Weathering the storm: School funding in the COVID-19 era

Recent research into the economics of education leads to the inescapable conclusion that if we want our public schools to serve all children well, then we must provide them with equitable and adequate funding. Viewed across several decades, school and district spending data from across the US reveal a clear pattern: When budgets have increased, students have seen significant gains in achievement and a range of other desirable outcomes. Conversely, when school funding has been cut, student performance has suffered; and the deeper those cuts have been--consider, for example, the sharp budgetary declines during the Great Recession of 2007-2009--the worse the student outcomes. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, public schools will likely experience even greater revenue losses in the coming years than they did during the Great Recession. Further, it appears that safely reopening schools in the fall of 2020 will itself be costly.