In recent years, despite China’s sustained expansion of public investment in education, pronounced regional disparities in educational development persist, revealing the practical constraints of the existing fiscal sharing structure in advancing equity objectives. In particular, the mechanism through which the allocation of fiscal responsibilities between central and local governments influences educational equity performance remains insufficiently examined in a systematic and empirical manner. From the perspective of fiscal structure, this study seeks to identify and explicate the evolutionary trajectory of educational fiscal equity in China, as well as its underlying institutional determinants. To this end, the study constructs a fiscal performance evaluation framework comprising seven core indicators. Objective weights are assigned using the entropy method, and the TOPSIS model is subsequently employed to conduct a comparative ranking analysis of national education fiscal performance over the period from 2013 to 2023. The results indicate that educational fiscal equity has exhibited an overall upward trend during the study period; however, its evolution displays clear stage-specific characteristics. In the initial phase, improvements in equity were primarily driven by fiscal expansion, leading to rapid gains. In the subsequent period, progress became increasingly constrained by structural optimization bottlenecks, with fiscal performance gradually stabilizing at a plateau in more recent years. Further analysis reveals that the persistently heavy fiscal burden borne by local governments, coupled with the relatively limited regulatory and equalization capacity of the central government, constitutes a key structural impediment to the sustained improvement of educational equity. By elucidating the internal mechanism through which the allocation of fiscal responsibilities shapes educational equity performance, this study provides both theoretical grounding and quantitative support for deepening fiscal system reform and optimizing policies related to the allocation of educational resources.