Racial and Socioeconomic Disparities in School District Funding

• In Event: 3146 - Race, Equity, and Legitimacy in Education Policy and Practice

Abstract

Resource exposure is believed to be a key mechanism linking patterns of racial segregation and student outcomes. Recent literature provides evidence that school resources are also shown to be an important input for student performance. We know that past desegregation produced positive outcomes largely through increased resource exposure. We also know that contemporary desegregation segregation has largely stalled. Are contemporary patterns of segregation linked to socially reproductive disparities in school district revenue, much as they were in the past? The current study seeks to answer this question using national data collected at the district level. The results reveal that racial disparities in exposure/enrollment and poverty are associated with patterns of funding, but not necessarily in anticipated ways. This evidence is consistent with narratives linking racial anxieties to local willingness to fund public schools.

Author

• Ericka Weathers, Pennsylvania State University