Racial Equity in State Funding for Community Colleges

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 2:15 pm - Gold 1
  In Roundtable Session: The Role of the State Policy in Shaping Equity, Access, and Resources

Abstract

This descriptive study investigates how states incorporate race into funding models community colleges. While community college funding structures vary widely across states (Kelchen et al., 2024), one key area of difference is the extent to which race is explicitly addressed. Incorporating race into funding formulas can serve as a form of reparative policy, responding to the longstanding "education debt" owed to racially minoritized communities (Ladson-Billings, 2006). Advancing racial equity requires anti-racist policy frameworks that name and address race directly (Bensimon, 2020; Kendi, 2019). Drawing on Bonilla-Silva’s concept of “color-blind ideology,” we apply this framework to examine whether states explicitly include race or avoid doing so.

Authors

• Elizabeth Aritonang, UT Austin

• Denisa Gandara, University of Texas at Austin