Georgia had some of the biggest school budget cuts in the nation during and after the Great Recession, according to a new report that also said the state swung the most in the other direction this year, adding proportionately more money than most, if not all.
The report that the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities released Thursday says Georgia had the fourth-largest proportional cut in state per-student funding from 2008 to 2014, with Arizona cutting deepest followed by Alabama and Idaho.
The Washington, D.C. think tank calculated Georgia’s cut during that period at 16.5 percent. The ranking was based on inflation-adjusted numbers from 44 states, with six excluded for lack of data.
Some argue that money doesn't affect educational quality, but the nonpartisan organization asserts it is important, citing recent research that found poor children in schools that got a fifth more money each year over a dozen years were 23 percentage points more likely to graduate and earned 25 percent more in the workplace.
The Center contends that budget cuts undermine efforts to train teachers, prepare young children for school, reduce class sizes and increase “learning time.”
Other groups, such as The Heritage Foundation, have reported that school budget increases in prior decades did not lead to improvements in academic achievement.
State revenue comprises about half of school district budgets. Georgia schools saw even deeper cuts when erosion of the local tax base was added into the calculation. The state had the largest proportional combined state and local funding cuts during that period at 16.6 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars, out of 45 states with adequate data.
The situation had changed significantly by this year, with Georgia putting proportionately more money back into education than any of the 46 other states for which data were available, the report says. The inflation-adjusted increase was 9.1 percent.
Georgia may increase educational funding in 2018. Gov. Nathan Deal's Education Reform Commission, which meets one last time on Tuesday, recommended a broad legislative package last month including a new state funding formula with an extra quarter-billion dollars.
Deal hasn't announced whether he will ask the General Assembly for the extra money, though he has said he backs a proposal to introduce merit pay for teachers. And that pay-for-performance recommendation is a key element of the proposed funding formula.
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