Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card

Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card

Bruce D. Baker, Rutgers University David G. Sciarra, Education Law Center Danielle Farrie, Education Law Center

Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card

Bruce D. Baker, Rutgers University David G. Sciarra, Education Law Center Danielle Farrie, Education Law Center

September 2010

About the Authors

Bruce Baker is Associate Professor in the Department of Educational Theory, Policy and Administration in the Graduate School of Education at Rutgers University. He is coauthor of Financing Education Systems with Preston Green and Craig Richards, author of numerous peerreviewed articles on education finance, and sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Education Finance and Education Finance and Policy as well as serving as a research fellow for the Education and the Public Interest Center.

David Sciarra is Executive Director of the Education Law Center (ELC) in Newark, New Jersey. A practicing civil rights lawyer since 1978, he has litigated a wide range of cases involving socioeconomic rights, including affordable housing, shelter for the homeless, and welfare rights. Since 1996, he has litigated to enforce access for low-income and minority children to an equal and adequate education under state and federal law, and served as counsel to the plaintiff students in New Jersey's landmark Abbott v. Burke case. He also does research, writing, and lecturing on education law and policy in such areas as school finance, early education, and school reform.

Danielle Farrie is Research Director at the Education Law Center (ELC). She maintains a large database of educational data and conducts analysis to support litigation and public policy for ELC and partner organizations. Before joining ELC, she conducted research in the field of urban education on such topics as school choice, white flight and school segregation, and has coauthored several peer-reviewed articles on parental involvement among low-income families. She holds a Ph.D. in Sociology from Temple University.

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Margaret Goertz, Consortium for Policy Research in Education, University of Pennsylvania, and Richard Coley, Educational Testing Service, for reviewing numerous drafts of the report and providing valuable feedback. We would also like to thank the Ford Foundation for generously supporting this work. Errors of fact or interpretation are those of the authors.

For more information and to download copies of this report, go to .

Copyright ? Education Law Center, Newark, N.J.

Table of Contents

I. Introduction. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Why Our Nation Needs Fair School Funding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 U.S. Public Education: Decentralized, With Concentrated Poverty. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Existing School Funding Measures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Limitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 A Better Measure: Analyzing School Funding Fairness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 The Fairness Principles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Why Measure Fairness?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 The Fairness Measures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Research Method. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Research Framework. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

II. The Four Fairness Measures. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Evaluating the States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Fairness Measure #1: Funding Level . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Fairness Measure #2: Funding Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 The State Fairness Profiles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Fairness Measure #3: Effort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 Fairness Measure #4: Coverage. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

III. The National Report Card on Fair School Funding. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

IV. Next Steps. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Digging Deeper . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Does fair funding improve student outcomes? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Does greater state share increase funding fairness?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 Does state wealth or state effort matter most? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Is there a better measure of student poverty?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Does school district organization matter? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Does federal funding affect state fairness? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Can we expect fairness to improve in some states?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 Improving Funding Fairness. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

Conclusion. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 Appendix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

Figures and Tables

Table 1: Concentrated Student Poverty in U.S. School Districts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 ? 4 Figure 1: Factors Influencing State and Local Education Costs. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Table 2: Fairness Measure #1: Funding Level. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 ? 15 Table 3: Fairness Measure #2: Funding Distribution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 ? 17 Figure 2: State Funding Distribution. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Figure 3: State Fairness Profiles. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Figure 4: Mid-Atlantic: Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, New York . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Figure 5: Big Sky: Idaho, Montana, Utah, Wyoming. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Figure 6: Gulf Coast: Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Figure 7: S outheast: Arkansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Oklahoma,

Tennessee, West Virginia. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Figure 8: N ew England: Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts,

New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 Figure 9: North Central: Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Figure 10: Pacific: California, Oregon, Washington . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 Figure 11: Prairie: Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Figure 12: Midwest: Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Figure 13: South Coast: Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia. . . . . . . . 25 Figure 14: Southwest: Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 Table 4: Fairness Measure #3: State Effort. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 ? 27 Table 5: Fairness Measure #4: Coverage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 ? 30 Table 6: The National Report Card . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 ? 32 Figure 15: State Share and Funding Distribution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Figure 16: U.S. Census Poverty Rate and Mean Corrected Poverty Rate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 Appendix A: National Child and Student Poverty Rates. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39 ? 40 Appendix B: NCES State and Local Revenues per Pupil by State. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 Appendix C: Education Week Rankings (2007). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 ? 43 Appendix D: Education Trust Rankings (2006). . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Appendix E: A Better Measure for Student Poverty. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 ? 46 Appendix F: State Funding Distribution with Title I. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 ? 48

Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card

 ................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download