Education spending debates often make headlines. A rural district will argue that it does not receive equitable funding. A charter school might say it lacks school construction money or a city will simply roll back school funding due to declining enrollments.
These are important issues. But they all ignore one of the nation’s biggest funding problems: the tremendous difference in school expenditures across different states. A student in New York, for instance, gets three times more money on average than a student in Utah. Plus, these sorts of spending gaps often hit the poorest students the hardest.
The above excerpt was originally published in U.S. News & World Report.
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