When it comes to education spending, middle-income Americans typically don’t put their money where their mouth is. How often do we hear politicians and parents wax poetic about education being the great equalizer? Yet they do nothing about lopsided budgets that favor wealthier districts. It’s impossible for education to be an equalizer if budgets don’t meet every kid’s needs.

In a noble attempt to level the education playing field, in October a Maryland state panel, known as the Kirwan Commission, voted to recommend a new funding formula that calls for spending to increase by $4 billion per year by 2030. About a third of that increase, $1.2 billion, would come from local municipalities, with the state picking up the remaining $2.8 billion per year — 37 percent more than it currently spends. The increases would be phased in over the course of this decade. How to pay for this plan, which would certainly benefit low-income districts, will ultimately be determined by lawmakers during the 2020 legislative session.

If education financing systems could talk, they would say middle- and upper-class Americans don’t like paying for the education of poor children.

There are many states that have passed new laws that mitigate large funding disparities between rich and poor districts, but, if fully funded, Maryland would become “the first in the country to prioritize equitable distribution of funds among school systems,” according to reporting from the radio station WAMU 88.5 FM.

Read the full article about education funding by Andre Perry at The Hechinger Report.