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What role should the federal government play in education?”
K-12 education in the United States is predominantly under the authority of states. According to Pew Research, the federal government provided about 13.6% of total funding for K-12 schools in FY 2022, the most recently available data. This means state and local sources fund a significant majority of K-12 expenses. State-level education funding also extends into early learning and higher education.
In Indiana, preschool, K-12 and higher education account for more than 60% of the state’s budget. The federal government provides additional funding for states across the education spectrum, such as Title I grants through the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which provide financial assistance to schools with high percentages of students from low-income families who might need additional learning support to meet grade-level standards. Additionally, the federal government plays a critical role in higher education through grants and loans, enabling students to afford the cost of college. In fiscal year 2024, for example, 6.3 million American students received $33.9 billion in grants for college.
One of the most critical roles the federal government plays in education is overseeing K-12 academic achievement outcomes and ensuring each state, and our nation overall, is monitoring how our students are performing. Why is this important? Because our continued ability to flourish as a country is rooted in the ability of our young people to obtain an education that prepares them to contribute to the economic and civic vitality of their local communities once they become adults. As every organizational leader understands, you cannot assess how your organization is performing unless you regularly collect and analyze outcomes data. This same principle applies when it comes to monitoring K-12 student academic achievement levels, such as the percentage of students who can read and perform math successfully.
Since 1969, states have administered the National Assessment of Educational Progress—known as The Nation’s Report Card—under the auspices of the National Center for Education Statistics. NAEP enables us to track student learning outcomes using a common set of measures across every state. Before 1969, at a national level, we tracked only education inputs—for example, per-pupil expenditures, student attendance rates, teacher salaries—but not education outputs. For more than 50 years, NAEP results have allowed each state and our nation as a whole to develop policies and practices and establish funding priorities informed by student learning outcomes data.
“The Mississippi Miracle” is one example of how NAEP can inform policy and practice, leading to improved outcomes. In 2013, after observing that their NAEP scores were far below the national average, Mississippi leaders revamped the state’s academic standards and literacy instruction policies and practices. This translated into significant improvements in NAEP scores by 2019, with student proficiency levels on par with the national average. Mississippi’s revised literacy instruction policies and practices now serve as a national model and helped inspire Indiana’s own recent literacy instruction overhaul.
While education is largely driven by states, the federal government plays a crucial role regularly collecting, analyzing and disseminating student academic achievement data so that we have a collective understanding of how well America is preparing our children for promising futures.
Given the rapidly increasing pace of change we are experiencing globally—driven in large part by factors like automation and artificial intelligence—the need for valid and reliable data about how our students are performing both nationally and within each state is more important than ever.•
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Fiddian-Green is president and CEO of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation, whose mission is to advance the vitality of Indianapolis and the well-being of its people. Send comments to [email protected].
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