Equity And: The Political Economy of School Funding and the Democratic Imperative

• In Event: Democracy as the Aim of Education: Critical Issues of Leadership, Voice, Equity, and Schooling

Abstract

School finance systems – state-level school funding mechanisms - have remained stable over the last 85 years since the introduction of the Stayer-Haig model of differential resource allocation based on school and district factors (Springer, Houck & Guthrie 2015). Current school finance structures remain grounded on cornerstone features such as state revenue combined with local revenue generation based on property taxes; initial funding levels based around student census counts; and differential funding levels based around student, school, and district characteristics. However, political and contextual factors have changed dramatically. Current funding mechanisms were already in place and did not anticipate key court cases and legislation such as Brown versus Board, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Lau versus Nichols, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. These inclusive forces, combined with a standards-oriented framework for understanding school success and performance (Smith & O’Day 1991; O’Day & Smith 2019) have dramatically reshaped how generations of teachers, leaders, and policymakers think about the enterprise of public education. How can these leaders recapture the democratic imperative of schooling within these new demands and political realities?

This presentation contends that school finance structures are insufficient to provide revenue for schools that are considerably more diverse in terms of student demographic and learning needs during a time in which the concept of equity is becoming an increasing focus of educators and researchers (Baker, 2018). Drawing upon literature in political science and school finance (Guthrie et al 2007; Houck 2015), this paper uses a values-in-tension model of school finance to interrogate the manner in which alternate values in policy space - efficiency, liberty, and adequacy - interact to blunt the effects of equity-oriented resource allocation policies in schools. Examples include adequacy studies that advocate spreading scarce resources across a range of functions instead of focusing on a necessary few (Alexander 2012; Jackson 2016); efficiency studies that allocate dollars with a bias towards effectiveness rather than need (King 2004; Rice 2009); and philosophical studies that privilege notions of localized control over notions of appropriately resourcing higher needs students, schools and communities (Baker, Libby & Wiley 2015).

This examination does not serve to decenter equity but rather to help educators and policymakers better understand the array of pressures working against equity and justice-oriented policies in the current context. Finally, this presentation serves to point towards directions forward for educators including moving away from “reward success” models to investment-oriented strategies; explicitly using race and gender in school funding mechanisms rather than proxy measures; linking school finance with other policy initiatives within and without the education policy spheres such as school integration, child healthcare, and housing; and better integrating federal, state, and local efforts in order to address learning and opportunity gaps for students across a broad spectrum of needs.

Author

• Eric A. Houck, University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill