Sources

In this article, Barton discusses the educational spending in California K-12 during the post pandemic era when schools were returning to in person instruction. Specifically, school districts received a large sum of almost $60 billion through a roughly even split of federal and state funding post pandemic, especially those with higher underserved populations, such as low income or high need students, received more funds on average but Barton argues the distribution was determined by pre-existing policies like Title I and California’s Local Control Funding Formula rather than the actual need based on “learning loss” experienced by districts over the course of the lockdown. This article is important because Barton’s analysis on the actual spending of the funding is aligned with one of our key research questions: that the use cases are not very specific and there is variation in spending patterns across districts. A large portion of the funds were classified in the “Other” category, revealing very little about what the money was actually used for and whether or not it directly aided the students as per its original intent–Barton argues that there should be more clarity in spending categories in the future as well as an improved system of funding allocation to ensure funds are actually impacting students directly. For our project, we can use this in parallel with other data to highlight how the “Other” category obscures where education funding is directed as well as analyze whether funding reflects government policies or actual regional needs.

This article examines whether the Accountability Theory of Action, or the idea that providing low-performing schools with additional support and resources will lead to improved student outcomes, holds true in practice. Specifically, the authors analyze the effectiveness of the additional funding and resources schools under the Comprehensive Support and Improvement (CSI) and whether these additional funds accurately reflect the need for them and whether or not they equate to the intended student achievement. This article is significant as the authors discuss the importance of accountability designations and Title I allocations towards schools who are categorized to need additional support, noting that while CSI schools generally have a higher expenditure per student than non-CSI schools, the way these funds are allocated vary by state due to different state and district policies. This is relevant to our project as it spotlights how there is discrepancy between federal, state, and district policies, which may be representative of underlying political priorities and objectives.

This article discusses the history of federal emergency relief aid for K-12 education and offers recommendations for improving future funding policies. The authors note how K-12 funding has experienced a steady decline when accounting for inflation and population growth, except for short term crises such as 2009’s Great Recession and 2020-2021 pandemic response through the Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER funds). Most relevant to our project, the authors focus specifically on the surplus of federal funding during and post pandemic, and discuss how while these funds provided immense short term aid and enabled states and districts to improve learning conditions and amass more resources,in the long term, the recurring structural challenges in K-12 funding, including continuous achievement gaps and teacher shortages, remain unsolved. In our project, we can build off the author’s arguments that federal funding policies need to improve with encompassing policies and equitable fund distribution beyond short term crisis relief, as it reveals historical patterns of K-12 federal finances and how the long term decline in K-12 funding reflects government policy and priorities.

In this article, Lee examines disparities in school and teacher resources and how these inequities affect disadvantaged minority students’ ability to meet national mathematics proficiency standards. The study highlights persistent gaps in access to qualified teachers, advanced coursework, and instructional materials in underfunded schools serving high concentrations of minority and low-income students. A key structural factor underlying these disparities is the way public schools in the United States are funded, particularly the heavy reliance on local property taxes. Because school districts collect a significant portion of their funding from taxes on homes and businesses within their boundaries, districts located in wealthier areas with higher property values are able to generate substantially more revenue than districts in lower-income communities, even when tax rates are similar. This means that two schools can be funded very differently simply because one is located in a high-property-value neighborhood and the other is not. As a result, wealthier districts are often able to provide smaller class sizes, more experienced teachers, expanded curriculum options such as Advanced Placement courses, updated facilities, and enhanced student support services. In contrast, underfunded districts may struggle to maintain basic resources, which directly affects instructional quality and student performance. Lee’s analysis makes clear that educational inequality is not solely the result of individual student effort but is structurally embedded in funding systems shaped by local and state policy decisions.

Lee connects these resource gaps directly to differences in academic proficiency, particularly in mathematics, by showing that students in under-resourced schools are less likely to meet national proficiency benchmarks. Schools with limited funding often lack certified or experienced math teachers, up-to-date textbooks, and advanced or college-preparatory courses, all of which are important factors in student achievement. Without these supports, students may receive a narrower or less rigorous curriculum, making it more difficult for them to reach national standards even if they have the same potential as students in wealthier districts. Lee’s analysis suggests that proficiency gaps are not simply the result of student ability or effort, but are closely tied to the level of resources available in their schools. This connection reinforces the argument that educational outcomes are structurally shaped by funding systems. Although state and federal governments establish academic standards and may attempt funding equalization, the continued dependence on local property wealth makes it difficult to ensure true adequacy and equity nationwide, ultimately contributing to persistent achievement gaps.

