Critical Resource Theory: A Conceptual Lens for Identifying, Diagnosing, and Addressing Inequities in School Funding 2022012278, 2022012279, 9781032267326, 9781032272207, 9781003291862

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Table of Contents
Detailed Chapter Contents
List of Figures, Tables, Cases
Preface
Acknowledgements
About the Authors
Chapter 1: Critical Resource Theory
Introduction
Case Studies Build Theories
Case Study 1: The “Alpha and Omega Syndrome”
Case Study 2: Adjusting a State’s Education FundingFormula
What the Case Studies Suggest
Taxpayer Dollars Apportioned Differently to Different Communities
Resource Allocation Decisions Allow Political Bargaining
School Inequities are Normalized
Applying a CReT Lens
Critical Resource Theory
CReT as a Value-Added Theory
CReT as a Complete Theory
What
How
Why
Who/Where/When
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 2: Critical Resource Theory’s “Family Tree”
Introduction
Critical Theory
Critical Theory and Empirical Study
Criticism of Critical Theory
Critical Theory in Education
Criticism of Critical Theory in Education
Critical Race Theory
Critical Race Theory and Education Finance
Critical Race Theory and Empiricism
Criticism of Critical Race Theory
Resource Dependence Theory
Criticism of Resource Dependence Theory
Pulling It All Together
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 3: Critical Resource Theory and Education Funding Inequities
Introduction
Money – and How It’s Spent – Matters in Education
School Funding Inadequacies and Inequities
Property Taxes and School Funding
The Politics of State Education Funding Formulas
Disparities in Funding, Disparities in Educational Quality
Using Critical Resource Theory to Remedy Education Funding Inequities
Question Existing Practices
Gather and Organize Relevant Data
Construct Easily Understood Graphic and Narrative Comparisons for Analyses
Communicate Findings to Stakeholders
Advocate for What You Need
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 4: From Courthouse to Schoolhouse: Determining School Funding Equity and Adequacy
Introduction
Equity and Adequacy
Landmark School Funding Cases
Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954)
Serrano v. Priest (CA, 1971)
San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodrigues (TX, 1973)
Robinson v. Cahill (NJ, 1973)
Abbott v. Burke (NJ, 1985–2011)
Rose v. Council for Better Education (KY, 1989)
Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. State of New York (NY, 1993–2006, 2021)
Outcomes of School Finance Litigation
Case Study 3: Conducting School Equity Audits
Question Existing Practices
Gather and Organize Relevant Data
Provide Easily Understood Graphic and Narrative Comparisons for Analyses
Communicate Findings to Stakeholders
Advocate for What You Need
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 5: Colorism, Caste, Structural Racism, and Racial Colorblindness
Introduction
Race as Policy in the United States
Colorism and Equality
An American Caste System
Racism and Caste in the United States
An American Dilemma
The Eight Pillars of Caste
Structural Racism in Public Policy
Housing Policy
Segregated Neighborhoods, Schools, and Student Outcomes
Racial Colorblindness Theory
Color Evasion and Power Evasion
Color Evasion
Power Evasion
From Normalization to Increased Equity
Conclusion
Notes
Chapter 6: Education: Socializing Children for American Democracy
Introduction
Education as Socialization for American Democracy
Public Education in the Early American Nation
Public Education for a Growing Nation
Education as a Fundamental (Constitutional) Right
Research on Education’s Socialization for Democracy
Balancing Societal Needs with Individual Wants
Conclusion
Notes
Index

Citation preview

CRITICAL RESOURCE THEORY

Critical Resource Theory (CReT) offers an innovative critical perspective on education funding. This new conceptual lens enables school leaders and policy makers to analyze quantitatively school funding policies and practices as a catalyst to make them more equitable. It offers a useful orientation and tool to increase fairness and opportunity in a society that systemically advantages the dominant group with ample resources while it disadvantages others by withholding them. Presenting a balance between the theoretical and its practical application to improve educational outcomes for marginalized children, chapters introduce and discuss this new extension of Critical Theory, validate it as a value-­added and complete theory, place it within a broader philosophical framework, and construct its historical, social, political, and educational contexts. Designed for use in school finance and educational policy courses, this book presents an analytical tool that leaders, scholars, and policy makers can use to alter how they view public funding policies and practices – to question their assumptions about funding and resource allocations, look for, identify, and assess inadequacies and inequities, share their findings, and use these data to shape policy recommendations for increased fiscal fairness and improved student outcomes. Leslie S. Kaplan is a retired teacher, school counselor, and school and district-­level administrator and is currently a full-­time education writer. She serves on the editorial board of the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) Bulletin. She is a 2014 National Education Finance Academy Distinguished Fellow of Research and Practice. William A. Owings is a Professor of Educational Leadership at Old Dominion University, USA. He serves as co-­Treasurer of the National Education Finance Academy, is on the editorial advisory board of the Journal of Education Finance, and is a 2014 National Education Finance Academy Distinguished Fellow of Research and Practice.

CRITICAL RESOURCE THEORY A Conceptual Lens for Identifying, Diagnosing, and Addressing Inequities in School Funding

Leslie S. Kaplan and William A. Owings

Cover image: © Getty Images First published 2023 by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 and by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 Leslie S. Kaplan and William A. Owings The right of Leslie S. Kaplan and William A. Owings to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Kaplan, Leslie S., author. | Owings, William A., 1952- author. Title: Critical resource theory : a conceptual lens for identifying, diagnosing, and addressing inequities in school funding / Leslie S. Kaplan and William A. Owings. Description: New York, NY : Routledge, 2023. | Includes bibliographical references and index. | Identifiers: LCCN 2022012278 (print) | LCCN 2022012279 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032267326 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032272207 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003291862 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Education–United States–Finance. | Public schools–United States–Finance. | Educational equalization–Economic aspects–United States. | Children with social disabilities–Education–United States. | Critical theory. Classification: LCC LB2825 .K327 2023 (print) | LCC LB2825 (ebook) | DDC 379.1/10973–dc23/eng/20220622 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022012278 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022012279 ISBN: 978-1-032-26732-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-27220-7 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-29186-2 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003291862 Typeset in Sabon by SPi Technologies India Pvt Ltd (Straive)

CONTENTS

List of Figures, Tables, Cases xi Preface xiii Acknowledgements xxiii About the Authors xxv

CHAPTER 1 Critical Resource Theory CHAPTER 2 Critical Resource Theory’s “Family Tree”

1 27

CHAPTER 3 Critical Resource Theory and Education Funding Inequities

53

CHAPTER 4 From Courthouse to Schoolhouse: Determining School Funding Equity and Adequacy

73

CHAPTER 5 Colorism, Caste, Structural Racism, and Racial Colorblindness 98

CHAPTER 6 Education: Socializing Children for American Democracy132

Index 152

v

DETAILED CHAPTER CONTENTS

CHAPTER 1 Critical Resource Theory

1

Introduction 1 Case Studies Build Theories 3 Case Study 1: The “Alpha and Omega Syndrome” 4 Case Study 2: Adjusting a State’s Education Funding Formula 7 What the Case Studies Suggest 8 Taxpayer Dollars Apportioned Differently to Different Communities 8 Resource Allocation Decisions Allow Political Bargaining 11 School Inequities are Normalized 12 Applying a CReT Lens 13 Critical Resource Theory 13 CReT as a Value-Added Theory 14 CReT as a Complete Theory 15 What 16 How 17 Why 18 Who/Where/When 19 Conclusion 20 Notes 21

CHAPTER 2 Critical Resource Theory’s “Family Tree”

27

Introduction 27 Critical Theory 28 Critical Theory and Empirical Study 30 Criticism of Critical Theory 31 Critical Theory in Education 32 Criticism of Critical Theory in Education 34 Critical Race Theory 34 Critical Race Theory and Education Finance 36 vii

Critical Race Theory and Empiricism 37 Criticism of Critical Race Theory 39 Resource Dependence Theory 40 Criticism of Resource Dependence Theory 42 Pulling It All Together 42 Conclusion 45 Notes 45

CHAPTER 3 Critical Resource Theory and Education Funding Inequities 53 Introduction 53 Money – And How It’s Spent – Matters in Education 54 School Funding Inadequacies and Inequities 56 Property Taxes and School Funding 57 The Politics of State Education Funding Formulas 58 Disparities in Funding, Disparities in Educational Quality 61 Using Critical Resource Theory to Remedy Education Funding Inequities 63 Question Existing Practices 63 Gather and Organize Relevant Data 65 Construct Easily Understood Graphic and Narrative Comparisons for Analyses 65 Communicate Findings to Stakeholders 66 Advocate for What You Need 66 Conclusion 67 Notes 67

CHAPTER 4 From Courthouse to Schoolhouse: Determining School Funding Equity and Adequacy

73

Introduction 73 Equity and Adequacy 74 Landmark School Funding Cases 75 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) 76 Serrano v. Priest (CA, 1971) 77 San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodrigues (TX, 1973) 77 Robinson v. Cahill (NJ, 1973) 78 Abbott v. Burke (NJ, 1985–2011) 79 Rose v. Council for Better Education (KY, 1989) 80 Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. State of New York (NY, 1993–2006, 2021) 82 Outcomes of School Finance Litigation 82

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Detailed Chapter Contents

Case Study 3: Conducting School Equity Audits 83 Question Existing Practices 85 Gather and Organize Relevant Data 85 Provide Easily Understood Graphic and Narrative Comparisons for Analyses 87 Communicate Findings to Stakeholders 91 Advocate for What You Need 91 Conclusion 92 Notes 92

CHAPTER 5 Colorism, Caste, Structural Racism, and Racial Colorblindness 98 Introduction 98 Race as Policy in the United States 99 Colorism and Equality 100 An American Caste System 103 Racism and Caste in the United States 103 An American Dilemma 104 The Eight Pillars of Caste 105 Structural Racism in Public Policy 110 Housing Policy 111 Segregated Neighborhoods, Schools, and Student Outcomes 113 Racial Colorblindness Theory 115 Color Evasion and Power Evasion 116 Color Evasion 117 Power Evasion 117 From Normalization to Increased Equity 119 Conclusion 121 Notes 121

CHAPTER 6 Education: Socializing Children for American Democracy132 Introduction 132 Education as Socialization for American Democracy 133 Public Education in the Early American Nation 134 Public Education for a Growing Nation 135 Education as a Fundamental (Constitutional) Right 137 Research on Education’s Socialization for Democracy 142 Balancing Societal Needs with Individual Wants 144 Conclusion 147 Notes 147



Detailed Chapter Contents

ix

FIGURES, TABLES, CASES

FIGURES

Figure 1.1 Figure 2.1 Figure 4.1

Critical Resource Theory’s “Family Tree” How Critical Resource Theory Operationalizes Critical Theory Unweighted Per-Pupil Expenditures vs. Weighted Per-Pupil Expenditures

17

Relevant Data Collection for Each School Studied Equity Weightings Using Verstegen/Driscoll (2008) and Original a priori Models Sample Comparison Table

86

28 89

TABLES

Table 4.1 Table 4.2 Table 4.3

88 90

CASES

Case Study 1 The “Alpha and Omega Syndrome” Case Study 2 Adjusting a State’s Education Funding Formula Case Study 3 Conducting School Equity Audits

4 7 83

xi

PREFACE

WHY CRITICAL RESOURCE THEORY?

A society relies on widespread schooling to survive and thrive. Our nation’s founders knew that their new nation’s success depended on having a well-­informed, educated electorate. Publicly funded schools would help families and communities meet this responsibility. Yet the persistently inadequate and inequitable funding of low-­income schools populated largely by African American and other marginalized children is well documented. In more than half the states, the poorest school districts do not receive adequate funding. By contrast, wealthier school districts typically receive and spend substantially more money to run their public schools.1 This translates into notably fewer resources in money, people, and material to address marginalized students’ increased learning needs. Moreover, this resource gap leads to an “opportunity gap” – the unequal or inequitable distribution of vital resources – that contributes in large measure to the “achievement gap” – the disparity in students’ academic outcomes between lower-­ income students (often people of color, non-­ native English speakers, and those living in rural communities) and their more affluent peers. Ultimately, this cycles into an income gap and a wealth gap, widening the chasm between “haves” and “have nots.” When educational success is closely tied to family background rather than to students’ talents and attitudes, education tends to reproduce pre-­ existing inequalities across generations, as critical theories of education predict. 2 But it doesn’t have to be this way. Economics of education studies conclude that if we want our public schools to serve all children well, we must provide them with adequate and equitable funding.3 Education policies that aim at adequacy and equity can be influential drivers generating upward social mobility and reducing income disparities over the long term.4 School and district spending studies verify that when budgets increase – both in total amount and in targeted categories – students show significant gains in achievement and other desirable outcomes.5

xiii

By contrast, when school funding is cut or insufficient, student performance suffers.6 Since these disparate resources and student outcomes reinforce the societal status quo, a lower-­quality education limits low-­ income children’s life options. Moreover, in an era of globalized education policy, the problems of equitably funding public schools have universal relevance.7 Critical Resource Theory (CReT), an easily understood extension of Critical Theory (CT), offers an innovative critical perspective and blueprint for informed action in education funding. This new conceptual lens enables finance scholars, future and practicing school leaders, policy makers, and legislators to conduct pragmatic quantitative analysis as a catalyst to inform and change inequitable (intended or unintended) policies and practices and generate more beneficial outcomes for underserved children. At a time of widespread societal divisions, the need to teach every child their society’s shared (and often aspirational) norms, knowledge, beliefs, and skills so they may become responsible, capable citizens and workers has never been more urgent. What is more, CReT’s lens can support moves toward greater adequacy and equity in an array of public policies beyond education. Addressing this fiscal shortfall in funding public schools is especially acute since shifting demographics will soon make ours a minority majority nation. And as a citizenry, we cannot fix what we do not see or do not understand. ORIGINATING CRITICAL RESOURCE THEORY

CReT emerged inductively from a happy confluence: the melding of firsthand K-­12 practitioner experiences, scholarly study of American public school finance, and theories considered for inclusion in an organizational behavior textbook for school leadership. As frontline educators in K-­12 public schools, Leslie S. Kaplan and William A. (Bill) Owings became equity advocates. In her school counselor’s role, Leslie persuaded high school English teachers in an academically “tracked” curriculum to accept capable students from a “below average” track into their “average” classes to make the youths eligible to enroll in much-­desired vocational programs. Similarly, as an assistant principal for instruction, Leslie coaxed stellar “12 AP English” or “Honors English” teachers to instruct one section of “9 Average English” each year to give “regular” students the chance to learn in a highly engaging classroom as well as to model effective teaching to less venturesome or proficient colleagues. And when creating her school’s master schedule, she always looked for ways to place slower-­learning math students into smaller-­sized classes so they could receive more individual teacher attention and learn successfully. In short, Leslie advocated for xiv

Preface

equal access to rigorous curricula (with extra support, if needed) before “de-­tracking” became a favored policy. While Leslie was improving equity student-­by-­student and classroom-­ by-­classroom, Bill was improving equity school-­by-­school and district-­ by-­ district. As an elementary principal, Bill saw many youngsters arriving for kindergarten already knowing their numbers and colors. Some could even read short passages in books. Other children could not. As the years progressed, he saw the achievement gap between students of varying socioeconomic backgrounds widen further. Later, as a new high school principal in a different district, Bill reorganized the Guidance Department to ensure that each student received an equal share of counselor time and effort. In four years, his school raised the school’s college-­ going rate from 30% to over 80%. And when he became a new school district superintendent, he noticed that the high-­poverty neighborhood’s elementary school was in such poor repair that the septic system had to be pumped daily or it would back up into the school’s toilets. With the school board and county’s approval, he began a multimillion-­dollar capital improvement plan to give every child – starting in that long-­suffering facility – the positive environment in which to learn. As their experiences as educators extended and deepened, the less Leslie and Bill stumbled across inequities in school resource allocations. Instead, they began looking for them, intent on questioning, identifying, assessing, and redesigning practices to advantage every student. When Leslie and Bill met in 1997, they quickly recognized their shared perspectives and began professional writing together. In 1999, Bill retired from the superintendency and became an associate professor of educational leadership at Longwood University in Farmville, VA. In 2002, he joined Old Dominion University’s faculty. His specialization: school finance. Also making changes, Leslie retired in 2006 from her school district as an assistant principal and spun her part-­time writing “hobby” into a full-­time career. She and Bill began co-­authoring education journal articles and textbooks and conducting independent (often grant-­funded) research and reports focused on providing highly effective teachers and administrators to low-­ income students. Their original equity study, “The Alpha and Omega Syndrome” article (2010), appeared in the Journal of Education Finance.8 Leslie and Bill found the blatant disparities between resources allocated to two high schools in the same school district both dismaying and revelatory. They assumed these same unfair practices occurred elsewhere, could be made transparent, and addressed. In developing their Organizational Behavior for School Leadership (2017) textbook, they read deeply about Critical Theory, Critical Race Theory, and Resource Dependence Theory. These frameworks offered a

Preface

xv

big picture lens and a language to approach many of the same issues with which they had wrestled as K-­12 practitioners. But none fit their school funding adequacy or equity concerns quantitatively or had the pragmatic capacity for real-­world problem solving. Yet, by applying certain aspects of each theory and creating relevant case studies to illustrate their usefulness, Leslie and Bill developed the CReT construct and illustrated how it could identify and quantitatively assess inequities in education funding and resource allocations. By making real inequities transparent, its quantitative analyses could be communicated clearly to key stakeholders and the public. These data provided the basis for proposing workable remedies. This present book represents an elaboration and extension of the authors’ original article, “A Commentary on Critical Resource Theory: Increasing Resource Equity in Low-­Income Schools and Beyond” published in the Journal of Education Finance (2022).9 THIS BOOK’S GOALS

Critical Resource Theory: A Conceptual Lens for Identifying, Diagnosing, and Addressing Inequities in School Funding is a critical perspective on education funding with a new conceptual lens. It offers a useful orientation and tool to increase fairness and opportunity in a society that systemically advantages the dominant group with ample resources while it disadvantages others by withholding them. Using a CReT framework enables persons to act intentionally to question, identify, quantify, analyze, communicate, and advocate in an informed manner for more adequate and equitable resources for low-­income public schools and children. Immediate and long-­term, these actions affect both personal and national interests. CReT is anchored firmly in American historical and social realities that view free, taxpayer-­supported education as a fundamental right so essential to sustaining our democratic republic that states embedded its primacy in their constitutions. In this broad context, underfunding high-­poverty schools and marginalized children undermines our shared civic values, economic viability, and national wellbeing. This situation requires attention and action now, and we wish this book to help advance such advocacy. Although our discussion focuses on disparities in allocating public education finance resources in the United States, it could just as easily apply to other public policy areas and in other democratic countries with high wealth disparities and similar inequitable resource allocations that create disparate outcomes for marginalized individuals and groups. As educators, we intend this book to generate actual learning – that is, to create a relatively permanent change in readers’ behavior and knowledge.

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Preface

We want future school leaders, policy makers, and the public at large to alter how they view public funding policies and practices – to question the funding and resource allocation “givens,” look for and identify inadequacies and inequities, assess them quantitatively and qualitatively, share their findings, and use these data to shape policy recommendations for increased fiscal fairness and improved student outcomes. Research affirms that learning facts is easier when they are relevant and have personal meaning to the learner. When individuals engage students emotionally and connect new information with what they already know cognitively – new concepts and practices become easier to remember.10 We try to do this by our selection and placement of content. By clearly defining CReT as a value-­added and complete theory; linking it to its theoretical antecedents; demonstrating the inadequacies and inequities in current public school funding; and weaving these threads tightly within their historical, social, legal, political, and educational milieus (that have shaped our national norms and ethos, keeping inequitable practices in place to maintain the society as it is), we offer a thoughtful discussion that many will find worthwhile. We want this book and its CReT focus to alter readers’ insights and perspectives on what causes our wide ranging societal and educational disparities, how to inform ourselves about their nature, and how to best address them. It is not hyperbole to assert that our nation’s political and economic health depend on adequately and equitably resourced public schools and fully educating every child to responsible citizenship in a democratic republic. INTENDED AUDIENCES

Critical Resource Theory: A Conceptual Lens for Identifying, Diagnosing, and Addressing Inequities in School Funding has potential appeal to a wide audience: scholars, school finance and public policy activists, and an educated public interested in achieving greater social justice. Mainly, we intend it as a primary academic supplement for graduate courses in public school finance and educational policy programs leading to master’s, advanced education certificates, or doctoral degrees in Educational Leadership and Public Policy. Over time, school finance has moved from “one of many” required classes to arguably the most important graduate course available to educational leadership students. Because without sufficient and targeted funding, schools cannot move every child to the performances needed for twenty-­fi rst-­century competence. School finance also reflects how communities infuse their values into their children’s educational programs. In an era of dwindling fiscal support for public schools, increasing federal mandates, and more competition for public dollars, education leaders must be able to articulate



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with informed arguments, sound finance theory, and practical application that advances every student’s learning. Educational leadership programs are most effective when they link theory with practice. CReT does this. Scholars and doctoral students can apply CReT to an array of public policy funding arenas, creating new case studies to expand the theory’s knowledge base as they identify, quantify, analyze, discuss, and propose public policy remedies for funding adequacy and equity. Chapter 3 provides a blueprint for doing this, and Chapter 4 gives an example of the blueprint in action. Education practitioners and their allies represent another key audience. Increasing educational funding equity is of strong interest to principals, district superintendents, and local school board members who regularly discuss school funding practices with their stakeholders; central office administrators who manage school budgets and liaise with local and state decision makers; and professional education associations (for principals, superintendents, school business officials, school boards, and others) who frequently work with lobbyists and state and national legislators to improve essential resources for high-­poverty schools. The U.S. has about 44,000 school principals, 7,000 superintendents,11 and approximately 13,800 public school boards12 who can use this book to better understand how states and localities fund schools and cogently explain the importance of school funding adequacy and equity to others as they advocate for support. Additionally, this book is appropriate to every field of graduate study in the social sciences that champions social justice by ensuring the adequate and equitable distribution of essential resources. These courses include advanced education finance, public administration, economics of education, social and educational policy, and applied economics. Political science and philosophy scholars and graduate students will be excited to learn how CReT operationalizes Critical Theory – a social philosophy oriented toward using education to increase human freedom from domination and oppression by our society’s social, economic, and political elites – by making it tangible, quantifiable, and available to inform social justice action in the public square. Further, in an era of globalized education policy, the problems of funding public schools have universal relevance.13 Although some countries have built education systems where a child’s socioeconomic status (SES) makes less of a difference in their learning, wellbeing, and post-­ high school educational attainment – their performance cannot be solely predicted by their SES – every country can do more to improve educational equity.14 The international education and public policy markets may have high interest in our discussion, especially since social justice is a “global ambition.”15 xviii

Preface

At a moment of jarring political upheavals that threaten our nation’s welfare, coupled with the racial justice movement, many Americans urgently feel the need to better understand our emerging status as a majority minority nation and to re-­forge our common bonds. A popular audience exists for scholarly readable books that explain our history, its continuing impact on our present norms and culture, and how to move beyond these limiting ideas to extend fairness to underserved groups. This book appeals to a wide general audience readership of educated persons interested in advancing equal opportunity. Educating every child well for twenty-­fi rst-­century life in a multicultural nation with shared ideals and goals is essential. As it was in the beginning, adequately and equitably funding public schools is fundamental to achieving this end. It is our deepest hope that our book contributes to this outcome. CHAPTER ORGANIZATION

Critical Resource Theory: A Conceptual Lens for Identifying, Diagnosing, and Addressing Inequities in School Funding offers a balance between the theoretical and its practical application in present society to improve educational and life outcomes for marginalized children. Our chapters introduce and discuss this new extension of Critical Theory, validate it as a valued-­added and complete theory, place it within a broader philosophical framework, and construct its historical, social, political, and educational contexts. Chapter 1: Critical Resource Theory introduces Critical Resource Theory as a conceptual framework to inform public policies and produce more equitable resources and outcomes for low-­ wealth communities. CReT meets the criteria for a value-­added (provides original insight with utility for some purpose) and complete theory (by addressing what, how, why, who/when/where). The chapter offers two case studies (a school equity audit and an analysis of a state education funding formula) as models demonstrating how to apply CReT to question, identify, and remedy resource inequities in public school allocations and funding. The chapter concludes by synthesizing the patterns of school funding inequities these case studies depict. Chapter 2: Critical Resource Theory’s “Family Tree” summarizes and critiques Critical Theory, Critical Race Theory (CRT), and Resource Dependence Theory (RDT) and discusses how each contributes to CReT or shares its attention to pressing societal concerns. The chapter also describes each precursor’s “empiricism,” defines its relationship to education, and offers research findings on each approach.



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We further explain how CReT improves upon CT and CRT’s rhetorical language and lack of quantifiable metrics and how it uses RDT’s pragmatic language about securing “critical resources” to focus on collaborative real-­world problem solving. Chapter 3: Critical Resource Theory and Education Funding Inequities presents the research affirming that adequate and equitably allocated school funding – targeted appropriately – can lead to improved student outcomes. Our country’s traditional reliance on property taxes to fund schools ensures that community wealth inequalities carry over into education and life outcomes. Additionally, state education funding formulas reflect political decisions about resources and accountability. Under-­resourced schools contribute to the opportunity and achievement gaps between students of color and White students. Action steps for using CReT to remedy education funding and resource allocation inequities are presented. Chapter 4: From Courthouse to Schoolhouse: Determining School Funding Adequacy and Equity describes vertical and horizontal equity, wealth neutrality, and the three waves of school finance court decisions that shape education funding. Recounts what many school finance scholars consider the “Most Consequential” school funding adequacy and equity litigation from the U.S. Supreme Court (unsuccessful) to state courts (often successful). Case Study 3 offers an example of using CReT to frame and conduct a school district’s “equity audit” to question, identify, gather and organize relevant data, construct easily understood comparisons, assess, communicate, and remedy the fairness of their intra-­district resource allocations. Chapter 5: Colorism, Caste, Structural Racism, and Racial Colorblindness explores how Race – a man-­made social construct – carries immense political and economic weight and plays a dominant role in our history and culture. Since our nation’s founding, our society socializes its populace not to see the favoring or disfavoring of different groups as anything but ordinary. Using a critical lens to look beneath our “normalization” of material and social disparities, we see how the constructs of colorism, caste, structural racism (as witnessed in housing policies and their impact on schooling), and racial colorblindness shape and sustain the racial attitudes and material disparities between Whites and peoples of color to this day.

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Preface

Chapter 6: Education: Socializing Children for American Democracy investigates why and how providing taxpayer funded public education to socialize local children and acculturate increasingly diverse children into shared American civic norms, knowledge, and skills has been a fundamental right guaranteed by state constitutions since our nation’s start. Defining an appropriate curricular balance between advancing order (societal needs) and liberty (individual wants) would challenge communities then and now. Adequately and equitably resourced public schools remain an essential bulwark to ensure every individual’s capacity and our nation’s political and economic health. Consistently applying a CReT lens can help achieve these ends. NOTES

1 Barshay, J. (2018, July 9). In 6 states, school districts with the neediest students get less money than the wealthiest. The Hechinger Report. https://hechingerreport.org/in-­6-­states-­ school-­districts-­with-­the-­neediest-­students-­get-­less-­money-­than-­the-­wealthiest/; Camera, L. (2018, February 27). In most states, poorest school districts get less funding. U.S. News & World Report. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-­states/articles/2018-­02-­27/ in-­most-­states-­poorest-­school-­districts-­get-­less-­funding 2 Bordeau, P. (2018). Cultural reproduction and social reproduction. In E. Brown (Ed.), Knowledge, education, and cultural change: Papers in the sociology of education (pp. 71–112). Routledge; Bowles, S. & Gintis, H. (2002). Schooling in capitalist America revisited. Sociology of Education, 75(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.2307/3090251 3 Baker, B.D., Weber, M., & Atchison, D. (2020, June 1). Weathering the storm: School funding in the COVID-­ 19 era. Phi Delta Kappan, 102(1), 8–13. https://doi.org/10.1177 %2F0031721720956839; Jackson, C.K. (2018). Does school spending matter? The new literature on an old question (No. 25368). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi. org/10.3386/w25368 4 Brueckner, M., Dabla-­Norris, E., & Gradstein, M. (2014). National income and its distribution. IMF Working Paper, 14(101). International Monetary Fund. https://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2014/wp14101.pdf 5 Sutcher, L., Darling-­Hammond, L., & Carver-­Thomas, D. (2019). Understanding teacher shortages: An analysis of teacher supply and demand in the United States. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 27(35). http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/epaa.27.3696 6 Baker, B.D., Farrie, D., & Sciarra, D. (2018, February). Is school funding fair? A national report card (97th ed.). Education Law Center and Rutgers Graduate School of Education. https://edlawcenter.org/assets/files/pdfs/publications/Is_School_Funding_Fair_7th_Editi.pdf; Jackson, C.K., Wigger, C., & Xiong, H. (2018). Do school spending cuts matter? Evidence from the Great Recession (No. 24203). National Bureau of Economic Research. http://www. nber.org/papers/w24203.pdf 7 Ball, S.J. (2012). Global education, inc. New policy networks and the neoliberal imaginary. Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203803301; Verger, A. (2014). Why do policy-­ makers adopt global education policies: Toward a research framework on the varying role of ideas in education reform. Current Issues in Comparative Education, 16(2), 14–29; Whitty, G. With Anders, J., Hayton, A., Tang, S. & Wisby, E. (2016). Research and Policy in Education. London: UCL IOE Press. 8 Owings, W.A., & Kaplan, L.S. (2010). The Alpha and Omega syndrome: Is intradistrict funding the next ripeness factor? Journal of Education Finance, 36(2), 162–185. https://doi. org/10.1353/jef.2010.0002 9 Owings, W.A., Kaplan, L.S., & Whitfield, A (2022). A commentary on Critical Resource Theory: Increasing resource equity in low-­income schools and beyond. Journal of Education Finance, 47(3), 324–338. https://muse-jhu-edu.proxy.lib.odu.edu/article/852712/pdf 10 See: Bernard, S. (2010). Science shows making lessons relevant really matters. Edutopia. Retrieved from https://www.edutopia.org/neuroscience-­brain-­based-­learning-­relevance-



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­improves-­engagement; Immordino-­Yang, M H. (2015). Emotions, learning, and the brain: Exploring the educational implications of affective neuroscience. WW Norton & Company; Willis, J. (2010). Current impact of neuroscience on teaching and learning. In D. A. Sousa, (Ed.), Mind, brain, education. Neuroscience implications for the classroom (pp. 45–68). Solution Tree; Pekrun, R. & Linnenbrink-­Garcia, L. (2012). Academic emotions and student engagement (Chapter 12, pp. 259–282). In S.L. Christenson et al. (Eds.), Handbook of research on student engagement. Springer Science + Business Media, LLC. 11 Zippia (2021, September 9). School principal. Demographics and statistics in the US. https://www.zippia.com/school-­principal-­jobs/demographics/; Zippia (2021, September 9). School superintendent. Demographics and statistics in the US. https://www.zippia.com/ school-­superintendent-­jobs/demographics/ 12 Ballotpedia (n.d.). Public school district (United States). https://ballotpedia.org/ Public_school_district_(United_States) 13 Mowat, J.G. (2017). Closing the attainment gap – a realistic proposition or an elusive pipe-­ dream? Journal of Education Policy, 33(2), 299–321.https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.2017. 1352033 14 OECD (2018). Equity in education: Breaking down barriers to social mobility. PISA, OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264073234-­en. 15 U.S. News & World Report (2021, April 13). Canada is the No. 1 country in the world, according to the 2021 Best Countries Report. https://www.prnewswire.com/news-­releases/canada-­ is-­the-­no-­1-­country-­in-­the-­world-­according-­to-­the-­2021-­best-­countries-­report-­301267237. html

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This is our fourth book working with Heather Jarrow, Routledge Publisher. She continues to be a wise and valued companion, guiding us with her intelligence, encouragement, flexibility, and practical suggestions. “Thank you” also goes to Rebecca Collazo and the rest of the Routledge team. A sincere “Thank you” to Kern Alexander, best-­ selling textbook author, Professor of Excellence at the University of Illinois Urbana-­ Champaign, and Editor of The Journal of Education Finance (JEF) who challenged us to refine our first manuscript draft on Critical Resource Theory and published a revised and refocused version as a Commentary in JEF, 2022. Special gratitude goes to Gaye Adegbalola, our dear friend for over 40 years. Gaye, a highly talented musician, composer, and blues vocal artist has “lived the life” that Leslie and Bill can only read about. Her questions and clarifying feedback on our “Colorism, Caste, and Racial Colorblindness” chapter helped us anchor it in real experience as well as scholarship. Another special “Thank you” to Joe Murphy, Emeritus Professor of Education at Peabody College of Education and Human Development, Vanderbilt University, for generously sharing his thoughts on assessing equity in marginalized students’ academic achievement. A sincere “Thanks” also to our good friend, Phillip Langlais, for encouraging us to give the CReT lens agency by clarifying how readers could use it as a tool to change outcomes. We also express appreciation to our book’s reviewers who provided invaluable feedback that we used to strengthen this discussion. They are valued collaborators. Steve Bounds, Professor, Center for Leadership and Learning, Arkansas Tech University and Eric Houck, Associate Professor, School of Education, UNC – Chapel Hill. Likewise, we appreciatively thank Maire Harris, our diligent copyeditor, whose keen eyes for the smallest details improved the book’s clarity and accuracy and Jashnie Jabson, our Senior Production Editor and her team.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Leslie S. Kaplan, a retired school administrator in Newport News, Virginia, is a full-­time education writer and former researcher with Old Dominion University’s Research Foundation. She has provided middle school and high school instructional leadership as well as central office leadership as a director of program development. Before becoming a school administrator, she worked as a middle school and high school English teacher and as a school counselor with articles frequently published in The School Counselor. Kaplan’s scholarly publications, coauthored with William A. Owings, appear in numerous professional journals. She also has coauthored several books and monographs with Owings, including Educational Foundations, (3rd ed.); American Public School Finance (3rd ed.). Routledge; Organizational Behavior for School Leadership: Leveraging Your School for Success. Routledge; Introduction to the Principalship: Theory to Practice. Routledge; Culture Re-­ Boot: Reinvigorating School Culture to Improve Student Outcomes; American Public School Finance (2nd ed.); Leadership and Organizational Behavior in Education; Educational Foundations (2nd ed.); American Education: Building a Common Foundation; American Public School Finance; Teacher Quality, Teaching Quality, and School Improvement; Best Practices, Best Thinking, and Emerging Issues in School Leadership; and Enhancing Teacher and Teaching Quality. In addition, their chapter on privatizing American public schools appears in The Oxford Encyclopedia of Educational Administration (2021). Kaplan also serves on the NASSP Bulletin Editorial Board. As a person with experiences in a variety of education roles, she has the unique distinction of being honored as both Virginia’s “Counselor of the Year” and “Assistant Principal of the Year.” She is a past president of the Virginia Counselors’ Association and the Virginia Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, and she served as board member and secretary for Voices for Virginia’s Children. She is a 2014 National Education Finance Academy Distinguished Fellow of Research and Practice.

