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Notes -
Is Education Spending Progressive?
This is mostly a specific data question. Brookings Institute reports that education spending is ever so slightly higher in poor districts than non-poor districts; this paper by two Stanford Professors seems to find the same thing; the Urban Institute (with one of the same authors from the Brookings report) seems to show that on the state level funding is frequently progressive. I’m not doing full justice here to these papers, which are more nuanced and actually argue that funding to poor districts is still frequently lacking. This makes sense to me - it stands to reason if you spend basically the same on rich students and poor students the former will still do better based on all their other advantages. But I’m more wondering about the empirical claim itself because the Economic Policy Institute finds the exact opposite results. They agree using national averages school spending is a little progressive, but find that when you break things up at the district level wealthier districts receive more funding.
The funny thing here is that they’re using the same data source as the other papers: the Department of Education’s Digest of Education Statistics / National Center for Education Statistics 2017–2018 Local Education Agency Finance Survey. But when EPI looks at it they find:
And when the Stanford guys look at it they find:
What gives? Am I misunderstanding and they’re actually measuring different things that cause their results to be different?
Part of the answer is probably "The South". If you look in any given area, you'll probably find the poor districts are funded as well or better than the rich ones. But there's more poverty in some areas/states and those areas will have less funding for both rich and poor districts, in part because the cost of providing education there is cheaper. Brookings actually adjusts for this, though they claim the adjustment doesn't affect their conclusions. The other part is likely different ways of choosing poor districts.
Its also cost of living/teacher salaries reflecting COL. Teachers in Des Moines, Iowa aren't demonstrably worse, or materially worse off than teachers in Chicago, IL, but they are paid much less. And their house costs much less. And their food costs less. And their childcare costs less.
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Thanks, that makes sense.
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