As part of the Brookings Scholar Lecture Series, Brookings Mountain West presents a lecture titled, "Improving Schools to Promote Upward Mobility: The Promise and Limits of School Finance Reforms" by Brookings senior fellow in economic studies, Sarah Reber.

Systematic differences in access to high-quality schools by race, income, and other characteristics perpetuate inequality across generations. Local property tax financing of schools is often identified as a key cause of unequal educational opportunity. While the consensus of rigorous research supports the common intuition that, on average, “money matters” in improving educational outcomes, questions about how much, and under what conditions, school funding affects performance remain unresolved. To improve schools, should policymakers and advocates focus primarily on increasing funding, or are other reforms equally (or more) important?

In this lecture, Brookings Cabot Family Senior Fellow in Economic Studies Sarah Reber explains how schools in the United States are funded, how that has changed over time, which schools have the least (and most) funding, and what it means for inequality and economic mobility.