The Progressive School Funding Option
One of the more striking findings in our recent report presenting data from the School Finance Indicators Database concerns funding progressivity, or fairness. A state’s finance system is considered progressive (or fair) to the degree districts serving higher-needs students (e.g., lower-income students) receive more funding than districts serving lower-needs students.
The graph below is taken directly from our report (my co-authors are Bruce Baker and Mark Weber), and it provides a rough illustration of progressivity in the U.S. as a whole. The numbers in the graph are state and local per pupil revenue by district poverty quintile. They are not dollar amounts because they are centered around the average for each district’s labor market to make them more comparable. If funding were progressive, the bars in the graph would slope upward left-to-right, since it would indicate that higher poverty districts receive more revenue than lower poverty districts. Regressive funding, in contrast, would be characterized by a downward right-to-left slope. Instead, what we find is that the bars are virtually flat – that is, higher-poverty districts receive no more or less state and local revenue than lower-poverty districts. Moreover, this has been the case for 20 years.
I would reiterate that this is just an approximation of the national average. But it is consistent with what you see if you examine the situation state-by-state – there are a handful of truly progressive states and a few that are truly regressive, but most states are basically flat. It is also consistent with other analyses that use alternative methods (e.g., Chingos and Blagg 2017).