Though Brown v. Board of Education established that segregated schools are unconstitutional back in 1954, we’ve made little progress toward improving educational opportunity for students of color in America since then. According to writer and MacArthur “genius grant” recipient Nikole Hannah Jones, in some districts, school segregation is worse now than it was in the 1970s. And now we have recent financial data that demonstrates the incredible funding disparity between white school districts and districts that serve mostly students of color.
A new report from the nonprofit EdBuild singles out states in which school districts that serve predominantly white students receive $23 billion more in funding than those with predominantly black and brown students. Yes, you read that right: billions, with a B. According to NPR, the report states that “for every student enrolled, the average nonwhite school district receives $2,226 less than a white school district.”
The data comes from 21 different states where this disparity exists. These include California, New York, and New Jersey, which are some of the most demographically diverse places in the United States. However, this is an issue that impacts students all across the country. According to the EdBuild report, more than half of students in the U.S. go to segregated, or what they refer to as “racially concentrated,” schools. Not all predominantly black and brown schools are in high-poverty areas. But the ones that are tend to fare the worst. Schools that serve primarily students of color in areas where there is a high concentration of poverty receive less money. Those districts get about $1,600 less per student than the national average, compared to schools that serve predominantly white and poor students, which receive only about $130 less. There goes the argument about class trumping race. The data shows that poor white students still get more school funding than black and brown students. If anything, the parents of poor black and brown students should really be the ones with all that economic anxiety that supposedly elected Donald Trump.
EdBuild’s CEO, Rebecca Sibilia, says the gap in funding can be explained, in part, by how much residents in a given area pay in taxes and how much wealth is concentrated in that area. "We have built a school funding system that is reliant on geography, and therefore the school funding system has inherited all of the historical ills of where we have forced and incentivized people to live," she says.
K-12 public schools are mainly funded locally and by the state, with the federal government only contributing a small percentage (less than 10 percent). Ideally, states would step in to fund the neediest school districts, but they are often unable to. Some of this is because they don’t have the income to do so. And it’s not a coincidence that in those states, teachers have gone on strike to demand better wages and teaching conditions.
But back to Sibilia’s point: It’s also important to understand that in places where school districts are drawn along wider geographical lines, the gap in funding for black and brown students is smaller. For example, the EdBuild report showed that funding for school districts in the South actually looks a lot more equal than in other parts of the country. This is because the districts in places like Georgia and Alabama are often drawn along county lines, which tends to make them bigger as a whole. In comparison, in other states, such as New Jersey, for instance, the school district borders are drawn along municipality lines, which are a reflection of years-long residential and housing segregation. Smaller school districts are also more often predominantly white, and that size disparity is meaningful. Larger school districts with mostly students of color "rely more on the decisions that are being made at the state level, but there are fewer voices representing them.” Sibilia says that when school districts are larger and have a wider tax base, it helps to balance out funding disparities and can bridge the gap between white wealthy suburbs and poorer urban or rural areas.
Sixty-five years post-Brown, our integrated public schools haven’t been the great equalizer that was once predicted. So often, children of color are told that getting an education will pave the way for opportunity and serve to mitigate the effects of racism in America. But the reality is that we can’t expect those kids to thrive in schools that are perpetually underfunded by billions of dollars. In order to address racism, we need to understand how deeply embedded it is in our society’s structures, and how even school district lines and funding are used to disenfranchise people of color. Hopefully, we’ll figure it out sooner rather than later. Our kids and our country can’t afford to wait another sixty-five years.