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Because so much of school funding is drawn from the property taxes raised within each district’s borders, those borders do much to determine students’ access to resources. District borders could be drawn to bring about fairer funding. Instead, our district map is the product of specific communities seeking to advance their own interests—affluent areas seceding; financially healthy districts refusing to join with struggling neighbors; and small districts resisting statewide consolidation attempts that would increase efficiency and inclusion.

Divisive borders are incentivized by the school funding system, but they are made possible by the laws that govern school district borders. Those working for educational equity should engage with these laws directly. This report supports that work with a fifty-state survey of school district border law.

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School district secessions are explicitly allowed in most states, despite their deleterious effect on efficiency and equality of resources. Of the 30 states with explicit policies detailing how a community can secede from its current district, only six require consideration of the effects on racial and socioeconomic diversity. Only nine mandate a study of the funding impact. By having in place such permissive policies, states are incentivizing behavior which widens the economic and opportunity divide as it relates to our children.

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When state laws allow wealthy municipalities to easily fence off their tax dollars and resources, they are increasing segregation and reducing opportunity for children in the communities left behind. States have a responsibility to make sure that school systems are fair and logical, so that all children can receive a quality education. When communities secede it is typically for their own benefit, but these changes have far reaching repercussions, well beyond their new borders.

In 39 states, consolidation is purely voluntary. Twenty-four of these states also provide financial incentives to encourage mergers between wealthier and less affluent neighbors, but such mergers rarely happen. In fact, only nine states have mechanisms that allow the state to force a merger, but very few can do so in response to financial problems. And no consolidation policy can overcome the problem of insolvent districts surrounded by other property-poor school systems. Widening the tax base cannot help students who live and learn in regions experiencing broad economic struggles.

So long as states depend on local property taxes to fund their schools, there will inevitably be students stranded in districts ill-equipped to provide for their educations. Read about examples when children were left behind by these policies in our Case Studies, and then continue on to the Solutions section to see how states can do better.

School district secessions are explicitly allowed in most states, despite their deleterious effect on efficiency and equality of resources. Of the 30 states with explicit policies detailing how a community can secede from its current district, only six require consideration of the effects on racial and socioeconomic diversity. Only nine mandate a study of the funding impact. By having in place such permissive policies, states are incentivizing behavior which widens the economic and opportunity divide as it relates to our children.

Income-based segregation between school districts is rising. Today, high-poverty school districts enroll half of America's schoolchildren. Often these high poverty districts neighbor wealthier school systems where children have access to greater resources. Because property taxes play such an important role in school funding, affluent communities have an incentive to establish school district borders around their neighborhoods in order to ensure that the benefit of their wealth is reserved for their children alone. When the families with means isolate themselves in wealthy districts, low-income children are left behind and income segregation between school districts increases.

This report presents the results of EdBuild’s analysis of the degree of income segregation across America's school district borders. In particular, it highlights trends among the 50 most segregating borders, and tells the stories of Detroit, MI; Birmingham, AL; Clairton, PA; Dayton, OH; and Balsz, AZ, whose borders with wealthy neighboring districts are the most segregated in the country.

Schools have the potential to serve as a corrective, a way to bring students of different socioeconomic backgrounds together and to bring resources and opportunity into the lives of needy kids. The school funding system we have, though, only draws brighter lines between the haves and have-nots.

FundED is the first interactive web tool to aggregate and standardize information regarding each state’s education funding laws. The intent of this site is to enable better state-to-state comparisons and provide easy access to detailed information related to the funding policies of all 50 states.

FundED provides information related to the most common elements of state funding formulas through national maps and state pages, organized by the general categories below. Explore the tool using the navigation bar above to see at-a-glance national maps, detailed state comparisons, and downloadable reports.

The Los Angeles Times recently covered an EdBuild report about the California State Lottery, which is presented to the public as a means of generating funding for public education. What the program actually amounts to, however, after all the costs and winnings are siphoned away, is a transfer of $449 million out of the state's poorest communities and into schools in better-off areas.

We often hear this phrase in public education: “How much money we spend on education doesn’t matter; it’s how we’re spending it that’s important.”

While it’s true that our national average funding per student has increased significantly, what matters much more is the picture when we zoom in: who’s making the investment, who receives the funding, and which students need it most?

The state of California, like many others across the country, runs a lottery whose stated purpose is to increase funding for education. In practice, this government-run program results in a transfer of wealth of $449 million from lower-income to higher-income school districts. In California, poor neighborhoods pay much more into the lottery than their schools get out of it, while affluent areas contribute far less than their schools receive.

There’s a new blog post floating around attacking EdBuild that blatantly (and bizarrely) mischaracterizes what we’re up to. It touches on some important policy areas, so it’s worth correcting the facts.

In 2013, there were 26.3 million students living in high-poverty school districts throughout the United States. This is an increase of 60% since 2007. Launch the map to see how we got here.

Recently, EdBuild launched an interactive map that highlights student poverty in every school district across the United States. After receiving a number of inquiries about our methods, we created this guide to help answer common questions.

Schools have the potential to serve as a corrective, a way to bring students of different socioeconomic backgrounds together and to bring resources and opportunity into the lives of needy kids. The school funding system we have, though, only draws brighter lines between the haves and have-nots.

An introduction to EdBuild.