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William A. Owings is a professor of educational leadership at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia. Owings has worked as a public school teacher, an elementary school and high school principal, assistant superintendent, and superintendent of schools. His scholarly publications, coauthored with Leslie S. Kaplan, include books on educational leadership, school finance, and educational foundations, as well as articles in National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) Bulletin, Journal of School Leadership, Journal of Education Finance, Journal of Effective Schools, Phi Delta Kappan, Journal of Academic Perspectives, Teachers College Record, Journal of Applied Business and Economics, and the Eurasian Journal of Business and Economics. Owings has served on the state and international boards of the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) and is a member of the Journal of Education Finance Editorial Advisory Board. He also reviews articles for the NASSP Bulletin Educational Administration Quarterly, Eurasian Journal of Business and Economics, Asia Pacific Journal of Education, and International Journal of Education Research. He is a frequent presenter at state and national conferences and a consultant on educational leadership, school finance, and instructional improvement. He is a 2018 winner of Old Dominion University’s Tonelson Award for Outstanding Faculty Achievement in Teaching, Research, and Service and a 2014 National Education Finance Academy Distinguished Fellow of Research and Practice. Owings and Kaplan share the 2008 Virginia Educational Research Association Charles Edgar Clear Research Award for Consistent and Substantial Contributions to Educational Research and Scholarship.

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About the Authors

CHAPTER 1 Critical Resource Theory

INTRODUCTION

It helps to be powerful, wealthy, and well connected if one wants access to valued and scarce resources. In “It Pays to be Rich During a Pandemic,” The Atlantic reported that in early March 2020, when COVID-19 virus tests were extremely difficult to obtain, the state of Oklahoma completed 58 COVID-19 tests in a few hours on the Utah Jazz and the Oklahoma City Thunder basketball teams. The Jazz consumed 20% of the state’s entire stock of test kits.1 Looking more broadly, economist Robert Reich sees “Socialism for the Rich, Harsh Capitalism for the Rest,” citing large government bailouts for major banks and a shrinking “social safety net” for everyone else. 2 Clearly, access – or lack of access – to sufficient essential resources is central to the wellbeing of every aspect of individual, community, and national life. Throughout history, the capacity of certain persons and groups to wield their social, political, and economic influence to mold culture, shape public policies, and enact institutional practices that benefit themselves and others like them – while disadvantaging those unlike them – offer examples of power that many theories critique for insights they can apply to make their societies more fair.3 On a large scale, power – “the ability to direct or influence the behavior of others” – affords “the capacity to set the public agenda, to frame big choices, to influence legislators, and to get laws enacted or prevent them from being enacted, to assert one’s will on the world.”4 Those with power often engage in political activities to advance their preferred agendas and outcomes. Influence – political, economic, and/or social, singly or in combination – represents an additional type of power.5 Critical Resource Theory (CReT), a new extension of Critical Theory (CT), questions, identifies, assesses, and explains how power inequities in our society advantage those with substantial influence at the expense

DOI: 10.4324/9781003291862-1

1

of those without it. Uniquely, CReT offers a conceptual framework with the quantitative and qualitative capacities to question, identify, and analyze publicly funded disparities in resources going to high- and lowwealth communities. Quantifying the relevant factors into actual dollars and cents enables scholars, policy makers, and practitioners to demonstrate concretely how those with societal power can create systemic practices that benefit themselves and burden those who lack similar assets. These data can undergird policy remedies to make public funding more equitable and outcomes more widely beneficial. Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Resource Dependence Theory (RDT) also concur or contribute to CReT’s framework. All four theories – CT, CRT, RDT, and CReT – share the basic premise: Those persons who hold the societal power to secure and allocate limited essential resources tend to use these assets to profit themselves and those like them and to sustain the status quo. Social and educational mobility indicate a society’s equality of opportunity. The principle that everyone has a fair chance at improving one’s life is central to democratic political and economic institutions. Better education outcomes correlate strongly with higher socioeconomic status (SES) in adulthood.6 But, the degree to which education promotes social mobility varies across countries. When educational success is closely tied to family background rather than to students’ talents and attitudes, education tends to reproduce pre-existing inequalities (i.e., where everyone is not treated the same) across generations, as critical theories of education predict.7 By comparison, education policies that aim at equity (i.e., giving people what they need) and adequacy (i.e., providing sufficient resources to accomplish the job of educating our children)8 can be influential drivers generating upward social mobility and in reducing income disparities over the long term.9 Since school leaders have little control over the monies coming into their schools – short of voting for state and federal legislators who support adequate school funding or writing for grants to accomplish specific projects – our main focus will be on equity where school district leaders have some control over its allocation to schools. This chapter introduces CReT’s conceptual framework and quantifiable metrics as a value-added and complete theory with two case studies. The first study identifies the “Alpha” and “Omega” schools from their reputations as an urban school district’s alleged “best” and “worst” based on informal survey responses. The second case study examines the inequities in one state’s school funding formula to highlight how a minor reversal of weightings can deliver more state fiscal support to low-income communities’ public schools. A third case study conducting intra-district equity audits using a recognized weighting formula for certain student 2

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populations needing additional resources (such as students with disabilities or English learners) and an a priori lens to categorize disparity differences appears in Chapter 4. These real-world exemplars generate insights about inequitably funding schools (and the policies and practices that drive them) that others can use to identify and redress resource inequities between high- and low-wealth communities. Following these examples, we illustrate in narrative and graphic forms how CReT meets the criteria for a value-added and complete theory and explain how to apply the CReT lens to varied inequitable circumstances. Later chapters will expand these ideas. Chapter 2 considers CReT’s theoretical antecedents – Critical Theory, Critical Race Theory, and Resource Dependence Theory – and their contributions or concurrence to CReT. Chapter 3 discusses funding inequities in public education and how these maintain the societal status quo. Chapter 4 considers what many school finance scholars view as our “Most Consequential” school funding equity and adequacy court cases and describes using a CReT lens to conduct a meaningful intra-district school equity audit. Chapter 5 explores how our nation’s history and culture continue to shape our views about skin color and resource allocation – namely, colorism, caste, structural racism, and racial colorblindness – to normalize inequities in K-12 schools. Chapter 6 examines public education as a constitutional right that requires states to provide adequate fiscal support if our children are to help sustain our nation as a healthy democratic republic. Throughout this book, we argue for adequate and equitable public school resources, believing that effectively educating every child for full economic and civic participation in society advances us all. CASE STUDIES BUILD THEORIES

Case studies are rich, empirical descriptions of particular instances of a phenomenon typically based on a variety of data sources.10 Using case studies to develop new theories involves using one or more cases to create theoretical constructs, propositions, and/or midrange theory from case-based, empirical evidence. The cases may be historical but are more likely to be contemporary descriptions of recent events.11 Single case studies can have persuasive power, contributing to conceptual understanding by serving as concrete illustrations of a how a theory works in real life. Scholarly papers that construct theory from cases are often viewed as the “most interesting” research, rank among the most highly cited pieces, and have outsized impact to their numbers. Since each case serves as its own analytic unit, the case study approach invites other researchers to create additional cases as replications, contrasts, and extensions to the emerging theory. Theory building occurs through recursive cycling among the case data, emergent theory, and eventually,

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the resulting literature. As such, case studies build a bridge from vivid empirical data to mainstream deductive research, likely producing ­theory that is accurate, interesting, and testable.12

CASE STUDY 1  THE “ALPHA AND OMEGA SYNDROME”

Every country has a gradient in student performance linked with their family’s socioeconomic status (SES). SES is a sociological term that refers to the family’s or individual’s relative position in a hierarchical social structure based on their access to or control over wealth, prestige, and power,13 usually indicated by parents’ educational level and occupational prestige. On average, young people from lower SES households have weaker literacy skills than those from more advantaged backgrounds. The strength of this relationship varies among countries, with some more successful than others in reducing SES-related disparities.14 High-poverty schools can be defined as having more than 70% of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch (FRPL), a proxy for poverty, and low-poverty schools tend to have less than 40% of students eligible for FRPL In Fall 2017, a federal report found one out of every four (25%) U.S. schools classified as high poverty, 21% of schools were classified as “low poverty,” 15 and approximately 13 million children under age 18 were from families living in poverty.16 When a school system is equitable, it provides the necessary learning resources (i.e., sufficient learning time, effective teachers, appropriate curricular materials) to mitigate the disparities presented by their parents’ social and economic situations.17 For instance, schools are equitable when students of varying SES, gender, immigration status, and family background achieve similar levels of academic performance in key cognitive domains (i.e., reading, mathematics, science); social emotional wellbeing (i.e., life satisfaction, self-confidence, and social integration); and educational attainment.18 Equity does not mean that all students have equal education outcomes, or that the differences in students’ outcomes are not related to their family background or economic and social conditions over which the children have no control.19 In “The Alpha and Omega Syndrome: Is Intra-District Funding the Next Ripeness Factor?”, Owings and Kaplan (2010) reviewed the literature on funding disparities between and within school districts and conducted a fiscal equity audit comparing spending in each budget category for two southeast U.S. high schools located in the same urban district. The “Alpha” school was the one most 4

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informally (sample of convenience) surveyed parents wanted their child to attend; the “Omega” school (both pseudonyms) was the school most queried parents did not want their child to attend. Selecting local high schools representing opposite ends of the distribution enables investigators to discern what ample or insufficient funding resources might provide in these two counterparts that schools more like each other might not show. The “Alpha” and “Omega” high schools had under 10% and over 40% of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunches, respectively.20 For every $1 spent per pupil at the “Alpha” school, the district spent only $0.397 at the “Omega” school. By comparison, in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), Thurgood Marshall presented evidence that in 1950 in Clarendon County, South Carolina, the yearly per-pupil spending was $179 for White students and $43 for Black students: a $1 to $0.24 ratio. 21 In the 56 years between the two reports, the proportion of money spent on “most desirable” and “least desirable” schools in the same school district remained virtually unchanged, increasing by only 15 cents on the dollar. Although these numbers from Brown and “Alpha and Omega” come from completely different analyses of different questions using different data and methods, the comparison makes a notable point. The differences in resources available to “Alpha” and “Omega” teachers and students were stunning. The “Alpha” high school employed the most teachers with 25 to 30 years of classroom experience and graduate degrees whereas the “Omega” high school employed mostly first- through fifth-year teachers without graduate degrees. The “Alpha” high school had fewer students per class; a lower teacher–pupil ratio (12.37 pupils/teacher for “Alpha” versus 16.8 pupils/teacher in “Omega”) meant more individual attention to help “Alpha” students succeed. Since research finds that teachers are the most important school factor in student achievement, 22 and teacher experience is highly related to student achievement, 23 access to skillful teachers is a serious equity issue with life-long consequences. And the differences in resources available to “Alpha” and “Omega” teachers and students did not end there. “Alpha” high school offered interested students the option to participate in the intellectually rigorous International Baccalaureate program; “Omega” high school did not extend this opportunity. “Alpha” high school was air conditioned; “Omega” high school was not. In  every budget category – curriculum, administrators, professional staff (including deans and school counselors), technology,

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field trips transportation, professional development, and facilities’ maintenance – “Alpha” high school had higher per-pupil expenditures than the “Omega” high school. The lack of sufficient resources in “Omega” high school denied children the same educational opportunities as their peers across town. The miseducation does not end here. Most of the poorest schools in the United States, about 9.3 million or nearly one-fifth of the country’s public school students, are rural. Their schools also suffer from a significant lack of sufficient resources – qualified and experienced (or sometimes, any) teachers; up-to-date and available textbooks; adequate (or any) laboratory facilities for science classes; school facilities in poor repair and without adequate ventilation, air conditioning, or properly functioning sewers; and lack of accessible broadband or enough Wi-Fi-enabled digital devices to help students learn virtually when schools shutter for pandemics. 24 The Rural School and Community Trust, a national nonprofit group, found that decades of population loss and state governments’ divestment have created a unique “emergency” situation when it comes to educating their children. 25 Although Owings and Kaplan did not consciously investigate the “Alpha and Omega Syndrome” with a CReT lens, they hypothesized that they would find marked resource disparities between the two schools. Some national intra-district fiscal disparity litigation had begun. 26 Already familiar with Critical Theory, Critical Race Theory, and Resource Dependence Theory, they developed CReT inductively as they clarified their findings. They reasoned, if they could identify and diagnose these between-school resource inequities in one school district, using actual dollars and cents to make the imbalances transparent, and share them with district leadership, administrators would have the opportunity to recognize, address, and perhaps remedy them with their staff and community. And if their community and others like them, armed with valid and reliable descriptive and quantified data, actively pressed their state and federal legislators for more targeted education funding, they might improve fiscal adequacy as well. Owings and Kaplan then looked for additional ways to operationalize CReT, resulting in Case Studies 2 and 3 (Chapter 4). Blatantly inequitable situations like these may be less likely to happen in the future. The 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) requires states to report annually for every Title I public school and local education agency the total per-pupil spending of federal, state, and local money for the preceding fiscal

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year.  27 This includes actual (not average) spending on personnel, making it difficult to mask school-by-school spending differences. Advocates hope this effort to promote transparency and equity across schools will ensure a fairer distribution of resources. Yet as of 2020, the “vast majority of states” did not have online portals that allow users to compare spending across a district’s schools to identify and expose patterns of systemic inequity. Consequently, this opacity appears to mute the data’s impact on localities. 28

CASE STUDY 2  ADJUSTING A STATE’S EDUCATION FUNDING FORMULA

Case studies can also look beyond individual schools to examine the relationship between state funding formulas and equitable resource allocations to high- and low-poverty school districts and experiment with ways to increase equity. A 2020 study using a CReT lens intended to identify state public school funding practices that produce and legitimize fiscal and educational disparities over time between children of low- and high-wealth school districts, quantify them for analysis, and experimentally propose a remedy to reduce them. 29 The study confirmed that communities with higher wealth often commit extra local funds above what the state provides to support their schools. The investigation also found an association between how much income wealth inequality exists within a particular school division and how much of the foundation level of education funding the locality must pay to support its local schools. This suggested the likelihood of serious wealth differences in different parts of the community and the possibility of inequitable “Alpha and Omega Syndrome” conditions for their children. This relationship held practical but not statistical significance.30 Next, the investigator numerically adjusted the state’s education funding formula to simulate providing more aid to less wealthy localities and expecting wealthier localities to fund more for their own education systems from their more available resources. Experimentally reversing the weights between “property tax” and” income tax” (i.e., raising the high wealth communities’ expected contribution to their schools by one point and reducing low wealth communities’ contribution by one point) would require high-wealth areas to fund up to 90% of the foundation level of



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education (with the state adding the remaining 10%) whereas the low-wealth districts contributed less from their more limited resources (with the state paying more). For example, during the simulation, the lowest wealth county’s required school funding contribution fell from 16.9% to 6.92% whereas the state’s share of school funding rose from 83.08% to 93.08%, reducing the locality’s fiscal pressure and making more resources available to their schools. Similarly, after the adjustment, the highest wealth community’s share of education costs rose from 80% to 90% whereas the state’s share fell from 20% to 10%. This simulation shows that a modest change to the state’s funding formula may provide more state resources – increased resource adequacy and equity – to schools in high-needs communities. Since the state in question allows localities to fund their schools above the foundation level without a recapture clause, high-wealth districts can more easily supplement their lower state allotments. 31

WHAT THE CASE STUDIES SUGGEST

These two case studies point to serious inequities in funding low-income communities’ schools and the potential loss of human capital as many students of color do not receive the high-quality education they need to thrive. Several patterns emerge that merit discussion: • Taxpayer dollars may be apportioned in ways that systematically advantage higher-wealth students and disadvantage lower-wealth students, starting with placement of experienced, able educators. • Resource allocation decisions tend to lack transparency, allowing political bargaining to create inequities that continue unchallenged. • The general public has “normalized” our schools inequitable funding (and student outcomes) with wealthier localities receiving more resources than poorer communities. Taxpayer Dollars Apportioned Differently to Different Communities

First, taxpayer dollars may be apportioned in ways that systematically advantage higher-wealth students and disadvantage lower-wealth students, starting with placements of experienced, able educators. Studies affirm that by every metric of teacher quality – classroom experience, licensure exam scores, value-added estimate measures of students’ academic growth – teachers are inequitably distributed across every indicator of student disadvantage – free and reduced-price lunch (FRPL)

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eligibility, minority, and low prior academic performance.32 At the same time, Rutgers and Syracuse Universities’ studies indicate that schools with high percentages of low-income students need two to three times more money than other schools to address these students’ greater challenges, including lack of internet access and unmet health needs.33 School funding may be both inadequate and inequitable: not enough to satisfactorily accomplish the job of educating our children and unfairly allocated among schools to meet every student’s learning needs. In lowincome communities, lesser funding means receiving fewer resources – money, people, material – than higher-wealth communities. This reflects a national trend: In more than half the states, the poorest school districts do not receive funding adequate to address their students’ increased needs.34 School districts with the highest poverty rates receive about $1,000 less per student in state and local funding than schools with the lowest poverty rates.35 By contrast, even within the same districts, wealthy schools tend to receive millions of dollars more than the poor ones.36 In fact, wealthier school districts typically spend significantly more money to run their public schools.37 With the “Alpha and Omega” study, the high-needs “Omega” high school enrolled over 40% of students eligible for FRPL as compared to the higher-wealth “Alpha” school with fewer than 10% of students FRPL eligible. In budget analyses, teacher salaries made up most of the per-school funding differences. The “Alpha” school had the most teachers with 25 to 30 years of experience and graduate degrees as compared with the “Omega” school with mostly first-year through fifth-year teachers and without graduate degrees. Instructionally, these disparities do “Omega” students a serious disservice as compared with their “Alpha” peers. “Alpha” school also had a lower school counselor-to-student ratio (1:281 as compared with “Omega”’s 1:323). This suggests that “Alpha” students receive more personal attention for their academic and college/ career planning – and more occasions for informal mentoring – from these professionals than their “Omega” peers. Likewise, the “Alpha” school principal had more experience (and significantly higher salary) than the “Omega” principal. This also follows national trends: Principals in the highest-poverty public schools tend to have the least experience38 and least effectiveness.39 Further, many studies document how schools serving students of color and from low-income families in high-poverty schools tend to have higher teacher turnover rates than higher-wealth schools.40 Poverty, unsatisfactory working conditions, and/or ineffective school leaders may help fuel the low student achievement and increased educator exits. But the harm to student learning and school climate that comes from this teacher churn is unclear (since most of the studies are correlational, not

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causal).41 Even if causation were a factor, its direction of influence may be reciprocal: Teacher inexperience and turnover may generate low student achievement even as low achievement and related school factors may prompt frustrated teachers to leave.42 Yet it is possible to infer reasons for these links between teacher turnover and student outcomes. Teacher inexperience is one factor. Teachers who replace the leavers disproportionately tend to be beginning teachers who studies show to be substantially less effective than their more classroom-tested colleagues.43 Lack of opportunities for extended educator–student relationships is a second factor. Over 15% of adolescents identify a K-12 teacher, counselor, or coach as their most important mentor; 80% of these relationships continue after students graduate from high school.44 Longitudinal national studies find that when teachers and school counselors become informal mentors in a sustained relationship that supports individual students academically and socially (especially towards the end of ninth or beginning of 10th grade), young people achieve greater levels of academic success and higher levels of post-secondary attainment.45 Mentors can introduce students to new ways of thinking and alternate perspectives, serve as sounding boards to help young people better manage their emotions,46 and expand adolescents’ self-perceptions and goals of who they might become by introducing them to a wider range of “possible selves.”47 Importantly, these benefits are largest for lower SES students.48 From these data, one might logically assume that elevated teacher turnover rates in high-poverty schools would decrease the occasions for students and school personnel to forge strong, caring bonds over time that support school and life success. Disruption to the school as an organization from high educator turnover is a third variable. Some scholars suggest that the quality of relationships and trust among teachers and between teachers and students predicts student achievement.49 High turnover makes it difficult for schools to establish a stable culture that underlies a positive learning climate and supports students making academic gains.50 Over time, teachers build relationships and trust with their colleagues. These interpersonal bonds enable them to work collaboratively to improve their practice and increase student learning. By severing these relationships, turnover reduces teacher willingness to collaborate and reduces the “social resources” – including collegiality, community, and trust – that positively impact student achievement.51 This may partly account for the disciplinary difficulties in schools with high teacher turnover as students “test” new teachers with whom they do not have relationships.52 Moreover, research finds that the harmful impact of teacher turnover on student achievement is stronger in schools with high proportions of lowachieving and African American students.53 10

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A school’s academic quality suggests a fourth factor that affects student outcomes. The esteemed International Baccalaureate (IB) program was available for “Alpha” academic achievers whereas IB was not an option for their “Omega” counterparts. This, too, is a national trend, as high-poverty schools face disparities in access to advanced courses such as calculus, physics, and Advanced Placement (AP) courses – often due to lack of resources and teaching staff – that most public four-year colleges expect high school students to take.54 This lack of strong academic preparation typically leads to lower educational attainment, with students from low-income families earning bachelor’s degrees at significantly lower rates than their more affluent peers.55 Studies also find that higher levels of education are associated with higher lifetime earnings, with a B.A. degree often a powerful driver for lifting individuals out of poverty.56 Fifth, school facilities – including indoor and outdoor lighting, plumbing, heating/air conditioning, adequate ventilation, electrical, security, fire suppression, telecommunications, furnishings, playgrounds, parking, and aesthetics – contain the educational process, create the learning conditions, and impact student learning.57 The “Alpha” school was air conditioned. The “Omega” school wasn’t. “Alpha” had a lower studentto-custodian ratio (205:1 as compared with “Omega”’s 323:1), suggesting a more promptly cleaned and well-maintained facility. The presence or absence of these varied academic, professional, and supporting dimensions shape a school’s climate, culture, and student outcomes. Resource Allocation Decisions Allow Political Bargaining

Similarly, the state’s school funding formula appears designed to put a greater fiscal burden on poorer localities to raise the additional funds needed to adequately support their schools. By comparison, wealthier communities that can easily raise additional local funds often don’t have to because the state’s inequitable allotment favors them. Again, fewer resources available to “Omega” students and teachers can translate into an array of academic disadvantages that remove many high-quality opportunities to learn and diminish academic achievement, educational attainment, and life outcomes. It doesn’t have to be this way. First, studies find that higher public expenditure per student can reduce student achievement differences between schools, thus reducing the achievement gap between low- and high-income pupils.58 Second, resource allocation decisions tend to lack transparency, allowing political bargaining to create inequities that continue unchallenged. Although local property taxes make up the “overwhelming majority” of funds collected to finance local government operations, including school districts, the process of assigning property its specific

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value rarely receives much public scrutiny. Many decisions about property taxes rest in complex, detail-oriented legislative and administrative practices, the result of political bargaining that determines exemptions and the size of tax burdens on different parts of the population.59 For example, varied types of extremely expensive property (such as luxury urban residences) are undervalued. Meanwhile, property designated for charitable, educational, and philanthropic purposes receives state-­ mandated tax exemptions. Although the process of deciding these valuations and exemptions is “opaque” to anyone not professionally involved in these efforts, their fiscal impact “can increase the tax burden on less wealthy groups that are not well connected politically.”60 Similarly, establishing school funding practices involves inherently political decisions. The interaction of state and local funding is an ongoing balancing act, subject to choices by legislators, judges, district administrators, and voters. Although every funding formula variable can be related to specific underlying costs, these exercises always leave considerable room for political discussions and bargaining because deciding on the expected quality of schooling is by nature a political decision involving a competition over resources and accountability.61 As a result, political decisions tend to allow wealthier school districts to monetarily support schools at much higher levels than the state or locality’s funding formula provides.62 Again, it doesn’t have to be this way. Economics of education studies conclude that if we want our public schools to serve all children well, we must provide them with adequate and equitable funding.63 School and district spending studies verify that when budgets increase, students show significant gains in achievement and other desirable outcomes.64 By comparison, when school funds are cut or insufficient, student performance suffers.65 Chapter 3 gives a more complete picture of these funding realities. School Inequities are Normalized

Third, the general public has “normalized” our schools’ inequitable funding with wealthier localities receiving more resources than poorer communities. In psychology and sociology, normalization refers to the social processes through which ideas and actions through repetition, ideology, or propaganda, come to be seen as “normal,” taken for granted, or natural parts of everyday life. Although often operating beyond conscious awareness, normalization can have a complex but unseen influence on our perceptions, beliefs, and decisions. For instance, our seeming acceptance of poverty in our otherwise wealthy society, the assumption that low-income children will perform poorly in school, and belief that it is okay to provide fewer educational opportunities for 12

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low-income people and people of color reflect how we have normalized this situation. Rather than alert us to an injustice, we see it as ordinary, “It’s just the way things are,” not a societal shortcoming that denies access to vital resources for “others” unlike us. Chapters 4 and 5 will discuss in greater detail how we learn to normalize societal inequities. Applying a CReT Lens

Additionally, the two case studies suggest an inductive approach for applying the CReT lens to school funding resource disparities that deserve intensive inquiry. Step 1: Question existing practices. Simply because certain policies and practices are in place for allocating intra-district resources does not mean they are allotted equitably or in accord with the school board’s and community’s goal for all its students. Step 2: Gather and organize relevant data. Collecting and thoughtfully arranging the descriptive and quantitative data to look more closely at intra-district resource allocations (Case Study 1) and challenging a state’s school funding formula (Case Study 2) can highlight present inequities and suggest possible remedies. Step 3: Construct transparent graphic comparisons for analyses. Presenting the relevant data in clear narrative and visual ways that make sense to researchers and lay audiences supports accurate analyses, communication, and taking further action. Step 4: Communicate findings to stakeholders. With accurate and consequential comparisons of key data presented narratively and graphically to stakeholders and explained in everyday terms – such as Thurgood Marshall’s example of resource disparities by emphasizing “cents per dollar” in per-pupil spending between White and Black schools – audiences can make sense of the findings. Step 5: Advocate. With evidence of specific disparities in resources and student outcomes in hand, presenting persuasive arguments to key local and legislative decision makers to provide adequate and equitably distributed resources becomes easier. Chapters 3 and 4 puts these steps into action. CRITICAL RESOURCE THEORY

Considering these two case studies; recognizing other societal inequities enacted through unfair, opaque public funding policies; and identifying ways to remedy them, we developed a conceptual framework – Critical Resource Theory – to encompass our ideas. Simply put, a theory is “a statement of concepts and their interrelationships that shows how and/

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or why a phenomenon occurs.”66 Many use the terms “theory” and “model” interchangeably.67 Theory building, an integral part of any area of study, increases the field’s scope of understanding on a topic. Theory helps create mental models about human behavior and societal structures, and these models place data interpretation within a meaningful context while enabling analysis to challenge the underlying ideas. It provides a starting point to conduct research. Since organizational and management research offers useful theory-building paradigms, we begin here,68 presenting CReT as a value-added and as a complete theory. CReT as a Value-Added Theory

