Money matters
People who don't want to fund public schools like to say money doesn't fix them. The research says otherwise. Economists C. Kirabo Jackson, Rucker Johnson and Claudia Persico studied what happened to kids when court orders forced states to put more money into schools. A 10% increase in spending per student, kept up for all twelve years of school, led to about a quarter-year more of completed education, and the gains were larger for kids from low-income families.[1] They followed those kids into adulthood, not just to the next test.
Pay what Congress promised
When Congress created the federal special education law in 1975, it said it would pay 40% of the extra cost of educating students with disabilities. Federal funding has never reached that level. It's about 10% today, roughly $1,810 per student.[2] States and districts have to cover the gap. Congress should pay what it promised.
Free pre-K for every family
Only 37% of four-year-olds were in state-funded pre-K in the 2024-25 school year.[3] For everyone else, preschool is another bill, or it's not an option at all.
Good pre-K helps kids for years. Boston ran a lottery for seats in its public preschool, which let researchers compare kids who got in with kids who didn't. The kids who won a seat were more likely to graduate from high school and go to college.[4] In Tulsa, Oklahoma, a long-running study found that former pre-K students graduated on time and enrolled in college at higher rates.[5]
The word that matters is "good." A randomized study of Tennessee's state pre-K program found that children who were offered a seat did worse on state tests by sixth grade and were more likely to have discipline problems.[6] So the federal money has to come with real quality standards. Georgia's universal program is the first to meet all ten of the National Institute for Early Education Research's quality benchmarks, including small classes and teacher pay on par with public school teachers.[3] That should be the floor everywhere.
The objection: "Money doesn't fix schools"
It does when it's spent and sustained. The strongest evidence we have, from Jackson, Johnson and Persico, tracked real kids over real decades and found more money meant more years of school, especially for poor kids.[1] What doesn't work is spending money badly, which is why our ask comes with standards attached.
Sources
- C. Kirabo Jackson, Rucker C. Johnson and Claudia Persico, "The Effects of School Spending on Educational and Economic Outcomes: Evidence from School Finance Reforms," NBER Working Paper 20847, 2015 (published in the Quarterly Journal of Economics, 2016). https://www.nber.org/papers/w20847
- K-12 Dive, on the U.S. Education Department's national study of special education spending, May 1, 2026. https://www.k12dive.com/news/federal-special-education-spending-study-IDEA-students-with-disabilities/819107/
- The 74, on NIEER's 2025 State of Preschool Yearbook, April 22, 2026. https://www.the74million.org/zero2eight/kids-in-state-funded-preschools-hit-record-high-but-program-quality-varies/
- Guthrie Gray-Lobe, Parag Pathak and Christopher Walters, "The Long-Term Effects of Universal Preschool in Boston," NBER Working Paper 28756, 2021. https://www.nber.org/papers/w28756
- The 74, "Results From Long-Running Study Bolster Case for Universal Pre-K," September 20, 2022. https://www.the74million.org/article/results-from-long-running-study-bolster-case-for-universal-pre-k/
- The Hechinger Report, on the Tennessee pre-K study published in Developmental Psychology, January 24, 2022. https://hechingerreport.org/a-state-funded-pre-k-program-led-to-significantly-negative-effects-for-kids-in-tennessee/