State budget cuts from recession still hurting students, report says

Most states are providing less funding to schools than they did before the recession hit in 2008, according to a report released Thursday by a Washington-based think tank.

At least 30 states are giving schools less funding per student during the current school year than they did in 2007, the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities’ (CBPP) report found. Fourteen of those states have cut funding for each student by more than 10 percent.

Schools in Alabama, Arizona, Idaho and Oklahoma have experienced the deepest cuts over the last seven years.

{mosads}In the current school year, at least 27 states are providing more funding per student than they did in the previous school year, but the CBPP said those increases don’t offset cumulative cuts. At least 20 states, by contrast, cut per-student funding this year.

States have slashed education funding because their revenue hasn’t returned to pre-recession levels, states have avoided raising taxes, costs are rising for schools and federal aid to states has dropped, the report said.

Through fiscal 2011, states relied heavily on emergency relief from the federal government for funding schools, but the CBPP said the federal government allowed this aid to expire.

“The expiration of most federal aid at the end of the 2011 fiscal year is a key reason why state education funding dropped so sharply in the 2012 fiscal year and remains at low levels in many states,” the report said.

Congress has also cut ongoing education funding to states, the CBPP said, which includes the 2013 sequester cuts. Since 2010, the report says federal spending on an assistance program for high-poverty schools is down 10 percent and federal spending on education for disabled students is down 8 percent.