nation entered a movement that by 1970 had cut more than 100,000 districts down to less than 20,000. Now there are 13,000.

But district mergers tended to lack high-minded ambitions to create more racial or socioeconomically balanced schools. Rather, they were likely to be unions of districts with similar demographics, explained Tomas Monarrez, a research associate at the Urban Institute who has studied racial and ethnic segregation in schools.

Some of the starkest examples of drawing boundaries to benefit wealthier populations include recent efforts by some communities to break away from larger, often county-level, school districts. the 2017 report from EdBuild, noted 73 secessions since 2000, with another 55 either attempted or in progress.

Several have launched in the Northeast, but the Bellwether report also includes examples in the South. In Memphis, Tennessee, for example, communities within Shelby County split off into smaller districts in 2014 after the majority Black Memphis district dissolved and merged into the county district. In Alabama, there have been 10 successful attempts since 2000, with in the works. 

“At the very least, we should be wary of those secession trends,” Monarrez said. Mergers, however, can minimize disparities in access to quality schools if leaders pursue them with the goal of improving equity, he said.

Some states have created where multiple districts share tax revenue or allow students to transfer into schools across district lines as a way to reduce disparities. The Nebraska legislature created such a plan involving 11 Omaha-area districts. In Massachusetts, the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity, encompassing Boston and the surrounding area, is another example.

But Malkus, at the American Enterprise Institute, cautioned that such options only tend to “nibble around the margins.” Daniel Thatcher, a senior fellow at the National Conference of State Legislatures, noted that open enrollment programs can make school funding disparities worse because the receiving district gets the state funding for those students.

School choice programs are another way to allow students to attend a school outside their neighborhood, the authors suggest. The results of that approach are mixed. that within a district, charters lead to a slight decrease in student diversity. But across a metro area, the presence of charters can create schools that are more racially mixed.

That’s what leaders in School District 49, adjacent to the Colorado Springs, Colorado, district have found. The district is considered “inaccessible” to lower-income families because there’s not enough affordable housing to meet the demand, according to the Bellwether report. But more than a third of the district’s students come from outside the district for traditional, charter and online options, said Peter Hilts, the system’s chief education officer. Half of the Colorado Springs district’s students are nonwhite, compared to 43 percent in District 49.

“There’s no question that open, inclusive choice has made us a more diverse district,” Hilts said. “If you genuinely want educational equity, you must believe in school choice, and if you truly advocate for inclusive choice, you must address other factors like transportation, affordable housing, and childcare options that can inhibit choice.”

Housing affordability not only affects families wishing to move into a district, but also those who want to stay put. In Tacoma, Washington, low-income families are beginning to leave because of a lack of housing options, said Elliott Barnett, a senior planner for the city. Proximity to quality schools is a key element of , a project that recommends building additional types of housing in neighborhoods that were previously reserved for single-family homes.

“We know that where a person lives has a link to their access to opportunities that have a big impact on our lives such as education achievement, income, life expectancy and others.” Barnett said. “Even if kids can travel from elsewhere to a high-performing school outside their neighborhood, that is another burden to overcome.” 

Some states, like and , have recently passed legislation to increase the supply of affordable housing. While such efforts haven’t always taken school locations into account, Monarrez said that’s beginning to change. California governor Gavin Newsom mentioned the need for a wider array of housing options near schools as one goal of his state’s legislation. 

The next step, Monarrez said, is for policymakers to reconsider district boundaries as well.

“We need to find out more about what would happen if we changed these lines,” he said. “A viable solution is drawing better lines.”

Disclosure: Andy Rotherham co-founded Bellwether Education Partners. He sits on The 74’s board of directors.