Equity in K-12 School Spending

A long-time concern in the US K-12 schooling system is that local property taxes within each school district are a primary source of funding. As a result, school districts in high-income areas with higher property values will tend to have more money to spend per student. While this was indeed a pattern 40-50 years ago, school finance issues are no longer that simple. Sarah Reber, Beyond Deng, and Gabriela Goodman explain in “School Spending and Equity since 1976″ (Center for Economic Security and Opportunity at Brookings, June 2026). They write: Schools in high-poverty or predominantly non-white communities often fail to serve their students well. Many point to American schools’ reliance on local property taxes as the culprit, arguing the school finance system ensures that “affluent areas end up with well-funded schools and low-income areas end up with poorly funded schools,” (American University 2020). However, state governments now contribute about as much to school funding as…