U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos and her team are giving states and districts an extra year to comply with new financial transparency requirements in the Every Student Succeeds that are aimed at shining a light on how much schools spend on each student. And at least one key civil rights group is unhappy about the delay.
ESSA calls for states to report per-pupil expenditures for all their schools on school report cards for the first time beginning in the 2017-18 school year. The requirement was intended in part to help local policymakersâand the public figure out if there are significant spending disparities between schools that serve high percentages of poor kids and other schools, and whether schools that lag behind in student achievement are getting as much money as more successful schools.
When ESSA passed, civil rights advocates were excited about the new transparency around per-pupil spending. But school superintendents and state leaders warned that providing that sort of detailed data on such a tight timeline could be a tough lift. The Education Department is giving states until the 2018-19 school year to begin putting the per-pupil expenditure information on their report cards…
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