According to Corley and Gioia, the value-added of theory development “rests largely on the ability to provide original insight into a phenomenon by advancing knowledge in a way that is deemed to have utility or usefulness for some purpose.”69 Originality can advance understanding and insight either incrementally or revelatory whereas the practical dimensions can be either realistically or scientifically useful. As such, a new theory can offer a “critical redirection of existing views or … an entirely new point of view on phenomena,”70 like the difference between extending a current conversation and starting a new one.71 Most organizational scholars generally work on improving what already exists and do not build a new theory “from scratch.”72 Originality is a necessary but not a sufficient aspect of a new theory. Insights must be useful with the potential to either improve current research or practice. Generally, scientific utility is an advance that improves conceptual rigor or specificity of an idea and/or strengthens its potential to be operationalized and tested. By comparison, practical utility occurs when a theory can be directly applied to real-world problems that practitioners face. For a variety of reasons, theoretical work among scholars tends to be aimed at more general than practical formations, but for true scope, theory should address both domains.73 Further, Corley and Gioia argue that new theory should be problem driven – that is, in some fashion addressing a problem of direct, indirect, or long-linked relevance to practice, rather than narrowly adding the (theoretical) “problem” of finding the next mediator or moderator variable for filling theoretical gaps simply because they exist…. A small shift in orientation might make a big difference in the contribution of our theories to addressing important problems.74

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But without a theory’s link to practice, it contributes little and affects nothing beyond its own theorizing. Influential theorizing – sometimes called prescience scholarship – should also hold the possibility for anticipating, identifying, and possibly shaping the domains and intellectual framing “that will soon be in need of theorizing,” such as upcoming concerns.75 Sensitive to developing trends, this initial theorizing conceptually encases scholars’ interactions with each other and predicts the conversations both scholars and societal leaders should be having, influencing these movements by forward-looking sensemaking (giving meaning to ambiguous phenomena)76 and sense giving (expressing the work in ways that are pragmatically useful).77 Sensemaking and sense giving provide meaning to unclear informational cues, draw attention to issues needing understanding from a theoretical viewpoint, and articulate reasonable interpretations and actions to address impending real-world demands.78 By this definition, CReT fits Corley and Gioia’s paradigm as an original, incremental theory with scientific and practical utility that is problem driven and advances prescience scholarship. CReT extends CT and CRT operationally by focusing on the contemporary public financing – the dollars and cents – of how political, economic, and/or societal power affect the distribution of essential resources (such as people, material, and influence) in ways that systemically and disproportionately benefit those who have these assets and disadvantage those who lack them. Likewise, CReT enables prescience scholarship, drawing attention and giving meaning to relevant issues and problems needing a theoretical understanding and providing the empirical methods to remedy otherwise ambiguous practices. For example, the “Alpha and Omega Syndrome” case study identifies intra-district funding inequities as “the next ripeness factor” (i.e., in legal terms, readiness for litigation). Likewise, for those seeking to prosecute state-initiated funding disparities between high- and low-wealth school districts, the state school funding study might prove valuable evidence and suggest possible remedies for between-district resource adequacy and equity disparities. This capacity to empirically document existing unfairness in actual numbers has clear implications for both policy and practice. CReT as a Complete Theory

Dubin (1978) and Whetten (1989) posit that a complete theory must contain four essential elements: What, How, Why, and Who/Where/When.79 What identifies the factors (variables, constructs, or concepts) that logically explain the social or individual phenomenon of interest while balancing comprehensiveness and parsimony. How describes and visually



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illustrates the factors’ relationships, showing patterns and causality. What and how make up the theory’s subject or domain. Why explains the theory’s underlying psychological, social, political, and economic logic and gives credibility to this particular representation of the phenomena. What, how, and why provide the essential parts – the description and explanation – of a simple theory. Who, where, and when state the conditions and limitations on the theory’s propositions that set generalizability boundaries. We will use this framework to introduce CReT. What

CT, CRT, RDT, and CReT all share underlying dynamics: the concept of highly influential people using their social, political, and/or economic advantages and access to needed limited resources to shape social policy and institutional decisions and practices in ways that maintain their own primacy, reproduce their views, and accrue certain benefits for themselves and those like them. Within this critique, their attention varies notably. CT addresses inequities within the whole society, CRT focuses on inequities in a White-dominated society, RDT concentrates on power and securing essential resources for organizational functioning, and CReT addresses inequities in public funding policies, practices, and outcomes in varied societal contexts. Unlike CT and CRT but similar to RDT, however, CReT’s focus on measurable public funding policies and practices allows researchers to demonstrate quantitatively how those with power and assets can engage through persons and organizations to create systemic practices that advantage themselves and disadvantage those who lack similar power and assets. In the United States, such public fiscal policies include public school funding and private property valuation;80 federal withholding taxes, FICA;81 federal housing policy and real estate redlining;82 and income tax rates and deductions,83 among other examples. Reliance on “numbers” brings cautions. Some argue that quantitative methods (i.e., numbers), although highly esteemed by policy makers, media, and people in general for their “objectivity” and “facts,” can hide and even encode biased perspectives.84 Statistics are neither value free nor politically neutral. Like other forms of data, statistics are socially constructed through a design process that includes decisions about which issues to research, what kinds of questions to ask, how to analyze the information, and which findings to share publicly. Their authoritative façade hides the possibility that at any stage of the process, people make decisions to obscure or misrepresent issues that could be essential to social justice concerns. For example, schools that use “creative bookkeeping” to identify “dropouts” as “transfers” can avoid low-achieving

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students bringing down their achievement test averages and raising their dropout rates. At the same time, quantitative methods used with appropriate safeguards and the willingness to challenge one’s own assumptions can contribute to greater fairness in education by showing how a society makes and legitimizes inequitable practices.85 How

Exploring the theoretical precursors to CReT as they apply to inequitable public education funding will help identify the underlying paradigms’ assumptions that must be understood to develop comprehensive views of the phenomena under study.86 When developing a new theory, authors must convince readers that the research question is crucial for organizations and/or theory and demonstrate that the existing research either does not address the research question at all or does so in a way that is inadequate or likely to be untrue.87 CReT’s conceptual “family tree” – specifically aspects of Critical Theory, Critical Race Theory, and Resource Dependence Theory – appear graphically in Figure 1.1. All four theories – CT, CRT, RDT, and

Critical Race Theory Dominant groups (White) control resources Benefit themselves Exploit/oppress others Race, racism, and power in American culture Disadvantages minorities Systemic Education: Status quo or liberating Goal: Transform status quo Empirical: Qualitative

School funding QuantCrit cautions

Critical Theory Dominant groups control resources Benefit themselves Exploit/oppress others Systemic Education: Status quo or liberating Goal: Transform status quo Empirical: Qualitative Critical: Critique “knowledge” Social criticism social action human freedom

Critical Resource Theory Dominant groups control resources Benefit themselves Disadvantage others Systemic Goal: Transform status quo Empirical: Quantitative, Qualitative Social criticism policy end inequities

Resource Dependence Theory Influential persons with power control critical (essential) resources Benefit certain organizations Increase individuals’ influence Goal: Control environment, increase organization’s autonomy, lessen unpredictability Empirical: Quantitative, qualitative Reduce organizations’ reliance on others, uncertainty Quantitative Neutral terms

Figure 1.1  Critical Resource Theory’s “Family Tree” Originally published in Owings, W.A., Kaplan, L.S., & Whitfield, A. (2022, Winter). Critical resource theory: Increasing resource equity in low-income schools and beyond. Journal of Education Finance, 47(3), 324–338 (Figure 1, page 329).



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CReT – share the basic premise: Those persons who hold the societal power to secure and allocate limited essential resources tend to behave in ways that sustain the status quo. Chapter 2 will discuss each antecedent in greater detail. CReT differs from (or concurs with) its antecedent theories in its focus, language use, and methodology. First, whereas CT addresses inequities within the whole society, CRT emphasizes systemic inequities in a White-dominated society, RDT concentrates on using power to secure essential resources for organizational functioning, CReT centers on inequities in public funding policies, practices, and outcomes in varied contexts. Next, each theory uses the term, “critical,” but not to mean the same thing. CT, CRT, and CReT use “critical” to mean critique, questioning, challenging the society’s unfair values, ideologies, and practices. RDT uses “critical” to mean essential resources for organizational functioning. In addition, RDT and CReT use neutral, pragmatic, contemporary language (i.e., advantage, disadvantage) appropriate for dispassionate problem solving. By contrast, CT and CRT tend to use rhetorical language (i.e., exploitation, oppression), reflecting CT’s roots in Marxist thought, words more likely to arouse strong emotions and perhaps limit actual problem solving.88 Lastly, like RDT, CReT deals in measurable data, making it receptive to quantitative analysis to inform policy inquiry, recommend changes, and support evidentiary arguments in school funding litigation. The three case studies presented demonstrate this benefit. Although CRT recently has begun considering quantitative methods in educational research,89 tensions within CRT’s own ranks are likely to keep Quantitative Critical Theory (QuantCrit) from becoming a central tenet.90 Why

Throughout human history, the ability of certain individuals and groups to use their economic, social, and political influence to shape culture, public policies, and institutional practices to advantage themselves and those like them – while disadvantaging those unlike them91 – offers examples of power that many theories critique for insights they can apply to make their societies more fair. Public policies and practices that continue to keep low-income people and people of color at severe disadvantage often reflect structural (i.e., institutional) racism – the totality of ways in which societies foster racial discrimination through “mutually reinforcing systems of housing, education, employment, earnings, benefits, credit, media, health care, and criminal justice.”92 Racism – “a multifaceted, deeply embedded, often taken-for-granted aspect of power relations” – is central to understanding institutional racism in the United States and elsewhere.93 18

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Millions of American children face the historic legacy of racially separated and unequal schooling – much of it from “pervasive structural racism” – as a daily reality.94 Structural racism is visible in public policies that place low-income communities at a disadvantage, evident in public schools segregated by race and SES; by school attendance boundaries intentionally drawn to reinforce student segregation by race and SES;95 and by teacher assignment patterns that typically send the least experienced teachers to the most economically disadvantaged schools.96 Structural racism is also evident in school funding policies that depend on local property taxes and in policies that ensure unequal access to health care, healthy food, and clean water and air.97 Although racial inequity may not be a conscious, deliberate goal of education policy, neither is it accidental. Rather, many believe that with tacit intentionality, racism is structured into institutional practices that account for its continuance and influence by White power holders and policy makers. The continuance of these inequitable practices reflects the normalized, routine privileging of White interests that go “unremarked in the policy mainstream.”98 By extending CT’s and CRT’s reach beyond societal critique and identifying existing fiscal inequities perpetuated by those with the influence to shape laws, public policies, and institutions, CReT makes CT’s empirical aspirations and CRT’s critiques of public school funding and its disparate outcomes accessible to quantitative study, informed debate, and reform. Who/Where/When

CReT works best within certain limitations and conditions. Since societal views on equity, public funding policies, and allocation practices differ with national cultures, CReT is context dependent, reflecting U.S. political and wealth dynamics. The U.S. has the world’s highest wealth inequality: the richest 10% of households own 79% of total wealth, and the richest 1% holds 42%.99 CReT may also have relevance in similar advanced economies with large wealth gaps.100 In the 28 OECD countries, the wealthiest 10% of households hold, on average, 52% of the total household wealth whereas the 60% least wealthy households own slightly over 12%.101 CReT may also be applicable in countries that finance schools through centralized budgets and where local revenue capacities play an important role in school financing.102 At regional levels, funding formulae components and their impact on high- and low-wealth school districts may present a meaningful study focus. At local levels, school districts may choose to allocate their resources equitably or inequitably. Community demographics, available assets, cultures, and social justice orientations all influence school funding amounts and allocation practices and are available for study.



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The “When” CReT becomes useful depends on the availability of public funding policy data to examine, assess, and communicate to a larger audience and the governing authorities’ political will to do so. CONCLUSION

“A theory’s potential and real explanatory power can be assessed best by weighing whether core propositions are informative or not, applicable to a large number of phenomena, realistic and empirically tested – or at least testable – and confirmed.”103 Corley and Gioia (2011) assert that if scholars have the responsibility for generating and disseminating useful knowledge, then the utility must be more than grist for scholarly debate; it must also have the potential to influence current and future practice. Likewise, Kilduff observes, “The route to good theory leads not through gaps in the literature but through an engagement with problems in the world.”104 Theorizing should anticipate coming conceptual domains in need of theory and research.105 CReT meets these criteria. According to Horkheimer, a critical theory is adequate only if it explains what is wrong with the current social reality (including psychological, cultural, and social dimensions and institutional forms of power), identifies the actors to change it, and provides both clear norms for criticism and achievable, practical goals for social transformation into “real democracy.”106 Likewise, CRT scholars suggest that it take an empirical approach to identifying inequities in school funding.107 CReT addresses these concerns. At their most basic, power and politics are about securing and distributing limited resources. Political considerations appear in many current public fiscal practices. Legislators and their advisers design state education funding formulas to reflect influential stakeholders’ preferences. School district leadership assigns limited resources to schools according to leaders’ and their supporters’ expressed (or unspoken) priorities. As the disparate resources and student outcomes reinforce the societal status quo, a lower quality education limits low-income children’s life options. CReT offers a conceptual framework and an empirical orientation with which to study public fiscal policies that maintain and/or increase disparities between those persons with social, economic, and political sway and those without it. Analyses of school funding data in two case studies (and a third case study in Chapter 4) demonstrate how states and localities enable education aid to primarily benefit wealthier communities’ schools at the expense of poorer localities’ schools. Additional studies may reinforce CReT’s efficacy as a tool to improve societal fairness.

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NOTES 1 Harris, A. (2020, March 15). It pays to be rich during a pandemic. The Atlantic. www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/03/coronavirus-testing-rich-people/608062/ 2 Reich, R.B. (2020). The system. Who rigged it, how we fix it. Alfred A. Knopf (p. 42). 3 Winters, J.A. (2017). Wealth defense and the complicity of liberal democracy. Nomos, 58, 158–225. www.jstor.org/stable/26785952 4 Reich, 2020, p. 9. 5 Politics can be understood as the activities associated with the governance of a country or other area, especially the debate or conflict among individuals or parties having or hoping to achieve power. Wealth – the value of everything a person or family owns (including real estate, stocks, and bonds readily converted into cash) minus debt – is one type of power. Wealth enables the capacity to get others to do the needed work to produce vital goods and services, negotiating money for labor within marketplace limits. Wealth can also be traded for other types of power or influence, such as swaying those in positions of authority to support certain goals through both legitimate (i.e., lobbying) and illegitimate (i.e., corruption) means. See: Winters, J.A. (2017). Wealth defense and the complicity of liberal democracy. Nomos, 58, 158–225. https://doi.org/10.2307/26785952 6 Hout, M. (2012). Social and economic returns to college education in the United States. Annual Review of Sociology, 38(1), 379–400. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.soc.012809.102503 7 Bordeau, P. (2018). Cultural reproduction and social reproduction. In E. Brown (Ed.), Knowledge, education, and cultural change: Papers in the sociology of education (pp. 71–112). Routledge; Bowles, S. & Gintis, H. (2002). Schooling in capitalist America revisited. Sociology of Education, 75(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.2307/3090251 8 Odden, A.R. & Picus, L.O. (2004). School finance: A policy perspective (3rd ed.). McGraw-Hill. 9 Brueckner, M., Dabla-Norris, E., & Gradstein, M. (2014). National income and its distribution. IMF Working Paper, 14(101). International Monetary Fund. www.imf.org/external/ pubs/ft/wp/2014/wp14101.pdf 10 Yin, R.K. (1994). Case study research: Design and methods (2nd ed.). Sage. 11 Eisenhardt, K.M., & Graebner, M.E. (2007, February). Theory building from cases: Opportunities and challenges. The Academy of Management Journal, 50(1), 25–32. https:// doi.org/10.5465/amj.2007.24160888 12 Bartunek, J.M., Rynes, S.L., & Ireland, R.D. (2006). What makes management research interesting and why does it matter? Academy of Management Journal, 49(1), 9–15. https:// doi.org/10.5465/amj.2006.20785494; Eisenhradt & Graebner, 2007; Siggelkow, N. (2007). Persuasion with case studies. Academy of Management Journal, 50(1), 20–24. https://doi. org/10.5465/amj.2007.24160882; Yin, 1994. 13 Mueller, C.W. & Parcel, T.L. (1981). Measures of socioeconomic status: Alternatives and recommendations. Child Development, 52(1), 13–30. https://doi.org/10.2307/1129211 14 Willms, J. (2006). Learning divides: Ten policy questions about the performance and equity of schools and schooling systems. UIS working paper No. 5. UNESCO. http://uis.unesco.org/ sites/default/files/documents/learning-divides-ten-policy-questions-about-the-performanceand-equity-of-schools-and-schooling-systems-06-en_0.pdf 15 National Center for Education Statistics (2020). Concentration of public school students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch. Chapter 1. The condition of education 2020, p. 1. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/pdf/coe_clb.pdf 16 Barshay, J. (2020, June 29). A decade of research on the rich-poor divide in education. The Hechinger Report. https://hechingerreport.org/a-decade-of-research-on-the-rich-poor-dividein-education/ 17 Willms, 2006; Downey, D., & Condron, D. (2016). Fifty years since the Coleman Report. Sociology of Education, 89(3), 207–220. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0038040716651676 18 Herrera-Sosa, K., Hoftijzer, M., Gortazar, L., & Ruiz, M. (2018). Education in the EU: Diverging learning opportunities: World Bank Group. https://pubdocs.worldbank.org/ en/180421529688002726/EU-GU-Skill-Supply-final-5-30-2018.pdf; OECD (2018). Equity in education: Breaking down barriers to social mobility, PISA, OECD Publishing. https://doi. org/10.1787/9789264073234-en. 19 OECD (2018). Equity in education: Breaking down barriers to social mobility, PISA, OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264073234-en. 20 Owings, personal communication August 10, 2020.



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21 Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/ us/347/483/ 22 Opper, I.M. (2019). Teachers matter. Understanding teachers’ impact on student achievement. RAND www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR4312.html 23 Kini, T., & Podolsky, A. (2016, June). Does teaching experience increase teacher effectiveness? A review of the research. Learning Policy Institute. https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/sites/ default/files/product-files/Teaching_Experience_Report_June_2016.pdf 24 Parks, C. (2021, September 7, Updated September 9). The tragedy of America’s rural schools. The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2021/09/07/magazine/rural-public-education.html? referringSource=articleShare 25 Showalter, D., Hartman, S.L., Johnson, J., & Klein, B. (2019). Why rural matters 2018– 2019. The time is now. The Rural School and Community Trust. www.ruraledu.org/ WhyRuralMatters.pdf 26 Hobson v. Hansen. 269 F. Supp. 401(D.D.C. 1967), aff’d sub nom., Smuck v. Hobson, 408 F.2d 175 (D.C.Cir, 1969); 401 (D.D.C., 1967); 327 F.Supp.844, 863-864 (D.D.C, 1971); Rodriguez v. LAUSD No C 6 11–3 5 8 (1992). 27 Botel, J. (2017, June 28). Per-pupil expenditure reporting letter. U.S. Department of Education, Office of Elementary and Secondary Education. www2.ed.gov/policy/elsec/leg/ essa/perpupilreqltr.pdf; Hadley, L., Ross, E., & Roza, M. (2020). A moment of (early) truth: Taking stock of school-by-school spending data. Edunomics Lab. McCourt School of Public Policy at Georgetown University. https://edunomicslab.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/ School-Level-Data-Brief_R5.pdf. 28 Hadley et al., 2020. Authors suggest that the “muted” response to the data may reflect pandemic concerns. Civil rights groups are encouraging reporters and state officials to better publicize and dig into the data. 29 Whitfield, A. (2020). Property, wealth, race, and power: An introduction to Critical Resource Theory [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Old Dominion University. https://doi.org/ 10.25777/dzvb-nz95 30 Kirk, R.E. (1996). Practical significance: A concept whose time has come. Educational Psychological Measurement, 56(5), 746–759. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0013164496056 005002 31 Worner, W. (2019. May 5). Worner: Shame on our politicians for disparities in school funding. Roanoke Times. https://roanoke.com/opinion/commentary/worner-shame-on-our-politiciansfor-disparities-in-school-funding/article_6bc1f6c8-3cac-55ae-ad08-5197d2a6b133.html 32 Goldhaber, D., Lavery, L., & Theobald, R. (2015). Uneven playing field? Assessing the teacher quality gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students. Educational Researcher, 44(5), 293–307. https://doi.org/10.3102%2F0013189X15592622 33 Baker, B.D., Farrie, D., & Sciarra, D. (2018, February). Is school funding fair? A national report card (97th ed.). Education Law Center and Rutgers Graduate School of Education. https://edlawcenter.org/assets/files/pdfs/publications/Is_School_Funding_Fair_7th_Editi.pdf; Duncomb, W.D., & Yinger, J. (2004). How much more does a disadvantaged student cost? Center for Policy Research, 103. Syracuse University Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. https://surface.syr.edu/cpr/103 34 Camera, L. (2018, February 27). In most states, poorest school districts get less finding. U.S. News & World Report. www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2018-02-27/ in-most-states-poorest-school-districts-get-less-funding 35 Morgan, I., & Amerikaner, A. (2018, February 27). Funding gaps 2018. Resource. The Education Trust. https://edtrust.org/resource/funding-gaps-2018/ 36 Mathewson, T.G. (2020, October 31). New data: Even within the same districts some wealthy schools get millions more than poor ones. The Hechinger Report. https://hechingerreport.org/ new-data-even-within-the-same-district-some-wealthy-schools-get-millions-more-than-poor-ones/ 37 Barshay, J. (2018, July 9). In 6 states, school districts with the neediest students get less money than the wealthiest. The Hechinger Report. https://hechingerreport.org/in-6-states-schooldistricts-with-the-neediest-students-get-less-money-than-the-wealthiest/; Camera, 2018, February 27. 38 Grissom, J.A., Egalite, A.J., & Lindsay, C.A. (2021). How principals affect students and schools: A systematic synthesis of two decades of research. The Wallace Foundation. www. wallacefoundation.org/knowledge-center/Documents/How-Principals-Affect-Students-andSchools.pdf

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39 Grissom, J.A., Bartanen, B., & Mitani, H. (2019). Principal sorting and the distribution of principal quality. AERA Open 5(2), 1–21. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F2332858419850094 40 Carver-Thomas, D. & Darling-Hammond, L. (2019, April 8). The trouble with teacher turnover: How teacher attrition affects students and schools. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 27(36), 1–32. https://epaa.asu.edu/ojs/article/view/3699; Simon, N.S., & Moore Johnson, S. (2015). Teacher turnover in high-poverty schools: What we know and can do. Teachers College Record, 117(3), 1–36. http://www.tcrecord.org.proxy.lib.odu.edu/library/pdf. asp?ContentId=17810 41 Guin, K. (2004). Chronic teacher turnover in urban elementary schools. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 12(42), 1–30. https://doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v12n42.2004; Ronfeldt, M., Loeb, S., & Wyckoff, J. (2013). How teacher turnover harms student achievement. American Educational Research Journal 50 (1), 4–36. https://doi.org/10.3102 %2F0002831212463813 42 Ronstadt et al., 2013. 43 Clotfelter, C., Ladd, H.F., & Vigdor, J. (2006). Teacher-student matching and the assessment of teacher effectiveness. Journal of Human Resources, 41(4), 778–820. http://jhr. uwpress.org/content/XLI/4/778.full.pdf+html; Rivkin, S., Hanushek, E.A., & Kain, J. (2005). Teachers, schools and academic achievement. Econometrica, 73(2), 417–458. https://doi. org/10.1111/j.1468-0262.2005.00584.x 44 Kraft, M.A., Bolves, A.J., & Hurd, N.M. (2021, July). School-based mentoring relationships and human capital formation. EdWorkingPaper: 21–441. Annenberg, Brown University. https://doi.org/10.26300/96bs-6m26 45 Kraft et al., 2021. 46 Deutsch, N.L., Mauer, V.A., Johnson, H.E., Grabowska, A.A., & Arbeit, M.R. (2020). “[My counselor] knows stuff about me, but [my natural mentor] actually knows me”: Distinguishing characteristics of youth’s natural mentoring relationships. Children and Youth Services Review, 111, (C). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2020.104879; Hurd, N.M., & Sellers, R.M. (2013). Black adolescents’ relationships with natural mentors: Associations with academic engagement via social and emotional development. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 19(1), 76–85. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0031095; Van Dam, L., Smit, D., Wildschut, B., Branje, S.J.T., Rhodes, J.E., Assink, M., & Stams G.J.J.M. (2018). Does natural mentoring matter? A multilevel meta-analysis on the association between natural mentoring and youth outcomes. American Journal of Community Psychology, 62(1–2), 203–220. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajcp.12248 47 Hurd, N.M., Sánchez, B., Zimmerman, M.A., & Caldwell, C.H. (2012). Natural mentors, racial identity, and educational attainment among African American adolescents: Exploring pathways to success. Child Development 83(4), 1196–1212. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.14678624.2012.01769.x; Rhodes, J.E., & DuBois, D.L. (2006). Understanding and facilitating the youth mentoring movement. Social policy report, 20(3), 1–20. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ ED521751.pdf 48 Kraft et al., 2021. 49 Bryk, A.S., & Schneider, B. (2002). Trust in schools: A core resource for improvement. Russell Sage Foundation. www.jstor.org/stable/10.7758/9781610440967 50 Holmes, B., Parker, D., & Gibson, J. (2019). Rethinking teacher retention in hard-to-staff schools. Contemporary Issues in Education Research, 12(1). https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ EJ1203451.pdf; Ingersoll, R.M. (2001). Teacher turnover and teacher shortages: An organizational analysis. American Educational Research Journal, 38(3), 499–534. https://doi. org/10.3102/00028312038003499 51 Guin, 2004; Hanselman, P., Grigg, J., Bruch, S., & Gamoran, A. (2016). The consequences of principal and teacher turnover for school social resources. Family Environments, School Resources, and Educational Outcomes, 19(1), 49–89 (p. 27). Research in the Sociology of Education. Emerald Group Publishing. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED587112.pdf 52 Griffith, D., & Tyner, A. (2019, July 30). Discipline reform through the eyes of teachers. Thomas B Fordham Institute. https://fordhaminstitute.org/sites/default/files/publication/ pdfs/20190730-discipline-reform-through-eyes-teachers.pdf 53 Ronstadt et al., 2013. 54 Government Accountability Office (2018, October). Public high schools with more students in poverty and smaller schools provide fewer academic offerings to prepare for college. GAO—19-8. K-12 Education. www.gao.gov/assets/gao-19-8.pdf



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55 Lauff, E., & Ingels, S.J. (2013). Education longitudinal study of 2002 (ELS:2002): A first look at 2002 high school sophomores 10 years later (NCES 2014-363). U.S. Department of Education. National Center for Education Statistics. https://nces.ed.gov/pubs2014/2014363. pdf 56 Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (2018, May). Report on the economic wellbeing of U.S. households in 2017. www.federalreserve.gov/publications/files/2017-report-economic-well-being-us-households-201805.pdf 57 Cherney, K. (2017, September 8). Sick building syndrome. Healthline. www.healthline. com/health/sick-building-syndrome; Baker, L. & Bernstein, H. (2012, February 27). The impact of school buildings on student health and performance. The McGraw-Hill Research Foundation and The Center for Green Schools. www.ncef.org/pubs/010715.McGrawHill_ ImpactOnHealth.pdf 58 Greenwald, R., Hedges, L. & Laine, R. (1996). The effect of school resources on student achievement. Review of Educational Research, 66 (3), 361–396. https://doi.org/10.3102 %2F00346543066003361; Jackson, C.K., Johnson, R.C., & Persico, C. (2016). The effects of school spending on educational and economic outcomes: Evidence from School Finance Reforms. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 131 (1), 157–218. https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjv036 59 Youngman, J. (2016). A good tax: Legal and policy issues for the property tax in the United States. Cambridge, MA: Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. www.lincolninst.edu/sites/default/ files/pubfiles/a-good-tax-full_2.pdf 60 Youngman, 2016, p. 91. 61 Hanushek, E.A. (2006). Science violated: Spending projections and the “costing out” of an adequate Education. In E. Hanushek, E. (Ed.), Courting failure: How school finance lawsuits exploit judges’ good intentions and harm our children (pp. 257–312). Hoover Institution Press. http://hanushek.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/courting_failure.pdf 62 Martin, C., Boser, U., Benner, M., & Baffour, P. (2018, November 13). A quality approach to school funding. Center for American Progress. www.americanprogress.org/issues/ education-k-12/reports/2018/11/13/460397/quality-approach-school-funding/ 63 Baker, B.D., Weber, M., & Atchison, D. (2020, June 1). Weathering the storm: School funding in the COVID-19 era. Phi Delta Kappan, 102(1), 8–13. https://doi.org/10.1177 %2F0031721720956839 64 Jackson, C.K. (2018). Does school spending matter? The new literature on an old question (No. 25368). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w25368 65 Baker, B., DiCarlo, M., & Weber, M. (2019). The adequacy and fairness of state school finance systems: Findings from the school finance indicators database, school year 2015-2016. Albert Shanker Institute, Rutgers Graduate School of Education. http://schoolfinancedata.org/ wp-content/uploads/2019/03/SFID_AnnualReport_2019.pdf; Jackson, C.K., Wigger, C., & Xiong, H. (2018). Do school spending cuts matter? Evidence from the Great Recession (No. 24203). National Bureau of Economic Research. www.nber.org/papers/w24203.pdf 66 Corley, K.G., & Gioia, D.A. (2011). Building theory about theory building. What constitutes a theoretical contribution? Academy of Management Review, 36(1), 12–32. (p. 12). https://doi. org/10.5465/amr.2009.0486 67 Dubin, R. (1978) Theory development. Free Press; Whetten, D.A. (1989). What constitutes a theoretical contribution? Academy of Management Review, 14(4), 490–495. http://doi. org/10.2307/258554 68 Gioia, D.A., & Pitre, E. (1990, October). Multiparadigm perspectives on theory building. The Academy of Management Review, 15(4), 584–602. https://doi.org/10.2307/258683; Weick, K.E. (1989). Theory construction as disciplined imagination. Academy of Management Review, 14(4), 516–531. https://doi.org/10.2307/258556; Whetten, D. (2002). Modelingas-theorizing: A systematic methodology for theory development. In D. Paddington (Ed.), Essential skills for management research (pp. 45–71). Sage. 69 Corley & Gioia, 2011, p. 15. 70 Conlon, E. (2002). Editor’s comments. Academy of Management Review, 27(4), 489–492. (p. 489). https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2002.15875448 71 Huff, A.S. (1999). Writing for scholarly publication. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage. 72 Whetten. 1989. 73 Corley & Gioia, 2011; Hambrick, D.C. (2005). Upper echelons theory: Origins, twists and turns, and lessons learned. In K.G. Smith & M.A. Hitt (Eds.), Great minds in management: The process of theory development (pp. 109–127). Oxford University Press.

