About This Lesson
The Education Center of the Columbia Policy Institute (CPI) created a lesson on the prevalent public school funding mechanisms in the United States, focusing on how such funding structures perpetuate educational disparities and academic achievement gaps. Through a comprehensive literature review, CPI researchers synthesized insights from diverse sources—including newspapers, think tank reports, and peer-reviewed journals—and transformed this scholarly work into an engaging lesson. In this lesson, the Center leverages state-specific case studies to illustrate broader patterns in school funding models. Emphasizing the real-world implications of different public school funding approaches, the lesson highlights their myriad outcomes, such as widening achievement gaps and the equitable distribution of per-pupil funding. Moreover, it underscores the critical link between funding levels, educator retention, and overall school resources. Culminating with evidence-based policy solutions drawn from the academic literature, the lesson equips students with a deeper understanding of the complexities of the American education funding system. Complementing this lesson plan is a dynamic PowerPoint presentation, also accessible to educators, which features active learning activities interspersed throughout an informative lecture comprising the majority of the presentation. The PowerPoint presentation should be used to visually facilitate the lesson to students, and this lesson plan, to inform and guide that facilitation. At its core, the creation of this lesson reflects CPI's commitment to empowering students with the knowledge needed to navigate and advocate for improvements in the education landscape.
Authors: Yunseo Kim, Cora Cole, Roselyn Rojas Rodriguez, Jorge Hernandez-Perez, and Nori Leybengrub
