The power of ideas

Bully to Harvard.

Columbia could have stood up, too.

The regime has but one lever against Universities: money. Only once the academy rejects being bought can they be free.

And academic freedom matters.

Never underestimate the power of ideas to shape the course of human possibilities. 

Here's Isaiah Berlin paraphrasing Heinrich Heine in the opening of Two Concepts of Liberty (1958):

"Over a hundred years ago, the German poet Heine warned the French not to underestimate the power of ideas: philosophical concepts nurtured in the stillness of a professor's study could destroy a civilisation. He spoke of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason as the sword with which German deism had been decapitated, and described the works of Rousseau as the blood-stained weapon which, in the hands of Robespierre, had destroyed the old regime; and prophesied that the romantic faith of Fichte and Schelling would one day be turned, with terrible effect, by their fanatical German followers, against the liberal culture of the West. The facts have not wholly belied this prediction; but if professors can truly wield this fatal power, may it not be that only other professors, or, at least, other thinkers (and not governments or congressional committees), can alone disarm them?"

The threat of education

Education has always provided the tools to identify, disrupt, and even to dismantle the market forces of capitalism and commodification. It does so by making the "invisible" hand of the market visible, and then by providing a forum (apparatus) in which individuals can discuss and examine (Humanities) the effect of the now-visible market.

The threat of education to market interests has grown in direct relationship to the prosperity of the country. That is, as economic scarcity became less real at the collective level, the need to reify the struggle that fuels market competition grew; if individuals reject the capitalist engine that they propel, the ship will stop moving. [But it likely won't sink]

Brown 1954 presented an especially difficult decision for post-war market culture: it was rooted in equality of educational resources for all, at a time when economic prosperity was so robust that the lie of scarcity was almost a neon sign. In the two decades since the Great Depression, the United States had turned a cultural corner as well as an economic one, and equality of all was clearly about to catch up with equality of prosperity.

In many ways, the students who walked out of an underfunded school in Virginia in protest did so in a great acknowledgement that they possessed and were being denied the apparatus of prosperity. Barbara Johns and the students who followed her led to Brown, and set off the sensibility of equality that would lead to Rosa Parks, Medgar Evers, Martin Luther King, and the formation of the NAACP.

Public institutions and public goods are central to the measure of equality in our culture and in our struggle to complete the promise of democracy. Schools and libraries, in particular, have been essential in measuring the distance we yet have to go, and in nurturing the sensibility required for completing the assignment laid down in the declaration of independence.

[Tougaloo Nine]

Entrenched Discouragement: Property Tax

Entrenched Discouragement: 

Critical Policy Analysis of 

Property Taxes 

in Funding Formulas

H. L. Schmidt

Department of Educational Leadership

EDL 704-201: Politics of Educational Leadership

Dr. Amanda Potterton

April 2021

Introduction

This is the third in a series of papers analyzing three elements that have a significant, and possibly outsized, impact on educational budget formulas. The first paper looked at the use of enrollment and attendance--and the varying ways in which it was measured-- through a critical policy analysis lens to determine the context of attendance as a factor and then understand how that context affects the “development, implementation, and outcome” (Sampson, 2019) of the resulting budget policies. This paper continues the analysis by investigating the context of property tax in budgeting formulas, especially at the local level, and the gap revealed between the policy intent and its practical outcome. Policy analysis shows “social stratification and the broader effect a given policy has on relationships of inequality and privilege” (Diem, Young, Welton, Mansfield, & Lee, 2014 as cited by Sampson, 2019). In the case of local budgets, this gap is stark and widening.

Property tax as a revenue stream for education is often heralded as a measure that ensures citizens aren’t paying for something they don’t use, a neo-liberal cafeteria-style allocation of municipal revenue, not from research in best practices for education. Such a framework devalues educational spending and looks at students as customers, positioning the school as a business and not as an essential institution for thriving. Seen in this way, the process of funding schools becomes adversarial, focused on outputs as opposed to outcomes. 

In times of economic recession and during a period of public outcry against taxation, this market-based rhetoric gains traction in public opinion, resulting in elected officials who reflect contemporary sentiment. Yet qualitative research found that “permanent additional money improved student achievement and high school graduation rates and decreased poverty rates, while sharp spending cuts had the opposite effect.” (Lafortune, Rothstein, Schatzenbach, 2016).

