WASHINGTON — Only a few of states that cut education funding during the recession have increased it since the economic recovery, according to a report to be released today about how public schools are funded.
It also found that most states don’t allocate extra education money to public schools with high concentrations of poverty.
“The nation as a whole, this report shows, is failing to provide the resources our students need,” said David Sciarra, executive director of the Education Law Center, an advocacy group for equal educational opportunity that produced the report. It covers the nation’s 49 million students in public elementary and secondary schools.
The report measured states on per-student funding; funding distribution, meaning whether a state provides more or less funding to schools in high-poverty areas; how much “effort” states show, meaning how much they spend on education compared with their overall economic situation; and the proportion of children in public schools and the income disparity between those in public and private schools.
It found that only New Jersey and Massachusetts did relatively well on all four. Missouri, Alabama and Virginia were marked as poor performers on all four fairness measures.
The report defines fairness in education funding as meeting all student needs and offering additional funding for high-poverty schools to provide smaller class sizes and extra staff to address the needs of low-income students.
The report also found that since teacher salaries and benefits make up the bulk of school budgets, a fair funding system was needed to provide an equitable distribution of high-quality teachers in all districts.
Other key findings:
• Most states aren’t spending as much on education as they did before 2008, during the recession. Only Illinois, Wyoming, Connecticut and West Virginia are spending more than they did in 2008.
• The poverty rate of students grew from 16 percent to 21 percent between 2007 and 2012. Poor students were more likely to be isolated in high-poverty school districts.
• There are wide disparities in school funding among states. New York, with the highest spending per student ($18,507), spent $12,000 more per year than Idaho, with the lowest per student funding ($6,369).
• Only 15 states spend more for students in high-poverty schools.
The report looked at data through 2012, the latest numbers available from the Department of Education. About 90 percent of education funding is controlled by states.
