How Is Louisiana’s K-12 Education Funding Being Spent?

National education researcher Mark Schneider from American Enterprise Institute recently wrote about the massive amount of money the United States spends on elementary and secondary education, how little we know about how it’s actually spent, and how, sadly, it’s not leading to much improvement in student achievement.

The spending is from federal, state, and local tax dollars, and in addition to being a large sum overall, it’s also more than most other countries spend on education. Schneider pointed out, “Except for tiny Luxembourg, the United States spends more money on education than every other OECD country and exceeds the OECD average by over 50 percent.”

Louisiana spends big money on education, too, spending the most in the Southeast on a per student basis, and by a large margin.

Total K-12 education funding for Louisiana peaked at over $8.2 billion in FY24. Much of this was attributable to big increases in federal pandemic recovery money received, but the portion of the state’s education budget coming from state revenues has also increased over the past decade. Louisiana’s general fund supplied about $3.5 billion for education in FY14 and now exceeds $4.2 billion. Total state effort toward K-12 education in FY25 is budgeted at over $4.7 billion.

At the same time, public school student enrollment has decreased by about 35,000 students from 2014 to 2024.

Like national spending, questions have arisen about how Louisiana public education dollars are being spent relative to student achievement gains. The Louisiana Department of Education began publishing school-level spending information on its website several years ago and then migrated the information to its “School Finder” website, which allows users to learn about different public schools throughout Louisiana. It displays information on school and school system per-student spending, revenue, central office spending, and largest areas of spending in broad categories.

The Pelican Institute also added an education dashboard to its website to help citizens easily compare finance, demographic, student achievement, and school performance data across school systems.

While Louisiana public schools have managed to achieve some notable academic gains over the years, the rate of improvement has been slow and the state remains, on average, below pre-COVID levels in some subjects. Overall, just 35 percent of students are performing at proficient levels. Out of 69 school systems, 25 experienced declines and 23 held steady compared to 2023.

Whether more money is needed to achieve higher outcomes is debatable. Just last week, education stakeholders gathered at a meeting of the state’s Minimum Foundation Program (MFP) Task Force, which serves as an advisory group to advise the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education with regard to requesting public education funding from the Louisiana Legislature. One local school superintendent (at time marker 2:06:25) called for increased state funding for high school programming when the Louisiana Department of Education (LDOE)’s chief of staff pointed out that his school system hasn’t been pursuing and spending dollars already available through an existing program. He chided him on asking his local school board to spend more local tax dollars unnecessarily.

How can policymakers and the public better understand how money is being spent relative to desired outcomes, and in greater detail? A new tool is on the way. Last year, state lawmakers took education financial transparency to a new level when they passed Act 370. The law requires local school systems to annually publish on their website their most recent budgets as well as semiannual reports detailing actual revenue, receipts, expenditures, and disbursements, including information about contracts. Budgets must be posted by September 30 of each year, and the more detailed information must be posted by March 31 and September 30 of each year.

The legislation calls for the Louisiana Department of Treasury to work with LDOE and school systems to make the information easily accessible. In the months since, the agencies have been developing a user-friendly portal where the public can easily access financial information for all Louisiana public school systems on a single site, allowing users to compare school systems, explore a particular area of spending, and even download the raw data for further analysis. They can also connect this information to trends in student achievement and school performance. The portal is expected to go live sometime next spring.

These tools themselves won’t improve student outcomes, but opening the books to see where effective decision-making is (and is not) happening with regard to spending taxpayer money to address the biggest student needs is a critical start. We look forward to seeing how these tools will be put to good use for the benefit of Louisiana’s students and to assure taxpayers that their dollars are being well spent.