Amendments defeated so far include attempts to remove money for additional judges and block implementation of nationwide education standards for math and reading.

The Senate budget represents a 3.7 percent increase from projected spending for this fiscal year.

Negotiators remain far apart on how to fund increases in public schools, including how much to boost spending and where the money will come from.

Gov. Bev Perdue will ask legislators to spend an additional $562 million on K-12 schools and increase the state sales tax in the $20.9 billion budget she plans to release Thursday.

Gov. Corbett said that despite a recent uptick in revenue, his administration will think long and hard before rushing to restore steep cuts proposed in next year's state budget.

Spending from the Education Trust Fund next year would drop as much as $141 million, 2.5 percent, compared to this year.

The budget also closes a projected $200 million deficit in the current year and does not raise taxes beyond those that were raised last year in the largest tax increase in state history.

With fewer than two months before the state budget is due, Gov. Chris Christie said he wants the state Legislature to deliver laws changing the tenure system for public school teachers in a way that will result in decreased taxes for New Jersey residents.

Reflecting increased state tax revenues in recent months due to an improving economy, the bill provides $50 million for the Accountability Block Grants used by school districts for kindergarten and pre-school programs. The accountability grants were zeroed out in Corbett's proposal.

Gov. Jan Brewer signed into law an $8.6 billion budget for next fiscal year that includes increases for certain education, public-safety and health programs but also puts $450 million into a "rainy-day fund."

ALEC's 17th edition of the Report Card on American Education contains a comprehensive overview of educational achievement levels (performance and gains for low-income students) for the 50 states and the District of Columbia (see full report for complete methodology). The Report Card details what education policies states currently have in place and pro

The sixth-annual Tennessee Pork Report is chock-full yet again, of waste, fraud, abuse, and mismanagement of taxpayer money by state and local government officials. Despite a changing political landscape in Tennessee, wasteful government spending has not disappeared.

Gov. Mitch Daniels Numerous signed legislation that implemented his wide-ranging reform agenda, including expanding the school options available to Indiana families through vouchers and charter school opportunities and increasing accountability for both schools and teachers.

The proposed House budget would eliminate online learning for grades K-6, displacing more than 2,000 students. This would neither save the state money nor serve the interests of Washington's students.

These data are taken from the National Public Education Finance Survey and show major categories of revenue and expenditure for each public school district for fiscal 2004 through fiscal 2008.

This primer does not make policy recommendations. Instead, it explains how revenues are raised for Michigan's elementary and secondary public school system; how money is distributed to education programs and school districts once it is collected by various taxing authorities; and how districts budget monies for the various activities involved in operating schools and other educational programming.

This report is the latest look at the history of enrollment, spending, and achievement in Kansas public
schools using information from the Kansas State Department of Education, the U.S. Department of
Education and the U.S. Census Bureau.

Perhaps no subject in Kansas has been more controversial in recent history than school funding.
Years of court battles earlier in the decade culminated in 2005 with the Kansas Supreme Court
ruling in favor of plaintiffs in Montoy vs. State of Kansas and ordering the Legislature to increase
funding by $853 million. State aid to schools increased by $496 million between the 2004-05
school year and the 2009-10 revised budget and total funding to schools has increased by $1.26
billion.

Analysis of merit pay for teachers and the role of the Florida Education Association in teacher contracts.

The average Connecticut high school graduate cost taxpayers about $133,000 from kindergarten through senior year, according to new research by the Yankee Institute. For high school graduates in the city of Hartford, which has the state's most expensive graduates, that figure climbed to just under $200,000 per graduate, the data shows.

With state and local education budgets under pressure and questions about student achievement front and center, administrators, parents, and teachers are now looking to advanced and increasingly less-expensive technology as a way to help address some of the current issues in education. One school district in particular, the Mooresville Graded School District, in Mooresville, NC stands out as an example of how technology can help improve student achievement in times of tightening budgets

South Carolina should refuse federal No Child Left Behind Funds and the accompanying mandates and find a way to fund poor school districts adequately.

Online learning can help at-risk students and is also cost-effective. Per pupil costs at the state’s virtual charter schools are an estimated 25 percent to 65 percent lower than at traditional public schools.

The state should discontinue the confusing practice of allocating funds to each school district using various funding formulas. Coupled with open enrollment for schools statewide, student-centered funding would ensure that schools of the parents' choosing receive funds necessary to educate each child and nothing more. The state should also implement a merit pay system for teachers that will pay a portion of their salary based on the value that they add to their students' academic performance.

Parents should have more control over how tax funds are spent on their own children. Our state should allow more freedom for parents to choose - or even create - public schools that best meet their children's needs. T

Explanation and review of virtual education in Arkansas.

Funding for core Arkansas government functions-education, corrections and transportation-could occur at slightly increased rates while other operations are frozen at current levels, providing $31 million in savings to cut state income, capital gains and grocery tax rates.

The idea behind student based budgeting (SBB) is for school dollars to be dispersed on a per-pupil basis and to follow individual students into schools where the principals determine how the money is best spent.

The Texas Taxpayer Savings Grant Program is designed to reduce the amount of general revenue spent on public education by reducing enrollment in and the associated costs of the state’s public K-12 schools. The program works by reimbursing parents and legal guardians for “the amount of actual tuition costs or 60 percent of the state average per- pupil spending maintenance and operations expenditures, whichever is less,” should they choose to enroll their child in a private school, rather than a Texas public school.

Converting these statistics into actual budget savings involves a combination of straightforward "eat your vegetables" cuts, and process innovations like privatization that generate savings through "second-order" incentive changes throughout the system.