Nation’s per-pupil K-12 funding fell for second consecutive year in 2012 - The Washington Post

Nation’s per-pupil K-12 funding fell for second consecutive year in 2012 - The Washington Post:

Nation’s per-pupil K-12 funding fell for second consecutive year in 2012

By Emma Brown January 29 at 12:01 AM  

After more than a decade of increases in per-pupil funding for K-12 public schools, the nation’s per-pupil spending dropped in 2012 for the second year in a row, according to data released Thursday by the National Center for Education Statistics.

Schools across the country spent an average of $10,667 per student in fiscal year 2012, a decline of 2.8 percent compared to the year before, adjusting for inflation. Thirty-seven states saw per-pupil expenditures decline at least 1 percent, and some states saw much larger slides.

Per-pupil spending climbed steadily by at least 1 percent per year between 1996 and 2008, when the nation began to feel the effects of the recession. Spending flattened out between 2008 and 2010, and then in 2011 fell for the first time in 15 years.

In the world of school finance, the two-year funding drop is “big news,” said Stephen Cornman, project director of the national school finance survey or the National Center for Education Statistics.

The downturn has come as federal stimulus funds dried up, shrinking the federal government’s aid to schools by more than 20 percent between 2011 and 2012. At the same time, many local governments saw their property tax base evaporate in the housing collapse and states wrestled with balancing recession-battered budgets. Many Republican-dominated legislatures chose to cut spending instead of raising taxes.

In Wisconsin, for example, per-pupil spending dropped nearly 9 percent between 2011 and 2012 as Gov. Scott Walker (R) cut hundreds of millions of dollars in state aid to public schools. Schools in Texas and Florida also saw per-pupil spending drop more than 8 percent.

The new federal data mirror an analysis of state education budgets by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. That analysis, published last year, Nation’s per-pupil K-12 funding fell for second consecutive year in 2012 - The Washington Post:

Title:	Revenues and Expenditures for Public Elementary and Secondary School Districts: School Year 2011-12 (Fiscal Year 2012)
Description:	The report provides finance data for all local education agencies (LEAs) that provide free public elementary and secondary (PK-12) education in the United States. Specifically, this report includes findings from the following types of school finance data: Revenue and expenditure totals by state and the 100 largest LEAs; LEA revenues by federal, state, and local revenues by source; Expenditures by function and object totals by state; Current expenditures per pupil by state and the 100 largest LEAs; Interest on debt; and Capital outlay.
Online Availability:	Download, view and print the report as a pdf file.  (1001KB) Need Help Viewing PDF files?
Cover Date:	January 2015
Web Release:	January 29, 2015
Publication #:	NCES 2014303
Center/Program:	NCES
Authors:	Stephen Q. Cornman
Type of Product:	First Look / ED TAB
Survey/Program Areas:	Common Core of Data (CCD) Education Finance Statistics Center (EDFIN)
Keywords:	Expenditures • elementary and secondary schools • federal government for education • public schools Finance • elementary and secondary schools Revenues • elementary/secondary schools School districts
Questions:	For questions about the content of this First Look / ED TAB, please contact: Stephen Cornman.