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92 Bailey, Z.D., Krieger, N., Agenor, M., Graves, J., Linos, N., & Bassett, M.T. (2017). America: Equity and equality in Health 3. Structural racism and health inequities in the USA: Evidence and interventions. The Lancet, 389(10077), 1453–1463 (p. 1453). https://doi.org/10.1016/ s0140-6736(17)30569-x 93 Gillborn, D. (2017). Education policy as an act of white supremacy: Whiteness, critical race theory and education reform. Journal of Education Policy, 20(4), 485–505. (p. 485). https:// doi.org/10.1080/02680930500132346 94 Noguera, P.A., & Alicea, J.A. (2020). Structural racism and the urban geography of education. Phi Delta Kappan, 102(3), 51–56. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0031721720970703 95 EdBuild (2019). Fractured: The accelerating breakdown of America’s school districts. 2019 Update. Author. https://edbuild.org/content/fractured/fractured-full-report.pdf 96 Fensterwald, J. (2018, March 29). Districts must do more to reduce low-income schools’ share of inexperienced, ineffective teachers under new federal law. EdSource. https:// edsource.org/2018/districts-must-do-more-to-reduce-low-income-schools-share-of-inexperienced-ineffective-teachers/595287 97 Bailey et al., 2017. 98 Gillborn, 2017. 99 Balestra, C., & Tonkin, R. (2018, June 20). Inequalities in household wealth across OECD countries: Evidence from the OECD wealth distribution database. Working Paper No. 88. Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) (pp. 7, 14). www.oecd.org/officialdocuments/publicdisplaydocumentpdf/?cote=SDD/DOC(2018) 1&docLanguage=En 100 Chancel, L. (2019, October 16). Ten facts about inequality in advanced economies. World Inequality Lab, Paris School of Economics. www.piie.com/sites/default/files/documents/ chancel20191017.pdf 101 Balestra & Tonkin, 2018, pp.4, 7. 102 Fazekas, M. (2012, May). School funding formulas: Review of main characteristics and impacts. OECD Education Working Papers, No. 74. OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi. org/10.1787/5k993xw27cd3-en 103 Nienhüser, W. (2008). Resource dependence theory: How well does it explain behavior of organizations? Management Revue, 19(1/2), 9–32. (p. 28). http://hdl.handle.net/10419/78991 104 Kilduff, M. (2006). Editor’s comments: Publishing theory. Academy of Management Review, 31(2), 252–255 (p. 252). https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2006.20208678 105 Corley & Gioia, 2011. 106 Bohman, J. (2019). Critical Theory. In E.N. Zalta (Ed.), Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (pp. 1–71). (Originally published in 2005). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2019/ entries/critical-theory/ 107 Ladson-Billings, G. (1998, January). Just what is critical race theory and what’s it doing in a nice field like education? International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 11(1), 7–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/095183998236863; Milner, H.R, IV (2013). Analyzing poverty, learning, and teaching through critical race theory lens. Review of Research in Education, 37(1), 1–53. https://doi.org/10.3102%2F0091732X12459720

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CHAPTER 2 Critical Resource Theory’s “Family Tree”

INTRODUCTION

To know where you are, you must first understand where you’ve been. In the same way, to fully understand Critical Resource Theory’s tenets and capacity to identify and help remedy inequities in public funding policies, especially regarding public schools, exploring its theoretical precursors and their underlying assumptions provides solid grounding.1 Likewise, authors developing a new theory must convince readers that the larger society needs their ideas and insights. Innovators must demonstrate that the existing research either does not solve the problems they intend to solve or does so inadequately or inaccurately. This argument may consider the language and metrics that each theory uses to advance its assumptions. 2 To address both concerns, Figure 2.1 presents CReT’s “family tree” – Critical Theory (CT), Critical Race Theory (CRT), and Resource Dependence Theory (RDT). This visual image highlights the relationships among and between these four theories. It provides a scaffolding, a conceptual roadmap upon which to affix relevant facts on the way to understanding the whole. Since our purpose is not to consider each theory in its entirety, the discussion focuses on each theory’s main points as it relates to CReT and how CReT improves upon each to make analyses of public policy funding practices more rigorous and policy outcomes fairer. To help underscore differences among theories, certain CT, CRT, and RDT terms appear in “quotes” to identify their word choices as compared with CReT’s word choices. Figure 2.1 depicts how CreT operationalizes CT and CRT, progressing from their societal critique and qualitative analyses of power and resource inequities to societal critique of these factors with real-world problem solving using quantitative and qualitative analyses. CReT also acknowledges merit in CT and CRT’s cautions that since researchers are

DOI: 10.4324/9781003291862-2

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Those with power in a society (Social, Economic, Political Assets and Influence)

Public Institutions &

Public Policies

Benefit those with power. Disadvantage those without power Over time, policies, practices become systemic

Critical Theory

Critique of public policies and outcomes Qualitative analysis Institutionalized bias “Rhetorical” language

Critical Race Theory

Critique of public policies, laws, and outcomes Structural racism Qualitative/QuantCrit cautions “Rhetorical” language

Resource Dependence Theory

Organizations rely on critical (essential) resources Power is key to organizational behavior Quantitative analyses Neutral language

Critical Resource Theory Critique of public policies and outcomes. Institutionalized bias. Dependence on critical (essential) resources for equitable processes and outcomes. Quantitative and qualitative analyses. Neutral language.

Figure 2.1 How Critical Resource Theory Operationalizes Critical Theory, Critical Race Theory, and Borrows from Resource Dependence Theory Original figure by Leslie S. Kaplan and William A. Owings.

influenced by their culture and society – that is, “numbers are not neutral” and categories are socially constructed – investigators must continually challenge their thinking to prevent bias in research design, data organization and interpretation, and presentation. Additionally, CreT adopts RDT’s focus on access to “critical resources,” power relationships, quantitative analyses, and dispassionate language. CreT’s empirical data and neutral language provide the basis for informed discussion and potential shifts in public policies and outcomes, advancing its precursors’ capacities to shape meaningful societal change. CRITICAL THEORY

Critical Theory is a social philosophy oriented toward social justice using education to increase “human freedom” from control by our society’s

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social, economic, and political elites. Using inquiry to look beneath societal norms’ benign appearances, CT intends to unmask the ideologies, rationalizations, and past injustices (such as “women are inferior to men”) that falsely validate some forms of social or economic “oppression.” Identifying “social pathologies” and the structural conditions that sustain them enables CT to propose more equitable ways of constructing social boundaries and end the injustices that restrict the society members’ self-realization. In their view, CT operates in the space between theory and practice, linking critical understanding and transformative action.3 Critical Theory traces its roots to German philosopher G.W.F. Hegel and German economist and social theorist and economist Karl Marx. Hegel (1770–1831) posited that philosophy both reflects its own time, influenced by its historical or cultural contexts, and contains aspects which are eternal, expressing truths beyond everyday experience. Around the same time, Marx (1818–1883) criticized the classical free market economists, contending that “capitalists” (i.e., factory owners) enjoyed profits because they paid their workers less than – “exploited” – their labor’s actual value.4 Likewise, Marx saw the education system as advancing the interests of those who controlled the means of production and the culture, reproducing and legitimating class inequality by providing starkly different opportunities to children of the rich and the less well-off. These intended education disparities reproduced the social order, benefitting those in power at the expense of those without it.5 Using Marxism as a framework for studying their society, scholars at the Frankfurt School, founded in 1923 in Frankfurt, Germany, developed Critical Theory. In defining CT, Max Horkheimer (1895–1973), one of their principal intellectuals, concluded that a theory is “critical” to the extent that it seeks “to liberate human beings from the circumstances that enslave them.”6 Taking Hegel’s cue and rejecting the idea that knowledge is objective, Horkheimer asserted that knowledge is embedded in historical and social processes; it is socially and culturally defined. Knowledge could not be objective because intellectuals themselves exist within the society that defines their reality.7 Moreover, unlike traditional theory (that he believed was not functional because it separated knowledge from action), Horkheimer contended that CT is functional because it critiques rather than “fetishizes” knowledge, converting information into social criticism that translates into social action and transforms reality.8 Because such theories intend to explain and transform all circumstances that “subjugate” human beings, many critical theories – including feminism, critical race theory, queer legal theory, “Latino Crit” – have developed in connection with social movements that try to advance societal inquiry, reduce

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“domination” of one group over another, and increase “freedom” in its various forms.9 Critical social inquiry has the practical goal of making people more aware of the circumstances that restrict their “freedom,” leading to an improved society that realizes greater forms of democracy. In this regard, CT and John Dewey’s (1859–1952) American pragmatism are very similar. Each favors the reflective participant rather than the detached observer and requires some sort of “practical verification” of critical social inquiry.10 Today, critical theories extend their ideas about seeking “human emancipation in circumstances of domination and oppression” to fields including ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of history, the social sciences, and education, to name a few. Their main inquiry methods include the interplay between philosophy and social science through interdisciplinary empirical (mainly qualitative) social research.11 Critical Theory and Empirical Study

Critical Theory considers itself empirical because scholars can integrate normative inquiry of existing “social facts” with social sciences (“empirical”) research to provide insight into societal circumstances that can then inform policies and actions to increase “human freedom.” By articulating how elites’ political values have molded the institutions that systemically “exploit” or “oppress” certain groups or individuals, CT avows that their inquiry provides “practical verification” of its tenets.12 Today, CT has become an empirical tool for education policy analysis. Critical policy analysis (CPA) focuses on how educational programs and policies, regardless of intent, reproduce stratified social relations; how policies institutionalize inequality; and how individuals react to policy and policy processes.13 By studying aspects of policy development and the resulting products that tend to go unquestioned, CPA seeks to generate empirical (typically descriptive) accounts of how policy and practice reproduce social inequality.14 Investigations include articulating the differences between “policy rhetoric and reality; the unequal distribution of power, resources, … knowledge, [and] social stratification;”15 the institutional biases’ underlying assumptions; and the exclusion of certain parties from full participation.16 Through their study, CT policy analysts identify the decisions that perpetuate social inequality inside schools and in the larger community.17 CPA differs from traditional policy analysis in several ways. In CPA’s view, the traditional approach uses a strictly rational, deliberate goaldriven process that can be planned, managed, and effectively evaluated in a cost–benefit framework to identify and remedy problems. But because this approach is anchored in a collection of taken-for-granted

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assumptions, norms, and traditions, it tends to overlook the role of power and ideology inherent in the policy process.18 Critical policy analysts see these as serious limitations. Likewise, Critical Theory can be a useful tool in analyzing education funding policies and practices. For instance, some posit that the reasons disparities in student outcomes continue (despite improvements in state equalization of basic school funding) suggest the need to make visible the assumptions and biases underpinning these policies. These bias orientations – such as children of color having a “cultural deficit” or attending “failing schools,” concepts that stigmatize marginalized students’ lack of academic achievement and limited educational attainment – currently keep these children from fully benefitting from these investments.19 CT’s empiricism has its critics. Several scholars conclude that CT promises more empirical research than it attempts.20 As evidence, they point to CT’s lack of “empirical content” that results in “excessive abstraction”21 and its nature as a de-contextualized universalistic theory that leads to “discriminative failure.”22 Despite these limitations, CT scholars insist that it can be used as a qualitative “empirical tool in a small but important body of critical sociological research” by providing interpretive concepts to identify the differences between appearance and reality in varied social ­science areas (i.e., in making sense of public policy analysis, administrative decision making, economics, law, and education) and for making informed decisions.23 And, as critical theorists have always understood, cultural criticism is an affirmative use of theory which, though not primarily empirical, is nevertheless a valid form of practical [and] … a quite different type of research to that attempted in empirical sociology.24 Nonetheless, as new research approaches develop, such as the Q methodology in political science research, 25 more quantitative empiricism of CT may become possible. 26 In short, as presently conceived and applied, CT is empirical largely in the descriptive, qualitative sense. The theory’s tenets have a practical intent more useful in “big-picture” interpretive critique than for quantitative analysis of actual problems or proposing informed dollars-andcents policy solutions. Criticism of Critical Theory

Much critique of CT comes from within its ranks, raising arguments about its limitations in today’s complex world 27 or challenging its internal contradictions. 28 Some point to its current narrow attention to



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normative bases of criticism as widening the chasm between CT’s debate about social critique and its efforts to produce accurate knowledge of the social world. In this way, CT may be becoming more of a philosophical sub-discipline separate from the social sciences.29 Additionally, some claim that CT’s excessive abstraction and de-contextualized nature make quantitative empirical validation difficult.30 Others argue that CT disenfranchises many who find meaning in their lives through participation in social structures and hierarchies.31 At the same time, practical evidence from varied academic disciplines in varying contexts and from agents with contrasting viewpoints supports CT inquiry’s merit. Its advocates claim that outcomes through CT’s cognitive insights and ethical actions are tied to improving democratic practices and increasing fairness for all society’s members.32 Moreover, CT has seen many changes and transformations over the decades, reflecting its openness to feedback, modification, and renewal. 33 It continues to evolve as a comprehensive social philosophy and appraisal that is increasingly relevant in globalized, pluralistic societies. As an offshoot, CReT gives CT increased agency through its use of quantitative analyses and dispassionate language. CReT operationalizes CT by applying it in the real world to produce measurable and actionable knowledge. With this capacity, CReT addresses some of the critics’ concerns about CT’s limitations. Critical Theory in Education

Most modern democracies include members with varying cultural viewpoints, practices, and assets. To survive and thrive as a multicultural society, leaders must eventually attend to educating fully its most marginalized members. Basically, CT in education, sometimes called critical pedagogy, is a progressive orientation that focuses on the centrality of politics and power in how schools work. In education as elsewhere, the CT lens looks beneath surface appearances to see the inner dynamics of institutions and policies to identify and reduce the societal conditions that do disservice to low-income children and children of color. Critical pedagogy views knowledge as partisan and culturally determined, written by societal elites to legitimize their cultural and political authority (and control) over less powerful groups. Traditionally, schools’ biases and practices omit minority voices and teach students to support the societal status quo (that disadvantages low-income and students of color). In this context, schools become cultural and political sites, engines for social change. And since our contemporary world contains an “unprecedented convergence of resources – cultural, political, economic, scientific, military, and technological – [that] exercise powerful

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and diverse forms” of social control, 34 education must be treated as a public good. Therefore, by focusing questions on schools’ structure – its classroom interactions, curriculum, pedagogical practices, decision making and administration, and educational research – critical pedagogy identifies and exposes the present educational arrangement’s shortcomings. In the process, advocates offer a blueprint for creating schools that offer every child increased awareness of social relationships and self in the world, opportunities for cognitive and social development, and occasions to increase their autonomy and improve their society.35 To this end, critical pedagogy envisions new roles for curriculum and teachers. Education and teaching become moral and political activities in the struggle for democracy36 and students are producers of knowledge.37 Instead of the traditional Western European “official knowledge”38 curriculum that “indoctrinates” students as it reproduces the existing society and political power structures and fragments knowledge into separate academic disciplines, 39 the critical pedagogy curriculum integrates many different groups’ perspectives, experiences, and voices on contemporary society from varied fields of study into an interdisciplinary education that helps students better understand their world. And instead of teachers “pouring” inert knowledge into passive students’ heads (implicitly instructing them to be docile and naïve about their world and their capacity to change it),40 teachers and students should question their society’s beliefs, values, and institutions; increase students’ ability to ask, “Why?” and find whose interests they serve; and reflect on diverse perspectives to help increase their “freedom” and build a democratic community.41 Until recently, CT has had limited impact on K-12 education, partly because it challenges the essentialist view of always presenting America and democratic citizenship in a positive light.42 Nonetheless, over the past several decades, educational scholars and researchers have established conceptual frameworks for understanding the value of an educational environment that includes students’ cultural identities and personal experiences.43 Given the wide variety of student backgrounds in their classrooms, school districts nationally are reevaluating their curricular content and materials for alignment with community goals to confront racial and historical biases.44 Today, using concepts such as “culturally responsive curriculum,” “culturally responsive pedagogy,”45 and a reinterpreted narrative of enslaved Africans’ role in shaping our nation,46 schools are increasingly infusing diverse voices and stories from a wide array of racial, ethnic, religious, and cultural backgrounds into the regular social studies and English language arts curricula.47 Once excluded topics, including slavery, Juneteenth, the civil rights

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movement, and famous Black leaders such as Sojourner Truth and Frederick Douglas, indigenous peoples, and Japanese internment during World War II, now receive attention. Using an assets-based approach, teachers focus on students’ strengths, diversity of thought, and family cultures and traits as positive assets to help students in learning.48 Research supports the view that students who feel a sense of belonging and identity in schools are more likely to become more civically active;49 and students who see themselves represented in textbook lessons tend to perform better than those who do not see themselves in lessons.50 Criticism of Critical Theory in Education

Critical pedagogy has its detractors. Although advocates cite qualitative descriptions of critical pedagogy’s effectiveness, 51 until recently, critics (and even educated readers) often deemed this approach as too abstract, de-contextualized, utopian, and prescriptive for planning classroom practice, lacking enough attention to the real complexities in schools and educational systems, 52 and elevating group membership (defined by race, class, and sexual orientation) over individual ability and shared civic commonalities.53 Even today, some argue against its left-leaning political orientation, noting that it represents an attack on America’s norms and traditions.54 Additionally, critics claim that critical pedagogy advances “repressive myths that perpetuate relations of domination.”55 For instance, CT advocates assert that White middle-class males prefer using “rational deliberation” in classroom discussions as a tactic to invalidate expressions (usually from women and “other exotic Others”) that they dismiss as not “logical.” Although this may be true sometimes does not mean that logical thinking is always a technique intended to “oppress” those who reason intuitively or who supplement their views with experiential facts.56 Some suggest that the critical education movement should debate within itself to decide what specifically constitutes a radical or critical pedagogy and engage in self-criticism.57 CRITICAL RACE THEORY

An outgrowth of CT, Critical Race Theory originated in the 1970s and 1980s as a new academic framework within American Legal Theory advanced by scholars and political activists interested in studying and transforming the relationships among race, racism, and power.58 Building on insights from earlier movements – including the American radical tradition, 59 European critical theorists, and Brazilian educator Paulo Freire60 – CRT offers an analytical framework that examines racism in our society and an activist orientation to aid societal transformation.61 In 1989, critical race theory emerged as an organized field.62

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The late Harvard Law School professor, Derrick Bell, wanted to understand how – despite the Brown vs. Board of Education (1954) decision desegregating public schools and the 1960s’ civil rights laws – racial discrimination continued to assign people of color to second-class status. Progressive legal scholars contend that law is not objective, neutral, or apolitical. Instead of racism being a relic of the past, CRT legal scholars conclude that the law either can be used as a tool to reproduce racial inequality or to secure racial equality.63 Today, CRT scholars use race as an analytical tool to examine and challenge power structures embedded and systemic in U.S. law, institutions, and public policy that marginalize racial minorities and lead to unequal treatment and outcomes.64 CRT scholars see race as a social construct – existing not as objective reality but stemming from human interactions. Humans developed the concept of race to benefit themselves over others physically unlike them. Historically, Western Europeans and American colonials invented the social construct of race to explain the visible differences between themselves and dark-skinned Africans and Indigenous peoples they captured and enslaved.65 Anthropologists agree that race is not a scientifically reliable measure of human genetic variation.66 To CRT scholars, racism is an inherent part of American civilization that continually advantages White people over people of color and reproduces racism through the generations. By keeping the status quo, CRT claims, White elites gain material benefits, working-class Whites gain psychic benefits, and non-Whites receive few to none of either.67 And rather than being an aberration performed by malign individuals, CRT scholars assert that racism in our society is “normal,” systemic, “codified in law, embedded in structures, and woven into public policy.”68 As they see it, the criminal justice system, schools, labor market, health care, and other parts of life are infused with laws, regulations, rules, and procedures leading to differential outcomes by race. For example, “redlining” – literally drawing boundaries around areas determined to be poor financial risk and not approving home loans to potential residents only because people of color resided there – is an example of a seemingly race-neutral public policy with discriminatory racial impact.69 Similarly, they propose that adopting a “meritocratic” or racially “colorblind” orientation allows many to see racial discrimination as a collection of individual prejudices rather than officially approved public policies that structurally disadvantage people of color.70 Going further, CRT “challenges the experiences of Whites as the normative standard and grounds its conceptual framework in the distinctive experiences of people of color.”71 Accordingly, CRT recognizes the centrality of experiential knowledge as a valid data source. Women and men

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of color’s lived experiences – including storytelling, family histories, biographies, scenarios, parables, and narratives – are legitimate, appropriate, and essential data for scholarship, research, and teaching about racial subordination. This gives persons of color and women a high degree of competence and “voice” in matters that Caucasians are not likely to know or understand.72 Kimberlé Crenshaw, a CRT founding scholar, observes that CRT is now used “interchangeably for race scholarship as [the term] Kleenex is used for tissue.”73 Considered to be “an evolving and malleable practice,”74 CRT currently transcends the Black/White racial binary and acknowledges that racism also impacts other peoples of color, including Latinx, Indigenous Americans, and Asian Americans (i.e., LatCrit, TribalCrit, and Asian CRT) and intersects with a person’s many identities (i.e., gender identity, sexuality, and others).75 In sum, CRT fosters an overall commitment to social justice and ending racism by ending the subordination of gender, class, and sexual orientation in private, organizational, and public life. Critical Race Theory and Education Finance

Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995) expanded the CRT paradigm from law into education. According to Ladson-Billings (1998), “Perhaps no area of schooling underscores inequity and racism better than school funding.”76 To CRT scholars, school funding is a function of institutional, systemic, and structural racism.77 Using race as a theoretical lens helps explain social inequity in general and school inequity – the differential experiences and performances of Caucasian students and students of color – in particular.78 Other scholars also apply CRT as a conceptual framework to examine African American students’ disenfranchisement in certain school practices such as academic tracking79 and the disproportionately high rates of students of color’s dropouts, suspensions, expulsions, and grade retentions.80 Unhappy with the 1990s multicultural model (an orientation that includes history, voices, and customs of people of color in the K-16 curriculum) that did not propose a radical change to the current way of thinking, Ladson-Billings and Tate credit CRT as offering more potential for social transformation.81 They contend that U.S. society is based on property rights and “whiteness as property”82 rather than on human rights.83 According to Ladson-Billings and Tate, the intersection of race and property creates an analytical tool for understanding inequality by identifying the structural, systemic ways that this society continually reproduces racism.84 For example, in this nation’s early years through 1862’s Emancipation Proclamation, Africans in America were considered as property to be

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legally sold and used as commodities in the U.S. economic structure.85 Harris’ original “whiteness as property” construct enables “the legal legitimation of expectations of power and control that enshrine the status quo as a neutral baseline, while masking the maintenance of White privilege and domination.”86 With education a state responsibility, almost every state bases its schools funding on property taxes. Typically, areas of greater wealth have better-funded, schools. Yet schools mainly serving students living in poverty need additional, well-targeted funding and resources simply to catch up and keep up academically with more affluent peers.87 Thus, CRT persuasively argues that property ownership is a powerful determinant of academic advantage. Scholars often use the CRT lens to review legal decisions to show how the law and structural racism are complicit in sustaining an unjust social order. For instance, in Milliken v. Bradley (1974),88 Verda Bradley and other parents represented by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) alleged that Michigan maintained a racially segregated public school system through policies – such as racially discriminatory housing practices that excluded Black families from the Detroit suburbs – that isolated Black students within the city’s public schools. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the surrounding suburbs did not have to be part of Detroit’s desegregation plan because the district lines had not been drawn with “racist intent” (i.e., de jure vs. de facto segregation). Applying CRT to this case to formulate research questions, analyze data, draw conclusions, and present findings illustrates how discriminatory housing laws and school financing systems can perpetuate racial inequality.89 Some scholars observe that CRT contains an “activist dimension” that tries not only to understand racist social phenomenon but “to transform it for the better.”90 Civil rights attorneys can apply CRT as a potential tool to help gain and protect civil rights by: looking at how laws, systems, and structures reproduce racial injustice; challenging public policies’ allegedly objective, neutral standards; considering the unintended consequences of proposed remedies to actual people (whose voices are often silenced by their marginal societal status); and acting intentionally to prevent or minimize further harm.91 It is here, in understanding and confronting inequities in public school finance policies and practices that systematically disadvantage low-wealth and other marginalized communities that CRT aligns with CReT. Critical Race Theory and Empiricism

CRT has a mixed relationship with empiricism. Long embracing qualitative inquiries in studies, CRT largely focuses on descriptive and demographic statistics, using storytelling and lived experiences of people of



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color as primary tools for CRT scholars.92 For most CRT research, strong statistical analyses is not only missing, but often viewed as entirely antitheoretical.93 CRT scholars question whether quantitative methods can accurately capture the subtleties of everyday experience;94 assert that their façade of objectivity hides or encodes biased, racist perspectives;95 challenge so-called “white logic” in quantitative research;96 and claim that their decontextualized data (i.e., not analyzing also dimensions of societal power)97 could not be used to advance racial justice aims.98 As a result, the overwhelming majority of CRT studies are qualitative.99 But this orientation may be changing. American scholars are examining the degree to which CRT can include quantitative methods – QuantCrit – in educational research,100 making it a methodological sub-field of Critical Race Studies in 2018.101 While raising legitimate cautions about quantitative research methodology, QuantCrit advocates offer suggestions for making quantitative methods viable in advancing CRT goals. Drawing from CRT literature as well as early social scientists as W.E.B. DuBois (1899/1996),102 QuantCrit asserts that despite the alleged objectivity and factual basis of quantitative studies, numbers are not neutral; they are always filtered through human biases. If manipulated to create misleading findings, they can lead to decisions based on faulty conclusions.103 For instance, a 2019 research study published in Science found racial bias in a widely used commercial health algorithm used to guide health decisions. Authors estimate that this racial bias reduces the number of Black patients identified for extra care by more than 50%.104 Similarly, a 2020 study by FiveThirtyEight, an award-winning data journalism website, found that statistics don’t capture the full extent of systemic bias in policing. If police choose to stop a person (for a suspected law violation), the research data from administrative reports are already biased because they do not consider the full sample of possible stops, skewing the relationships one sees in the data.105 In short, research categories are never natural; they are socially constructed. Investigators must judiciously assess the categories they choose for analysis, especially those related to race, because racism is always operating in our society.106 However, CRT scholars add, qualitative research is not bias free, either.107 This awareness of quantitative methodology’s limitations – indeed, the inherent limitations in all empirical studies – agrees with CReT and is relevant to researchers in all social science disciplines. QuantCrit advocates also affirm that conventional practices including accuracy, reliability, and validity of measurement theory have merit.108 They suggest ways to infuse quantitative metrics within a statistical technique to advance racial justice and equity. These include

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interrogating the decisions made throughout the research process, from defining the problem through data organization, interpretation, and presentation.109 They suggest adopting “mixture modeling” (i.e., mixed methodology) approaches – linking descriptive and quantitative data – when studying topics of racism and racial inequity (such as racial microaggression and “racial battle fatigue”)110 as an approach to accommodate both numeric and subjective elements for a more in depth, nuanced look at the topic under study.111 Current literature suggests that CRT quantitative work, combining theory and method, has not yet reached its full potential.112 And it may not until CRT scholarship resolves the conceptual tensions within its own ranks. Criticism of Critical Race Theory

Although research supports many of CRT’s assertions about institutional structures’ negative outcomes for minorities,113 critics challenge the claims that all objective standards of factual accuracy, professional merit, or legal coherence are merely “social constructions” that White heterosexual males use to exert power over others.114 Much criticism (before QuantCrit) denounces its rejection of objective, quantitative, and methodological rigor, its resistance to offer testable hypotheses or measurable outcomes, and its use of subjective narratives as valid and reliable forms of data.115 Others challenge CRT’s claim to be a theory, arguing that it lacks a “mental model of racism”116 and has not coherently integrated its many rigorous concepts and methods into an “intellectual architecture” that social theories require.117 Some earlier critics contend that CRT’s focus on race identity sidelines more important attention to material, class, economic, gender, or multidimensionality issues.118 In response, defenders insist that CRT was not intended as a theoretical framework – although it is often used as such119 – but as a “theorizing counterspace for scholars of color to challenge and transform racial oppression,”120 a perspective about the significance of race and racism and how its operates in society.121 Additionally, some CRT scholars are venturing slowly into using more quantitative methodologies to address social justice.122 Overall, critics believe that CRT’s orientation has merit. It enables the deep historical analyses of policies, structures, laws, and institutions that perpetuate discrimination of those our society marginalizes. It offers a qualitative perspective as a space for insider accounts of their experiences, highlights historically silenced individual voices, and is beginning to consider how quantitative approaches can add to its social justice advocacy. And it is the first home-grown conceptual framework to operationalize critical theory in an American context.



