Giving Compass' Take:

• Jill Barshay discusses the deep academic disadvantages -- particularly for marginalized communities -- of COVID-19 budget cuts on schools.

• Why are marginalized areas more susceptible to damage from COVID-19 budget cuts? What can we do address that? How can you work to support educators as they struggle to stay afloat through the pandemic?

• Locate funds to support education during COVID-19.

A few weeks ago, in July 2020, education finance experts explained to journalists how schools across the country are going to be hit with big funding cuts this year.

Superintendents and principals will have to find ways to trim after they’ve already made their purchases and hired their teachers for the school year at a time when schools need extra money for masks, disinfectants, janitors —  and remote learning technology.

The last time that schools had to slash spending was after the 2008 recession. Publishing in the summer 2020 issue of Education Next, a team of three economists led by Kirabo Jackson of Northwestern University found student achievement suffered in proportion to how much funding was cut. Specifically, they calculated that a $1,000 reduction in per-pupil spending after the 2008 recession reduced reading and math test scores by about 1.6 percentile points and college going by 2.6 percent.

State budget cuts had the effect of increasing achievement gaps for both low-income students and students of color. A $1,000 spending cut increased the gap in tests scores between Black and white students by 6 percent, the economists found.

“The great recession impacted all student learning but it particularly impacted low- income and minority student learning,” said Griffith.

Scholars have been debating the importance of money in education for decades. And it’s easy to find examples of waste and mismanagement in school bureaucracies. Of course, money could be spent more efficiently. And it’s certainly possible to find one school district that manages to teach its kids more with less money than a district next door.

But given current labor contracts and a national preference for small class sizes, more money tends to be correlated with higher achievement. And less money seems to drag achievement down.

Read the full article about COVID-19 budget cuts in schools by Jill Barshay at The Hechinger Report.