Assessing the Costs of K-12 Education in California

Introduction

Public funding for K-12 education in the United States has been criticized for the past 25 years. For much of this period, the central question underlying the challenges of state funding for public education K-12 was the equity in funding. The charge was that students in school districts with higher base value of the property received much financial support was more educational than some of the students in the school district with lower property value bases. challenges successfully led to reform K-12 education funding in many states, however, these same challenges and the subsequent financing reforms in turn stimulates a backlash of the two anti-tax activists and citizens who denounced the loss of local control over education. As a result, challenges to anti-tax bias and challenges of a bias against centralization have been linked to equity in the financing of the challenges in the 1990's. Adding to the pot of educational innovations as outcomes-based education has been reduced to boiling point at a level where the controversy over public funding for K-12 education has spread to almost every state.

Nowhere within the state education policy arena are changes in local state relations starkly example that in financing public education K-12. Until late 1970, local property tax revenues made up the bulk of school funding. The state's role in direct fiscal support to schools was very limited. Floor is guaranteed financing districts (as long as the districts are taxed at a lower level in the specified state), and provided additional dollars for extraordinary expenses for transportation in rural areas, for example. Local property taxes forever, on average, 60 percent of K-12 funding, while the state provided 34 percent. Federal dollars made up the remaining 6 percent. Most importantly, nearly 90 percent of district revenues are general or restricted use, which means that the districts had a free hand to decide how to allocate the funds. (Sonstelie, pp. 44-59)

The financing system of education today is radically different. In 2004-052, on average, schools received 67 percent of its funding from the state, 22 percent from local sources, 9 percent of the federal government and 2 percent of the state lottery ( Figure 1). On the other hand, 60 percent of the state, 40 percent are restricted, which means that the money should be used only for certain purposes by the State. How much money districts have to spend each year is determined almost entirely by the legislature, not the district. While districts have authority to raise revenue through taxes to the plots, only a few have managed to do so. For all practical purposes, California has a state, the centralized system of financing education. (Rumberger, pp. 56-59

Cost of Education

The cost of education can be defined as the minimum amount of money a school district must pass in order to achieve a given educational outcome, such as reading at grade level appropriate. Costs generally vary among school districts for reasons that are beyond the control of local ...