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RESOURCE DEPENDENCE THEORY

Resource Dependence Theory also shapes CReT. Since humans evolved beyond basic individual and family survival to living in small groups and communities, they have strived to accumulate resources to protect and enhance their own wellbeing and that of their families, clans, and allies. The same human tendency to acquire resources and control its distribution to benefit oneself and one’s allies is a business and industry hallmark. Thus, drawing upon sociology and political science perspectives, RDT sees organizations as open systems, interdependent with their environments upon which they rely to provide “critical” resources – those essential for the organization to function and succeed – and to reduce or avoid uncertainty about being able to get these key assets.123 No organization is entirely self-sufficient. To survive and grow, each organization must respond successfully to its changing environments. Organizations need resources – including capital and physical materials, skilled employees, information, and social legitimacy – and the ability to allocate their uses if they are to perform. Demonstrating the importance of exchange-based power relations in and around organizations,124 RDT studies link organizational power with a theory of how organizations seek to manage their environments by securing needed resources.125 Although one organization’s power over another is only as strong as the second organization’s dependence on the first organization’s assets, organizations needing each other’s resources may be interdependent.126 For instance, General Motors and Fisher Body depended on each other to produce cars.127 RDT has three core ideas: (1) social context matters, (2) organizations have strategies to enhance their autonomy and pursue their interests, and (3) power – not simply rationality or efficiency – is key to understanding an organization’s internal and external actions.128 Since resources are not always adequate, stable, or assured, organizations create various interdependent relationships – with individual and group stakeholders inside and outside the organization – to secure these essential reserves.129 Whoever controls these vital supplies has power over those actors who need them. And the more crucial and scarce the assets, the greater the organization’s dependence on the asset providers. Organizations see dependence as undesirable: it reduces their range of choices in any given situation, threatening their stability and possibly their existence. Feedback from decisions and actions assists these interdependencies and affects the resource situation, the organization, and the demands of powerful groups. Since organizations interact through their people, the players’ social influence and control of vital assets help organizations manage or reduce the constraints on obtaining and allocating needed resources. Depending

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on the assets they control, actors can have more or less leverage to make decisions go according to their interests – including choosing top administrators – as those in power try to reproduce their views in important organization positions with persons like themselves.130 Those people, sub-units, or departments inside organizations who manage these important environmental dependencies and help the organization obtain what they need – such as central office finance directors – tend to hold more influence in decision making because of their essential role in ensuring organizational survival and success.131 Accordingly, RDT posits that power within the organization is often expressed in its budgets and resource allocations.132 One way administrators minimize environmental dependencies is by constructing boards of directors – similar to local school boards – with responsibility for allocating resources to support organizational goals. Notably, organizations select board members who can bring four benefits: (1) information in the form of advice and counsel, (2) access to information channels between the organization and environment, (3) preferential access to resources, and (4) legitimacy (i.e., the social judgment that an organization is pursuing socially worthy goals in a socially acceptable manner).133 As part of the organization and its environment, boards of directors maintain good relations with key external and internal stakeholders to ensure the resources flow into and from the organization and help the organization respond to external changes. Boards alter their composition as the organization’s environment shifts, keeping the board’s makeup (and accessible resources) matched to the company’s external needs.134 Ample research supports these proposed benefits.135 RDT also describes power and resource securing exchanges in education. On average, states and local governments deliver about 47% and 45%, respectively, of all elementary and secondary public education funding; the federal government contributes about 8% of all direct expenditures.136 In exchange for the funds, government regulations can require that school districts accept certain policies and decisions and threaten to withdraw resources for noncompliance. Imposed policies include teaching to state-approved K-12 academic content standards and assessing students’ learning with state-mandated achievement tests. Likewise, universities that accept federal monies must meet Title IX requirements to offer the same athletic opportunities for women as they do for men. Importantly, RDT’s focus on power leads organizations to generate an “explicit repertoire of tactics” – including joining associations, forming alliances, growing “too big to fail,” merging with resource suppliers or competitors, or diversifying – to secure and manage resource acquisition and allocation.137 Organizations use these approaches to facilitate

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their interdependence with asset holders. These strategies also identify principles that can be tested in a scientific manner. Overall, investigators find RDT useful in examining empirically how for-profit organizations,138 public sector organizations in specific milieu,139 non-profit organizations,140 and organizations in international contexts141 reduce environmental uncertainties. Moreover, RDT has proved to be a useful theoretical framework for examining higher educational institutions and K-12 school districts’ use of resource dependency-based strategies.142 For example, RDT explains how school board members and superintendents juggle competing demands for resources to address student achievement, financial solvency, personal job security, and the organization’s social acceptability or legality.143 Criticism of Resource Dependence Theory

Critics of RDT find some of its basic assumptions problematic and claim that the theory lacks precise information about under which conditions organizations fit into, resist, or actively change the environment and how these affect the distribution of power.144 Other critics cite various omissions from RDT, including an unclear relationship between securing resources and power;145 theoretical gaps;146 ignoring alternative strategies;147 not considering an organization’s historical, institutional, cultural, political, and transnational contexts;148 overlooking the trust factor between dependent organizations and stakeholders;149 and not updating for today’s information rich, high-tech, finance-infused globalized environment.150 Despite major changes in the corporate and societal environment since the mid-1970s, RDT’s concept remains viable. Its basic assumptions are realistic; issues of power and dependence remain relevant; the theory explains a broad range of phenomena;151 and it has strong empirical corroboration.152 Its language is straightforward and logical. Finally, the theory provides a concise conceptual lens to gain insights into the expansive corporate growth and social environments and is open to quantitative and qualitative scientific study. Its focus on organizational leaders’ uses of power in securing and distributing essential resources, its quantitative empiricism, and its straightforward language complement CReT in these dimensions. PULLING IT ALL TOGETHER

CReT advances understanding of how those with high levels of social, political, and economic leverage (power) affect securing and distributing assets (such as monies, people, material, and influence) in ways that systemically and disproportionately benefit those like themselves and disadvantage those who lack these assets. Each of its antecedent theories

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contributes to or confirms CReT’s development as an original, valueadded, theory with practical and scientific utility. First, CReT adopts CT’s conceptual lens of critique. Like CT, CReT is a framework for examining and questioning the relationships between elites holding societal power – the ability to direct or influence others’ behavior – and those without it. This influence gives these individuals and groups access to those setting the public agenda, defining big choices, and persuading legislators to enact laws (or prevent laws from enactment) to benefit themselves, their families, and allies and disadvantage those unlike them. In these ways, those holding influence reinforce and extend their power and resources in the present and into the future. Similarly, both CReT and CT look beneath the surface of policies and practices to uncover the taken-for-granted assumptions and rationalizations, unmask social ills and past injustices, and identify the structural conditions that perpetuate them. By revealing these norms as social constructs (rather than biological givens) and suggesting alternate, fairer ways to build a society, CReT and CT believe in acting to end injustices and increase opportunities for formerly marginalized individuals and groups. In American parlance, by making public school funding more adequate and equitable, CReT seeks to make our society more of a meritocracy. Additionally, both CReT and CT see the education system as advancing the interests of those who control the society’s norms and culture, reproducing and legitimating class inequality by providing starkly different opportunities to children of the rich and the less well-off. But whereas CT, through critical pedagogy, addresses the school’s structure, curriculum, and teaching practices, CReT addresses the inequities in public school funding. And CReT’s applicability extends beyond schools to include much public policy funding. Notably, CReT and CT differ in their use of empiricism in studying (and challenging) societal norms and institutional practices that disadvantage certain individuals and groups and in the language they use to advance their agendas. CT research relies on descriptive, qualitative studies and analytic discussion. By comparison, CReT relies on both descriptive, qualitative data and quantitative data analyses to generate findings and shape policy recommendations. Further, CT tends to use rhetorical language (i.e., domination, oppression, exploitation, human emancipation), reflecting its origins in Marxist thought. CReT uses neutral, everyday language (i.e., disadvantage, advantage) in its narratives to better foster alliances and solve societal problems. At the present, the two orientations also differ in their engagement with the world. Critics suggest that CT is becoming a narrow sub-specialty of philosophy rather than a potent agent for social action and change that CReT is poised to become.

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Second, Critical Race Theory, derived from CT, applies CT’s critical lens to issues of race, racism, and power. Building on many traditions, CRT scholars believe that racism is systemic and structural; built into institutions over decades and generations; and normalized through laws, policies, rules, and practices to serve and protect White privilege and undermine opportunities for marginalized groups. CRT challenges the dominant American and Western European interpretation of the world, rejecting so-called “neutrality,” “objectivity,” “rationality,” “truth,” and “universality” as socially powerful fabrications that Whites impose on the world to maintain their advantages. Similarly, CRT affirms the centrality of experiential knowledge as a valid data source, crediting storytelling, family histories, biographies, and other narratives as legitimate, appropriate, and essential information to inform scholarship, research, and teaching about racial subordination. As such, CRT’s empiricism is largely descriptive, although some CRT scholars are starting to use quantitative methodologies. Like CT and CReT, CRT has an overall commitment to social justice. CRT shares with CReT its focus on the blatant inequities in public school funding (i.e., as a function of systemic institutionalized and structural racism) and its questioning of research design and methodologies (i.e., numbers are not neutral, research categories are social constructs). The differential experiences and performances of White students and students of color reflect these resource inequities, and no one is free of culturally infused bias. But unlike CRT that focuses on the centrality of racism in our society and often employs rhetorical language in its narratives, CReT looks at disparities regardless of race and uses neutral language amenable to forming alliances and problem solving. Further, although CRT and CReT each address inequities in public school funding, each is responding independently to actual conditions in the larger society. Notably, litigation of inequitable public school funding, starting with Brown v. Board of Education (1954) and Serrano v. Priest (1971) and similar contests over resources for public schools continuing to this day, affect both theories. Third, Resource Dependency Theory also shapes CReT. RDT sees organizations as open systems, interdependent with their environments upon which they rely to provide critical resources – financial, physical, information, skills, employees, and social legitimacy. In this context, organizations (that is, the persons leading them) have ability to allocate their use to best facilitate organizational functioning and to reduce or avoid uncertainty about securing essential resources. Since organizations interact through their people, the players’ social influence and control of vital assets help organizations manage or reduce the constraints

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on obtaining and allocating resources. RDT also describes power and resource securing exchanges in education. RDT draws its originating ideas from sociology and political science perspectives. Although RDT does not credit its conceptual framework to CT, both theories likely stem from the same human impulses: people’s desire, after meeting their basic survival needs, to amass assets and use these to benefit themselves, their families, and those like them. The more complex the society, the more complex the tactics people use to gain, grow, and allocate their resources. As with CT, RDT’s tenets center on social, political, and economic power: Who has it, and how do they use it to control others, events, and outcomes to benefit themselves and those like them (and intentionally or unintentionally increase difficulties for those without it). Although their conceptual frames somewhat overlap, RDT and CReT focus attention on different contexts, organizational and societal, respectively. Lastly, both RDT and CReT employ qualitative and quantitative analyses in demonstrating their theory operating in the world. And both explain their ideas, using neutral language appropriate to building coalitions and solving problems. CONCLUSION

All four theories address how power inequities in society affect resource access and allocation. Each reflects the realities of a society in which those who hold resources control their use in ways that shape society to their liking, benefitting those like themselves and impeding others. The theories differ in their particular focus, their use of quantitative empiricism, and the language they use to support and advance their agenda. University of Westminster, UK, democratic theorist Ricardo Blaug compares CT to a “promissory note”: fully written but as yet uncashed.”153 CReT, we argue, has the potential to cash that note. NOTES 1 Myran, S., & Sutherland, I. (2019). Defining learning in educational leadership: Reframing the narrative. Educational Administration Quarterly, 55(4), 657–696. https://doi.org/10.117 7%2F0013161X18809338 2 Eisenhardt, K.M., & Graebner, M.E. (2007, February). Theory building from cases: Opportunities and challenges. The Academy of Management Journal, 50(1), 25–32. https:// doi.org/10.5465/amj.2007.24160888 3 Corradetti, C. (2013). The Frankfurt School and critical theory. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2012. https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2211197 4 Marx, K. (1867/1976). Capital: A critique or political economy, Vol. I. (B. Fowkes, Trans.). Penguin Books; Zwolinski, M., & Wertheimer, A. (2016). Exploitation. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Autumn 2017 Edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/ entries/exploitation/ 5 Bowles, S., & Gintis, H. (2002, January). Schooling in capitalist America revisited. Sociology of Education, 75(1), 1–18. https://doi.org/10.2307/3090251 6 Horkheimer, M. (1982). Critical theory. Seabury Press, p. 244.



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29 Renault, E. (2020). Critical theory, social critique, and knowledge. Critical Horizons, 21(3), 189–204. https://doi.org/10.1080/14409917.2020.1790750 30 Blaug, 1997; Ruane & Todd, 1988. 31 Leavitt, H.J. (2003, March) Why hierarchies thrive. Harvard Business Review, 81(3), 97–102. https://hbr.org/2003/03/why-hierarchies-thrive 32 Bolman, 2019; Freundlieb, 2008. 33 Freundlieb, 2008; Lara, 2008; Merawi, F. (2018, December). Limits of critical theory, critique and emancipation in Habermas’ critique of Horkheimer and Adorno. Open Journal of Studies in Philosophy, 2(2), 53–64. https://doi.org/10.32591/coas.ojsp.0202.03053m 34 Giroux, H. (2004, Winter). Critical pedagogy and the postmodern/modern divide: Towards a pedagogy of democratization. Teacher Education Quarterly, 31(1), 31–47 (p. 32). www.jstor. org/stable/23478412 35 Maddock, T. (1999, April). The nature of limits of critical theory in education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 31(1), 43–61. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-812.1999.tb00373.x 36 Apple, M. (1982). Education and power. Routledge; Apple, M.W. (1990). Ideology and curriculum (2nd ed.). Routledge; Freire, P. (1993). Pedagogy of the oppressed. Continuum Books; Giroux, H., Freire, P., & McLaren, P. (1988). Teachers as intellectuals: Toward a critical pedagogy of learning. Bergin & Garvey. 37 Darder, A., Baltodano, M., & Torres, R.D. (Eds.) (2009). The critical pedagogy reader (2nd ed.). Routledge. 38 Apple, M.W. (1993). Official knowledge: Democratic education in a conservative age. Routledge. 39 Kellner, D. (2003). Toward a critical theory of education. Democracy & Nature, 9(1), 51–64. https://doi.org/10.1080/1085566032000074940 40 Freire, 1970/2005. 41 Giroux, 2004.; Salehi, A., & Mohammadkhani, K. (2013). The school curriculum as viewed by the critical theorists. Procedia. Social and Behavioral Sciences, 89(1), 59–63. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2013.08.809; Giroux, H. (1985). Introduction. In Freire, P. (1985). Freire, P. The politics of education. Culture, power, and liberation. (D. Macedo, Trans.). (pp. xi–xxv). Bergin & Garvey. 42 Loewen J.W. (2013). Lies my teacher told me. Everything your American history textbook got wrong. The New Press. 43 Gay, G. (2018). Culturally responsive teaching. Theory, research, and practice (3rd ed.). Teachers College Press; Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). But that’s just good teaching! The case for culturally relevant pedagogy. Theory into Practice, 34(3), 160–163. https://doi. org/10.1080/00405849509543675; Ladson-Billings, G. (1995). Toward a theory of culturally relevant pedagogy. American Educational Research Journal, 32(3), 465–491. https://doi.org/1 0.3102%2F00028312032003465 44 Hanover Research (2020). Culturally responsive curriculum. Research Brief & Discussion Guide. www.wasa-oly.org/WASA/images/WASA/6.0%20Resources/Equity/DISCUSSION%20 GUIDE---CULTURALLY%20RESPONSIVE%20CURRICULUM.pdf 45 These frameworks differ in focus but all actively stress teaching practices and curricula that include low-income and children of color into the schooling experience. See: Hanover Research, 2020. 46 Hannah-Jones, N. (2021). The 1619 project. A new origin story. The New York Times Company. 47 Korbey, Y.H. (2018, May 23). A history in which we can all see ourselves. Edutopia. www. edutopia.org/article/history-which-we-can-all-see-ourselves 48 NYU/Steinhardt (2018, October 29; Updated 2020, September 16). An asset-based approach to education: What it is and why it matters. New York University. https://teachereducation. steinhardt.nyu.edu/an-asset-based-approach-mto-education-what-it-is-and-why-it-matters/ 49 Kahne, J., & Middaugh, E. (2008). High quality civic education: What is it and who gets it? Social Education, 72(1), 34–39. www.socialstudies.org/system/files/publications/articles/ se_720134.pdf 50 Good, J.J., Woodzicka, J., & Wingfield, L. (2010). Female students perform better in science when the images in their textbooks include women scientists. The Journal of Social Psychology, 150(2), 132–147. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224540903366552 51 Morrell, E. (2002). Toward a critical pedagogy of popular culture: Literacy development among urban youth. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 46(1), 72–77. www.jstor. org/stable/40017507; Parkhouse, H. (2016). Critical pedagogy in U.S. history classrooms:



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Conscientization and contradictory consciousness [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of North Carolina, at Chapel Hill. https://cdr.lib.unc.edu/concern/dissertations/ x346d497c?locale=en 52 Ellsworth, E. (1989). Why doesn’t this feel empowering? Working through the repressive myths of critical pedagogy. Harvard Educational Review, 59(3), 297–324. https://eric. ed.gov/?id=EJ396155; Maddock, T. (1999, April). The nature of limits of critical theory in education. Educational Philosophy and Theory, 31(1), 43–61. https://doi.org/10.1111/ j.1469-812.1999.tb00373.x 53 D’Souza, D. (1991). Illiberal education: The politics of race and sex on campus. Free Press; Eller, J.D. (1997). Anti-anti-multiculturalism. American Anthropologist, 99(2), 249–256. https://doi. org/10.1525/aa.1997.99.2.249; Parens, J. (1994). Multiculturalism and the problem of particularism. American Political Science Review, 88(1), 169–181; https://doi.org/10.2307/2944889; Schlesinger, A. (1992). The disuniting of America. W. W. Norton and Company. 54 Burke, L.M., & Gonzalez, M. (2020, October 7). To tackle critical theory in the K-12 classroom start with colleges of education. Commentary. Education. The Heritage Foundation. www.heritage. org/education/commentary/tackle-critical-theory-the-k-12-classroom-start-colleges-education 55 Ellsworth, 1989, p. 298. 56 Harris, U. (2018, January 17). Jordan B Peterson, critical theory, and the new bourgeoisie. Quilette. https://quillette.com/2018/01/17/jordan-b-peterson-critical-theory-new-bourgeoisie/; Liston, D.P., & Zeichner, K.M. (1987). Critical pedagogy and teacher education. Journal of Education, 169(3), 117–137. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F002205748716900310 57 Harris, 2018; Liston & Zeichner, 1987. 58 Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J. (2012). Critical race theory. An introduction (2nd ed.). University Press; Litowitz, D.E. (1997). Some critical thoughts on critical race theory. Notre Dame Law Review, 72(2), 503. https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndlr/vol72/iss2/5 59 McCarthy, R.P., & McMillian, H. (Eds) (2003). The radical reader. A documentary history of the American radical tradition. The New Press. 60 Delgado & Stefancic, 2012; Smith-Maddox, R., & Solórzano, D. G. (2002). Using critical race theory, Paulo Freire’s problem-posing method, and case study research to confront race and racism in education. Qualitative Inquiry, 8(1), 66–84. https://doi.org/10.1177 %2F107780040200800105 61 Delgado, R. & Stefanic, J. (2001). Critical race theory. An introduction. New York University Press. 62 Iati, M. (2021, May 29). What is critical race theory, and why do Republicans want to ban it in schools? The Washington Post. www.washingtonpost.com/education/2021/05/29/ critical-race-theory-bans-schools/ 63 George, J. (2021, January 11). A lesson on critical race theory. Human Rights Magazine, 46(2). www.americanbar.org/groups/crsj/publications/human_rights_magazine_home/civil-rightsreimagining-policing/a-lesson-on-critical-race-theory/; Tate, W.F. (1997). Critical race theory and education: History, theory, and implications. In M. Apple (Ed.), Review of Research In Education, 22, 195–247. https://doi.org/10.2307/1167376 64 Mack, K.W. (2021). Critical race theory. Harvard Law School. https://scholar.harvard.edu/ kennethmack/classes/critical-race-theory 65 Bridges, K.M. (2013). The dangerous law of biological race. Fordham Law Review, 82(1). Article 1. https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr/vol82/iss1/1; Smedley, A. (1998). “Race” and the construction of human identity. American Anthropologist, 100(3), 690–702. www.jstor.org/ stable/682047 66 Ifekwunigwe J.O., Wagner, J.K., Yu, J-H, Harrell, T.M., Bamshad, M.J., & Royal, C.D. (2017). A qualitative analysis of how anthropologists interpret the race construct. American Anthropology, 119(3), 422–434. www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6075721/# 67 Matsuda, M. (1991). Voices of America: Accent, Antidiscrimination Law, and a Jurisprudence for the Last Reconstruction. Yale Law Journal, 100(5), 1329–1407. https://digitalcommons. law.yale.edu/ylj/vol100/iss5/7 68 Magdaleno, K. (2021). Preface: Tenets of critical race theory. Journal of Leadership, Equity, and Research, 7(3), 1–5 (p. 3). http://journals.sfu.ca/cvj/index.php/cvj/index; See also: Delgado, R. (1989). Storytelling for oppositionists and others: A plea for narrative. Michigan Law Review, 87(8), 2411–2441; Harris, C. (1993). Whiteness as property. Harvard Law Review, 106(8), 1701–1791; Yosso, T.J., Smith, W.A., Ceja, M., & Solórzano, D.G. (2009). Critical race theory, racial microaggressions, and campus racial climate for Latina/o

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undergraduates. Harvard Educational Review, 79(4), 659–690. https://doi.org/10.17763/ haer.79.4.m6867014157m707l 69 Rothstein, R. (2017). The color of law. A forgotten history of how our government segregated America. Liveright. 70 Bonilla-Silva, E. (2017). Racism without racists. Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in the United States (2nd ed.). Rowman & Littlefield. 71 Taylor, E. (1998). A primer on critical race theory. Journal of Blacks in Higher Education, 19(Spring), 122–124 (p. 122). www.jstor.org/stable/2998940 72 Yosso et al., 2009. 73 Crenshaw, K.W. (2002). Critical race studies: The first decade – critical reflections or “a foot in the closing door.” UCLA Law Review, 49(5), 1343–1372 (p. 1363). www.researchgate.net/ journal/UCLA-law-review-University-of-California-Los-Angeles-School-of-Law-0041-5650 74 Kimberlé Crenshaw, cited by George, 2021, section on Principles of the CRT Practice. 75 Crenshaw, K. (2017, June 8). Kimberlé Crenshaw on intersectionality, more than two decades later. Stories and News. Columbia Law School. www.law.columbia.edu/news/archive/kimberle-crenshaw-intersectionality-more-two-decades-later; Crenshaw, K. (1991). Mapping the margins: Intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. Stanford Law Review, 43(6), 1241–1299. https://doi.org/10.2307/1229039 76 Ladson-Billings, G. (1998, January). Just what is critical race theory and what’s it doing in a nice field like education? International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 11(1), 7–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/095183998236863 77 Aleman, Jr., E. (2007). Critical race theory and human capital theory. In G.M. Rodriguez & R.A. Rolle (Eds.), To what ends and by what means? The social justice implications of contemporary school finance theory and policy (pp. 35–57). Routledge; Ladson-Billings, 1998; Milner, H.R, IV (2013). Analyzing poverty, learning, and teaching through critical race theory lens. Review of Research in Education, 37(1), 1–53. https://doi.org/10.3102%2F0091732X12459720 78 Ladson-Billings, G., & Tate, W.F. (1995). Toward a critical race theory of education. Teachers College Record, 97(1), 47–68. www.tcrecord.org/Content.asp?ContentId=1410 79 Oakes, J. (1985). Keeping track: How schools structure inequality. Yale University Press. 80 Delgado & Stefancic, 2012; Milner, 2013. 81 Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Writer, J. H. (2008). Unmasking, exposing, and confronting: Critical race theory, tribal critical race theory and multicultural education. International Journal of Multicultural Education, 10(2), 1–15. www.ijme-journal.org/ijme/index.php/ijme/ article/download/137/226 Freire, 1970/2005. 82 Harris, C. (1993). Whiteness as property. Harvard Law Review, 106, 1707–1791. https://doi. org/10.2307/1341787 83 Bell, D. (1987). And we are not saved: The elusive quest for racial justice. Basic Books; Harris, 1993. 84 Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995. 85 Takaki, R. (2000). Iron cages: Debating diversity. Clashing perspectives on race and ethnicity in America. Oxford University Press. 86 Harris, 1993, p. 1715. 87 Baker, B.D. (2018, July 17). How money matters for schools. School Finance Series. Learning Policy Institute. https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/sites/default/files/product-files/How_ Money_Matters_REPORT.pdf; Noguera, P.A., & Wells, L. (2011). The politics of school reform: A broader and bolder approach for Newark. Berkeley Review of Education, 2(1), 5–25. https://doi.org/10.5070/B82110065 88 Milliken v. Bradley, 418 U.S. 717 (1974). 89 Parker, L. (2003). Critical race theory and its implications for methodology and policy analysis in higher education desegregation. In G.R. Lopez & L. Parker (Eds.), Interrogating racism in qualitative research methodology (pp. 145–180). Peter Lang; Solorzano, D.G., & Yosso, T.J. (2002). Critical race methodology: Counter-storytelling as an analytical framework for education research. Qualitative Inquiry, 8(1), 23–44. https://doi.org/10.1177 %2F107780040200800103; George, 2021. 90 Delgado, R., & Stefancic, J. (2001). Critical race theory: An introduction. New York University Press (p. 3). 91 Aleman, E. (2004). Mexican American school leadership in South Texas: Towards a critical race analysis of school finance policy [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of Texas – Austin; George, 2021.



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92 Ladson-Billings, 1998; López, N., Vargas, E., Juarez, M., Cacari-Stone, L., & Bettez, S. (2017). What’s your “street race”? Leveraging multidimensional measures of race and intersectionality for examining physical and mental health status among Latinxs. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, 4(1), 49–66. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F2332649217708798; Zambrana, R., & Dill, B. (2006). Disparities in Latina health: An intersectional analysis. In A.J. Schulz & L. Mullings (Eds.), Race, class, gender and health: Intersectional approaches (192–227). Jossey-Bass. 93 Carbado, D.W., Roithmayr, D. (2014). Critical race theory meets social science. Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 10, 149–167. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-lawsocsci110413-030928 94 Garcia, N.M., Lopez, N., & Velez, V.N. (2018). QuantCrit: Rectifying quantitative methods though critical race theory. Race Ethnicity and Education, 21(2), 14–157. https://doi.org/10 .1080/13613324.2017.1377675 95 Crawford. C.E. (2018). The one-in-ten: Quantitative critical race theory and the education of the ‘new (white) oppressed’. Journal of Education Policy, 34(3), 432–444. https://doi.org /10.1080/02680939.2018.1531314; Rizvi, F. & Lingard, B. (2010). Globalizing education policy. Routledge. 96 Zuberi, T., & Bonilla-Silva, E. (Eds.) (2008). White logic, white methods: Racism and methodology. Rowman & Littlefield. 97 Susuki, S., Morris, S.L., & Johnson, S.K. (2021). Using QuantCrit to advance an anti-racism developmental science: Applications to mixture modeling. Journal of Adolescent Research, 36(5), 535–560. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F07435584211028229 98 Gillborn, D., Warmington, P., & Demack, S. (2017). QuantCrit: Education. policy, ‘Big Data’ and principles for a critical race theory of statistics. Race, Ethnicity and Education, 21(2), 158–179. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2017.1377417 99 McCoy, D.L., Rodricks, D.J. (2015). Critical race theory in higher education: 20 years of theoretical and research innovations. ASHE Higher Education Report, 41(3), 1–117. https:// doi.org/10.1002/aehe.20021 100 Covarrubias, A., Nava, P.E., Lara, A., Burciaga, R., Vélez, V.N., & Solorzano, D.G. (2018). Critical race quantitative intersections: A testimonio analysis. Race Ethnicity and Education, 21(2): 253–273. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2017.1377412; Pérez Huber, L., Vélez, V.N., & Solórzano D. (2018). More than ‘Papelitos’: A QuantCrit counterstory to critique Latina/O degree value and occupational prestige. Race Ethnicity and Education, 21(2), 208–230. https://doi.org/10.1080/13613324.2017.1377416; Garcia et al., 2018. 101 Garcia et al., 2018. 102 Du Bois, W.E.B. (1996). The Philadelphia negro: A social study. University of Pennsylvania Press. (Original work published 1899). 103 Numbers must always be carefully contextualized within an analysis of dimensions of power or else they will normalize racial inequality – such as the mistaken belief that certain racial groups are inherently lower performing compared to others. Gillborn, D. (2010). The colour of numbers: Surveys, statistics and deficit-thinking about race and class. Journal of Education Policy, 25(2), 253–276. https://doi-org.proxy.lib.odu.edu/10.1080/02680930903460740 104 Bias occurs because the algorithm uses health costs as a proxy for health needs, a flawed assumption. Less money is spent on Black patients who have the same level of need, leading to the mistaken conclusion that Black patients are healthier than equally sick White patients. See: Obeymeyer, A., Powers, B., Vogeli, C., & Mullanathan, S. (2019, October 25). Dissecting racial bias in an algorithm used to manage the health of populations. Science, 366(6464), 447–453. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aax2342 105 Bronner, L. (2020, June 25). Why statistics don’t capture the full extent of the systemic bias in policing. FiveThirtyEight. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/why-statistics-dontcapture-the-full-extent-of-the-systemic-bias-in-policing/ 106 Omi, M., Winant, H. (2014). Racial formation in the United States (3rd ed.). Routledge; Zuberi, & Bonilla-Silva, 2008. 107 Sabian, J.R. (2018). Can you really measure that? Combining critical race theory and quantitative methods. American Educational Research Journal, 56(1), 178–203. https://doi.org/1 0.3102%2F0002831218798325 108 Sabian, 2018. 109 Critical inquiry should occur during the design and analysis processes, challenging assumptions about and the historical and sociopolitical context of the topic under study. See: Susuki et al., 2021.

