K-12 Education: Untangled — Trends, Issues, and Parental Actions for Public Schools
Raising kids can be tough! I know because I’ve been a single mom who raised two kids on my own. And when they get in the K-12 public education system, learning the ins and outs of that system can get you all tangled up, especially when you’re a parent of color. You need to know about the current trends and issues as well as resources necessary to navigate within the system. That’s what the K-12 Education: Untangled podcast is all about — providing you with tools, information and practical actions to help you and your children succeed within the complexities of K-12 public education.
K-12 Education: Untangled — Trends, Issues, and Parental Actions for Public Schools
Episode 119: Unpacking Racial Discrepancies in School Funding
Imagine navigating the public school system as a parent, only to find that your child's educational opportunities are deeply tied to the color of their skin. That's been my journey as an African American mom and education advocate. Join me as I open the door to a crucial conversation about the persistent racial disparities in school funding and their impact on students of color. Together, we'll uncover how the relationship between per-pupil expenditures and academic achievement is more than just numbers—it's about fairness and the future of our kids. I dissect the significant gaps that still exist, despite numerous reforms, and explore the role of state school finance systems in tackling these inequities.
The episode doesn't shy away from the hard truths surrounding systemic inequities, particularly affecting the Latinx community in states like Texas, Arizona, New Mexico, and California. Ever wondered how a $23 billion funding gap emerges between majority-White and non-White school districts? I discuss the stark realities of hyper-racial segregation and local property taxes that fuel these disparities. Through insightful discussion, you'll learn about potential solutions like court-ordered state finance reform that could pave the way toward educational equity. This is a conversation about understanding those disparities to forge a path toward more equitable education for every student, regardless of their background.
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Welcome to another episode of K-12 Education Untangled.
Speaker 1:My name is Dr Kim J Fields, former corporate manager turned education researcher and advocate, and I'm the host of this podcast. I got into this space after dealing with some frustrating interactions with school educators and administrators, as well as experiencing the microaggressions that I faced as an African American mom raising my two kids, who were in the public school system. I really wanted to understand how teachers were trained and what the research provided about the challenges of the public education system. Once I gained the information and the insights that I needed, I was then equipped to be able to successfully support my children in their education and progress. This battle-tested experience is what I provide as action steps for you to take. It's like enjoying a bowl of educational research with a sprinkling of mother wisdom on top. If you're looking to find out more about current information and issues in public education that could affect you and your children, and the action steps that you can take to give your children the advantages they need, then you're in the right place. Thanks for tuning in today. I know that staying informed about K-12 public education trends and topics is important to you, so keep listening.
Speaker 1:In this episode, I'll be discussing racial disparities in school funding and its impact on students of color. Once again, the issue of inequities in education raises its head. This time it pertains to racial disparities in school funding and how a lack of sufficient resources specifically impacts students of color. It turns out school funding does matter. The challenge is whether school finance reform translates to improved student outcomes. The critical question to address is does the amount of per-pupil expenditures and the specific allocation of those expenditures matter as far as academic outcomes for students of color? I address this question and other pertinent issues surrounding inequities in school funding in this episode. Let's untangle this.
Speaker 1:Specific types of school spending can facilitate the relationship between expenditures and student outcomes, yet race remains related to school funding disparities, as well as school experiences, in ways that raise concerns about the role of school finance in perpetuating racial opportunity gaps. School funding matters because of the educational goods and services that money can buy. The specific types of spending include reductions in class size, increased instructional time, higher teacher salaries and infrastructure capital outlay. The relationship between revenue and student outcomes raises concerns about racial disparities in spending patterns. If spending matters for student achievement, racial disparities in spending patterns. If spending matters for student achievement, racial disparities in resources can play a role in the racial opportunity gap. No doubt recent research has found evidence of racial disparities in school district resources. Understanding how spending patterns vary with racial segregation is key to understanding racial disparities in educational opportunities.
Speaker 1:In recent decades, school spending increased due to school finance reforms and this led to increased student performance, educational attainment and adult outcomes. Reform-induced spending resulted in improvements in standardized test performance rates of high school graduation, college enrollment, college completion and adult earnings. Low-income students in low-income districts benefited from increases in funding. Spending on specific educational goods and services matters for student achievement, especially if spending is used for instruction, class size and teacher quality. Smaller class sizes and high quality teachers cost more money. Increases in instructional spending play a role in Black student outcomes. Funding for facilities, enrichment services and school and district leadership may improve outcomes by creating a context in which students can focus on learning.