Nearly half (45.6%) of school budgets come from local revenue (EducationData.org), largely from property taxation. This paper examines the role of property tax as a significant revenue stream for educational funding, contextualizing it for modern urban home ownership and rental patterns, while also analyzing the ways in which property tax perpetuates existing systems of disparity, entrenching diminished opportunities for marginalized communities.

Property Tax

Budgets are responsible for providing “equity for students;” “adequate resources to local school districts;” “predictability and stability of education resources over time;” and a finance system that “supports student learning” (NCSL, 2021). “Local governments depend almost exclusively on property taxes.” Funding formulas that rely heavily on property tax create actively adverse conditions to all these aims: while the taxation rate is uniform, the variability of the tax base results in dramatic disparities in local budgets, even within a district. Such variance perpetuates systemic inequity by allocating greater resources for schools in wealthy neighborhoods while diminishing resources for schools in poor neighborhoods, materially affecting the outcome for students and perpetuating an imbalance of educational opportunity based on economic status. 

Economically disadvantaged neighborhoods have lower home values, leading to lower property tax revenue. At equal rates of taxation, the revenue generated by a home valued at $100,000 is only ten percent of that of a home valued at one million. Progressive taxation -- formulas that seek to lighten the tax burden of poorer neighborhoods -- often provide a lower limit beyond which property tax is not assessed. The language often reads that taxes are assessed on property valued above a certain amount, resulting in poorer neighborhoods generating even less for the public coffers. While there is no doubt that these progressive policies reduce the tax burden to disadvantaged individuals, use of property tax as a factor in budget allocation lessens the available revenue in the neighborhoods that need it most. This is especially evident in the budgets of the schools of impoverished neighborhoods. Where property values are low, educational budgets are dramatically lower than for schools in wealthier neighborhoods, a disparity that manifests within districts.

Property tax adjustments remain a key point for local officials and are affected by economic cycles of boom and bust. In times of plenty, budgets swell and it often seems that no tax increases are necessary. In times of scarcity, though, local governments are disinclined to raise taxes, an unpopular move at any time, but especially during a downturn. In the wake of the 2008 economic crisis, for example, local governments saw budgets shrink to record lows. The 2008 crisis was largely driven through the housing market and had a significant impact on local budgets. “To offset revenues lost during the recession, most states cut education and other spending rather than raise taxes. At the same time, municipal property tax revenues fell due to the housing crisis.” This reduction, in turn, affected school budgets and teacher pay, and many states still have not recovered.  In 2018, 24 states had school funding below 2008 levels.

Further exacerbating the problematic reliance on property tax for local revenue is the shift in residential patterns in the last twenty-five years. Americans are more mobile than ever, moving house and changing jobs at unprecedented rates. They move to find better jobs, but increasingly they are also moving to find better cities. And “more U.S. households are renting than at any point in 50 years,” with “8 million householders between the age of 35 to 44 years old made up the largest population of renters in the U.S. in 2019, followed by 7.3 million householders aged 45 to 54 years old.” Even though college-educated residents are the least likely to be renters, they reflect the trend of increasing rental residence, 29% in 2016 up from 22% in 2006.

Increasing rental rates in cities has a ripple effect on property tax revenue: renters don’t pay property tax, and often the buildings in which they reside are afforded tax incentives for development that include a period of diminished taxation or outright tax amnesty. The downstream effect is that property tax revenue no longer reflects the residential makeup of the city, long held as the foundational rationale for using property tax as a metric for providing services in proportion to residency. Residential patterns of the twenty-first century make clear that attracting high-skilled workers doesn’t necessarily translate to increased property tax revenue: a brain surgeon who rents a luxury loft apartment doesn’t pay property tax, while a working-class warehouse homeowner does. The effect on school budgets is devastating.

At its core, property tax reflects better revenue for wealthy neighborhoods and diminished funding for schools in poor sections of a city. When placed in context of modern residential patterns, the revenue stream is choked by increasing rental rates by age groups most likely to be parents of school-aged children. Reliance on property rates for local schools diminishes educational opportunities across the board, an impact that has a thunderclap impact on poor neighborhoods.