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110 Smith, W.A., Hung, M., Franklin, J.D. (2011). Racial battle fatigue and the miseducation of Black men: Racial microaggressions, societal problems, and environmental stress. Journal of Negro Education, 80(1), 63–82. www.jstor.org/stable/41341106 111 Garcia et al., 2018; Susuki et al., 2021; Sabian, 2018. 112 Sabian, 2018. 113 Gallup Editors (2014, December 12). Gallup review: Black and white differences in views on race. Gallup.com. https://news.gallup.com/poll/180107/gallup-review-black-white-differences-views-race.aspx; Williams, D.R., Lawrence, J., & Davisa, B. (2019, April 1). Racism and health: Evidence and needed research. Annual Review of Public Health, 40, 105–120. www.annualreviews.org/doi/pdf/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-040218-043750 114 Litowitz, D.E. (1997). Some critical thoughts on critical race theory. Notre Dame Law Review, 72(2), 503–529. https://scholarship.law.nd.edu/ndlr/vol72/iss2/5; Subotnik, D. (1998). What’s wrong with critical race theory: Reopening the case for middle class values. Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy, 7(3), 681–756. http://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/ cjlpp/vol7/iss3/1 115 Farber, D.A., & Sherry, S. (1997). Beyond all reason: The radical assault on truth in American law. Oxford University Press; Kennedy, R.L. (1989). Racial critiques of legal academia. Harvard Law Review, 101(7), 1745–1819. https://doi.org/10.2307/1341357 116 Cabrera, N.L. (2018). Where is the racial theory in critical race theory? A constructive criticism of the Crits. Project Muse. The Review of Higher Education, 42(1), 209–233. https:// doi.org/10.1353/rhe.2018.0038 117 Treviño, J., Harris, M.A., & Wallace, D. (2008). What’s so critical about critical race theory? Contemporary Justice Review, 11(1), 7–10. https://doi.org/10.1080/10282580701850330 118 Hutchinson, D.L. (2004, August). Critical race histories: In and out. American University Law Review, 53(6), 1187–1215. https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent. cgi?article=1102&context=aulr 119 Delgado & Stefancic, 2012. 120 Cabrera, 2018, p. 209. 121 Gillborn, D. (2006). Critical race theory and education: Racism and anti-racism in educational theory and practice. Discourse: Studies in the cultural politics of education, 27(1), 11–32. https://doi.org/10.1080/01596300500510229 122 Garcia et al., 2018; Gillborn et al., 2017. 123 Pfeffer, J., & Salancik, G. (1978). The external control of organizations: A resource dependence perspective. Harper & Row. 124 Emerson, R.M. (1962, February). Power-dependence relations. American Sociological Review, 27(1), 31–41. https://doi.org/10.2307/2785619 125 Davis, G.F., & Cobb, J. (2010). Resource dependence theory: Past and future. Research in the Sociology of Organizations, 28(1), 21–42. http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/ S0733-558X(2010)0000028006 126 Emerson, 1962. 127 Davis & Cobb, 2010. 128 Davis & Cobb, 2010. 129 Aldrich, H.E., & Pfeffer, J. (1976). Environments of organizations. Annual Review of Sociology, 2(1), 79–105. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.so.02.080176.000455; Pfeffer, J., & Salancik, G. (1978). The external control of organizations: A resource dependence perspective. Harper & Row. 130 Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978. 131 Salancik, G.R., & Pfeffer, J. (1974). The bases and use of power in organizational decision making: The case of a university. Administrative Science Quarterly, 19(4), 453–473. https:// doi.org/10.2307/2391803; Salancik, G.R., Pfeffer, J., & Kelly, J.P. (1978). A contingency model of influence in organizational decision-making. Sociological Perspectives, 21(2), 239– 256. https://doi.org/10.2307%2F1388862 132 Pfeffer, J., & Moore, W.L. (1980). Power in university budgeting: A replication and extension. Administrative Science Quarterly, 25(4), 637–653. https://doi.org.10.2307/2392285 133 Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978. 134 Boeker, W., & Goodstein, J. (1991). Organizational performance and adaptation: Effects of environment and performance on changes in board composition. Academy of Management Journal, 34(4), 805–826. https://doi.org/10.2307/256390; Lang, J.R., & Lockhart, D.E. (1990). Increased environmental uncertainty and changes in board linkage patterns. Academy of Management Journal, 33(1), 106–128. https://doi.org/10.5465/256354



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135 Kor, Y.Y., & Misangyi, V.F. (2008). Outside directors’ industry-specific experience and firms’ liability of newness. Strategic Management Journal, 29(12), 1345–1355. https://doi. org/10.1002/smj.709; Pfeffer & Salancik, 1978. 136 Leachman, M., & Figueroa, E. (2019, March 6). K-12 School funding up in most 2018 teacher-protest states, but still well below decade ago. Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/k-12-school-funding-up-in-most-2018teacher-protest-states-but-still 137 Davis & Cobb, 2010, p. 5. 138 Hillman, A.J., Withers, M., & Collins, B.J. (2009). Resource dependence theory: A review. Journal of Management, 35(6), 1404–1427. https://doi.org/10.1177/0149206309343469; Neely, S.R. (2015). No child left behind and administrative costs: A resource dependence study of local school districts. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 23(26), 1–22. http:// dx.doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v23.1785; Nienhüser, W. (2008). Resource dependence theory: How well does it explain behavior of organizations? Management Revue, 19(1/2), 9–32. http://hdl.handle.net/10419/78991 139 Garrow, E.E. (2011). Receipt of government revenue among nonprofit human service organizations. Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 21(3), 445–471. http://dx.doi. org/10.1093/jopart/muq074; MacIndoe, H. (2013). Reinforcing the safety net: Explaining the propensity for and intensity of nonprofit-local government collaboration. State and Local Government Review, 45(4), 283–295. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0160323X13515004 140 Hodge, M.M., & Piccolo, R.F. (2005, Winter). Funding source, board involvement techniques, and financial vulnerability in nonprofit organizations. A test of resource dependence. Nonprofit Management & Leadership, 16(2), 171–190. https://doi.org/10.1002/nml.99 141 Sharif, S.P., & Yeoh, K.K. (2014). Independent directors’ resource provision capability in publicly listed companies in Malaysia. Corporate Ownership and Control, 11(3), 113–121. https://doi.org/10.22495/cocv11i3p8 142 Fowles, J.T. (2014). Funding and focus: Resource dependence in public higher education. Research in Higher Education, 55(3), 272–287. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11162-0139311-x; Neely, 2015; Powell, K., & Rey, M.P. (2015). Exploring a resource dependence perspective as an organizational strategy for building resource capacity: Implications for public higher education universities. Management in Education, 29(3), 94–99. https://doi. org/10.1177/0892020615586805; Zeehandelaar, D.B. (2012). The local politics of education governance: Power and influence among school boards, superintendents, and teachers’ unions [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. University of Southern California. https:// rossier.usc.edu/files/2013/10/Zeehandelaar-Dissertation-final.pdf 143 Zeehandelaar, 2012. 144 Casciaro, T., & Piskorski, M.J. (2005). Power imbalance, mutual dependence, and constraint absorption: A closer look at resource dependence theory. Administrative Science Quarterly, 50(2), 167–199. https://doi.org/10.2189%2Fasqu.2005.50.2.167; Nienhuser, 2008. 145 Nienhuser, 2008. 146 Katila, R., Rosenberger, J.D., & Eisenhardt, K.M. (2008). Swimming with sharks: Technology ventures, defense mechanisms and corporate relationships. Administrative Science Quarterly, 53(2), 295–332. https://doi.org/10.2189%2Fasqu.53.2.295 147 Hillman, A.J., & Dalziel, T. (2003). Boards of directors and firm performance: Integrating agency and resource dependence perspectives. The Academy of Management Review, 28(3), 383–396. https://doi.org/10.2307/30040728; Westphal, J.D., Boivie, S., & Chng, D.H.M. (2006). The strategic impetus for social network ties: Reconstituting broken CEO friendship ties. Strategic Management Journal, 27(5), 425–445. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.525 148 Corbetta, G., & Salvato, C.A. (2004). The board of directors in family firms: One size fits all? Family Business Review, 17(2), 119–134. https://doi.org/10.1111%2Fj.17416248.2004.00008.x; Walsh, J.P., Meyer, A.D. & Schoonhoven, C.B. (2006). A future for organization theory: Living in and living with changing organizations. Organization Science, 17(5), 657–671. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1060.0215 149 Lamsa, A-M., & Pucetaite, R. (2006). Development of organizational trust among employees from a contextual perspective. Business Ethics: A European Review, 15(2), 130–141. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8608.2006.00437.x 150 Casciaro & Piskorski, 2005. 151 Davis & Cobb, 2010; Nienhuser, 2008. 152 Nienhyser, 2008. 153 Blaug, 1997.

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CHAPTER 3 Critical Resource Theory and Education Funding Inequities

INTRODUCTION

Addressing inequities in educational outcomes associated with socioeconomic status (SES) continues to bedevil nations around the globe.1 Individual countries vary in the degree to which public policies and practices increase or mitigate differences in students’ SES. Depending on where a child is born, their parents’ SES can make less of a difference in their learning, wellbeing, and post high school educational attainment. Their performance cannot be solely predicted by their SES. Every country can do more to improve educational equity. 2 In the “Alpha and Omega” case study (Chapter 1), the funding inequities between the “most” and “least” desirable public high schools in the same school district in total annual per-pupil spending are 39 cents on the dollar, favoring the low-poverty school. In the 56 years between the 2010 study and the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision (that cited South Carolina’s yearly per-pupil spending at $179 for White students and $43 for Black students – a $1 to $0.24 ratio), 3 it appears that little had changed. Economics of education studies conclude that if we want our public schools to serve all children well, we must provide them with adequate and equitable funding.4 Adequate funding means giving localities sufficient resources to educate all its students to high, rigorous state-approved levels. Equitable funding recognizes that students and schools are different and treating unequals requires providing additional resources to those who most need them if they are to make the academic gains to meet state achievement standards.5 Under-resourced schools contribute to the opportunity and academic achievement gaps between low-income students/students of color, and White students.6 School and district spending studies verify that when budgets increase, students show

DOI: 10.4324/9781003291862-3

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significant gains in achievement and other desirable outcomes. And when school funding is cut or insufficient, student performance suffers.7 This is true of both urban and suburban schools.8 In 2015–2016, children of color became the majority in U.S. public schools, comprising 47.0% of the over 50 million students enrolled.9 By 2030, simple math suggests that all baby boomers (children born 1946 to 1964) will be age 65 or older; one in every five U.S. residents will be retirement age.10 As a result, the more rapidly growing, largely White seniors will increasingly rely on individuals of color’s contributions through their income and other taxes to the economy and to government programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Unless this upcoming workforce has the high-quality education and skills to provide national, statewide, and local leadership and to earn strong and consistent wages, our body politic may suffer, and our social networks may not be able to meet their obligations. When one looks at high school graduation rates for minority students in 2018–2019 – lowincome students, 80% and English learners, 68%;11 African American, 80%; Latino, 82%; Native American/Alaska Native, 74%; White students, 89%12 – the challenge for policy makers and educators is clear. The need to educate fully every young person to meaningful levels has significant implications for our personal and nation’s wellbeing. MONEY – AND HOW IT’S SPENT – MATTERS IN EDUCATION

Until recently, educators and policy makers disagreed about whether money made a difference to student learning. But today, the research consensus is clear: Money – its total amount and how it is spent – and on which students – can lead to increased student achievement.13 In 2018, Bruce Baker, a leading school finance scholar, reviewed all relevant studies available and found “on average, the aggregate measures of per student spending is positively associated with improved and/or higher student outcomes.” Although the extent of the improvement varies, he concludes, “the adequate and equitable distribution of financial resources is a necessary underlying condition for improving [student] outcomes.”14 If the money isn’t there, schools can’t support the strategies that might make a positive difference in student performance and life options. A robust and growing body of literature confirms that substantive and sustained school finance reforms positively affect student aftermaths. In one notable study, economist Rucker Johnson and colleagues investigated the link between school spending and intermediate and long-term student outcomes. Using nationwide data, they found that after court-ordered reforms, a 10% increase in per-pupil spending a year for all 12 years of a student’s schooling in high-poverty schools can lead 54

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to higher achievement test scores, one additional year of completed education, a lower high school dropout rate, 7% higher earnings as adults, and a 3.2-percentage point reduction in the annual incidence of poverty in adulthood.15 Authors assert that this extra learning is large enough to wipe out the educational attainment gap between children from lowincome and more affluent families.16 By comparison, when school funding has been cut, such as those during recent recessions, these cuts fall disproportionately on districts serving higher percentages of children from low-income families.17 In other words, substantial, sustained, and targeted state school finance reforms that bring changes in school resources are likely responsible for the resulting long-term gains in student attainments.18 Similarly, in 2016, economists Julien Lafortune, Jesse Rothstein, and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach found that investing “sharp, immediate, and sustained” funding into low-income school districts can have large effects on students’ educational achievement (measured in National Assessment of Educational Progress [NAEP] scores) as compared with states that did not increase funding to lowest-income districts.19 The funding changes bought at least twice as much achievement per dollar as the pivotal Tennessee Project STAR experiment that decreased class sizes in early grades. 20 Likewise, economic researcher Raj Chetty and colleagues explored the extent to which lower-income children could be upwardly mobile and enter the middle or upper class. They found that upward mobility (or its lack) was largely a function of each state’s willingness to invest its tax dollars in its people through education, health, and welfare. 21 Other studies confirm that education dollars increase the value of the American economy and our quality of life by enlarging students’ earning potential, 22 employability23 and reducing crime and incarceration rates. 24 Notably it is not simply the dollar amounts but also what those dollars buy that makes the difference. Certain schooling resources that cost money and are positively associated with desirable student outcomes – especially for low-income children – produce the greatest achievement return for the dollars spent. Increased spending on teacher quality (effectiveness), 25 more competitive teacher compensation, 26 early childhood programs, 27 low pupil-to-teacher ratios in classes (especially in highpoverty districts), 28 teacher professional development, 29 and improved school facilities30 can generate improved student outcomes. This relationship is strong and consistent over time.31 Although in certain cases, these resources matter more for certain students and in certain contexts, little evidence suggests that stronger outcomes are possible without these resources. In fact, reducing equity in educational resources can cause harm.

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Providing adequate funding may be a necessary but not sufficient condition. Simply giving schools more money – without directing and administering them appropriately – is not likely to generate systematic improvements in student performance. Adequate money must be spent wisely and equitably on those aspects known to generate improved ­student results. SCHOOL FUNDING INADEQUACIES AND INEQUITIES

American schools are among the most unequally funded in the industrialized world. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reports that among the 34 OECD nations, the United States is one of the few advanced countries where schools serving children from more affluent families usually have more educational resources than those serving poor children.32 High-poverty schools can be defined as having more than 70% of students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch (FRPL), a proxy for poverty, and low-poverty schools tend to have less than 40% of students eligible for FRPL.33 In 2019, about 17% of U.S. children, or 12 million children, lived in poverty.34 In states’ highest-poverty districts, on average, actual spending is 17% below estimated adequate levels. In 18 states, this negative funding gap is more than 30% under adequate levels.35 This inadequate and inequitable funding greatly advantages youngsters of the well-to-do and shortchanges everyone else. As Bruce Baker concludes, “It’s kind of like baseball. When the Yankees spend more, it makes it harder for everyone else to compete.”36 Closing achievement gaps between children from wealthy and impoverished neighborhoods requires the state to invest more resources targeted to children with more educational needs. Yet studies find that most states fall below the funding levels needed for their highest poverty children to achieve national average outcomes in reading and math.37 A 2021 Albert Shanker Institute and the Rutgers Graduate School of Education report finds, after evaluating K-12 school finance systems in all 50 states and the District of Columbia, that “the vast majority of states are failing to provide adequate and equitable funding for their students, and this failure is due largely to policy choices.”38 According to the Education Week Research Center, only 23 states earn an A or A- grades for equitably funding their school districts.39 According to the nonprofit EdBuild, predominantly nonwhite school districts receive about $23 billion dollars less funding, annually, or $2,200 less per student, than White districts that serve the same number of students.40 Some districts spend two to six times more on students in affluent districts than other districts, even within the same state.41 These large funding gaps appear between states, within states, and between 56

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schools in the same school district with low-poverty schools receiving greater resources than high-poverty schools.42 Although the exact ­per-pupil amounts may vary, the significant under-resourcing remains. And the inequities may be increasing. According to a 2020 Penn State study, the funding gap between rich and poor schools – between a top 1% of school districts (disproportionately suburban, affluent, and White) and an average spending district at the 50th percentile – widened by 32% from 2000 to 2015.43 The contrasts in relative per-pupil funding between wealthy suburbs and nearby cities can be dramatic. For example, Lower Merion district in suburban Philadelphia boosted its education funding 87% between 2000 and 2015 to more than $23,000 per student a year. This is more than twice the per-pupil amount per student spent in nearby Philadelphia and almost three times the $7,500 per student funding level of the bottom 1% of school districts.44 Similarly, the 2020 Hechinger Report found that of nearly 700 school districts (with 15 or more schools) from 40 states, 53 districts spent a statistically significant amount less state and local money on high-poverty schools than on lower-poverty schools. In another 263 districts nationally, the per-pupil spending levels on each school had little to no relationship to the students’ needs, despite the higher needs often present in low-income schools.45 Of course, student demographics, cost of living, teacher pay and benefits, class sizes, tax structures – and legislative decisions in the state capital – all influence education spending. Politics and district size often skew funding levels. Influential policy makers often draw district lines around small affluent enclaves of wellfunded schools to reinforce student segregation by race and socioeconomic status. Thirty states have established a legal process to permit this.46 Since small schools lack economies of scale, districts with more small schools and magnet programs – often drawing the district’s highest performing children and most engaged families – may spend more.47 PROPERTY TAXES AND SCHOOL FUNDING

Since colonial times, American public education funding has relied on property taxes. In 1647, Massachusetts enacted the first public school finance law using property owners’ taxes – which landowners had to pay under penalty of law – to hire a teacher of reading and writing in towns of 50 or more. Towns of 100 or more had to provide a grammar school to educate the community’s sons and servants.48 Property stood as a proxy for a person’s wealth. We continue this tradition to this day. This method of funding public schools ensures that community wealth inequalities carry over into education. In the United States, the federal government supplies less than 10% of school funding, and the  state and local government’s contributions, on average, fluctuate

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around  50%. Since approximately 50% of schools’ financial support comes from local taxes, mostly from property taxes, the wealthiest districts have the capacity to spend as much as three times the per-pupil amount that the most economically disadvantaged districts spend.49 Wealthy communities can tax themselves at lower rates than can lower property wealth communities yet often raise much more revenue for their schools and other services.50 Research affirms a strong correlation among wealth, income, and race, often reflecting decades-old policy decisions establishing and reinforcing racially and economically segregated housing linked to local school district boundaries and attendance zones.51 We will discuss this issue more fully in Chapter 4. Although property taxes bring certain benefits (including visibility, transparency, ease of collection, and stability), 52 they are an inequitable basis for funding schools. Although most property is taxed on its worth, the process of assigning property its specific value rarely garners much public attention. Many property taxes decisions rest in complex, detail-oriented legislative and administrative practices that stem from political bargaining that determine exemptions and the size of tax burdens on different parts of the population.53 For example, varied types of extremely expensive property (such as farmland under preparation for development or luxury residences in major cities) are undervalued. Some property (such as those designated for charitable, educational, and philanthropic purposes) receives state-mandated exemptions from taxation. The process of deciding these valuations and exemptions is “opaque” to anyone not professionally involved in these efforts. Nonetheless, their fiscal impact “can increase the tax burden on less wealthy groups that are not well connected politically.”54 Some property taxing practices are blatantly inequitable. Certain municipalities overvalue and overtax Black residents’ homes to assessments higher than the marketplace would bring to keep White residents’ property taxes low. This practice gives Black residents a tax burden nearly 13% higher, nationally.55 As compared with White homeowners, Black homeowners rarely dispute new assessments; and when they do, they receive smaller reductions than White homeowners. The type of housing also affects its taxable rate. “The political rationale for benefiting homeowners who tend to be politically involved while burdening renters who are unaware of their tax is self-evident.”56 THE POLITICS OF STATE EDUCATION FUNDING FORMULAS

State government agents write policies – education funding formulas – shaping how they collect and distribute education funds. Since the late 1960s and 1970s, state funding formulas typically advance transparency 58

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and accountability at low administrative costs. Funding formulas estimate each school district’s ability to fund education (based mainly on local property tax values and other sources of wealth) and determine the minimum level (i.e., foundation level) of each district’s required level of services. Public school funding constantly changes, responding to current political, economic, and administrative developments. Since the 1990s, more complicated formulas incorporate extra variables beyond a simple allocation, such as accounting for differences in students’ learning needs and to advance resource equity.57 Funding formulas rely on a mathematical procedure containing several variables (i.e., number of pupils and their socioeconomic backgrounds; students’ needs such as students with disabilities or English learners; curricula or educational programs; and school and local characteristics) and coefficients (i.e., numbers representing the funding disparities across the state’s school districts adjusted to reflect cost differences and student needs). Each of these variables may serve different policy goals. For example, needs-based variables advance equity by providing added funding for schools teaching pupils whose first language differs from the language of the instruction. Debates around funding formulas focus on the inherent trade-offs between transparency/ simplicity and sensitivity to local conditions/complexity.58 Funding formulas reflect political decisions. In theory, the funding formulas’ details rest on scientific and objective cost calculations. In reality, establishing school funding practices involves inherently partisan deliberations, 59 sometimes subject to state judicial oversight. The interaction of state and local funding is an ongoing balancing act, subject to choices by legislators, judges, district administrators, and voters. Some of the most blatantly inequitable funding disparities reflect the simple failure of state legislators (whose constitutents prefer low tax policies) to raise and distribute sufficient state aid (taxes) to offset local property tax revenues’ wide disparities. Likewise, state legislators advocating for their districts seek to keep past funding streams and look for ways to get more. In this way, “stealth” features inserted into state school finance formulas (as political trade-offs to generate votes to pass the state funding formula) reinforce rather than lessen inequities, directing monies to districts that can more than pay their own way.60 For example, state legislation (such as New York State’s School Tax Relief [STAR] Program)61 may permit wealthy school districts to receive state aid for property tax reduction, allowing affluent localities to raise less local revenue while providing a higher level of education service (subsidized by state taxpayers), thus increasing inequities.62 Studies of school funding formulas say little about how decision makers determine the coefficients in the various designs or on the nature of

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political discussions revolving around exact cash amounts, relative importance of different variables, and what indicators to use.63 An example of how slightly adjusting variables can increase or decrease funding to school districts appears in Chapter 1’s Case Study 2. Even after deciding the formula’s variables and indicators, difficult questions remain: What monetary values or coefficients to attach to each indicator? Every funding formula variable can be related to specific underlying costs (i.e., additional costs of providing an enhanced musical curriculum). But these exercises always leave considerable room for political discussions and bargaining because determining schooling’s expected quality is by nature a political decision. Because each formula funding system involves a partisan contest over resources and accountability, decision makers typically feel pressure to retain some political discretion over determining coefficients.64 Moreover, we simply don’t know enough about how schools achieve their outcomes to scientifically and objectively calculate cost implications of delivering certain expected results.65 In addition, education funding formulas’ goals can vary as widely as their interpretations. Equity, for instance, can mean giving additional resources to students with higher needs or promoting fairness for taxpayers.66 Similarly, state legislatures often amend the funding formula parameters, changing inputs. For example, states may adjust the way they count students (i.e., average daily membership or average daily attendance)67 or update funding levels for inflation or other factors.68 As a result, despite the talk about equitable funding, state educational funding formula policies tend to allow wealthier school districts to monetarily support schools at much higher rates than the state funding formula provides.69 Political decisions enable school districts with greater resources to provide more educational opportunities to their students than can school districts in low-wealth districts. The extent and circumstances under which funding formulas change the political process of resource allocation and actual capital flows remain open questions. Although these funding decisions may not be transparent, they can provoke backlash. Over the past half century, parents believing the state was not sufficiently funding their children’s education have brought their complaints to court. Since 1973, plaintiffs in 45 of the 50 states have challenged state school finance systems, winning about two thirds of these cases, finding that current funding systems do not provide students with access to an adequate education.70 Although fiscal adequacy – providing sufficient resources to accomplish the job of educating our children – would seem to be a strictly rational concept, adequacy as a concept is socially derived. As a result over time, adequacy’s focus has shifted from inputs and processes (such 60

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as curriculum and governance, respectively) to outcomes (such as academic performance of low-income children, children of color, children with special learning needs, and others placed at risk). The perceived role of finance policy has shifted too, now viewed as a way to achieve socially desirable goals.71 Today, policy makers recognize that excellence and equity, efficiency and equity are not binary. These values are not in conflict.72 Some argue that a school funding system with a social justice orientation must include tenets and values to reach beyond traditional economic theory. Microeconomic theory contends that self-interested behavior generally leads to societal betterment, enhancing the common good.73 By comparison, CRT posits that no clear consensus exists about schooling’s goals.74 For instance, is it acceptable that we expect 80% of students in high-wealth districts to achieve a high proficiency rating on achievement tests while it is acceptable for students from mostly low-income families to have a 30% pass rate? In a social justice context, adequacy can best be understood as overall student performance, not funding amounts, seat time, or curriculum studied.75 In the fairest circumstances with appropriate funding formulas, observers should find no systematic associations between student demographics and desired student achievement, or “results neutrality.”76 As nineteenth century education advocate Horace Mann argued, public schooling should be an “equalizer.”77 DISPARITIES IN FUNDING, DISPARITIES IN EDUCATIONAL QUALITY

Education funding gaps between high- and low-wealth communities occur despite evidence that high-poverty students and English language learners often need more learning supports and services – estimated at costing 40% to 50% more – than educating low-poverty or regular education students.78 Rutgers and Syracuse Universities’ studies indicate that schools with a high percentage of students from low-income households need two to three times more funding than other schools to address these students’ greater challenges, including lack of internet access and unmet health needs, to name a few.79 Children from low-income families typically have more educational and academic ground to cover than their more affluent peers if they are to reach appropriate grade-level expectations. Children from relatively well-off families jump-start their school success because they often have many educational and academic experiences – cultural capital – as part of their families’ lifestyles outside school. Accordingly, children from low-income families need more instructional time and well-prepared, effective teachers if they are to succeed in a college- and career-ready curriculum and beyond. These resource disparities mean that basic



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education from kindergarten through high school tends to widen – not narrow – children’s economic disparities. These resource disparities translate into disparities in educational quality. Schools with the wealthiest students routinely draw the most experienced teachers whose seniority and credentials place them higher on the salary scale and thus cost more. Research finds that teachers with more than five years’ experience tend to be more effective and remain in the field longer than less experienced teachers, boosting student performance where they are the majority of the faculty.80 Local teacher transfer and salary policies tend to allow students in high-poverty schools to have the least experienced and least effective teachers.81 Resource inequities in teacher effectiveness, class size, facilities’ upkeep, available technology, and other factors can affect student learning and ultimately, students’ life chances. Low-income students especially benefit from working closely with well-prepared and experienced professional educators. Two recent studies support this conclusion. A 2017 meta-analysis of 101 well-designed studies from 2000 to 2014 found that low-income children gained the most academically from interventions including tutoring, small group instruction, cooperative learning, and feedback and progress monitoring. Each of these interventions involve time and working closely with others, especially with well-prepared teachers.82 Also, a 2018 study found an association between recession-era reductions in staffing and negative achievement concentrated on low-income children in high-poverty schools.83 Clearly, lack of these resources undermines children’s education and preparation for adult life. By contrast, adequate resources – such as professionally prepared teachers and school leaders, smaller class sizes (especially in the early grades), and extended learning time – tend to result in improved student outcomes.84 More than student achievement gaps, ongoing school funding inequities create opportunity to learn gaps. Opportunity to learn (OTL) refers to equitable conditions or circumstances within the school or classroom – namely, the curricula, pedagogy, and instructional resources – that promote every student’s learning. When schools provide sufficient OTL, lowincome, middle-class, and affluent students have equal occasions to receive high-quality teachers, rigorous curricula, relevant learning materials, well-presented and engaging instructional experiences, and well-maintained facilities that enable them to achieve high standards. OTL schools avoid barriers that prevent learning. Of all school-level factors that affect student achievement, research finds that opportunity to learn has the strongest impact.85 These learning-facilitating categories overlap.86 States vary widely in their level of state and local investing in improving student outcomes. Some states have the resources but lack the political will to 62

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provide adequate and equitable funding to its highest poverty schools. Other states have the goal but lack the economic capacity to raise student outcomes even to modest levels.87 Federal funding for schools has been insufficient to improve the inequities among the states. Ideally, states design their school finance systems to mediate wealth and revenue-raising differences between rich and poor public school districts, to provide supplemental resources to districts serving needier student populations, or to support districts facing other cost pressures. But these formulas vary widely in their design efficacy and the extent to which they sufficiently accomplish equitable funding goals. Few states’ finance systems actually provide progressive funding of adequate additional resources to meet their underserved students’ needs.88 States have the right to determine what constitutes an appropriate education for their students. Therefore, they also have an obligation to ensure that all institutions within their legal boundaries have the capacity to provide it. Unless the policies underlying public funding also consider a school’ s particular context – such as the community’s wealth, students’ learning needs, and their academic performance – schools with above average costs needed to educate students to the desired proficiency levels will fail, not because their teachers lack the capacity to effectively education children but simply because they receive insufficient fiscal resources to do the job adequately.89 USING CRITICAL RESOURCE THEORY TO REMEDY EDUCATION FUNDING INEQUITIES

Although Critical Resource Theory provides a conceptual lens and empirical orientation to address school funding inequities, we all live within particular social, political, and cultural contexts. These environments influence how we think and act. Always, we must consider – and question – the circumstances, the influences pressing to keep things as they are, and the alliances we must make if we are to find and remedy inequitable institutional practices. Using CReT to improve school funding inadequacies and inequities requires understanding these resisting forces and working with others to change or overcome them. The steps identified and discussed below describe how to apply the CReT lens to conduct a school district equity audit. Chapter 4 illustrates this orientation in practice (Case Study 3). Question Existing Practices

Simply because a certain policy or practice is currently in use does not mean it is the best or fairest way now available to generate successful outcomes for every student. Although asking difficult fiscal questions about how schools secure and distribute resources can arouse discomfort, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA 2015) requires school districts that



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receive Title I funds (and most school districts do) to annually report the spending of local, state, and federal dollars by school and make public a “per-pupil expenditure” (PPE) to the school level for the preceding year.90 ESSA gvies school leaders the incentive – and the political cover – to analyze school expenditures in support of equity. School district leadership will need to initiate the inquiry process and participate in its activities. For example, with the school board’s blessing, district leadership, teachers, parents, and the community can compose a task force to question existing district funding allocation practices as they gather, organize, and analyze the data about individual school needs, available district resources and their distributions, and present findings to the school and community leadership. To begin, the task force can expand its understanding of resources to include financial and nonfinancial assets essential to support the highlevel teaching and learning activities best suited to advance equitable outcomes for all pupils, especially marginalized students. These resources include time, appropriate staffing arrangements, and personnel decisions.91 Teachers need extra time to collaborate on new curricula that infuse grade-level (or above) academic rigor with culturally responsive and relevant instructional approaches and incorporate meaningful neighborhood resources into school activities. Staffing arrangements include providing enough well-prepared effective teachers, aides, and skilled volunteers placed to work in schools with high-needs students to facilitate their learning and family engagement. Personnel decisions include recruiting, hiring, placing, developing, and retaining teachers with the content expertise plus the cultural, social, and linguistic diversity to effectively teach children of color and English learners.92 It also involves providing the professional learning experiences for teachers to develop the instructional approaches and collaborative relationships they can leverage to advance student learning.93 Reallocating additional funding and targeting investments to accomplish a particular educational goal may be needed. Broadening resources’ definition suggests opportunities to reshape the nature of schooling to better serve marginalized students. Task force questions may include, Do the district funding amounts and allocations appear to advantage families with substantial influence at the expense of those without it? Does it appear that certain schools receive outsized shares of revenues (per-pupil expenditures) that enable them to hire the most effective, experienced teachers and other educational resources? Does the district or school provide a reasonably low teacher-to-student ratio for students needing the most teacher attention to advance their learning? Does the district or school offer high-quality and equitably accessed curricular programs and maintain clean, well 64

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repaired facilities in which all teachers and every student can perform at their best? Gather and Organize Relevant Data

Ideally, today’s ESSA requires transparency that enables school personnel and the community to see where school funding resources are going, which children are benefitting, and which children are being academically shortchanged. Until ESSA, states generally reported the PPE at the district level, only: school-level per-pupil spending remained opaque. This new level of openness creates opportunities to apply a CReT lens to conduct equity audits. Since most states consider school budgets as public information often available for review at the school, the school board office, or the local public library, they are accessible. Itemizing budget items and monies allocated to each is possible. But well-intentioned policy does not always translate into good practice. As of September, 2021, Education Trust reports that nearly one in five states is falling short of publishing meaningful data about school spending that could drive more equitable school funding models. Many state education departments lack the funding and resources to assemble and publish these data.94 Minimally compliant, most states appear to be meeting the “letter” rather than the “spirit” of the law. This resistance must be met and overcome. Construct Easily Understood Graphic and Narrative Comparisons for Analyses

Organizing the data in meaningful graphic and narrative formats makes it easier to understand and communicate. To be truly fair, those designing the study and collecting the data must challenge organizing categories to ensure they are bias-free. Use the “Alpha and Omega” model or facsimile to organize and present data comparisons by budget categories for schools or districts (with local variations). Task force tentative recommendations for further actions based on their conclusions are helpful. Chapter 4 offers several formats. Unfortunately, nearly every state failed EdTrust’s five-point test95 for whether available data meet its criteria for meaningful transparency.96 When analyzing these data, asking difficult, focused questions is essential. Are these resource disparities intentional or unintentional? In all likelihood, task force members or the larger community can never know the true thoughts that shaped the original school or district resource allocation decisions. They can only assess what happens when these inequities become known. The goal of data collection and analyses is to identify and fix the problems of insufficient and inequitably distributed school resources, not to affix blame.



