Source: Education Week
Funding was the prime education theme in this year’s state midterm elections, fueling debates over teacher pay and more money for local schools, as well as testing voters’ appetite for tax hikes to raise that money. Brutal legislative battles are likely in store for Democrats Tony Evers in Wisconsin and Laura Kelly in Kansas, two governors-elect who scored upsets after campaigning hard on the prospect of millions more for schools. Similarly, public school activists in Arizona, Colorado, and Hawaii will have to go back to the drawing board after measures they backed to tax wealthy residents in order to shore up their financially strapped public schools were either knocked off the ballot by the courts or soundly defeated on Election Day.