School Finance and Learning: Are We Leveraging State Aid to Get All We Can Out of It?

Abstract

After spending some twenty-five years working on schoolfinancefortheNewYorkStateEducationDepartment,Ihadtheopportunitytoworkoneducationreform for the State of Nevada. As Deputy Superintendent for Business and Support Services, I oversaw state aid to school districts, information technology, audit services, and child nutrition. I also served as Education Department liaison to the 77th session of the Nevada Legislature. Although my sojourn in Nevada, lasting little more than a year, was brief compared with my work in New York, the experience gave me perspective on how two states were implementing school finance and reform. Recent reforms in both states were driven in large part by the federal Race to the Top competition, but the approaches to reform were quite different. Key features of the education environment in Nevada—basic student services and a strong inclination against raising taxes—worked to keep school spending low, the sixth lowestschoolspendinginthenationat$8,419perpupil. New York State, in contrast, is a large-enrollment, highspending, and high-taxing state. Consequently, spending per pupil on education is among the highest in the nation, at $16,239 per pupil. 1 In 2011, the state reached the breaking point, however, and enacted laws to limit growth into the future for education revenues raised from the property tax and distributed as state aid to school districts.