NEPC Review: Financial Crisis Looming for K-12 Schools? Flexibility Needed, Not Bailouts (Heritage Foundation, April 2020)
A Heritage Foundation report argues that special interest groups are pushing for excessive federal relief. Such spending, the report suggests, will come at the immediate expense of priorities like national defense. It recommends that instead of increasing spending, policy leaders should renegotiate teacher contracts, trim administrative “bloat,” and give schools more discretion over how to spend their reduced budgets. But the report’s findings and recommendations are poorly grounded, and its selective use of data presents a misleading picture of the school funding landscape.