Conclusion

Examining the ways in which local school budgets are impacted by property value and property ownership reveals a reliance on commercialized, commodified, market-driven concepts, most notably from the neoliberal tradition that prefers quantitative data over qualitative research. The outsized valuation of quantitative data reveals prioritization by policy makers of market-based assumptions about the purpose of education, much in line with what Sanchez found (2019). Changing the framework of the formula and analysis of the underlying assumptions implicit in the variables themselves can prioritize best practices and increase “policy knowledge” by being based on qualitative research rather than quantitative measurements, effectively transforming budget formulas “from the ground up.” (Dumas & Anderson, 2014). 

References

Cilluffo, Anthony, Geiger, A.W., and Fry, Richard. 2017. “More U.S. households are renting than at any point in 50 years.” FactTank: News in the Numbers, Pew Research Trust, July 19, 2017.  https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/07/19/more-u-s-households-are-renting-than-at-any-point-in-50-years/ 

Diem, S., Young, M. D., Welton, A. D., Mansfield, K. C., & Lee, P. (2014). The intellectual landscape of critical policy analysis. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 27 (9), 1068-1090. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2014.916007

Dumas, M.J., Anderson, G. Qualitative research as policy knowledge: framing policy problems and transforming education from the ground up. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 22 (11). https://dx.doi.org/10.14707/epaa.v22n11.2014 

Gordon, Tracy. 2012. State and Local Budgets and the Great Recession. Stanford, CA: Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality.

EducationData.org, (2021). U.S. public education spending statistics [2021]: per pupil + total. https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statistics 

Lafortune, J., Rothstein, J., Schazenbach, D. W. (2016). School Finance Reform and the Distribution of Student Achievement. Washington Center for Economic Growth.

Leachman, M., Masterson, K., and Figueroa, E. (2017) Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/a-punishing-decade-for-school-funding 

Mantel, B. (2018, August 31). Education funding. CQ Researcher, 28, 705-728. www.cqreasearcher.com 

National Conference of State Legislatures (2021). The state role in education finance. https://www.ncsl.org/research/education/state-role-in-education-finance.aspx

Sampson, C. (2019). “The state pulled a fast one on us”: A critical policy analysis of state-level policies affecting English Learners from district-level perspectives. Educational Policy, (33)1, 158-180. https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0895904818807324 

Sanchez, J. (2019). Framing the common core; An analysis of four key policy actors. Teachers College Record, 121 (080306) 1-34.

Entrenched Discouragement: Assessments and Ratings

Entrenched Discouragement: 

Critical Policy Analysis of 

Enrollment and Ratings 

in Funding Formulas

H. L. Schmidt

Department of Educational Leadership

EDL 704-201: Politics of Educational Leadership

Dr. Amanda Potterton

March 22, 2021

The coronavirus pandemic of 2020 cast a harsh spotlight on the weak spots across the educational system, from infrastructure concerns to curriculum design and delivery. Underlying all these challenges, schools had to find ways to respond that fit their budgets. Budgets are the silent engine that drive--and often constrain--decisions by individual schools and districts, and allocation of these funds are in turn driven by factors that have an outsized impact: enrollment, property taxes, and student test scores. Designed to help ensure equality and to provide incentives for excellence, Critical Policy Analysis of key factors that drive budgets reveals that they often create inequality and can disincentivize achievement. In their worst application, these measurements actively entrench poor conditions in schools and widen the disparity of opportunity available to students.

Critical Policy Analysis examines the “development, implementation, and outcome” of policies through examination of “contextual and social factors, including systematic and institutional- and individual-level oppression” (Sampson, 2019). Policy analysis positions policies not as things but views them instead as “encoded in complex ways (via struggles, compromises, authoritative public interpretations and reinterpretations) and decoded in complex ways (via actors’ interpretations and meanings in relation to their history, experiences, skills, resources and context).” (Ball, 1993, emphasis added). By identifying critical concerns to evaluate the gap between educational policies’ rhetoric and their practiced reality, we can better see the “social stratification and the broader effect a given policy has on relationships of inequality and privilege” (Diem, Young, Welton, Mansfield, & Lee, 2014 as cited by Sampson, 2019). For the purposes of examining key factors in budget allocation formulas, it is helpful to see how these factors are themselves determined and how they are used as a part of the formula itself. In this paper, I will examine the first of three factors: enrollment specifically attendance as a measure of enrollment.

