The statements made and views expressed are solely the responsibility of the authors. Wigger and Xiong are grateful for financial support from the US Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences through its Multidisciplinary Program in Education Sciences (Grant Award # R305B140042). The views expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Bureau of Economic Research. At least one co-author has disclosed a financial relationship of potential relevance for this research. Further information is available online at http://www.nber.org/papers/w24203.ack NBER working papers are circulated for discussion and comment purposes. They have not been peerreviewed or been subject to the review by the NBER Board of Directors that accompanies official NBER publications.

During the Great Recession, national public school per-pupil spending fell by roughly 7 percent and persisted beyond the recovery. The impact of such large and sustained education funding cuts is not well understood. To examine this, first, we document that the recessionary drop in spending coincided with the end of decades-long national growth in both test scores and college-going. Next, we show that this stalled educational progress was particularly pronounced in states that experienced larger recessionary budget cuts for plausibly exogenous reasons. To isolate budget cuts that were unrelated to (i) other ill-effects of the recession or (ii) endogenous state policies, we use states’ historical reliance on state-appropriated funds (which are more sensitive to the business cycle) to fund public schools interacted with the timing of the recession as instruments for reductions in school spending. Cohorts exposed to these spending cuts had lower test scores and lower college-going rates. The spending cuts led to larger test score gaps by income and race. (JEL E32, H52, H75, I21, I28, J15)