Speaker 1:How do school districts make spending decisions? Fiscally independent school districts have the authority to levy taxes. School districts also receive state and federal funds to be dispersed to schools in the district. Spending practices in schools are largely dictated by district-level factors, which include labor contracts that determine staff salaries, salary schedules, class size and the academic calendar, as well as earmarks for specific programs or populations, policies on teachers' ability to choose the school where they work, voter levies and referendums for educational funding programs, as well as parent and community advocacy and the distribution of district forms that determine spending levels. School district spending is largely influenced by past practice. Budgets are often approved by the Board of Education and the public on a yearly basis. To sum it up, districts are essentially the entity that translates funding into expenditures.
Speaker 1:There is a significant relationship between racial segregation or racial disparities in school expenditures. Additionally, racial disparities, racial segregation and poverty seem to be directly related to spending priorities. For example, racial disparities and poverty may lead to lower spending as a result of preferences and characteristics of teachers. There's a large amount of research that indicates that high poverty and high minority schools are, on average, staffed by teachers with less experience, less education and less skill. Teachers also prefer to teach in schools and districts close to where they were raised and that are demographically similar to where they went to high school. Given these two things, funding preferences can reinforce socioeconomic and racial differences in teaching personnel across districts. Teachers are more likely to leave high poverty schools generally and high poverty schools with larger proportions of students of color in particular. Changes in the composition of the school district staff may also result in racial spending disparities in personnel expenditures. The bottom line is that, although race should not be a reason to drive spending, it usually is. It's interesting to note that certain types of spending tend to be associated with some groups and not others.
Speaker 1:School district spending varies in racialized ways. Disparities in school funding exist within and between states, especially for Black and Latinx students. The focus of a recent research study was on Latinx students, who make up over 25% of public school district enrollments in the United States, compared to less than 15% for Black student enrollments. In theory, state school finance systems are designed to one, remediate disparities between local public school districts that come from differences in wealth and revenue, thus raising capacity of those districts, and, two, provide supplemental resources to districts serving needier student populations or facing other cost pressures. Many state school finance systems attempt to explicitly compensate for differences in child poverty rates across districts, although few actually achieve progressive distributions of funding.
Speaker 1:Identifying racial disparities, their magnitude and causes, is a first step toward identifying appropriate remedies for these disparities. Whether those disparities are caused by some factor of race that state school systems have failed to address, or by race itself, what is known is that it's impossible to fix what is not seen or what is not measured. Latinx school districts are significantly more likely to be high need. Low spending districts and the state school finance system that supports those districts were inequitable and poorly resourced. The percentage of Latinx population in certain states was a significant predictor of financial disadvantage. Racial composition itself, above and beyond other economic conditions, affects the cost of achieving common academic outcome goals.
Speaker 1:The most dramatic increases in Latinx populations in the United States public school districts through the early 2000s occurred in smaller cities and large towns which tended to be hubs of the agriculture industry Towns like Lexington, nebraska, dodge City, kansas or Walla Walla Washington. Smaller cities and towns often lack the robust chemical and industrial tax bases of large cities, which limits their capacity to raise local revenues. In addition, smaller cities and towns often carry less weight in state legislatures than do major urban centers. Also, smaller cities and towns are more likely to be predominantly or increasingly Latinx than their larger urban counterparts and may have a more mixed demography by race and class. Research confirms that substantive and sustained school finance reforms positively affects both intermediate outcomes, like test scores and graduation rates, as well as longer-term outcomes for those exposed to increased schooling resources over sufficient durations. History has shown that when school funding has been increased, students have benefited from those increases. When school funding is increased substantially, it typically is leveraged toward more competitive teacher salaries and smaller class sizes tend to leverage their investment toward increased staffing ratios, which in turn support higher education achievement levels, especially for low-income children. The opposite is also true. When substantial cuts are levied across school districts, those cuts fall most significantly on districts serving greater percentages of students from families in poverty.
Speaker 1:School spending disparities facing the Latinx population in America are systemic and substantial. They occur in both the predominantly Latinx states like Texas, arizona, new Mexico and California spending much less on schools given their costs and needs, as well as in predominantly Latinx districts in generally better funded states, which may be left out of school spending, even when there are predominantly more black districts that have fared a little better. And while these disparities have not worsened over time with the growth in the Latinx population, they have also not improved. The findings from this research study indicate that states with large populations of Latinx students have disinvested in their schooling systems. Many low-spending states with large Latinx populations have substantially cut school funding over the past decade, as well as the proportion of their economic capacity spent on schools, including states like Arizona, new Mexico and Texas. California also remains among the lowest effort in the nation when it comes to spending on school funding. A significant portion of within-state disparities that have been identified result from a lack of state effort, not a lack of state capacity.
