When Vermont considers merging school districts or rewriting its education funding formula, two questions follow: Will students get better opportunities, and what will taxpayers pay?
Tammy Kolbe, the newly elected chair of Vermont’s State Board of Education, has spent years examining those questions. Her research includes comparisons of other states’ funding systems, an investigation of educational and taxpayer inequities in New Hampshire, and guidance to Vermont lawmakers on designing a foundation formula.
That background has immediate relevance. As VTDigger reported, the board is developing standards for evaluating school district merger proposals while also working on statewide graduation requirements. Kolbe, previously the vice chair, was elected to complete a chair’s term ending in February 2027.
Her published work provides a detailed picture of what she brings to those decisions: experience examining how different systems distribute resources, what drives educational costs, and how to test claims about savings.
A record that extends beyond Vermont
Kolbe was the lead author of Vermont’s 2019 pupil-weighting study. That project included a national policy review and detailed examinations of nine states: Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Wyoming.
The comparisons examined how states account for differences in student needs and educational costs. The study also used regional data from Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Massachusetts in its cost analysis.
Her expertise centers on research and policy analysis. The American Institutes for Research, where she is a managing researcher, identifies specialties including education finance, cost modeling, and special education funding. She also leads national research on special education spending.
That work provides a basis for comparing Vermont’s arrangements with alternatives—and for examining the details behind claims that another system works better.
In New Hampshire, the question included who paid
Kolbe coauthored a 2020 study of New Hampshire school funding that examined educational opportunities alongside property wealth and tax burdens.
The findings illustrated why statewide spending averages can conceal substantial differences.
In AIR’s explanation of the research, the researchers reported that high-poverty districts generally imposed higher property-tax rates while receiving less, or no more, funding than lower-poverty districts. Student outcomes were also lower in the high-poverty districts.
The team proposed funding adjustments and alternatives for raising revenue more equitably. It developed a simulator allowing policymakers to examine effects on district funding and local tax rates. Those were proposed and modeled changes, rather than measured results following implementation.
For Vermont, the study offers a concrete comparison: evaluating a system requires examining both the opportunities it provides students and the effort required of taxpayers to support them.
A different formula does not answer every question
A foundation formula generally starts with a base funding amount and adjusts it for student needs and other recognized costs. Decisions about how to raise the money—and how much local spending to permit—remain consequential.
Kolbe addressed those choices in a January 2025 presentation to Vermont lawmakers. She explained that states’ formulas differ and cautioned against comparing their base amounts or weights without accounting for different costs, goals, and calculation methods.
Foundation funding is not entirely absent from Vermont’s own history. A 2024 study of state finance reforms describes the original Act 60 system as combining a foundation grant with an equalized mechanism for additional local spending. The relevant comparison is how a particular design changes funding, tax burdens, and responsibility for spending decisions.
Michigan shows what changed—and what taxpayers traded
An example outside Kolbe’s documented project record illustrates the distinction between property-tax relief and lower educational costs.
Michigan’s 1994 Proposal A shifted school funding toward the state. A Michigan Senate Fiscal Agency analysis reported that school operating property-tax rates fell from roughly 33 mills to 6 mills for owner-occupied property. Replacement revenue included an increase in the sales tax from 4% to 6%, along with other tax changes.
That reduced school operating property taxes, but households’ overall results depended on the combination of taxes they paid.
There was evidence of educational benefit as well. Economist Leslie Papke’s study using Michigan district data through 2003–04 found that spending increases had statistically significant effects on mathematics pass rates, with larger effects in initially low-performing districts.
The example demonstrates that a state can change its financing structure and produce measurable benefits. Those benefits involved shifting the tax burden and increasing resources in some districts; they were not evidence that a different formula automatically made education cheaper.
Mergers need their own evidence
Changing district boundaries is a separate decision from changing the funding formula.
Combining school districts changes governance; combining school buildings changes where students attend. A proposal may involve either or both.
Research offers differing results. A study of rural New York district consolidation found cost savings, partly offset by transition costs, particularly capital spending.
An Arkansas study, examining mandatory consolidation of districts below an enrollment threshold, found either no effect or small positive effects on achievement. It found no evidence that consolidation reduced overall costs or increased the share of resources spent in classrooms.
Kolbe’s legislative presentation addressed this uncertainty. She called for identifying what efficiencies a merger would produce, when they would occur, and their dollar value. Funding adjustments, she explained, could be phased to match the timing of savings.
She also identified a question that survives consolidation: how a larger district allocates money among its individual schools. Different student populations can require different resources even under one school board.
A county-system connection, with work underway
AIR lists Kolbe as a contact for its resource-allocation project with Nevada’s Clark County School District.
The project is testing ways to turn district finance and personnel data into information useful for staffing and budgeting decisions. Its stated goals include tools for the district’s 2027–28 budgeting process.
That connects her to work within a county school system, although the project is ongoing and its public description does not yet report savings or improved student outcomes.
What happens next
The State Board’s forthcoming merger standards will give communities a clearer view of how proposals will be evaluated. According to VTDigger’s reporting, Kolbe said the board intends to make its expectations available so local study committees know what to anticipate.
Kolbe brings experience examining how other states organize education funding, account for students’ needs, and distribute costs among taxpayers. Her work gives her a basis for comparing Vermont’s choices with approaches used elsewhere.
Research from other states documents educational gains and, in some cases, cost savings. Those successes come with different conditions and tradeoffs, but they establish that Vermont has alternatives to examine.
As chair, Kolbe will bring that expertise into decisions involving local school boards, educators, families, taxpayers, and lawmakers with deeply held views about their schools. How she translates her comparative knowledge into the board’s standards and decisions—and how those communities respond—remains to be seen.