This summer, Philadelphia became the first big city to pass a sweetened-beverage levy, which was designed to fund the early childhood program. The city will pump $12.2 million into pre-K this year, funded through the beverage tax, and hopes to ramp up funding to cover 6,500 children in five years.
Indiana: As lawmakers wade into the issue, they must strike a delicate balance between providing money to expand the program while not ignoring competing interests as they write a new, two-year budget this legislative session. Lawmakers also must juggle expanding the number of scholarship recipients while allowing time for the state to create more spots in high-quality programs.
Kentucky: A proposed funding model for higher education in the state would reward progress in degree production and course completion while also offering funding for operational support.
This final week in the three part series, we grapple with the politics of school money, asking: Is there a better way to pay for our schools? The answer requires that we do two things: explore the challenges to change, and spotlight a few ideas that could lead to a more balanced system. What follows is a wrap-up of our reporting. For nearly every name and place, you’ll find a hyperlink to more.
This idea, that sprinkling more dollars over troubled schools won’t magically improve test scores or graduation rates, is a common refrain among many politicians, activists and experts. And they have research to back it up…This debate has raged for at least half a century, and today we’re going to put both sides under a microscope.
Over the next three weeks, the NPR Ed Team will unveil a vast collection of “School Money” stories told in collaboration with station reporters across the country. Our goal: To give voice to this school-funding imbalance and to explain what happens when many of America’s poorest students also attend its poorest schools. Click here to see how your school district compares to others on spending per student.
Newly released data from the National Center for Education Statistics show per pupil outlays have not recovered from the recession. Specifically, NCES data shows that 31 states are contributing less to public education than they did in 2008.
States like California and districts like Boston, Denver and Houston, among others, have been transitioning to a finance model that gives principals greater authority over their schools’ budgets in exchange for being held accountable for student outcomes. Rather than manage (and limit) how schools spend their money through rules and regulations, officials focus on how to distribute monies more equally among schools.
Mr. Wilson is facing a rebellion by teachers and some parents against his plan to allow families to use a single form to apply to any of the city’s 86 district-run schools or 44 charter campuses, all of which are competing for a shrinking number of students.
Student based budgeting is a flexible budget that gives principals the ability to tailor a large portion of their budget specific to their school instead of having the district put out a one-size-fits-all budget for all schools in the district. The 2015-2016 school year is the first year student-based budgeting has been used in the Metro School District, allowing schools to spend on what they need, whether it be computers, calculators, books, furniture, or anything else the school and its students need.