Speaker 1:School funding inequalities is an issue that has adversely and persistently affected black students since the 20th century and persistently affected black students since the 20th century. Local property taxes are collected from commercial as well as residential properties, and these property taxes support a large number of public school needs. The effects of financial disparities within public education disproportionately affect black students. Public school funding policies to not only create inequality but also maintain it in a manner that halts any form of equal social and racial reform. This is why a lack of substantial changes directed toward the inequities in public school funding systems is slow going. Some would argue that the current financial disparity among public schools is in place to continue by some measures.
Speaker 1:The historical, racial and socioeconomic hierarchy. Did you know that Illinois ranks near the bottom in percentage of state funding allocated to public schools? Illinois depends mainly on local funds to support public education. It is second worst in per-pupil expenditure disparities. In the United States, 60 to 65 percent of local contributions are derived from local property taxes. Therefore, in predominantly white, wealthy school districts, more funds are allocated for school resources compared to economically challenged school districts. Due to the locally funded school financial system, many poor black districts depend on state aid to provide 75 percent of needed funds. The property tax rates and revenues in Illinois illustrate systemic disparities in the inequitable school funding system.
Speaker 1:Illinois is not the only state where these disparities are noted. Other states include Alabama, mississippi, massachusetts, connecticut and Texas. The dynamics of race and the current status of Black students in education, in combination with the current state of school funding, continue to hinder Black students' achievement and imminent social and economic progress. But this is not a new challenge for Blacks in America. It's interesting to note that families living in high-poverty neighborhoods, whose children attend public schools with relatively low funding, actually paid higher property tax rates than wealthy families living in low-poverty neighborhoods whose children attend public schools that enjoyed relatively high funding, whose children attend public schools that enjoyed relatively high funding. The average breakdown of funding of public schools in the United States occurs in these three areas Federal contribution 8%. State contribution 47%. Local contribution 45%. Contribution 45%. Note that these percentages vary on the state and locales in which you live.
Speaker 1:Each state has its own formula for funding public schools. Although rich and poor public schools may receive comparable funding through federal and state allotments, the one differentiating factor among public schools is the local contribution, which is collected mostly through property taxes. Let's follow the money and take note of a couple of examples. If Neighborhood A consists of 1,000 homes that appraise at an average of $800,000 each, then the total value of property in Neighborhood A would be $800 million. Then the total value of property in Neighborhood A would be $800 million. The taxes assessed on this $800 million worth of property, along with federal and state funding, would provide the funds needed to operate the neighborhood public school. If Neighborhood B, on the other hand, consists of 1,000 homes that appraise at an average of $200,000 each and the property taxes assessed on those properties would amount to $200 million. The school in Neighborhood B would also receive federal and state funds, but the total assessed property value in Neighborhood B would be $600 million less than the total assessed property value in neighborhood A.
Speaker 1:To summarize this example, almost half of the school funding 45% is contingent upon the relative wealth of the people who live in the neighborhood in which the school is located. The property tax rate in the wealthier neighborhoods is lower because the values of the houses are much higher. In addition to increased funding at the local level, wealthy schools tend to have influential and very active parent groups who can generate large sums of money to support the arts, sports, field trips or whatever else is needed. The difference between schools in wealthy neighborhoods and those in poor neighborhoods has been well documented, including factors such as limited access to services, less up-to-date technology and reduced access to advanced curriculum. This is not to say that superb schools do not exist in poor neighborhoods, but the possibility of finding a great school decreases as the wealth of the neighborhood declines.
Speaker 1:There seems to be, to this day, a $23 billion gap between the amount of money spent on predominantly white school districts and predominantly non-white school districts. A study conducted a couple of years ago found that non-white school districts get $2,226 less funding per student than white districts. It also found that high poverty non-white districts received $1,487 less per student than high poverty white school districts. The study suggested that the issue lies in the way American schools have become hyper racially segregated in recent decades and have become heavily reliant on local funding revenues generated from property taxes. One known potential contributing factor to the achievement gap is the disparity in resources. Historically, school district financial resources and academic achievement for Black students have been negatively correlated, although this has narrowed in recent decades. School finance reform may partially explain narrowing resource disparities because court-ordered state finance reform is a court ruling that mandates the state to change the school funding system and to provide fair or educational opportunities for all students across the state.
Speaker 1:The question is to what extent does school finance reform work to close racial funding gaps? The theory is that school finance reform provides a possible policy mechanism to close race-related school funding. School finance reform increases in state aid in schools where percentages of students who are Black, hispanic and Native American are increasing. On the other hand, school finance reform leads to smaller increases in state aid as percentage of students who are Asian increases. The impact of school finance reform as it pertains to state aid increases with percentages of students who are non-white, thus closing racial funding gaps.