Proponents of limiting or cutting education budgets often focus on the notion of trimming wasteful spending as a way to reduce costs, a concept that comes from manufacturing and business analysis, not from research in best practices for educational outcomes. Such a framework devalues educational spending and looks at dollars as opposed to outcomes. In times of economic recession and during a period of public outcry against taxation, this market-based rhetoric gained traction in public opinion, resulting in elected officials who reflect contemporary sentiment. Yet qualitative research found that “permanent additional money improved student achievement and high school graduation rates and decreased poverty rates, while sharp spending cuts had the opposite effect.” (Lafortune, Rothstein, Schatzenbach, 2016). 

The emergency created by the pandemic brought the funding crisis for public schools into sharp relief: “Less funding would mean cuts in programs and personnel. And the districts that would be hit the hardest would be those with the poorest and neediest students” (Washington Post, March 15, 2021). Texas, a state that uses average daily attendance to determine district budgets in the state, saw attendance drop over 4% during the pandemic, threatening a tidal wave of cuts to already beleaguered and cash-strapped districts by creating automatic reductions through the attendance-based budget formula. Texas averages total daily attendance. Other states use attendance measures as well, and they can seem confusing and downright capricious: Some states average attendance from Fall and spring terms; Colorado uses the attendance figures from a single day in October.

Funding: Attendance, Enrollment, and the Market

Schools are funded by local (45.6%) and state (46.7%) budgets, allocated to individual schools and districts through funding formulas that can be complicated and complex and that vary from state to state (EducationData.org). This source of funding results in educational budgets becoming matters of the political landscape, skewing along the lines of public opinion more than being treated as a necessary and desirable expense for the public welfare. Two things stand out in market-driven educational budget allocation: attendance-based funding and test-score derived school and teacher ratings. These matrices are intended to provide equality (enrollment) and incentives (ratings). These two measures don't achieve their aims; in fact, they create the opposite effect, entrenching or worsening the problems these policy measures seek to address.

Attendance-based funding impoverishes school budgets. Even the broadest measure of attendance -- total enrollment-- results in diminished funds as students in a district attend private schools, are home-schooled, or drop out. This encourages parents who can afford alternative education to seek extra-public solutions, creating a positive feedback loop of scarcity for those who remain on the public school roster. Using an average of daily attendance is the worst application of this measure, actively penalizing schools where marginalized students often have attendance impediments as a factor of daily life. But even the total enrollment measurement hides the result of reducing funding as students increasingly turn to alternative educational options, whether through private schools (voucher-based, privately funded), or home-school options that reduce overall enrollment without reducing the responsibility of the district to provide quality education, much of which is tied up in fixed costs that do not change during periods of enrollment fluctuation.

Budgets are responsible for providing “equity for students;” “adequate resources to local school districts;” “predictability and stability of education resources over time;” and a finance system that “supports student learning” (NCSL, 2021). Attendance-based funding formulas create actively adverse conditions to all these aims: the variability of attendance can result in quixotic budget reductions while costs stay largely the same. In particular, when resident school-age children attend private or alternative school systems, the local budgets are reduced not only by attendance-based formulas but are often further diminished by tax-offset school choice schema that divert funding from the state coffers under a matrix that “would further magnify the disparities between rich and poor, public and private” (Potterton, Waddington, LaCour, 2021).

Conclusion

Examining the ways in which we measure attendance and performance in schools reveals a reliance on commercialized, commodified, market-driven concepts, most notably from the neoliberal tradition that prefers quantitative data over qualitative research. The outsized valuation of quantitative data reveals prioritization by policy makers of market-based assumptions about the purpose of education, much in line with what Sanchez found (2019). Changing the framework of the formula and analysis of the underlying assumptions implicit in the variables themselves can prioritize best practices and increase “policy knowledge” by being based on qualitative research rather than quantitative measurements, effectively transforming budget formulas “from the ground up.” (Dumas & Anderson, 2014).

References

Ball, S. (1993). What is policy? Text trajectories and toolboxes. The Australian Journal of Education Studies, 13 (2), 10-17. https://doi.org/10.1080/0159630930130203 

Diem, S., Young, M. D., Welton, A. D., Mansfield, K. C., & Lee, P. (2014). The intellectual landscape of critical policy analysis. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 27 (9), 1068-1090. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2014.916007

Dumas, M.J., Anderson, G. Qualitative research as policy knowledge: framing policy problems and transforming education from the ground up. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 22 (11). https://dx.doi.org/10.14707/epaa.v22n11.2014 

EducationData.org, (2021). U.S. public education spending statistics [2021]: per pupil + total. https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statistics 

Lafortune, J., Rothstein, J., Schazenbach, D. W. (2016). School Finance Reform and the Distribution of Student Achievement. Washington Center for Economic Growth. 

Mantel, B. (2018, August 31). Education funding. CQ Researcher, 28, 705-728. www.cqreasearcher.com 

National Conference of State Legislatures (2021). The state role in education finance. https://www.ncsl.org/research/education/state-role-in-education-finance.aspx

Potterton, A., Waddington, R. J., LaCour, S. E. (2021). Tax credit proposal is really a plan or private school vouchers in Kentucky. Courier Journal, Feb 26,2021. https://www.courier-journal.com/story/opinion/2021/02/26/school-vouchers-education-opportunity-account-program-bad-kentucky/6801079002/ 

Sampson, C. (2019). “The state pulled a fast one on us”: A critical policy analysis of state-level policies affecting English Learners from district-level perspectives. Educational Policy, (33)1, 158-180. https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0895904818807324 

Sanchez, J. (2019). Framing the common core; An analysis of four key policy actors. Teachers College Record, 121 (080306) 1-34.

Entrenched Discouragement: Enrollment and Ratings in Funding Formulas

Entrenched Discouragement: 

Critical Policy Analysis of 

Enrollment and Ratings 

in Funding Formulas

H. L. Schmidt

Department of Educational Leadership

EDL 704-201: Politics of Educational Leadership

Dr. Amanda Potterton

March 22, 2021

The coronavirus pandemic of 2020 cast a harsh spotlight on the weak spots across the educational system, from infrastructure concerns to curriculum design and delivery. Underlying all these challenges, schools had to find ways to respond that fit their budgets. Budgets are the silent engine that drive--and often constrain--decisions by individual schools and districts, and allocation of these funds are in turn driven by factors that have an outsized impact: enrollment, property taxes, and student test scores. Designed to help ensure equality and to provide incentives for excellence, Critical Policy Analysis of key factors that drive budgets reveals that they often create inequality and can disincentivize achievement. In their worst application, these measurements actively entrench poor conditions in schools and widen the disparity of opportunity available to students.

Critical Policy Analysis examines the “development, implementation, and outcome” of policies through examination of “contextual and social factors, including systematic and institutional- and individual-level oppression” (Sampson, 2019). Policy analysis positions policies not as things but views them instead as “encoded in complex ways (via struggles, compromises, authoritative public interpretations and reinterpretations) and decoded in complex ways (via actors’ interpretations and meanings in relation to their history, experiences, skills, resources and context).” (Ball, 1993, emphasis added). By identifying critical concerns to evaluate the gap between educational policies’ rhetoric and their practiced reality, we can better see the “social stratification and the broader effect a given policy has on relationships of inequality and privilege” (Diem, Young, Welton, Mansfield, & Lee, 2014 as cited by Sampson, 2019). For the purposes of examining key factors in budget allocation formulas, it is helpful to see how these factors are themselves determined and how they are used as a part of the formula itself. In this paper, I will examine the first of three factors: enrollment specifically attendance as a measure of enrollment.

Proponents of limiting or cutting education budgets often focus on the notion of trimming wasteful spending as a way to reduce costs, a concept that comes from manufacturing and business analysis, not from research in best practices for educational outcomes. Such a framework devalues educational spending and looks at dollars as opposed to outcomes. In times of economic recession and during a period of public outcry against taxation, this market-based rhetoric gained traction in public opinion, resulting in elected officials who reflect contemporary sentiment. Yet qualitative research found that “permanent additional money improved student achievement and high school graduation rates and decreased poverty rates, while sharp spending cuts had the opposite effect.” (Lafortune, Rothstein, Schatzenbach, 2016). 

The emergency created by the pandemic brought the funding crisis for public schools into sharp relief: “Less funding would mean cuts in programs and personnel. And the districts that would be hit the hardest would be those with the poorest and neediest students” (Washington Post, March 15, 2021). Texas, a state that uses average daily attendance to determine district budgets in the state, saw attendance drop over 4% during the pandemic, threatening a tidal wave of cuts to already beleaguered and cash-strapped districts by creating automatic reductions through the attendance-based budget formula. Texas averages total daily attendance. Other states use attendance measures as well, and they can seem confusing and downright capricious: Some states average attendance from Fall and spring terms; Colorado uses the attendance figures from a single day in October.

