On 17 Jan 2022, Ubiquitous <webermark@polaris.net> posted some
news:ss4ob4$dal6$24@news.freedyn.de:

> Sources in his family say Biden looks and smells like shit.

Introduction

As the coronavirus pandemic rages across the United States, the nation�s
public schools are confronting the budgetary impacts of a second major
economic crisis in just over a decade. Like the Great Recession of 2008,
declining revenues and diminishing rainy day funds are pressuring states
to reduce support for their PK-12 public school systems. Some states, such
as New York, Georgia, and Texas, have already enacted sizeable �pandemic
cuts� in their state budgets.[1] These cuts fall hardest on the poorest
school districts with the greatest need and, as in the Great Recession,
create a structural deficit that will impact state and district budgets in
future years. While the cuts may be offset by one-time federal COVID-19
relief, the federal funds are largely intended to supplement existing
state and district budgets to cover the additional costs related to the
pandemic, not to fill gaps resulting from reduced state support.

The pandemic is also a public health crisis. As such, it requires
increased technology to allow students to engage in remote learning and
creates a plethora of new expenses connected to safe school reopening.
According to one estimate, the average district needs an additional $1.8
million to cover the cost of cleaning, additional staff, personal
protective equipment (PPE), transportation and child care.[2] That does
not include the as yet unknown costs of remediation and academic support
for students whose schooling has been disrupted, along with the cost of
social and mental health supports for students dealing with economic
hardship, family loss and the psychological stress of COVID-19.

This edition of Making the Grade draws upon data from 2018, the most
recent year available. The report evaluates the condition of public school
funding in the states preceding the onset of the pandemic in early 2020.
This analysis demonstrates the alarming condition of school funding in
most states, leaving school districts, especially those segregated by
poverty, ill-equipped to weather the coronavirus crisis. What the pandemic
has made strikingly evident is the glaring funding disparities that have
persisted for years, if not decades. Poor households have
disproportionately suffered the devastating health and economic impacts of
COVID-19. As this report shows, children from these households are more
likely to attend schools that are under-resourced and unprepared for
transitioning to the new realities of virtual instruction, school health
and safety protocols and unprecedented remediation for lost learning time.

The devastating effects of COVID-19 follow on the heels of a slow and
uneven recovery from the 2008 Recession. In 2020, some states had yet to
climb out of the funding hole left by the Recession, only to face the next
fiscal crisis, one likely to extend for several years. As Making the Grade
2020 makes clear, most states face the challenges of COVID-19 with
outmoded, unresponsive school funding systems that fail to meet the needs
of their most vulnerable students.

How Fair is School Funding in Your State?

Making the Grade analyzes the condition of public school funding in all 50
states and the District of Columbia. Using the most recently available
data from the 2017-18 school year, this report ranks and grades each state
on three measures to answer the key question: How fair is school funding
in your state?

The three fairness measures are:

Funding Level � the cost-adjusted, per-pupil revenue from state and local
sources (Fig. 1);
Funding Distribution � the extent to which additional funds are
distributed to school districts with high levels of student poverty (Fig.
2);[3]
Funding Effort � the funding allocated to support PK-12 public education
as a percentage of the state's economic capacity (GDP) (Fig. 3).
The rankings and grades on these measures provide crucial data to inform
policymakers, business and community leaders, teachers, and parents and
students about the equity and adequacy of public school funding in their
state. Making the Grade is designed to assist state lawmakers, advocates
and others working to improve the level and distribution of funding in
their state's public schools.

For a brief overview of how these measures were constructed, see the Fact
Sheet.

For more detailed explanation of the data and analyses, see the Technical
Appendix.

What Is Fair School Funding?

We define fair school funding as the funding needed in each state to
provide qualified teachers, support staff, programs, services and other
resources essential for all students to have a meaningful opportunity to
achieve the state�s academic standards and graduate high school prepared
for citizenship, postsecondary education and the workforce. A fair school
funding system is the basic foundational building block for high-
performing, effective K-12 public school systems. Fair funding has two
basic components: a sufficient level of funding for all students and
increased funding to high-poverty districts to address the additional cost
of educating students in those districts. These two components are
dependent on a third: the effort made by state legislatures to provide
sufficient revenue to support the public school system.

Why the States?

Unlike other countries, the U.S. has no national education system.
Instead, states, under their respective constitutions, have the legal
obligation to support and maintain systems of free public schools for all
resident children. This means that the state is the unit of government in
the U.S. legally responsible for operating our nation�s public school
systems, which includes providing the funding to support and maintain
those systems.

All states fund their schools through a statewide method or formula
enacted by the state legislature. These school funding formulas or school
finance systems determine the amount of revenue school districts are
permitted to raise from local property and other taxes and the amount of
funding or aid the state is expected to contribute from state taxes. In
annual or biannual state budgets, legislatures also determine the actual
amount of funding districts will receive to operate their schools. Some
states, including New Jersey, New York, and Illinois, fail to provide in
their budgets the amount of state aid required by the state�s own funding
formula, a condition called formula underfunding.

State and local revenue account for, on average, approximately 92% of
total funding for public education. The federal government, primarily
through programs targeted for low-income students and students with
disabilities, contributes the remaining 8%.[4]

Why Does Fair School Funding Matter?

Fair, equitable and adequate school funding is the basic building block of
a well-resourced and academically successful school system for all
students. A strong funding foundation is even more critical for low-income
students, students of color, English language learners, students with
disabilities, and students facing homelessness, trauma and other
challenges. These students, and the schools that serve them, need
additional staff, programs and supports to put them on the same footing as
their peers. The research on the needs of vulnerable student populations
for extra academic and academically related programs and services is
compelling, as is the growing evidence that increasing investments in
these students improves their achievement and other outcomes.[5]

Table 1. Making the
Grade 2020

Funding Level

A state�s funding level is measured by analyzing the combined state and
local revenues provided through the state school finance formula, adjusted
to account for regional variations in labor market costs.

A state�s funding level grade is determined by ranking its position
relative to other states; the grade does not measure whether a state meets
any particular threshold of funding level based on the actual cost of
education resources necessary to achieve state or national academic
standards.[6]

Figure 1 shows, even after adjusting for regional cost differences, the
extreme divergence in school funding levels across states, with the top
states providing upwards of 50% more and the bottom states providing 30%
less than the national average funding level of $14,548 per pupil. Figure
1a shows a clear geographic pattern, with states in the Northeast and
Midwest generally having higher funding levels than those in the South and
West.

Funding Distribution

The hallmark of a fair school funding system is that it delivers more
funding to educate students in high-poverty districts. This means states
providing equal or less funding to high-poverty districts are
shortchanging the students most in need and at risk of academic failure. A
central feature of fair school funding is providing higher levels of
funding to districts serving large concentrations of students from
households with incomes below the federal poverty line.