Education Equity Through Funding

Academic Dorian Sanchez

Nominated by Professor MAUREEN O’HERIN

The education system in the United States of America is one that is both great for some students and horrible for others. Lack of equity in schools all over the country leads to the more privileged students, who are predominantly white, receiving a greater education than their minority counterparts whose families and districts do not hold as much privilege or capital. Often, the media only talks about the most prestigious schools, which are almost all in high-income communities with significant funding. The low-income districts where the attention is needed most are forgotten and left to continue to crumble through lack of funding and structure. When talking about issues in education equity, funding is the first thing that comes to mind. Through fewer budget cuts, better resource allocation, better quality resources, and a heavier focus on low-income districts with more at-risk students, we can succeed in creating more equity throughout schools across the nation.

Since the 2008 Great Recession, budget cuts to education have been devastating to schools nationwide. According to “A Punishing Decade For School Funding” by Michael Leechman, Kathleen Masterson, and Eric Figueroa, states dealt with their low budgets by using spending cuts at a much higher rate than revenue increases whereas they normally would be pretty balanced. To further that, for four years between 2008 and 2012 forty-five percent of budget losses were handled through spending cuts with just sixteen percent being handled via taxes and fees (Leechman, et al. 3). With most school funding coming from the state and local governments, many schools were left struggling to make up for the lowered financing from the state level. The Recession led to more profound issues as states struggled to find more funding via taxes due to the economic stress that the public was already experiencing. With fewer taxes, more budget cuts were inevitable. “Over the past decade, states with the steepest funding declines have seen one-fifth of state education funding vanish,” writes Lisette Partelow with other fellow authors in their article “Fixing Chronic Disinvestment in K-12 Schools” (Partelow et al. 2). One-fifth of a state’s education is no small number. In California, losing one-fifth of the education budget would be equivalent to losing nearly nineteen billion dollars for the students. Budget cuts continue to impact low-income districts and are a serious problem. But why are budget cuts so detrimental to students’ success across the country?

While in high-income districts, local funding may subsidize losses in state funding, low-income districts with low property taxes suffer from the lack of the aforementioned state funding. Those low-income districts often have the highest concentration of at-risk students on campus 191 and thus require even more funding than their higher-income counterparts. In Jeff Raike and Linda Darling-Hammond’s article, “Why Our Education Funding Systems are Derailing the American Dream,” they say, “inadequate school funding derails the future for students already struggling against the odds — intensifying disparities that harm society as a whole by reducing young people’s capacity to contribute to society” (Raike et al. 2). Budget cuts continually are much more detrimental to the struggling districts than the ones that can make up for the lost money. Having the largest amount of funding going to schools that do not necessarily need it to the extent others do creates a perpetual loop of students stuck in poverty due to a poor education system.

To avoid this, we must focus on finding more funding for these schools and on helping their fundamental resource allocation to better benefit the students who need them the most. The true level of impact a lack of funding has on students can be seen in Ben Davis’ article “How Does Lack of Funding Affect Students?” in which he says, “On average, a $1,000 reduction in per-pupil spending reduces average test scores in math and reading by 3.9 percent of a standard deviation and increases the score gap between black and white students by roughly 6 percent,” and, “also lowers the college-going rate by about 2.6 percent,” (Davis 1). While these numbers may seem small, in the grand scope of the country with the

millions of students, these lower scores are the reason equity must be fought for when it comes to the students and their resources. The amount of money schools have for each student is not the only issue with the funding of the current education system though.

Students are not only hurt by a lack of funding but also by the quality of the resources provided by the funding they do have. Marry Morris talks about this in her journal, where she says, “With high-performance demands and near-stagnant pay, teachers tend to burn out quickly, which in turn negatively affects the quality of education that their students receive. This effect is most evident in Title I schools, public schools with low funding allocation and high concentrations of low-income students” (Morris 1). Due to a lack of state funding, teachers cannot be compensated enough for their work. With educating the youth being arguably one of the most critical fields in the United States, there must be a way to better help these teachers. By having more state funding, teachers would be paid better, spend less money out of their own pockets on resources for their classroom, and would experience less burnout over time. Funding allows for teachers to do their job to the best of their ability as they would be able to receive proper training and support, whereas, in contrast, teachers who are not funded would be left undertrained and rarely supported. This issue stands alongside problems with equity in education as it cannot be obtained until all students are offered courses with instructors who have the same level of credentials. While high-income districts may be able to afford high-quality teachers and keep them for long periods of time, low-income districts constantly hire new, untrained teachers who are not ready to handle the stresses of a district in dire need of help. With a better understanding of how funding affects equity for low-income districts, we must also discuss how the allocation of resources affects them.

While states have made efforts to give fair amounts of resources to both high-income and low-income districts, there is a lack of understanding of what a low-income district needs. Though districts may be given the same amount of funding, how that funding is used is often not the same and is not helpful if not used correctly. To properly allocate resources, low-income schools must get “ additional resources — not the same resources — in order to meet the needs of at-risk students,” as well as “accountability frameworks to ensure that the key ingredients to student success — access to early childhood programs, effective teachers, and rigorous curriculum — [to be] available to students irrespective of their race, zip code, or economic status,” as said by Carmel Martin, Ulrich Boser, Meg Benner, and Perpetual Baffour’s article “A Quality Approach to School Funding” (Martin et al, 1). By giving lower-income districts better funding and support in fund distribution, they would be able to access better resources to meet the needs of their students with programs that would improve both the students and the overall community. With high-risk students being the most crucial focus, we must find a way to support them properly, which will inevitably be different from how schools support students in high-income districts. The framework that needs to be put in place to find equitable success for all students around the country would not be particularly hard but would require support from all members of each state’s communities to help each other.

While some may argue that there is not a feasible solution to the issue of funding for public schools, cuts in other parts of the country’s budget may be able to fund schools easily. One possible place for a budget cut to better fund the education system would be the military. By lowering the seven-hundred and twenty-five billion dollars spent on the military, more funding would be available to improve education in the future generations of students.

In conclusion, equity in the education system in the United States is an intricate problem that needs to be addressed by both politicians and ordinary citizens. By addressing budget cuts, where resources are allocated to, the quality of resources, and how different districts require different resources, we may find a way to have an equitable education system indeed.

Davis, Ben. “How Does Lack of Funding Affect Students.” MVOrganizing, 1 June 2021, https://www.mvorganizing.org/howdoes-lack-of-funding-affect-students-2/#:~:text=A%20growing%20body%20of%20evidence,greater%20among%20 low%2Dincome%20students.

Leachman, Michael, et al. “A Punishing Decade for School Funding.” Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, 29 Nov. 2017, https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/a-punishing-decade-for-school-funding.

Martin, Carmel, et al. “A Quality Approach to School Funding.” Center for American Progress, 23 Aug. 2021, https://www. americanprogress.org/article/quality-approach-school-funding/.

Morris, Marry. “No Teacher Left behind: Reforming the Educators Expense ...” Indiana Law Journal, 2021, https://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=11419&context=ilj.

Partelow, Lisette, et al. “Fixing Chronic Disinvestment in K-12 Schools.” Center for American Progress, 28 Mar. 2018, https:// www.americanprogress.org/article/fixing-chronic-disinvestment-k-12-schools/.

Raikes, Jeff, and Linda Darling-Hammond. “Why Our Education Funding Systems Are Derailing the American Dream.” Learning Policy Institute, 18 Feb. 2019, https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/blog/why-our-education-funding-systems-are-derailing-american-dream.