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Communicate Findings to Stakeholders

Compile a layperson-friendly report, in narrative and graphic formats, for the school board to receive, discuss, and distribute. Since the school board knows that this equity study is underway, they can anticipate the findings and recommendations on next steps. After orienting the school board to the report’s findings and recommendations, and responding to initial questions, the task force ­members – with the board’s OK – will present findings and recommendations at an open school board meeting to the public and media. The report may show the extent to which the district is adequately and equitably funding every school or suggest that the district is distributing resources inequitably in ways that are denying children in high-poverty schools the opportunity to learn to state standards. It may also illustrate that district funds are not adequate to the goals of effectively educating every student. Conveying findings includes working with allies and networks from the schools and the larger community to share these data, identify targets for improved resource adequacy and equity, and plan and initiate remedies. Allies should include influential state, school, and district personnel; well-regarded parents from diverse communities, business and community leaders; and representatives from high-needs schools and areas. Each member should believe that resource adequacy and equity are essential if schools are to sufficiently support every child successfully learning a college- or career-ready curriculum. Partners who helped gather and assess the data can help persuade others to consider the data and take appropriate actions. Advocate for What You Need

State legislatures design school funding formulas that allocate taxpayer dollars to localities. Generally, the local governing body designates the received state and local school funding to the district for its schools. School boards, district superintendents, and staff allocate funded resources to individual schools. Each locality must assess its own political and funding realities and plan advocacy activities accordingly. Activities will include educating the community – the voting public – about the meaningful funding disparities among schools, the reasons for these disparities, and the impacts these resource differences have on student learning opportunities and outcomes. Thoughtful, honest discussions with actual local data about funding decisions can be enlightening and productive. Of course, local taxpayers in low-wealth districts, may not be able to generate more funds. At this point, attention must turn to advocating and educating (and lobbying) local state legislators to provide additional resources. 66

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Pragmatism recommends anticipating resistance from those favoring the present arrangements and suggests planning counter measures. An updated and educated media can continually inform the public about the short- and long-term benefits – to students as individuals and to their communities – of adequate and equitable school funding. Ideally, timely, valid information, regularly updated and repeatedly shared, will prompt local and state leaders to take appropriate actions. CONCLUSION

At their most basic, power and politics are about securing and distributing limited resources. Political considerations appear in many current public fiscal practices. Legislators continue to rely on local property taxes to fund local schools, and they design state education funding formulas to reflect influential stakeholders’ preferences. Year after year, these disparate resources to high-poverty schools support a lower-­quality education for certain children that, in turn, limits their life options, reinforcing the societal status quo. Sufficient money is a necessary but not sufficient condition. Identifying school funding disparities, their size and causes, is an essential step in identifying appropriate remedies. Using a CReT framework can help because “We cannot fix what we do not see or choose not to measure.”97 NOTES

1 Mowat, J.G. (2017). Closing the attainment gap – a realistic proposition or an elusive pipedream? Journal of Education Policy, 33(2), 299–321. https://doi.org/10.1080/02680939.201 7.1352033 2 OECD (2018). Equity in education: Breaking down barriers to social mobility. PISA. OECD Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1787/9789264073234-en 3 Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/ us/347/483/ 4 Baker, B.D., Srikanth, A., Cotto Jr., R. & Green III, P.C. (2020, September 14). School funding disparities and the plight of Latinx children. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 28(15). https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1267650.pdf 5 Owings, W.A. & Kaplan, L.S. (2020). American public school finance (pp. 162, 164). Routledge. 6 Talbert-Johnson, C. (2004). Structural inequities and the achievement gap in urban schools. Education and Urban Society, 37(1), 22–36. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0013124504268454 7 Jackson, C.K. (2018). Does school spending matter? The new literature on an old question (No. 25368). National Bureau of Economic Research. https://doi.org/10.3386/w25368 8 Frankenberg, E., & Orfield, G. (Eds.) (2012). The resegregation of suburban schools: A hidden crisis in American education. Harvard Education Press; Kneebone, E. (2017, February 15). The changing geography of US poverty. Testimony. Brookings. www.brookings.edu/ testimonies/the-changing-geography-of-us-poverty/ 9 Riser-Kositski, M. (2021, February 22). Education statistics: Facts about American schools. Education Week. www.edweek.org/leadership/education-statistics-facts-about-american-schools/ 2019/01 10 United States Census (2019, December 10). 2020 Census will help policymakers prepare for the incoming wave of aging boomers. www.census.gov/library/stories/2019/12/by-2030-allbaby-boomers-will-be-age-65-or-older.html 11 National Center for Education Statistics (2019). These data are from the 2017-2018 school year. Table 219.46. Public high school 4-year adjusted cohort graduation rate (ACGR), by



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selected student characteristics, 2017-18. Digest of Education Statistics. https://nces.ed.gov/ programs/digest/d19/tables/dt19_219.46.asp 12 Annie E. Casey Foundaion (2021). 2021 Kids count data book. State trends in child wellbeing, p. 15. https://assets.aecf.org/m/resourcedoc/aecf-2021kidscountdatabook-2021.pdf 13 See: Baker, B.D, (2017, December). How money matters for schools. School Finance Series. Learning Policy Institute. https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/sites/default/files/product-files/ How_Money_Matters_REPORT.pdf; Lafortune, J., Rothstein, J., & Whitmore Schanzenbach, D. (2018). School finance reform and the distribution of student achievement. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 10(2): 1–26. https://doi.org/10.1257/app.20160567; Candelaria, C.A., & Shores, K.A. (2019). Court-ordered finance reforms in the adequacy era: Heterogeneous causal effects and sensitivity. Education Finance and Policy, 14(1): 31–60. https://doi.org/10.1162/edfp_a_00236; Jackson, C.K., Wigger, C. & Xiong, H. (2021). Do school spending cuts matter? Evidence from the Great Recession. American Economic Journal, 13(2): 304–335. https://doi.org/10.1257/pol.20180674 14 Baker, B.D. (2016). Does money matter in education? (2nd ed.). Albert Shanker Institute and Rutgers Graduate School of Education (pp. 7, 27). www.shankerinstitute.org/resource/ does-money-matter-second-edition 15 Jackson, C.K., Johnson, R.C., & Persico, C. (2016). The effects of school spending on educational and economic outcomes: Evidence from School Finance Reforms. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 131(1), 157–218. https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjv036 16 Jackson et al., 2016. 17 Knight, D.S. (2017). Are high-poverty school districts disproportionately impacted by state funding cuts? School finance equity following the great recession. Journal of Education Finance, 43(2), 169–194. www.jstor.org/stable/45093658; Shores, K., & Steinberg, M. (2019). Schooling during the Great Recession: Patterns of school spending and student achievement using population data. AERA Open 5(3). https://doi.org/10.1177%2F2332858419877431 18 Baker, B.D. (2018). Educational inequality and school finance. Why money matters for America’s students. Harvard Education Press. 19 LaFortune et al., 2016. 20 LaFortune et al., 2016; Mosteller, F. (1995, Summer/Fall). The Tennessee study of class size in the early school grades. The Future of Children, 5(2), 133–127. https://edsource.org/wpcontent/uploads/old/STAR.pdf 21 Chetty, R., Hendren, N., Kline, P., & Saez, E. (2014). Where is the land of opportunity? The geography of intergenerational mobility in the United States. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 129(4), 1553–1623. https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qju022 22 U.S. Census Bureau (2018). Annual social and economic supplement, 2001–2018. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce, Figure 3. Median annual earnings of full-time year-round workers ages 25–34, by educational attainment: 2000 – 2017. https://nces.ed.gov/programs/ coe/indicator_cba.asp 23 Brundage, Jr., V. (2017, August). Profile of the labor force by educational attainment. Labor force participation rates by educational attainment and gender, 25 years and over, 2016 averages, Spotlight on Statistics, p. 5. Bureau of Labor Statistics. www.bls.gov/spotlight/2017/ educational-attainment-of-the-labor-force/home.htm 24 Amos, J. (2008, August). Dropouts, diplomas, and dollars. U.S. high schools and the nation’s economy. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education. https://all4ed.org/wp-content/ uploads/2008/08/Econ2008.pdf; Lochner, L., & Moretti, E. (2004). The effect of education on crime: Evidence from prison inmates, arrests, and self-reports. American Economic Review 94(1), 155–189. https://doi.org/10.1257/000282804322970751; Lochner, L. (2011, January). Non-production benefits of education: Crime, health, and good citizenship. Working Paper 16722. National Bureau of Economic Research. www.nber.org/papers/w16722.pdf 25 See: Darling-Hammond. L. (2000, January 1). Teacher quality and student achievement: A review of state policy evidence. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 8(1). https://epaa.asu. edu/ojs/article/view/392/515; Marzano, R., Toth, M., & Schooling, P. (2012). Examining the role of teacher evaluation in student achievement. Contemporary research base for the Marzano causal teacher evaluation model. White Paper. Marzano Center, Learning. www. marzanocenter.com/files/MC_White_Paper_20120424.pdf; Whitehurst, G.J. (2002, March 5). Scientifically based research on teacher quality. Research on teacher preparation and professional development. U.S. Department of Education. http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/ download?doi=10.1.1.468.8079&rep=rep1&type=pdf

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26 See: Clodfelter, C., Glennie, E., Ladd, H., & Vigdor, J. (2008). Would higher salaries keep teachers in high-poverty schools? Evidence from a policy intervention in North Carolina. Journal of Public Economics, 92(5–6), 1352–1370. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2007.07.003; Steele, J.L., Murnane, R.J., & Willett, J.B. (2010). Do financial incentives help low-performing schools attract and keep academically talented teachers? Evidence from California. Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, 29(3), 451–478. www.jstor.org/stable/40802084 27 For a comprehensive review of research on the effectiveness of early childhood education programs, see Barnett, W.S. (2011). Effectiveness of early educational intervention. Science, 333(6045), 975–978. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1204534 28 Baker, B.D., Farrie, D., & Sciarra, D. (2016). Mind the gap: 20 Years of progress and retrenchment in school funding and achievement gaps. Policy Information Report. Educational Testing Service, Research Report No. EE-16-15. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1124843.pdf 29 See: Ball, D.L., & Cohen, D.K. (1999). Developing practices, developing practitioners: Toward a practice-based theory of professional development. In G. Sykes & L. DarlingHammonds (Eds.), Teaching as the learning profession: Handbook of policy and practice (pp. 30–32). Jossey-Bass; Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (2012, January). Gathering feedback for teaching. Combining high-quality observations with student surveys and achievement gains. MET Project. Research Paper. http://k12education.gatesfoundation.org/ download/?Num=2680&filename=MET_Gathering_Feedback_Research_Paper1.pdf; Yoon, K.S., Duncan, T., Lee, S. W-Y, Scarloss, B., & Shapley, K.L. (2007, October). Reviewing the evidence on how teacher professional development affects student achievement. (Issues and Answers Report. REL 2007-No. 033). U.S Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance, Regional Educational Laboratory Southwest. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED498548.pdf 30 Earthman, G. (2002). Selected facility conditions and student academic Achievement. Williams Watch Series: Investigating the claims of Williams v. State of California. UCLA Institute for Democracy, Education and Access. https://nctaf.org/wp-content/uploads/ucla_2002_article. pdf; See: Baker, L. & Bernstein, H. (2012, February 27). The impact of school buildings on student health and performance. The McGraw-Hill Research Foundation and The Center for Green Schools. www.ncef.org/pubs/010715.McGrawHill_ImpactOnHealth.pdf; Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories (2018). Human performance. Indoor air quality. Scientific Findings Resource Bank. https://iaqscience.lbl.gov/performance-summary 31 Verstegen. D.A. & King, R.A. (1998). The relationship between school spending and student achievement: A review and analysis of 35 years of production function research. Journal of Education Finance, 24(2), 243–262. www.jstor.org/stable/40704063 32 OECD (2013). Education at a glance 2013. OECD indicators. OECD Publishing. www.oecd. org/education/eag2013%20(eng)--FINAL%2020%20June%202013.pdf; OECD (2020). Results from PISA 2018. Volume V. Programme for International Student Assesment (PISA). Country Note. www.oecd.org/pisa/publications/PISA2018-VolV-UnitedStates-CountryNote. pdf 33 Glazerman, S., Protik, A., Teh, B., Bruch, J., & Max, J. (2013, November). Transfer incentives for high-performing teachers: Final results from a multisite randomized experiment. Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Evaluation, U.S. Department of Education. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED544269.pdf 34 The Annie E. Casey Foundation, 2021, p. 11. 35 Baker, B.D., DiCarlo, M., Reist, K., & Weber, M. (2021, December). The adequacy and fairness of state school finance systems (4th ed.). p. 4. www.schoolfinancedata.org/wp-content/ uploads/2021/11/SFID2022_annualreport.pdf 36 Bruce Baker as cited in Barshay, J. (2020, June 8). Rich schools get richer. The Hechinger Report. https://hechingerreport.org/rich-schools-get-richer/ 37 Baker, B.D., Weber, M., Srikanth, A., Kim, R., & Atzbi, M. (2018). The real shame of the nation. The causes and consequences of interstate inequity in public school investments. Rutgers Graduate School of Education and Education Law Center. www.shankerinstitute. org/sites/default/files/The%20Real%20Shame%20of%20the%20Nation.pdf 38 Baker et al., 2021, p. 5. 39 Lloyd, S.C., & Harwin, A. (2021, June 2). Nation’s ‘C’ on K-12 finance reflects disconnect on funding equity. Education Week, 49(34), 14–15. 40 EdBuild (2019). Nonwhite school districts get $23 billion less than white districts despite serving the same number of students. https://edbuild.org/content/23-billion



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41 Maciag, M. (2018, August). Why school spending is so unequal. Governing. www.governing. com/topics/education/gov-education-spending-states.html 42 Mathewson, T.G. (2020, October 31). New data: Even within the same district some wealthy schools get millions more than poor ones. The Hechinger Report. https://hechingerreport.org/ new-data-even-within-the-same-district-some-wealthy-schools-get-millions-more-than-poorones/; Owings & Kaplan, 2010. 43 Gardner Kelly, M. (2020). The curious case of the missing tail: Trends among the top 1% of school districts in the United States, 2000-2015. Educational Researcher, 49(5), 312–320. https://doi.org/10.3102%2F0013189X20922999 44 Gardner Kelly, 2020. 45 Mathewson, 2020. 46 EdBuild (2019). Fractured: The accelerating breakdown of America’s school districts. 2019 Update. https://edbuild.org/content/fractured/fractured-full-report.pdf 47 Matthewson, 2020. 48 Cubberley, E. (1920). The history of education. Houghton Mifflin. 49 Condron, D.J., & Roscigno, V.J. (2003, January). Disparities within: Unequal spending and achievement in an urban school district. Sociology of Education, 76(1), 18–36. https://doi. org/10.2307/3090259 50 Gardner Kelly, 2020. 51 Baker et al., 2020. September 14; Rothstein, R. (2017). The color of law. Liveright. 52 Youngman, J. (2016). A good tax: Legal and policy issues for the property tax in the United States. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. www.lincolninst.edu/sites/default/files/pubfiles/agood-tax-full_2.pdf; Baker et al., 2021. 53 Youngman, 2016; Baker et al., 2021. 54 Youngman, 2016, p. 91. 55 Avenancio-Leon, C., & Howard, T. (2020, July). The assessment gap: Racial inequalities in property taxation. Institute Working Paper No. 34. Opportunity & Inclusive Growth Institute. Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. www.minneapolisfed.org/institute/workingpapers-institute/iwp34.pdf 56 Youngman, 2016, pp. 92–93. 57 Ladd, H.F., Chalk, R., & Hansen, J.S. (Eds.) (1999). Equity and adequacy in education finance: Issues and perspectives. Committee on Education Finance, National Research Council. www. nap.edu/catalog/6166/equity-and-adequacy-in-education-finance-issues-and-perspectives 58 Levacic, R., & Ross, K. (1999). Principles for designing needs-based school funding formulae. In K.N. Ross & R. Levacic (Eds.), Needs-based resource allocation in education via formula funding to schools. International Institute for Educational Planning Newsletter. https://pdfs. semanticscholar.org/c62b/4fe1158858197b523132954c52849c5cf57e.pdf 59 Baker et al., 2021; Hanushek, E.A. (2006). Science violated: Spending projections and the “costing out” of an adequate education. In E. Hanushek, E. (Ed.), Courting failure: How school finance lawsuits exploit judges’ good intentions and harm our children (pp. 257–312). Hoover Institution Press. http://hanushek.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/publications/courting_failure.pdf; Ladd, H.F., & Hansen, S. (Eds.) (1999). Making money matter: Financing America’s schools. Committee on Education Finance, National Research Council. www.nap. edu/catalog/9606/making-money-matter-financing-americas-schools 60 Baker, B.D., & Corcoran, S.P. (2012). The stealth inequities of school funding: How state and local school finance systems perpetuate inequitqable student spending. Center for American Progress. www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-k-12/reports/2012/09/19/38189/thestealth-inequities-of-school-funding/ 61 New York State Department of Taxation and Finance (2021, September 7). STAR resource center. www.tax.ny.gov/star/; Thomas, K. (2021, May 18). The school tax relief (STAR) program FAQ. New York State Senate. www.nysenate.gov/newsroom/articles/2021/kevin-thomas/ school-tax-relief-star-program-faq 62 Baker & Corcoran, 2012. 63 Fazekas, M. (2012, May). School funding formulas: Review of main characteristics and impacts. OECD Education Working Papers, No. 74. OECD Publishing. http://dx.doi. org/10.1787/5k993xw27cd3-en 64 Agyemang, G. (2010). Accounting for needs? Formula funding in the UK schools sector. Accounting, Auditing and Accountability Journal, 23(1), 82–110. https://doi.org/10.1108/095135710110 10619; Edwards, P., Ezzamel, M., Robson, L., & Taylor, M. (1996). Comprehensive and

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incremental budgeting in education: The construction and management of formula funding in three English local education authorities. Accounting, Auditing, & Accountability Journal, 9(4), 4–37. https://doi.org/10.1108/09513579610129408 65 Hanushek,E.A.(2003).The failure of input-based schooling policies.Economic Journal,113(485), F64–F98. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-0297.00099; Krueger, A.B. (2003). Economic considerations and class size. The Economic Journal, 113(485), F34–F63. https://doi.org/10.1111/ 1468-0297.00098 66 Berne, R., & Stiefel. L. (1999). Concepts of school finance equity: 1970 to the present. In H.F. Ladd, R. Chalk, & J.S. Hansen (Eds.), Equity and adequacy in education finance: Issues and perspectives (pp. 7–33). National Academies Press. www.nap.edu/catalog/6166/ equity-and-adequacy-in-education-finance-issues-and-perspectives 67 Average daily attendance penalizes less affluent school districts where children in poverty tend to have higher absentee rates than children coming from wealthier families, thereby reducing state funding for those students who need it the most. By comparison, average daily membership does not penalize less affluent districts. 68 Chingos, M.M., & Blagg, K. (2017, November). Making sense of state school funding policy. Research Report. Urban Institute [Online]. www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/94961/making-sense-of-state-school-funding-policy_0.pdf 69 Martin, C., Boser, U., Benner, M., & Baffour, P. (2018, November 13). A quality approach to school funding. Center for American Progress. www.americanprogress.org/issues/education-k-12/reports/2018/11/13/460397/quality-approach-school-funding/; Semuels, A. (2016, August 25). Good school, rich school; Bad school, poor school. Business. The Atlantic. www. theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/08/propertytaxes-and-unequal-schools/497333/ 70 Rebell, M. (2017). Court & kids: Pursuing educational equity through the state courts, 2017 Supplement. (University of Chicago Press, 2009). https://press.uchicago.edu/dam/ucp/books/ pdf/COURTS_AND_KIDS_2019_Supplement.pdf 71 First, P.F., & Miron, I.F. (1991). The social construction of adequacy. Journal of Law and Education, 18(7), 18–24. 72 Alexander, N.A. (2007). Adequacy revisited. A critique of prominent conceptualizations of school finance standards. In G.M. Rodriguez & R.A. Rolle (Eds.), To what end and by what means? The social justice implications of contemporary school finance theory and policy (pp. 85–104). Routledge. 73 Keller, A.C. (2017). Smith versus Friedman: Markets and ethics. Critical Perspectives on Accounting, 18(2), 159–188. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpa.2005.12.001 74 Alexander, 2004. 75 Guthrie, J.W. (1983). Funding an “adequate” education. Phi Delta Kappan, 64(7), 471–476, www.jstor.org/stable/20386767 76 Carnoy, M. (1983). Educational adequacy: Alternative perspectives and their implications for educational finance. Journal of Education Finance, 8(3), 286–299. www.jstor.org/ stable/40703366 77 Mann, H. (Ed.) (1848/1868). Twelfth annual report to the Massachusetts board of education, 1848. In Life and works of Horace Mann, 3, 669. Walker Fuller. 78 Dobo, N. (2019, December 19). “Kids who have less, need more”; The fight over school funding. The Hechinger Report. https://hechingerreport.org/kids-who-have-less-need-morethe-fight-over-school-funding/; Wiener, R. & Pristoop, E. (2006). How states shortchange the districts that need the most help. Funding Gaps 2006, p. 6. Education Trust. https://files. eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED496559.pdf; Verstegen, D.A. (2015). On doing an analysis of equity and closing the opportunity gap. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 23(41). https://doi. org/10.14507/epaa.v23.1809 79 Baker et al., 2018; Duncomb, W.D., & Yinger, J. (2004). How much more does a disadvantaged student cost? Center for Policy Research, 103. Syracuse University Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. https://surface.syr.edu/cpr/103 80 Kini, T., & Podolsky, A. (2016, June 3). Does teaching experience increase teacher effectiveness? A review of the research. Learning Policy Institute. https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/ product/does-teaching-experience-increase-teacher-effectiveness-review-research 81 Kaplan, L.S., & Owings, W.A. (2020). Teacher turnover in high-poverty schools: Unintended or intended outcome of unitary salary schedules and transfer policies? Journal of Academic Perspectives, 2020(4), 1–22. https://www.journalofacademicperspectives.com/back-issues/volume-2020/volume-2020-no-4/; Sutcher, L., Darling-Hammond, L., & Carver-Thomas, D. (2019).



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Understanding teacher shortages: An analysis of teacher supply and demand in the United States. Education Policy Analysis Archives, 27(35). http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/epaa.27.3696 82 Three quarters of the studies were randomized controlled trials, considered a research design “gold standard.” Dietrichson, J., Bog, M., Filges, T., & Jorgenson, A-M.K. (2017). Academic interventions for elementary and middle school students with low socio-economic status: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Review of Educational Research, 87(2), 243–282. https://doi.org/10.3102%2F0034654316687036 83 Shores, K., & Steinberg, M. (2017). The impact of the Great Recession on student achievement: Evidence from population data (CEPA Working Paper No. 17-09). Stanford University Center for Education Policy Analysis. https://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/wp1709-v201708.pdf; Jackson et al., 2018. 84 Baker 2017. 85 Marzano, R.J. (2003). What works in schools: Translating research into action (pp. 22–25). Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. 86 Venezia, A., & Maxwell-Jolly, J. (2007). The unequal opportunity to learn in California schools: Crafting standards to track quality. Working Paper 07-2. University of California, Policy Analysis for California Education. https://edpolicyinca.org/sites/default/files/WP.07-2. pdf 87 Baker et al., 2018. 88 Baker et al., 2021; Baker et al., 2020. 89 Reschovsky, A., & Imazeki, J. (2010. Achieving educational adequacy through school finance reform. Journal of Education Finance, 26(4), 373–396. www.jstor.org/stable/20764015. 90 Burnette II, D. (2018, August 09). What is ESSA’s new school-spending transparency requirement, and how will it work? Education Week. www.edweek.org/policy-politics/what-is-essasnew-school-spending-transparency-requirement-and-how-will-it-work/2018/08; National Association of Elementary School Principals (2020, January 24). New per pupil expenditure requirements. www.naesp.org/blog/new-per-pupil-expenditure-requirements/ 91 Gonzales, S.A., & Rodriguez, J.L. (2007). The resource implications of NCLB for the recruitment, preparation, and retention of highly qualified teachers for English learners in California. In G.M. Rodriguez & R.A. Rolle (Eds.), To what end and by what means? The social justice implications of contemporary school finance theory and policy (pp. 145–159). Routledge. 92 Ladson-Billings, G. (1994). The dreamkeepers: Successful teachers of African American children. Jossey-Bass. 93 Darling-Hammond, L., & Snyder, J. (2003). Organizing schools for students and teacher learning: An examination of resource allocation choices in reforming schools. In M.L. Plecki & D.H. Monk (Eds.), School finance and teacher quality: Exploring the connections (pp. 179–205). Eye on Education; Delpit, L. ( 1995). Other people’s children. New Press. 94 Lieberman, M. (2021, August 26). States make it hard to tell how much schools are spending, report says. Education Week, 41(3), 3. www.edweek.org/policy-politics/ states-make-it-hard-to-tell-how-much-schools-are-spending-report-says/2021/08 95 Education Trust’s five-part standard includes: (1) Total and detail of per-pupil spending at each school by funding source and spending location: (2) Context, such as student demographics needed to help interpret data; (3) Comparisons of spending between and among schools and districts; (4) Beyond Money, with exta information on how well resources are used to impact student experiences to improve student outcomes; (5) Accessibilty of data with clear charts and visualizations to help stakeholders engage constructively with the data. See: Education Trust (2021, August 26). Nearly all states have significant work to do in providing transparent, accessible data on how districts spend school funds. Press Release. https:// edtrust.org/press-release/nearly-all-states-have-significant-work-to-do-in-providing-transparent-accessible-data-on-how-districts-spend-school-funds/ 96 Presume, R., & Morgan, I.S. (2021). Going beyond ESSA compliance: A 50-state scan of school spending reports. The Education Trust. https://edtrust.org/school-spending-beyondcompliance/?emci=8edb4dbd-a805-ec11-b563-501ac57bf4cb&emdi=1e957329-2b06-ec11981f-501ac57ba3ed&ceid=133540 97 Baker et al., 2020.

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CHAPTER 4 From Courthouse to Schoolhouse Determining School Funding Equity and Adequacy

INTRODUCTION

Equal treatment under the law and equality of educational opportunity are cherished American ideals. Yet for decades, education finance scholars and policy makers have recognized inequitable and inadequate public school funding as perhaps the most critical and stubborn barriers to improving educational opportunities for our nation’s children. States show wide gaps in school funding levels. Today, on average, schools spend approximately $15,000 per student nationally. But within states, average annual funding ranges from about $9,700 per student in Arizona to about $26,700 in New York – a difference of $17,000 per student each year. In more than 12 states, the per-pupil annual spending is more than $3,000 below the national average. And most states do not provide higher levels of funding to deliver the extra resources low-income students in high-poverty schools need to become educated for success in the twenty-first- century economy.1 According to the Education Law Center, “the need for school finance reform remains urgent and long overdue.”2 In response, a large national movement is underway to guarantee sufficient funding to provide all students an adequate education. In 46 of the 50 states, lawsuits have challenged state methods of funding public schools. Since 1989, plaintiffs have won in over 65% of the decisions in cases based on “adequacy claims” – that is, assertions that all students have a constitutional right to a meaningful educational opportunity, and states’ own constitutions oblige them to provide sufficient funding.3 Historically, almost all states’ large inequities in school funding result from their heavy reliance on local property taxes. As a result, children living in low-wealth districts with low property values – as is true for

DOI: 10.4324/9781003291862-4

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most low-income and marginalized students – will have substantially less funding available to meet their educational needs. This chapter will consider how Americans are addressing school equity and adequacy disparities, from courts to schoolhouses. Considering what many school finance scholars consider the “Most Consequential” cases will illuminate the rationales for filing, pursuing, and deciding them. While these efforts occur at federal and state levels, local district school leaders can also initiate their own in-house assessments, analyses, and remedies for educational resource fairness. Conducting effective “equity audits” can give local officials and their communities the quantifiable data needed to increase resource equity (and possibly increase resource adequacy) within their own districts and states. Case Study 3 demonstrates this process. EQUITY AND ADEQUACY

The fiscal terms equality, equity, adequacy, and fair in school funding can have different meanings. The equity concept is embedded in three principles.4 In horizontal equity, equals are treated equally. Students who are alike should receive equal shares of funding. Meeting this standard is difficult. Factors including cost of living in different localities and the extra resources required by students from impoverished backgrounds, with disabilities, or English language learners make equal dollar expenditures an inadequate metric for providing equal opportunity. The second principle, vertical equity, in funding “recognizes that students and schools are different, and that treating unequals requires appropriate unequal treatment.”5 This means providing additional resources to those who most need them if they are to make the academic gains to meet state achievement standards. As John Dewey saw it, to give all individuals the same opportunity is “to perpetuate the inequalities of the past.”6 Children in dissimilar circumstances – such as children with disabilities, English learners, children in poverty, children who are homeless or in foster care – and school districts with high costs (due to size, location, and cost of living) should be treated differently, that is, receive more resources for legitimate reasons. Equity’s third principal, wealth neutrality (sometimes called fiscal neutrality), holds that the quality of a child’s education should not be the sole function of affluence. A relationship should not exist between local property values and the quality of a child’s schooling. Rather, because education is a state function, education should depend on the state’s wealth – as a whole – rather than on a family, neighborhood, or locality. But the equity approach offers no solutions if all districts are equally funded at an insufficient level. In this instance, equity can mean “equally bad for all.” By the late 1980s, any theory of school funding that hoped 74

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to succeed would have to rid itself of the notion of leveling down funding (i.e., taking resources away from) the highest spending districts.7 Adequacy in funding means giving localities sufficient resources to educate all its students to high, rigorous state standards,8 providing the money to bring every child’s achievement to state-approved levels. More specifically, fair school funding includes both equity and adequacy: the funding needed in each state to provide qualified teachers, support staff, programs, services, and other resources essential for all students to have a meaningful opportunity to achieve a state’s academic standards and graduate from high school prepared for citizenship, postsecondary education, and the workforce.9 Fair funding depends on state legislative efforts to provide sufficient revenue to support the public school system. Michael Rebell, Professor of Law and Educational Practice, Director of Teachers College’s Center for Educational Equity, and co-counsel on many successful school adequacy cases advises that plaintiffs tend to prevail when they argue with evidence that resources are inadequate for schools to meet a state’s own expectations for students. Inadequate funding is especially harmful to low-income and minority students.10 Using a CReT lens to identify, collect, analyze, and present accurate, coherent, quantifiable data on resource disparities between lower- and higher-income schools can help advocates at all levels argue credibly for sufficient resources and their equitable distribution. LANDMARK SCHOOL FUNDING CASES

Scholars note three distinct “waves” of school finance court decisions.11 The first wave, from the late 1960s until 1973, inspired by Brown v. Board’s decision (1954), focuses on the federal constitution’s Equal Protection Clause and includes Serrano v. Priest (1971) and San Antonio Independent School Districts v. Rodriguez (1973). Plaintiffs argue that more money – equal expenditures – means a better education. Disparities in resources or opportunities between different school districts is unconstitutional. Equity claims’ downside comes when it threatens to “level down” (i.e., cut) funding to wealthier districts, increase state taxes, or cull dollars from local budgets to beef-up funding for poorer districts, an unappealing decision for legislators. The second wave, concentrating on equal protection and state constitutions’ education clauses, begins in 1973 with Robinson v. Cahill and ends in early 1989. Courtroom arguments stress equality of educational opportunity relying on state constitutional provisions, especially the state equal protection clauses and state education clauses. The states



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won most of these cases. The first two waves intend to reduce spending disparities, looking at traditional input measures such as per pupil and overall educational spending. Beginning in 1989, the third wave of decisions focusing on state constitutions’ education clauses stresses fiscal adequacy rather than equity. Some call this, “equity plus.”12 These cases continue to the present. Plaintiffs argue that all children are entitled to an education of at least a certain quality, and sufficient (usually more) money is needed to bring the worst school districts up to the minimum level that state education clauses mandate. Third wave plaintiffs emphasize the differences in educational quality delivered rather than on the resources available to the districts. Adequacy decisions challenge school finance systems because the educational quality in some districts (and not necessarily the poorest ones) fails to meet the constitutionally required minimum, not because some districts spend more money than others.13 Adequacy claims’ downside – the concept’s vagueness – is less open to quantifiable measurement than equity and invites subjective political interests to enter discussions.14 Although disagreement may exist about which cases are the “most consequential,” Stanford University suggests the following deserve inclusion.15 Because Brown v. Board of Education16 substantially reframes American public education as social justice and prompts the need for additional resources, we begin here. Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954)

In Brown v. Board of Education,17 the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously ruled to end school segregation and “ensure that educational opportunity would not be rationed according to race.”18 Brown was the first attempt to fiscally equalize educational opportunity for all children. In Brown, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) filed suit on behalf of African American children of elementary school age living in Topeka, Kansas, to allow their enrollment in the public schools serving White children. Future U.S. Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall argued that segregated public schools were not equal and could not be made equal (even with more money), thereby depriving the children of the equal protection of the laws. In his presentation, he cited the earlier Briggs v. Elliott (1951) case19 in which Clarendon County, South Carolina (in the 1940s with racially segregated schools) spent $221 annually for each White student as compared with $45 annually per Black student. 20 For every $1 spent per White student, the county spent 20.4 cents per Black student. The Brown case had serious implications for school funding. States that had historically underfunded their high-minority schools would have to make significant investments to educate their students of color.

