Giving Compass' Take:

· Governing Magazine analyzes the disparities in school spending in different districts throughout the United States and explains that one of the biggest factors is property tax.

· How can states improve funding for low-income schools? Why is it important for schools to receive additional funding for their local challenges? 

· Here is a state by state report of education spending and results. 

The Hopatcong School District, serving a solidly middle-class borough of Sussex County, N.J., has a lot of money to work with. It spent approximately $40,000 per student in fiscal 2016 -- more than any other school district in the country with at least 1,000 students. A few other New Jersey districts of similar size were spending less than a third of that.

Such vast differences in education spending are common across districts, and come as debates over teacher pay and demands for more overall state support have garnered a lot of attention this year.

Looking at how spending varies across individual districts, Governing calculated per pupil current spending for all school districts in the nation with 100 students or more, using data from the Census Bureau’s 2016 Annual Survey of School System Finances. In most states, as in New Jersey, the top elementary-secondary school districts reported spending from two to six times more than those near the bottom.

One measure frequently used to assess education spending disparities is the coefficient of variation, calculated using districts’ financial numbers. When weighted for enrollment, per pupil spending discrepancies were largest in Alaska, Illinois and Vermont -- more than three times as much as in states with more uniformity across their districts.

Read the full article about school spending by Mike Maciag at Governing Magazine.