Speaker 1:The demand for public education spending may respond to racial composition, affecting funding through voter bias. For instance, funding is lower in places with predominantly white elderly and dominantly black child populations than in places with high percentages of whites in both age groups. When courts mandate school finance reform, it tends to help remedy racial funding gaps. A recent poll released by the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, which is a national coalition of 200 organizations, indicated that the majority of African American and Latinx parents say that a lack of equitable funding, along with racism, are the two biggest contributors to racial disparities in public schools. According to poll results, nine out of 10 Black parents and families believe schools located in Black communities are underfunded compared to those in white communities. For Latinos, 57 percent of respondents said funding for their children's schools falls short of those located in white neighborhoods.
Speaker 1:So what's my take on the research that's been discussed? I think that any changes in racial composition of students in a given school district, whether that is black, white or Latinx white, seem to result in a downward shift in per-pupil infrastructure expenditures that disfavor black students and Latinx students. This shift may be the difference between hiring and firing a teacher, investing in needed building improvements or maintaining adequate food service staff at lunchtime. The systems that allow racial disparities in school funding are the same systems that produce inequities in housing due to segregation of housing and zoning policies, which still remain insufficiently remedied to this day. Policies such as redlining, limiting access to borrowing and discriminatory housing policies segregate minorities into districts with slower economic and property value growth.
Speaker 1:It's important to include findings from research on state school funding for students of color. Whether those students are Black, asian or Latinos, we are all affected by these funding differences. Given the percentage of Latinx and Black students in the public education system, state school funding disparities can have a significant impact on academic achievement outcomes for these students. The fact is that money matters for the improvement of school quality. Disproportionate funding leads to disproportionate academic outcomes, which leads to disparities in household incomes for families of color now and in the future. It's true that high poverty schools tend to be associated with lower achievement, lower social mobility and higher crime rates, but it is less known that the poor are often taxed at significantly higher rates than the rich. The saying that follow the money certainly applies to selecting a great public school in this country. The real issue is this America is investing billions more in the futures of white children than in the futures of children of color.
Speaker 1:Now let's move on from listening to this discussion to applying it. Here are the action steps you can take regarding this topic, one of the best things that you can do is to just observe the resources that are available to your children in their schools. Do they have up-to-date technology? Is the school library providing a broad array of resources? How qualified are their teachers? These are all signs of whether your child's school is resourced appropriately or under-resourced. You can certainly ask about funding allocations from the school principal, but what would be better is for you to sit in on budget meetings, either at the local school or in school board meetings, ask questions and make your voice heard. Your children's educational attainment is at stake. Here are this episode's takeaways School funding matters because of the educational goods and services that money can buy.
Speaker 1:The specific types of spending include reductions in class size, increased instructional time, higher teacher salaries and infrastructure capital outlay. Higher teacher salaries and infrastructure capital outlay. The relationship between revenue and student outcomes raises concerns about racial disparities in spending patterns. If spending matters for student achievement, racial disparities in resources can play a role in the racial opportunity gap. No doubt recent research has found evidence of racial disparities in school district resources. Understanding how spending patterns vary with racial segregation is key to understanding racial disparities in educational opportunities.
Speaker 1:School funding inequalities is an issue that has adversely and persistently affected Black children since the 20th century. Local property taxes are collected from commercial as well as residential properties, and these property taxes support a large number of public school needs. The effects of financial disparities within public education disproportionately affects black students, as well as Latinx, asian and Native American students. Public school funding policies not only create inequality, but also maintain it in a manner that halts any form of equal social and racial reform. The average breakdown of funding of public schools in the United States occurs in these three areas Federal contribution 8%. State contribution 47%. Local contribution 45%, which is usually secured through property taxes. These percentages, though, can vary depending on the state and locales in which you live. The bottom line is this Although race should not be a factor or a reason to drive spending, it usually is. It's interesting to note that certain types of spending tend to be associated with some groups and not others. School district spending varies in racialized ways.
Speaker 1:Do you agree with what's been discussed in this episode in relation to racial disparities in school funding? Let me know your thoughts by leaving me a text message on my podcast website, k12educationuntangledbuzzsproutcom. I'd love to hear what you have to say on this issue. Again, the podcast website is k12educationuntangled dot buzzsprout dot com. Remember to share my podcast with anyone that you think would find it valuable. That includes your friends, family and community, friends, family and community. Thanks for listening today. I hope you'll come back for more K-12 educational discussions with even more exciting topics to untangle. Until next time, aim to learn something new every day. Thank you.
