School improvement efforts through the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) can help the lowest performing schools turn student outcomes around, but they cannot undo decades of underfunding in public education that have shaped those same outcomes. This doesn’t mean the U.S. Department of Education should be weakening accountability requirements, as Indiana sought to do in their initial waiver request. Instead, this is a reminder that improving student outcomes requires a both/and approach: state leaders must pair accountability and support with fair, adequate funding so schools have the resources to meet students’ needs.

Unfortunately, many state leaders continue to inadequately fund public education, and rapidly expanding voucher programs are pulling state dollars away from public schools. Additionally, the new federal voucher program and massive federal tax cuts for the wealthy pose major threats to funding sources for public education. In total, these choices weaken school improvement efforts by limiting available resources that state leaders could direct to students who need support the most.

School funding levels in many states are inadequate, meaning that these state funding systems are not providing enough funding for all students to learn and thrive. Furthermore, too few states are investing enough to cover the rising costs of educational services that help students succeed, such as behavioral and mental health supports, English language programs, and high-impact tutoring.

The harmful impacts of this underinvestment are not felt equally. Districts serving mostly Black and Latino students and students from low-income backgrounds tend to receive less money than their whiter and wealthier counterparts. Even when funding systems provide additional state dollars to less wealthy districts, it is not enough to overcome inequities in local funding. This means that district leaders serving mostly students of color and students from low-income backgrounds struggle to cover everyday education costs, let alone the costs of additional resources that could meaningfully boost student achievement.

While more state leaders have updated their funding formulas to target dollars to students facing the steepest barriers to learning, they need to do more. For starters, state leaders must adequately fund their public schools. Secondly, state leaders must ensure that the students who need more — such as students from low-income families, multilingual learners, students with disabilities, and students from rural communities — get more.

What does this mean for school improvement? When school funding is inadequate, the entire school improvement ecosystem is compromised: schools lack the resources to implement evidence-based interventions (e.g., multi-tiered systems of support and instructional coaching), which weakens student opportunities — especially for students from underserved backgrounds. This drives overall achievement down and intensifies pressure on identified schools.

This design flaw ultimately asks identified schools to improve with only temporary school improvement funding that disappears once they are no longer formally identified for improvement. What’s more, it also leaves many low-performing schools that are not officially identified in state accountability systems without proper resources.

The Impacts of Vouchers on School Improvement Funding

Rapidly expanding voucher programs are financially straining state budgets and make public schools, which serve 90% of students, compete for already limited state revenues. This presents yet another barrier to meaningful and sustained school improvement: as voucher programs expand and their costs balloon, those same public dollars are increasingly redirected away from public schools, limiting states’ ability to invest meaningfully in school improvement.

What’s more, demographic data from some programs reveals that vouchers primarily benefit students from wealthier communities. As a result, public dollars subsidize families who can already afford private education, while students from low-income backgrounds are left with less.

Slowly but surely, some state leaders in states have expanded voucher programs are beginning to publicly acknowledge the financial unsustainability of these programs and are redirecting resources toward proven programs. For example, legislators in Louisiana chose to invest in an effective tutoring program for K-3 students in public schools instead of investing more in the state’s universal voucher program, which has not yielded better academic results for participating students.

Louisiana legislators’ recent budget decision illustrates that states can—and should—invest more deeply in evidence-based programs that actually lead to better student outcomes. Instead of spending more on vouchers, they should deepen investments in public schools so educators can better target and sustain academic supports for the students who need them most.

As the Trump administration continues to weaken accountability systems and requirements under ESSA and reduce or cancel federal K-12 investments, district leaders will face additionally challenges when implementing school improvement strategies. Furthermore, school improvement dollars alone are already not enough to help the lowest performing schools to improve student learning. These schools need more adequate, equitable, and sustainable funding. Advocates must continue to push state leaders to fully and fairly fund public schools and keep public funds exclusively in public schools.

This is the fifth post in EdTrust’s School Improvement blog series. This blog series features authors from EdTrust and partner organizations who explore different dimensions of school improvement and how it intersects with other core education advocacy issues. This series follows the release of a new EdTrust report, “Examining State Education Agency Perspectives on School Improvement Supports,” which draws on interviews and focus groups with state education agency (SEA) leaders across 11 states and Washington, D.C. to explore the barriers and opportunities SEAs face when designing, monitoring, and evaluating school improvement efforts.

Photo by Allison Shelley/The Verbatim Agency for EDUimages

Series: School Improvement