Eight Years Under the Ax
While the rest of the world was celebrating the passage of an ESEA (only eight years or so late! yay!) or looking at NEPC's brutal-but-necessary report on the charter gravy train, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities was releasing the results of its three-month study of state funding for education over the last almost-decade.
The first part of the story is familiar. Back around 2008, the Great Recession hit. Although, let's not say "hit" and give it a fancy name as if it were some random act of nature and not a predictable and avoidable economic collapse caused by reckless greedheads on Wall Street. Instead of a Great Recession that somehow happened, maybe we could instead refer to that time that Wall Street screwed over every American in a series of criminal and stupid acts so huge that they have yet to be paid for their misbehavior in the slightest. Let's call it that.
But I digress. Wall Street tanked the economy, resulting in a big bunch of cutbacks as every state tried to deal with a sudden lack of money. That part of the story we already knew.
The second part of the story, which you may have suspected, is that once states got in the habit of slashing education budgets, the just kept on doing it even after the economy began to recover. CBPP does not bury the lede on this one:
Most states provide less support per student for elementary and secondary schools — in some cases, CURMUDGUCATION: Eight Years Under the Ax: