While Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. is best known for his inspirational leadership in bringing down legal barriers to civil rights for Black Americans and other people of color, he also emphasized the need to reduce poverty and expand opportunity to achieve true racial justice. This MLK Day, we would do well to remember that state tax codes are a critical lever for policymakers not only to...
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POLICY INSIGHT
BEYOND THE NUMBERS
BEYOND THE NUMBERS
As School Year Begins, Time for States to Invest in Schools
August 22, 2019
As children across the country begin a new school year, their schools’ facilities and equipment aren’t as modern as they should be, due to sharp cuts in state funding for school capital projects over the past decade. As a share of the economy, state capital funding for schools — for example, to build new schools, renovate and expand facilities, and install more modern technologies — was still...
States Used 2019 Legislative Sessions to Boost Revenue for Schools, Other Services
June 27, 2019
With a new fiscal year set to begin in most states on July 1, state policymakers have raised revenue for public investments in schools and other areas that will lay a strong foundation for stronger long-term economic growth, and they’ve proposed additional revenue increases that need voter approval.
Many of the revenue increases, like New York’s millionaires’ tax extension or New Mexico...
K-12 Funding Still Lagging in Many States
May 29, 2019
Some states still provide much less K-12 funding per student than in the 2008 school year, when the Great Recession hit, according to new Census Bureau data and state budget documents....
Severe Teacher Shortage Shows States Should Better Fund Schools
April 24, 2019
The country’s severe shortage of qualified public elementary and secondary school teachers, which a new Economic Policy Institute (EPI) report details, demonstrates states’ need to raise adequate revenue not only to boost teacher pay but also to provide the resources that high-quality schools require.
While teacher protests over the...
K-12 Funding Up in Teacher-Strike States, But Room for More Growth
March 6, 2019
Protests by teachers and others helped drive substantial school funding increases over the last year in Arizona, North Carolina, Oklahoma, and West Virginia, four states that had cut school “formula” funding — the main state revenue source for schools — the most over the last decade. Still, formula funding remains well below 2008 levels in these states, as we explain in a...
Report: States Can Use Tax Policy to Advance Racial Equity
November 15, 2018
States and localities can do more to help undo the harmful legacies of racism and the damage of continuing racial bias and discrimination, a major new Center report finds. If state policymakers can design their budget and tax policies to better address these harms and...
North Carolina Tax Cap Threatens Funding for Public Services
October 18, 2018
North Carolina voters will decide in November whether to tighten the cap on the state’s income tax rate, which would make it harder to fund schools, health care, and other public services while overwhelmingly benefiting the state’s wealthiest families.
The ballot measure would amend the state constitution to reduce the cap on...
State, Local Tax Systems Worsening Inequality
October 17, 2018
State and local tax systems can be a powerful tool for boosting economic opportunity, creating broadly shared prosperity, and building equitable state economies. But in nearly every state, they’re reinforcing and often worsening inequality, as the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy shows in a new report.
The new study of the state and local...
K-12 Funding Cuts Contributing to Inadequate Teacher Pay
September 11, 2018
Teachers in every state are paid less on average than other similarly educated workers, according to a new report by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) and the University of California, Berkeley’s Center on Wage and Employment Dynamics (CWED), and the gap is growing. This erosion reflects state policy choices, not weak state...
