The latest edition of "Quality Counts 2018" takes a detailed look at what is behind this year's school finance grades from the Education Week Research Center, first reported as part of the annual state-by-state ranking of the nation's schools released in January. Under the new "Quality Counts" format, this second of three installments digs deep into data illuminating school finance from two important angles: (1) Overall state-by-state spending; and (2) Funding equity, or just how fairly that money is spent. It looks at the C rating the nation received on school finance in January's top-line report card, revealing much better performance on indicators of funding equity than on measures of overall spending: a B (86.5) for equity, but a D-minus (62.3) for spending. Articles in this issue include: (1) What's Behind Mediocre Scores on School Finance Report Card (Sterling C. Lloyd); (2) Equity in Funding: More than Just Dollars (Daarel Burnette, II); and (3) States Squeezed by Fiscal Pressures, Political Rifts in Financing Education (Daarel Burnette, II). [For the first installment of this three part series, see ED580226.]