One effect of the federal stimulus funding for K-12 has been to create an impression that schools are suffering today because of the economic downturn. This is true. But the downturn is not the sole reason for their financial pains…nor is it the principal reason.

As Education|Evolving partners and associates have worked around the country it has become increasingly apparent that the annual routine of raising spending and cutting services to balance school budgets cannot continue. There is a sort of collective acknowledgment by many school administrators that the system is not sustainable. They get the sense, as one superintendent has put it, that they are merely “managing decline.”