The U.S. Department of Education made recent technical changes reducing eligibility for the Rural and Low-Income School Program. Given smaller budgets and lower economies of scale, rural districts may be less able to absorb short-term funding cuts and experience stronger negative achievement effects. Kansas implemented a state-level finance change (block grant funding) after 2015, which froze district revenue regardless of enrollment and reduced funding in districts where enrollment increased. Difference-in-differences models compare achievement before and after block grant implementation to estimate effects of funding cuts separately in rural and nonrural districts. Between-state and within-state comparisons offer complementary identification strategies in which the strengths of one approach help address limitations of the other. Revenue/spending reductions are similar by geography but represent a larger fraction of rural district budgets. Results indicate that revenue reductions have larger implications for achievement in rural areas, where they represent a larger proportion of the total budget.

美国教育部最近进行了技术更改，降低了农村和低收入学校计划的资格。鉴于较小的预算和较低的规模经济，农村地区吸收短期资金削减的能力可能会降低，并会经历更强的负面成就效应。堪萨斯州在 2015 年之后实施了州级财政改革（整笔拨款），无论入学率如何，都冻结了地区收入，并减少了入学率增加的地区的资金。差异中的差异模型比较了整体拨款实施前后的成就，以分别估计农村和非农村地区资金削减的影响。州间和州内比较提供了互补的识别策略，其中一种方法的优势有助于解决另一种方法的局限性。收入/支出减少在地域上相似，但占农村地区预算的较大部分。结果表明，收入减少对农村地区的成就影响更大，在农村地区占总预算的比例更大。