Sonya Hoo, Sheila Murray, Kim Rueben:

Real per capita school spending increased by about 50 percent between 1972 and 2002. Spending levels fell in the late 1970s and early 1980s, reflecting declines in student populations and funding that grew more slowly than inflation. However, those real declines were reversed by the mid-1980s.
Although school districts are the primary supplier of education services, they do not always have independent authority to set spending levels or raise revenues. The ability to set expenditure levels depends in part on the taxing authority of school districts. School districts in 36 states are designated independent, meaning they may generate their own revenues, usually by setting property tax rates. In the other states, some school districts are dependent on a city, town, or county to raise revenues. For example, most school districts in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island are city- or towndependent, while districts in Maryland and North Carolina are primarily dependent on counties. Other states have a mix of both dependent and independent school districts, with dependent school districts generally found in larger cities. Most dependent school districts are on the East Coast.