How Performance-Based Funding Can Improve Education (from Brookings)

Is the annual expenditure on U.S. public elementary and secondary education appropriate and sustainable?  Reasonable people can disagree whether the current $600+ billion—5.4 percent of the nation’s GDP—is too much or not enough, especially when considering the different federal, state, and local jurisdictions involved.  However, there are increasing signs that it is likely not sustainable at its present, relatively low level of productivity.

In this era of middling economic performance and constrained government resources, new thinking about how we fund public education is critical.  The current system is opaque by allocating revenue almost entirely upon student attendance or enrollment, which misaligns incentives for improving outcomes.

Click here to read the rest of this article at the Brookings Institution Brown Center on Education Policy