Funding: Attendance, Enrollment, and the Market

Schools are funded by local (45.6%) and state (46.7%) budgets, allocated to individual schools and districts through funding formulas that can be complicated and complex and that vary from state to state (EducationData.org). This source of funding results in educational budgets becoming matters of the political landscape, skewing along the lines of public opinion more than being treated as a necessary and desirable expense for the public welfare. Two things stand out in market-driven educational budget allocation: attendance-based funding and test-score derived school and teacher ratings. These matrices are intended to provide equality (enrollment) and incentives (ratings). These two measures don't achieve their aims; in fact, they create the opposite effect, entrenching or worsening the problems these policy measures seek to address.

Attendance-based funding impoverishes school budgets. Even the broadest measure of attendance -- total enrollment-- results in diminished funds as students in a district attend private schools, are home-schooled, or drop out. This encourages parents who can afford alternative education to seek extra-public solutions, creating a positive feedback loop of scarcity for those who remain on the public school roster. Using an average of daily attendance is the worst application of this measure, actively penalizing schools where marginalized students often have attendance impediments as a factor of daily life. But even the total enrollment measurement hides the result of reducing funding as students increasingly turn to alternative educational options, whether through private schools (voucher-based, privately funded), or home-school options that reduce overall enrollment without reducing the responsibility of the district to provide quality education, much of which is tied up in fixed costs that do not change during periods of enrollment fluctuation.

Budgets are responsible for providing “equity for students;” “adequate resources to local school districts;” “predictability and stability of education resources over time;” and a finance system that “supports student learning” (NCSL, 2021). Attendance-based funding formulas create actively adverse conditions to all these aims: the variability of attendance can result in quixotic budget reductions while costs stay largely the same. In particular, when resident school-age children attend private or alternative school systems, the local budgets are reduced not only by attendance-based formulas but are often further diminished by tax-offset school choice schema that divert funding from the state coffers under a matrix that “would further magnify the disparities between rich and poor, public and private” (Potterton, Waddington, LaCour, 2021).

Conclusion

Examining the ways in which we measure attendance and performance in schools reveals a reliance on commercialized, commodified, market-driven concepts, most notably from the neoliberal tradition that prefers quantitative data over qualitative research. The outsized valuation of quantitative data reveals prioritization by policy makers of market-based assumptions about the purpose of education, much in line with what Sanchez found (2019). Changing the framework of the formula and analysis of the underlying assumptions implicit in the variables themselves can prioritize best practices and increase “policy knowledge” by being based on qualitative research rather than quantitative measurements, effectively transforming budget formulas “from the ground up.” (Dumas & Anderson, 2014).

References

Ball, S. (1993). What is policy? Text trajectories and toolboxes. The Australian Journal of Education Studies, 13 (2), 10-17. https://doi.org/10.1080/0159630930130203 

Diem, S., Young, M. D., Welton, A. D., Mansfield, K. C., & Lee, P. (2014). The intellectual landscape of critical policy analysis. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 27 (9), 1068-1090. https://doi.org/10.1080/09518398.2014.916007

Dumas, M.J., Anderson, G. Qualitative research as policy knowledge: framing policy problems and transforming education from the ground up. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 22 (11). https://dx.doi.org/10.14707/epaa.v22n11.2014 

EducationData.org, (2021). U.S. public education spending statistics [2021]: per pupil + total. https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statistics 

Lafortune, J., Rothstein, J., Schazenbach, D. W. (2016). School Finance Reform and the Distribution of Student Achievement. Washington Center for Economic Growth. 

Mantel, B. (2018, August 31). Education funding. CQ Researcher, 28, 705-728. www.cqreasearcher.com 

National Conference of State Legislatures (2021). The state role in education finance. https://www.ncsl.org/research/education/state-role-in-education-finance.aspx

Potterton, A., Waddington, R. J., LaCour, S. E. (2021). Tax credit proposal is really a plan or private school vouchers in Kentucky. Courier Journal, Feb 26,2021. https://www.courier-journal.com/story/opinion/2021/02/26/school-vouchers-education-opportunity-account-program-bad-kentucky/6801079002/ 

Sampson, C. (2019). “The state pulled a fast one on us”: A critical policy analysis of state-level policies affecting English Learners from district-level perspectives. Educational Policy, (33)1, 158-180. https://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0895904818807324 

Sanchez, J. (2019). Framing the common core; An analysis of four key policy actors. Teachers College Record, 121 (080306) 1-34.