The latest findings from U.S. Census data rank Illinois as second worst among the 50 states in high reliance on local revenue for financing public education, and low reliance on state funding. Only Nevada outranks the Land of Lincoln.
To put it another way, Illinois ranks 49th in the percentage of state funding it receives to finance public education.
The federal government’s National Center for Education Statistics recently released a report examining Census data of fiscal year 2006 funding sources for K-12 public education. Local, state and federal revenues comprise funding sources for public education nationwide. Local revenues are made up primarily of property taxes.
Illinois reliance on the three sources is distributed as follows: local, 62 percent; state, 29.6 percent; and federal, 8.4 percent. Nevada ranked worse in its reliance on local funding at 66.9 percent, with state funding tallying 25.9 percent and federal funding totaling 7.1 percent.
The nationwide average for reliance on funding sources is distributed as follows: local, 44.4 percent; state, 46.5 percent; and federal, 9.1 percent.
The Illinois Constitution calls for the state to bear the “primary responsibility” for financing public education, which most of the crafters of the 1970 constitution thought meant 50 percent plus a dollar. But the state has never met that goal.
IEA’s Invest in Excellence initiative calls for providing adequate resources to all preK-12 public schools, and supports the property tax/income tax swap as outlined in Senate Bill 2288.
At the other end of the scale, the No. 1 state for low reliance on local revenues is Vermont, at 6.8 percent. The Green Mountain State gets 85.6 percent of its education funding from the state, and 7.6 percent from the federal government.