It could help,” she added, but “if we’re spending all of our time … focused on the level and allocation of school funding, we’re missing other important things.” To do this work, Reber and her colleagues used data collected by the Census Bureau, which surveys school districts on their spending and enrollment. (Credit: Brookings)They found that spending allocations across these five poverty brackets is U-shaped, with the poorest and wealthiest districts spending the most. In the report, the authors note that their findings might seem to contradict other reports on school funding equity that suggest primarily non-white and high-poverty school districts receive less funding. They point to the widely cited 2019 report from EdBuild, which found “predominantly white school districts get $23 billion more than their nonwhite peers.”