Lockridge and Maiden analyze the effects of school finance litigation on actual funding levels and educational conditions in public schools. Their research demonstrates that court rulings challenging inequitable or inadequate funding systems can lead to measurable increases in per-pupil spending and, in some cases, improvements in educational resources and student outcomes. The article emphasizes how judicial intervention can reshape state-level funding formulas, urging legislatures to allocate funds more equitably across districts. This highlights the significant role state governments play in determining school funding structures, particularly when constitutional mandates for adequate education are invoked. The authors suggest that litigation can serve as a valid way to address disparities in teacher quality, facilities, and academic programming, however the extent of impact varies by state. Overall, the study illustrates how legal action intersects with policy decisions, demonstrating that funding reforms driven by the courts can influence curriculum quality, staffing, and broader school conditions.

Owens investigates how income segregation across school districts contributes to unequal educational outcomes, focusing on the relationship between residential patterns, district boundaries, and student achievement. The article shows that as income segregation between districts increases, disparities in academic performance also widen. Because school funding in many states is closely tied to local property wealth, affluent districts are often able to generate higher revenue, resulting in better facilities, more experienced teachers, enriched curricula, and safer school environments. In contrast, lower-income districts may struggle to provide comparable educational quality. Owens contextualizes these inequalities within broader governmental funding structures, noting that state equalization efforts often fail to fully counteract the advantages of wealthier communities. The study emphasizes how local, state, and federal funding policies intersect with housing patterns to shape educational opportunity, reinforcing the idea that school funding is not merely a budgetary issue but a main factor in shaping students’ academic trajectories and overall school experience.

This article examines federal legislative mandates that fund school-based mental health services for adolescents across the United States, with particular attention to the challenges schools face in implementing these services. The authors support their argument using national mental health statistics, analysis of federal funding streams and mandates, and discussion of practical barriers to service delivery. The resource is important because it shows how federal funding structures directly shape whether schools can provide meaningful mental health support, exposing the gap between policy intention and actual access. For our DH101 project, this article reinforces the idea that federal education funding is not just financial data but a structural force that influences student well-being and educational equity. It helps situate our dataset within a broader policy context, demonstrating how funding categories and legislative design affect what services schools are realistically able to deliver and, ultimately, how student outcomes are shaped.

The article argues that the 2009 stimulus bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), expanded the federal government’s power in education by granting the Secretary of Education an unprecedented level of discretionary control over billions of dollars in funding for the country. The piece draws on prior reporting about the $100 billion education allocation in the details of the Recovery Act, interviews with policymakers across the US and former education officials, and descriptions of how the stabilization and incentive funds were structured in the creation of the bill. This article is important because it illustrates how federal funding supplements can reshape the balance of power in education policy and reveal the political priorities and ideologies embedded within discretionary spending. For our DH101 project, this article provides context for how federal education funding reflects governmental priorities rather than simply responding to student needs. It helps us analyze how the Recovery Act temporarily expanded federal influence and structured funding in a new way, reinforcing our broader argument that funding categories function as political tools that shape educational inequality and access.

The article argues that the U.S. Department of Education has increasingly relied on randomized controlled trials to determine “what works” in education, opening the doors for opportunities in experience-based decision-making. The piece draws on prior reporting about federally funded randomized studies, interviews with researchers and education officials, and examples of programs that either succeeded or failed from federal educational funding. This resource is important because it reveals how decisionmakers for federal education policy have the opportunity and ability to analyze measurable outcomes in funding decisions. For our DH101 project, this article helps us interrogate the assumptions built into a dataset that tracks funding but not outcomes, showing how federal authority can evaluate educational success based on its educational funding allocations. It strengthens our argument that funding categories and evaluation standards reflect political and ideological priorities about measurement, accountability, and reform, rather than fully capturing the lived realities of students and teachers.

In this article, Aracho argues that the heavy reliance on local property taxes to fund public schools produces major intrastate inequalities, and that Congress should use conditional federal funding to incentivize more equitable state school finance systems. He mentions Supreme Court cases like the San Antonio v. Rodriguez and Plyler v. Doe, state court litigation, legislative history, funding disparities data, and constitutional analysis of Congress’s spending power as support for his argument. This article shows how structural features of federalism and property-tax-based funding systematically reproduce inequality rather than correcting it, revealing the limits of both judicial and state-level reform. This is relevant to our project since Aracho shows how federal education funding structures inequality by deferring to the state property tax systems while offering only conditional and limited corrective mechanism. His analysis supports our argument that federal funding categories and spending structures reflect political priorities more than they do the lived realities of underfunded schools and students.

Glover and Levacic argue that the way that education funding is structured, through central vs. local control, block vs. categorical grants, matching funds, and formula allocations, reflect political priorities and value choices about efficiency, equity, and national standards rather than educational needs. The authors use comparative international examples like Bosnia, Luxembourg, Sweden, Pakistan, England, and the U.S. as well as various policy models like the Tiebout model, fiscal equalization, formula funding, and categorical grants, to show how different systems can shape inequality, efficiency, and local autonomy. This article is important because it provides a framework for understanding how different countries operate with different funding categories and grant structures and how those shape education systems and results. This article interprets the U.S. Department of Education budget dataset as a political structure that organizes education funding according to federal priorities instead of lived student experience. It supports our argument that funding categories and allocation mechanisms reveal power struggles, ideological values, and structural inequalities that might be obscured when the dataset tracks funding amounts, not outcomes or demographic realities.

