California continues to underfund its schools

Valuable new report from California Budget Project.

Rising to the Challenge: Why Greater Investment in K-12 Education Matters for California's Students

A new CBP School Finance Facts compares California student demographics, education spending, and school staffing to that in the rest of the US, and finds that the state's investment in K-12 schools lags the nation even as California faces unique challenges in educating its 6.2 million public school students.Rising to the Challenge: Why Greater Investment in K-12 Education Matters for California's Students shows that:

• California invests less in K-12 education than other states, despite having greater financial resources. California's per capita income ($47,115) was higher than for the rest of the US ($43,905) in 2012-13. This same year, the rest of the nation invested 4.04 percent of total personal income in K-12 education, a level more than one-fourth (27 percent) higher than the 3.18 percent in California.

• California's 1.3 million English learners (ELs) nearly equal the combined number of ELs in the next four most populous states -- Texas, New York, Florida, and Illinois -- even though these four states together have roughly twice as many students as California.