Do Massachusetts's schools have enough money to provide their students with a quality education? That's the question that motivated our recent report called "Cutting Class." And what we found is that in many areas the answer seems to be no. Schools across the state are hiring fewer teachers, providing less professional development, and spending less on materials & technology than the state funding formula considers adequate.

Twenty years ago, Massachusetts introduced a whole new system of education funding, built around what they called the Foundation Budget. For every district, the state does three things: 1) it calculates how much money is required to provide a quality education to every student in that district; 2) it determines how much money the local community can reasonably contribute towards that goal; and 3) it makes up the difference.

Over time, however, the Foundation Budget has not kept up with the changing costs of education. Currently, it underestimates health insurance costs by more than $1 billion dollars, and special education costs by another billion. On several occasions, the state has also failed to make inflation adjustments indicated by the law.

To compensate, many districts end up using money that would otherwise have supported core education programs--especially the hiring of teachers. The lowest-wealth districts, in particular, spend 32 percent less on regular education teachers than is specified in the foundation budget formula.

You can read the full report at our website, and you can also use our online interactive tool to look more closely at individual districts.