In this article, Timar argues that federal categorical aid in education is shaped less by coherent educational reform goals but rather by political bargaining, symbolic politics, and shifting ideological commitments about federal vs. local control. He analyzes the historical development of federal categorical programs, legislative debates, funding patterns, and policy shifts to show how these programs evolved through political compromise and changing federal-state power dynamics rather than consistent educational needs. This article is important because it shows how funding categories are political constructions that reflect struggles with federal authority, equity, and accountability, rather than just being neutral responses to student or classroom realities. Timar helps us interpret the U.S. Department of Education budget dataset as a political artifact. His analysis enforces our argument that reveals how administrations define “educational importance” through politics rather than equity or student outcomes.

Jennings elaborates on the changing role of the federal government in K-12 education, specifically in the decades that follow the major legislation, including the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) and No Child Left Behind (NCLB). He explains that while the government’s involvement was originally designed to promote equity, targeting students from low-income and marginalized communities, the act has shifted toward heavy accountability measures and standardized testing requirements. He argues that the federal government’s role should be changed to better balance overall supervision with state and local flexibility in education while maintaining a commitment to educational equity. This article is especially relevant to our research and project because it traces how federal funding priorities have evolved over time and how those changes have influenced educational policy and classroom activities. Jenning’s emphasis on his argument in US policy changes can be useful in our process of creating a narrative of how federal involvement boundaries are necessary to draw in order to improve the wellbeing of students and their education.

This paper evaluates the relationship between poor school funding and students’ mathematics achievement in US schools. Authors claim that inadequate school funding, particularly in high-poverty areas, is strongly correlated with lower academic performance. They argue that funding does not hugely impact the outcomes, as they present evidence that economic disadvantage and underfunded schools compound educational inequality. I think this article would be helpful for our research because it demonstrates how funding disparities are very hard to find on paper but can directly influence the students’ academic performance and educational opportunities for future generations. It strengthens our project’s narrative by making connections with funding inequities through history and resulting student outcomes. While the article provides helpful information and statistics, we would need to be concerned with the narrow spectrum of the student outcomes they measured as they only gave analysis on students’ mathematical achievements.

This journal article ranks the states in the US according to the equality of their public school funding systems, signifying the disparities again in federal expenditures. The report states how unequal funding by the government harms the minority and low-income students, creating racial socioeconomic gaps in academic achievement. By providing a list of all the states and their quantitative data, the author highlights how funding equity is very different across the nation as well as each state’s taxes and policies. This article helps our projects’ narrative by demonstrating how throughout history, funding models have shaped unequal educational systems and inequality in the late 1990s, which are the years that our team aims to cover in our narrative. We can include this in our argument alongside our data visualizations, which will make our argument on educational funding much more powerful and strengthened.

Heise examines the shift from No Child Left Behind to the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) to show how education policy is shaped by ongoing struggles over federal versus state authority. He argues that although ESSA was framed as reducing federal control, the federal government continues to influence education through accountability systems and the way funding is organized. This reading supports our research because it helps explain how federal education spending categories are shaped by political power and institutional conflict, not simply by what students and teachers need most. It also provides context for why differences between Presidential budget priorities and Congressional appropriations matter: these decisions reveal competing definitions of educational importance. Heise’s work strengthens the idea that funding structures can reinforce inequality when they prioritize governance and accountability over lived realities in schools. A limitation is that the article focuses more on policy institutions than on the everyday experiences of students.

Lou and colleagues analyze long-term trends in federal spending on children, showing how funding shifts across categories over time. The authors argue that these patterns reflect changing federal priorities, especially when comparing discretionary and mandatory spending. This source is useful for our research because it demonstrates how education budgets reveal what the government consistently chooses to support and what it leaves underfunded. It helps frame federal spending categories as political signals rather than neutral reflections of educational reality. The report also supports our question about how major events and policy shifts can disrupt or reinforce existing priorities. However, because it focuses on broad national trends, it does not fully capture how these funding decisions are actually experienced by students and teachers, especially in under-resourced communities where inequality is most visible.

Lomax et al. explore how mandated standardized testing disproportionately harms minority students, arguing that accountability-based reforms often reproduce inequality rather than reduce it. The authors show that policies presented as objective measures of achievement can place heavier burdens on marginalized students and schools. This reading connects strongly to our research because it highlights what federal education funding datasets often fail to capture: the unequal human consequences of policies that appear neutral in spending categories. While budgets track dollars and programs, they often exclude demographic detail and outcomes, limiting the ability to see how inequality is structured through funding priorities. Lomax et al. help demonstrate that federal emphasis on measurement and accountability can obscure student well-being and deepen existing disparities. Although the article is older, its critique remains relevant for understanding how education policy continues to harm students through unequal systems.