At CRPE, our previous finance research centered on how funding systems could support the growth of charter schools and portfolio-style governance, with a strong emphasis on equity, transparency, and flexibility in resource allocation. We examined how traditional formulas often disadvantaged schools of choice and studied weighted or student-based funding models that might better match dollars to student needs.
Today, our focus has shifted to how education finance can help schools recover and adapt in the face of disruption. We study how pandemic-era funding was used, what lessons districts learned, and how the expiration of those funds creates new fiscal challenges. We also examine how shifting federal priorities—such as efforts to scale back or restructure education funding—affect schools’ capacity to innovate, sustain supports, and equitably serve all students. Across this evolution, our commitment remains the same: to understand how funding systems can be designed to meet student needs while enabling schools to respond to change.
Public school districts are facing an existential threat. Demographic shifts and school choice policies are exacerbating declining enrollment. A diminishing role for the federal Department of Education alongside broad economic uncertainty could further erode state and local revenues.
The changing landscape of education under new federal legislation places heavy responsibility on states to create policies that ensure better student outcomes amid tight fiscal realities.
Student enrollment is falling at public schools across the country, impacting funding streams and threatening financial solvency, as schools continue to be on the hook for considerable fixed costs like loans or debts.
In May 2025, we spoke with about a dozen superintendents across the country—and others who work closely with them—about challenges stemming from recent national events, including a much smaller United States Department of Education (ED), likely changes in federal Title I funding and oversight, and the various executive orders aimed at shifting more responsibility to the state and local levels.
I was shocked recently when I read about school enrollment declines in Salt Lake City. Both the public elementary schools I attended are among the many slated for closure, and the district is slowly losing about 3% of its enrollment every year.
The Trump administration is following the Project 2025 agenda, vowing to turn federal education programs into block grants or issue blanket waivers that would let states see money in any way they want.
No shortage of ideas abound about how to address post-pandemic learning loss, mental health problems and low school attendance. But the best-sounding ideas may make demands on schools and other public agencies that they often can’t meet.