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Litigation at the federal and state levels would become the main legal tools for creating more equalized and adequate school resources. Serrano v. Priest (CA, 1971)

Serrano21 was the first significant school finance court decision addressing the competition for educational resources, namely per pupil spending, and challenging the state’s local property tax-based education funding system. In a landmark decision, the California Supreme Court ruled that an education in public schools is a “fundamental interest” or right, and a school district’s “wealth” (i.e., its real-property tax base) is a “suspect classification” requiring strict judicial scrutiny. The court asserted that education plays a pivotal role for success in America’s diverse society and is essential to creating opportunity for individual children to fully participate in our culture.22 Since 49 of the 50 states used a similar funding model, the ruling’s potential impact did not end at the California border.23 In Serrano v. Priest, Los Angeles County public schools’ students and their families argued that the California school finance system which relied heavily on local property taxes disadvantaged the students in districts with lower parental incomes. At that time, the state paid 35.5% of school funds, and the local district taxes on real property paid 55.7%. To educate pupils in 1968-69, the Baldwin Park School District spent $577.49 per pupil, Pasadena spent $840.19 per pupil, and Beverly Hills spent $1,231.72 per pupil. 24 This wide chasm between various districts’ tax bases meant that “poorer” districts had to tax themselves at much higher rates (even if this were possible) to match what their wealthier neighboring districts could generate to fund their public schools. As the California Supreme Court observed, “affluent districts can have their cake and eat it too: they can provide a high-quality education for their children while paying lower taxes. Poor districts, by contrast, have no cake at all.”25 Adopting the principle of fiscal neutrality – “the quality of education may not be a function of wealth other than the wealth of the state as a whole”26 – the court ruled the state funding formula unconstitutional. It violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. Relying on local property taxes to largely fund public schools makes the quality of a child’s education a function of his parents’ and neighbors’ (taxable) wealth. This standard implicitly assumes a direct relationship between the amount spent for education and the quality of education obtained, 27 a rationale soon challenged. San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodrigues (TX, 1973)

In a reversal of Serrano’s rationale (and ending the first wave of school finance litigation), the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Rodriguez28 that



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education is not a “fundamental right” under the U.S. Constitution. A fundamental right elevates that particular function to a unique governmental status, basically declaring that each individual is constitutionally entitled to have courts protect that right. 29 In short, the federal government’s obligation for providing resources to support a free public education is limited.30 In San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, eight Mexican-American parents argued on behalf of their school-aged children that the Texas education funding model based mainly on local property taxes made educational quality a function of the local property tax base. Their 96% minority Edgewood school district, with one of the highest tax rates in the county ($5.76 per $100 property value) could raise only $37 per pupil whereas a nearby wealthy 81% Anglo Alamo Heights district ($0.68 per $100 property value) raised $413 per pupil, annually.31 This situation disadvantaged children – including their own – living in poorer areas who had to attend inferior schools with insufficient instructional supplies and fewer qualified teachers. The state funding was not enough to correct the inherent inequalities. Following Serrano’s logic, the Texas Supreme Court agreed. But on appeal, the U.S. Supreme Court did not, overturning the lower court’s ruling, and deciding that the Texas school funding formula was not unconstitutional. In their view, the funding system did not intentionally or substantially discriminate against a class of people, and education was not a fundamental interest, explicitly or implicitly. Were education to be designated as a fundamental right, the Court asserted, it would create “intractable economic, social, and even philosophical problems”; affect most states’ school finance systems; reduce local control of schools; and shift the relations between federal and state power.32 In a nutshell, the Court did not see public education as “worth the incremental cost.”33 More equitable or adequate school funding would not come from federal courts. Robinson v. Cahill (NJ, 1973)

The second wave of school finance court decisions would also focus on equity by reducing per-pupil spending disparities. But it would turn away from the federal Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause and toward state constitutions’ equal protection and education clauses.34 State education clauses directly address the state’s educational duties and oblige them to provide educational services. With Robinson, school finance reformers’ strategies shifted to state courts to successfully secure adequate and equitable education funding. Robinson v. Cahill, a series of cases, 35 was filed on behalf of students, parents, taxpayers, public officials, and public bodies. The complaint

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charged that New Jersey’s state aid formula discriminated in favor of children attending public schools in wealthy school districts and was unconstitutional. Plaintiffs showed evidence of both substantial fiscal disparities among New Jersey’s 600 school districts and a direct relationship between property wealth and per-pupil expenditures. At the time, New Jersey guaranteed each district that if it raised its local “fair share” of tax dollars, the state would provide the difference between that amount and the minimum foundation level ($400). In 1969–70, the actual statewide average per-pupil expenditure was $800.56.36 In many districts, few local resources, high municipal overburden, and generally high education-cost student populations combined to cause insufficient funds for current operations and school facilities. Only 13 days after the Rodriguez decision, 37 the New Jersey Supreme Court announced in Robinson I that the New Jersey school funding system violated that state’s constitutional guarantee of access to a “thorough and efficient” free public education system for all the state’s children.38 The court required the state to ensure equal educational opportunity for all school children by financing education from state revenues imposed uniformly on taxpayers and ordered the state to implement a funding equalization plan. The court did not recognize education as a fundamental right, finding the concept “not helpful” and difficult to define.39 Nor did it precisely define “thorough and efficient.” It also permitted per pupil funding disparities among districts if they did not “dilute” the state’s mandated responsibility to provide all students with equal educational opportunity. Many courts would uphold state school finance systems despite per pupil spending differences. Accordingly, the second wave court decisions hold a mixed record of success.40 Abbott v. Burke (NJ, 1985–2011)

Widely recognized as the most successful and impactful education litigation case for poor and minority school children since Brown v. Board,41 Abbott v. Burke42 stands as a clear example of state courts’ power to expand educational opportunity.43 Moving further than Robinson by focusing on educational inputs and outcomes,44 the Abbott case offered a new concept: comparative equal educational opportunity. In Abbott, the court compared educational opportunities that poorer disadvantaged students received in contrast to those relatively advantaged students received. Its innovative and needs-based approach ensured “parity” between the two levels of available resources by requiring the state to spend more to improve low-income school children’s educational outcomes. Moreover, the New Jersey Supreme Court became the nation’s first to hold a public school system unconstitutional only as it applied to



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a portion of the state’s districts than as applied to all districts.45 Notably, Abbott operationalized the education clause’s “thorough and efficient” in ways that could be measured for funding accountability.46 In 1981, New Jersey’s Education Law Center (ELC) filed a complaint in Superior Court on behalf of 20 children attending public schools in four of New Jersey’s poorest districts,47 claiming that New Jersey’s school finance system was unconstitutional. The then-current funding scheme poorly resourced students in low-income districts, contributing to significant differences in the quality of education offered – in curricula, programs, facilities, student-to-teacher ratios, results of minimum basic skills tests, and dropout rates – in poor districts as compared to wealthy districts. In 1985, the New Jersey Supreme Court issued its first Abbott decision (Abbott I) and transferred the case to an administrative law judge. In 1990 (Abbott II), the court found the system unconstitutional and ordered explicit and direct funding – now increased to 31 severely underfunded urban school districts and over 300,000 students – in an amount “substantially equivalent” to that spent in successful suburban districts plus additional funding for supplemental programs to address high-poverty students’ academic, social, and health needs. In 1998 (Abbott V), New Jersey’s highest state court became the nation’s first to require highquality PreK for three- and four-year-olds as part of a child’s constitutional right to a K-12 public education. Abbott IV (1997) and Abbott V (1998) decisions required New Jersey schools to implement additional reforms of curriculum and instruction, supplemental programs, and school facility upgrades to ensure an adequate and equal education for low-income schoolchildren. In sum, the court gave tangible quantifiable meaning to “thorough and efficient” education: low-income students must be given the chance to compete with relatively advantaged students as pupils and workers in the same society. Abbott litigation is ongoing.48 Rose v. Council for Better Education (KY, 1989)

Starting in 1989, school finance litigation’s third wave represents a “subtle but dramatic shift in school finance litigation theory and strategy.”49 Both Brown and Rodriguez decisions note education’s importance and hint at some “identifiable quantum” of education. The third wave’s attention to adequacy (i.e., sufficient funds allocated to students and schools) replaces the traditional attention on equity (i.e., per pupil spending disparities). Focusing on state education clauses rather than state equal protection clauses (or a mix of both), the third wave heralds a major paradigm shift, a turning point in school finance litigation.50 In Rose v. Council for Better Education, 51 the Kentucky Supreme Court found the state school finance system violated the Kentucky

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constitution, formally recognized adequate public education as a fundamental constitutional right, and required sufficient state funding. The paradigm shift includes two key elements. First, it moves judicial thinking about constitutional rights from negative (i.e., one that gives its holder the power to prevent government actors from engaging in behaviors that infringe on a right, such as the right to equal protection under law) to positive (i.e., one that allows the right’s holder, possibly an individual, to compel government action to protect and advance the holder’s constitutional interest, such as provide adequate and sufficient funds for education).52 Second, the paradigm shifts from legal strategies based on theories of equity or equality to litigation strategies founded on theories of adequacy as a means for relief. These two doctrinal changes distinguish Rose from the litigation before it and remains relevant today.53 The Council for Better Education (CBE), a non-profit corporation, a group of superintendents representing (initially 28 and eventually 66) property-poor districts, parents (representing 22 students), and other education advocates brought the suit. By the 1980s, Kentucky schools ranked at the bottom rung nationally: last in high school graduations, one of the highest poverty rates, and third from last in education funding.54 At the time, property-rich school districts had about eight times more local property wealth than did property-poor districts.55 Kentucky students educated in the public schools could not compete meaningfully in the national economy.56 CBE claimed that the educational resources in their districts were both inadequate and inequitable, violating the Kentucky Constitution. The trial court agreed, but the General Assembly did not. It appealed to the Kentucky Supreme Court (KSC), which ruled the entire system (“all its parts and parcels”) unconstitutional. The court struck down not only Kentucky’s school finance laws but also laws and regulations affecting the entire range of the common school system including creating school districts, school boards, the state education department, from teacher certification to school construction.57 Wrestling with what an “adequate education” would look like, the KSC decided that it would include basic “capacities” that every Kentucky student should develop. These included oral and written communication skills to function in a complex and rapidly changing civilization; a curriculum that sufficiently prepared students for academic or vocational fields and the skills to compete favorably with their peers in surrounding states, academically or in the job market. The court also spelled out what it meant by an “efficient” system of common schools: “substantially uniform throughout the state” and “sufficiently funded.”58 In the next regular session, the General Assembly passed KERA (Kentucky Education Reform Act, 1990), overhauling how Kentucky funded schools (i.e., raising revenues to make it more equitable), identified basic

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academic needs that school systems must provide, established accountability measures to judge schools on all students’ performance, and instituted measures to prevent political corruption.59 Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. State of New York (NY, 1993–2006, 2021)

The Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) makes a normative contribution toward understanding what comprises a constitutional “right to education” under New York’s state constitution. It also illustrates that although a legal victory does not always mean “success,” it can provide invaluable leverage for ongoing advocacy and related litigation efforts.60 CFE demonstrates that when government fails to remedy court-identified constitutional violations, the court may be required to spell out farreaching orders with large budgetary implications. In 1993, the Campaign for Fiscal Equity,61 a nonprofit advocacy organization, several students, and their parents filed a complaint asserting that New York State’s educational financing scheme violated the state constitution by failing to provide New York City students the opportunity to obtain a sound basic education to prepare them for effective civic participation and good jobs. In 1995 (and in later proceedings), New York’s highest court, the Court of Appeals, agreed. In 2007, after initial delays in compliance and further court decisions, the state legislature enacted a series of far-reaching reforms of the state finance system and called for a funding increase to support it. Unusual for its specificity about what a state constitutional guarantee of a “sound basic education” means, the court ruled that every child deserves access to at least basic literacy, calculating, and verbal skills needed for productive civic engagement and the capacities to sustain competitive employment and acquire higher education. This would require minimally adequate and accessible physical facilities; basic learning resources; up-to-date curricula; enough satisfactorily prepared and qualified teachers, principals, and other personnel; appropriate class sizes; and additional resources for struggling students.62 Related cases are ongoing.63 OUTCOMES OF SCHOOL FINANCE LITIGATION

Equal educational opportunity and school finance equity are very complex and difficult to define through litigation. Our valued tradition of local control of education often conflicts with the inability of propertypoor school districts to sufficiently fund their schools to a basic minimum acceptable quality standard as compared with more property-rich locations. Further equal, equitable, and adequate can have very different meanings, depending on whether one views it from the educator/ student or taxpayer perspectives. Additionally, different students require

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different treatments and different amounts of educational resources to achieve equal opportunity. These realities complicate efforts to make school finance systems fairer and appropriate for the desired student outcomes. Arguably, the 1980s change in legal strategy from finances (inputs alone) to student achievement (outcomes) – from equity to adequacy – is the most significant change in educational initiatives. Examining these cases through a CReT lens shows this clearly. An adequacy litigation approach brings several advantages. First, it appeals more widely to accepted norms of fairness and opportunity. Efforts to define minimum (or adequate) educational standards in courtrooms tend to produce fewer logistical, theoretic, and rhetorical difficulties than equitable standards. It avoids the more politically and ethically complicated task of reducing perpupil spending difference by either increasing spending (leveling up), redistributing existing spending (leveling down), or a combination of the two. Adequacy’s link to state constitutional clauses also anchors arguments that directly address schooling, raising fewer concerns about the possible costly implications of adequacy decisions for other public entitlements.64 Second, because adequacy litigation focuses on sufficient school funding rather than the outcome of local property-tax revenues, adequacy decisions present no direct and urgent threat to local control of schools. Third, urban school districts find this approach attractive because seeking additional educational resources for struggling ­districts – not necessarily the poorest, financially – allows them to spend more per pupil than the state average. Fourth, adequacy court decisions largely align with the educational standards movement, arguing for sufficient resources to help every student meet state-legislated achievement expectations.65 Implicitly, all litigation to more equitably and adequately fund schools in property-poor communities can be understood as operating under a CReT perspective.

CASE STUDY 3  CONDUCTING SCHOOL EQUITY AUDITS

Every child needs and deserves the opportunity to receive a highquality education to prepare for a successful life in a fast-paced, complex society. Children from low-income families and children of color are disproportionately denied the resources needed to meet this goal. Studies find that the achievement (opportunity) gap between low-income and high-income students tends to be stable and persistent.66 This is true in large measure because school districts and schools with high percentages of low-income and students of color do not receive their fair share of education funding.67



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Research on historically underserved students’ needs for additional academic and related programs and services is ample and persuasive.68 Existing literature of intra-district resource allocations reveals an unequal distribution pattern to schools within large districts, particularly those serving tens of thousands of students and spending hundreds of millions of dollars on education.69 Many studies report that intra-district funds are systemically directed away from economically disadvantaged students and toward more advantaged students.70 Likewise, a research consensus points to teacher quality as the single most important schoolbased contributor to students’ immediate academic outcomes and long-term achievement.71 The growing data that support increased and sustained investments in these students to improve their school achievement and other life outcomes are also influential.72 Unfortunately, apart from electing public officials who actively champion adequately resourcing public schools and securing philanthropic grants to endow special projects, educators tend to have little control over the fiscal inputs their school district receives. But district leaders, principals, and key stakeholders do have the capacity to ensure they are resourcing their schools equitably to give every student an equal opportunity to succeed academically. Using a CReT orientation, they can take the five steps – question existing practices, gather and organize relevant data, construct clearly understood graphic comparisons for analyses, communicate findings, and advocate for what they need – to conduct intra-district school equity audits. Identifying intra-district disparities in perpupil expenditures, teacher quality, and academic achievement using publicly available data can help practitioners and scholars make appropriate adjustments and advocate for sufficient resources to ensure every child receives a quality education. Until the 2015 Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA)73 that requires data accumulation and transparency to advance student equity concerns,74 resource disparities within school districts were opaque to all but the most trusted insiders. But not all school districts have the capacity to fulfill these new requirements. A 2019 examination of state ESSA proposals finds states’ plans for presenting these data transparently as “especially problematic.”75 Many school districts lack technical know-how and/or political will to share their school funding practices openly with school and community stakeholders. Nevertheless, two recent equity studies in mid-Atlantic school districts using a CReT lens pioneered an innovative approach, a blueprint, to provide the high-quality, quantifiable, transparent data

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needed for making these equity goals a reality.76 One study focused on a district’s middle schools whereas the other study examined all schools within the district. Each found intra-district funding and resource inequities. We will illustrate how to use the CReT framework by describing their innovative methodology that can be applied to funding in many public contexts. Question Existing Practices

How does the school district allocate monies and other key resources to its schools? To determine this, investigators need to know: What student populations compose each school? Does one school’s enrollment contain a meaningfully higher proportion of students with special learning needs – low-income students, students with disabilities, or English ­learners – who require additional resources to succeed academically? How do students’ academic achievement at the same grade levels compare across schools? Are fully credentialled and experienced teachers apportioned fairly among schools? To collect and organize data, investigators applied Sklar, McKenzie, and Scheurich’s (2009)77 key indicators organized into three categories for analysis: teacher quality equity, programmatic equity, and achievement equity. Teacher quality includes teacher education, teacher experience, and teacher mobility. Programmatic equity includes special education, gifted and talented programs, career and technical education (CTE), and bilingual education. Metrics for achievement equity include state achievement tests (including student growth measures), dropout rates, graduation programs of study, and SAT/ACT/AP/IB performance. School district leaders may want to add other meaningful and quantifiable data. These data points are reliable and valid indicators when examining per-pupil expenditures and accessible from public sources.78 Gather and Organize Relevant Data

Since equity is a multidimensional concept, investigators use multiple measures to evaluate it based on research and best practice.79 Investigators gather pertinent school demographics for each school studied for a selected school year: student enrollment numbers and demographics; student achievement results; numbers of teachers (and teacher quality data); administrators; other school personnel; and school budgets (only from district funds) (Table 4.1). Unique district-wide programs (such as voluntary or courtordered majority-to-minority transfer programs), if any, that affect



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Table 4.1  Relevant Data Collection for Each School Studied Students

Administrative personnel principals, assistant principals deans, administrative assistants Teaching personnel

Teacher quality

Professional staff (licensed) counselors, nurses, librarians Classified staff (no certification) clerks, cafeteria monitors, security officers, technology support School operational costs

Total student enrollment Number, percentage by race, ethnicity Number, percent eligible for free or reducedprice lunch Number, percent with disabilities Number, percent English learners Number, percent identified as gifted Student achievement growth measures (elementary, middle) College and career readiness (high school graduation, dropout rates) Number of administrators (by title) Number of years at this school Number of full-time equivalent classroom teachers Student-to-teacher ratio Average teacher salary Level of educational attainment (by degree) Years of teaching experience Number of provisional teachers Number of inexperienced teachers Number of out-of-field teachers Number of professional staff (with staff– student ratios) Number of years at this school Number of classified staff (by job title)

Total operational costs Per-pupil school level and district expenditures

Total per-pupil spending Professional development for building personnel Total spending Cents spent per dollar* Source: Based on Cohoon, D. (2021). Measuring up: A case study of school finance equity among five middle schools [Unpublished doctoral dissertation], Old Dominion University. https:// digitalcommons.odu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1264&context=efl_etds Note: For a more detailed sample table for collecting school and student characteristics, see Cohoon (2021), Chapter 4, Table 3, School 1 Characteristics, pp. 50–51. * To determine the per-pupil spending at each school, arrange them from highest per-pupil spending to lowest per-pupil spending. Then determine the percentage spent at each school relative to the highest per-pupil spending. That percentage equals cents on the dollar. For example: School School School School

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#1 #2 #3 #4

$5,000 per-pupil = $1.00 $4,500 per-pupil = $0.90 $4,000 per-pupil = $0.80 $3,000 per-pupil = $0.60

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[90 cents per dollar] [80 cents per dollar] [60 cents per dollar]

the distribution of students and teachers across schools are also considered. These data can come from publicly available sources and school district records. From these data, researchers can calculate the weights for certain student groups (discussed next), total spending, total spending per student, and cents spent per dollar.80 Compiling this information may require pragmatic accommodations to realities of data availability. For instance, since not all 12 of Skrla and colleagues’ (2009) indictors for teacher quality may be publicly accessible, investigators may use teachers’ highest level of education attained and the number of teachers teaching outside their certificate areas. Likewise, for examining programmatic equity, researchers may use the numbers and percentage of students with disabilities, English learners, bilingual education, CTE, and gifted/talented by school. And when examining student academic achievement, the researchers can use the school’s state assessment performance, school dropout rates, and the school’s percentage of students in college-preparation academic courses of study. Most of these data are publicly available. The education profession sets one year of academic growth during a school year as the minimum expectation for every student. To ascertain equity in students’ academic progress, especially for marginalized students, one year of measured academic gain – or higher – is satisfactory. Growth measures the progress of the same students from the start of one grade level to the end of that academic year, regardless of how others perform. Anything lower than one year of growth could be considered inequitable. Provide Easily Understood Graphic and Narrative Comparisons for Analyses

But numbers without context lack meaning. Verstegen (2015) defines weight as “the ratio of excess costs above the base to the basic per-pupil funding amount.”81 Weighting certain variables can help clarify their real-world impacts and give these data more import to educators, policy makers, and the general public. Our equity case studies use two different weighting schemes. The first one (Verstegen & Driscoll, 2008; Table 4.2, upper portion), applied after recording student demographic data (Table 4.1), modestly adjusts for the actual costs of educating students with additional learning needs to meet state standards. Education finance scholars Deborah Verstegen & Lisa Driscoll (2008),82 weight students with disabilities at 2.0 because they reason that it costs twice as much to educate a student with a disability when compared to a



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Table 4.2

Equity Weightings Using Verstegen/Driscoll (2008) and Original a priori Models

Verstegen & Driscoll (2008) Weightings

Weights

Students with disabilities

2.0

English learners

1.5

Students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch

1.5

Researchers’ a priori weightings Difference Between X School and School with Highest Per-Pupil Expenditure

Classification

10–24.9%

Slight difference

25–39.9%

Moderate difference

40% and above

Notable difference

Source: Based on Cohoon, D. (2021). Measuring up: A case study of school finance equity among five middle schools [Unpublished doctoral dissertation], Old Dominion University. https:// digitalcommons.odu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1264&context=efl_etds

non-disabled student. They weight students qualifying for free or reduced-priced lunch and students who identified as English Learners (EL) as 1.5 because they estimate that it costs one and a half times more to educate them. Weighting these specific subgroup categories and multiplying by the current per-pupil expenditures reveals the amount of funding estimated to meet these students’ basic educational needs. Adding student weightings to determine what the “adjusted” per-pupil expenditures at each school should be and comparing the differences among schools can suggest the extent the district funding plan meets standards for horizontal and vertical equity. The second weighting involves a researcher-designed novel a priori algorithm83 (Table 4.2, lower portion) to assess teacher quality (using the average teacher salary per school as a teacher quality proxy), student achievement, and overall school expenditures for the designated school to compare with the highest spending district school (Table 4.1). While literature concludes that increased welltargeted money for schools results in increased achievement,84 no scale exists to measure what is equitable and what is not. These a priori weightings generate a more nuanced assessment of the differences in resources (i.e., experienced teachers), students’ academic performance, and overall spending between and among schools. By comparing the actual per-pupil expenditure with the “adjusted” weighting per-pupil expenditure, one can better estimate whether the

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School 5

School 4

School 3

School 2

School 1 $0.00

$5,000.00

$10,000.00

Weighted Per-Pupil Expenditures

$15,000.00

$20,000.00

$25,000.00

Unweighted Per-Pupil Expenditures

Figure 4.1  Unweighted Per-Pupil Expenditures vs. Weighted Per-Pupil Expenditures Note: To add student weightings (1.5 or 2.0), multiply the per-pupil spending at that school by the Verstegen/Driscoll weighting by the number of students. For example, if 20 students have disabilities, multiply the per-pupil spending for those 20 students by 2.0 to determine the adjusted spending.Based on Cohoon, D. (2021). Measuring up: A case study of school finance equity among five middle schools [Unpublished doctoral dissertation], Old Dominion University. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1264&context=efl_etds

differences are slight (i.e., a 10–24.9% difference between/among schools), moderate (i.e., a 25–39.9% difference between/among schools) or notable (i.e., a 40% and above difference between/among schools). These weightings make between/among school disparities more visible, meaningful, and open to remedies. Figure 4.1 illustrates the actual per-pupil expenditures versus the “adjusted” per-pupil expenditures weighted for educating students receiving special education services at that school. Discrepancies are apparent because the district’s per-pupil expenditures for students with disabilities is not adjusted using Verstegen and Driscoll’s weighting.85 Comparing intra-district disparities graphically (Figure 4.1) provides the transparency, clarity, and significance (although not necessarily statistically) that educators and others need to recognize and analyze the existing resource inequities that impact school outcomes.86 As seen in Figure 4.1, School 2 has the lowest perpupil expenditure. It also has the highest weighted per-pupil expenditure, showing a rather substantial discrepancy – inequity – in funding special needs children.



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Table 4.3 Sample Comparison Table Categories School #1

School #2

School #3

Variable

Percentages

Schools

Source: Based on Cohoon, D. (2021). Measuring up: A case study of school finance equity among five middle schools [Unpublished doctoral dissertation], Old Dominion University. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1264&context=efl_etds

For impact, Table 4.3 could also display the total per student spending and cents spent per dollar.87 To compute this, one would identify the school with the highest per-pupil expenditure as the base line. Then for every dollar spent at the highest per-pupil expenditure school, determine the percentage of that dollar or the cents per dollar spent at each of the other schools. From there, one can plot out the additional costs using the a priori algorithm to determine if a slight, moderate, or notable difference in per-pupil expenditure for each school exists. Looking for patterns in the data, observers may find that total (weighted) expenditures; experienced, fully credentialed teachers; and building administrators may not be allocated fairly to schools based on students’ weighted needs. When districts base school staffing allocations purely on enrollment numbers (rather than on student weightings for special learning needs requiring additional resources), they may not staff schools equitably. For instance, if one school appears to have the highest teacher salaries; the fewest students of low-income, disabilities, or English learners; the fewest teachers on provisional and out-of-field certificates; the lowest student–teacher ratios; and the highest per-pupil expenditures (after student weightings), some difficult questions (and thoughtful, honest answers) about resource equity are in order. These questions may include: Do teacher transfer policies favor moving experienced teachers to relocate from high-poverty schools to low-poverty schools, causing a constant churn at high-poverty schools? Are unitary salary scales contributing to more experienced teachers leaving

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high-poverty schools for low-poverty schools? If the answer to either of these questions is “Yes,” one must ask if these are unintended or intended policy consequences.88 Although data can be a powerful tool for identifying, analyzing, and remedying school expenditure inequities, a reminder is in order: Equity is a complex goal. Measurement is a first step toward taking the actions needed to achieve it. Therefore, the choice of measures should always be revisited and challenged; inequity can arise from a wide range of decisions, actions, and omissions.89 Communicate Findings to Stakeholders

ESSA aims to advance schools’ equity and excellence, especially for ­students of color, low-income students, English learners, students with disabilities, and those who are homeless or in foster care. The law gives states the opportunity to equitably address these historically underserved students’ additional learning needs with enough resources to prepare for twenty-first century life. District leaders and legislators now have the political incentive and the CReT lens to develop and make public these data, look seriously at how they currently resource their schools and students, and make necessary adjustments. Effective communications begin with selecting persons to serve on the data teams. Superintendents, research professionals, school principals, teacher leaders, influential parents and community members will work together to design the study; collect, organize, and analyze the findings; and prepare the materials to communicate with the school board and the public. A larger group of educators and key stakeholders could review these data products and initial analyses; offer feedback to clarify and extend their meaning; recommend revised policies and/or practices; and offer additional suggestions. The larger group will also review a timeline with relevant performance benchmarks to monitor implementation. And they will help enact plans to explain these findings and recommendations to the wider community and media. Advocate for What You Need

Well-informed teachers, school personnel, and community and business leaders can be extremely credible surrogates to educate their communities about the school districts’ academic successes



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and equity (and adequacy) challenges. Ideally, they will also share their findings with their state legislators and philanthropic foundations as they advocate for increased funding amounts to improve all students’ outcomes. In this way, conducting equity audits that provide regular, precise, and transparent data on per-pupil expenditures, teacher quality, and academic achievement can help communities, supporters, and policy makers understand which students are experiencing resource inequities so they can accurately target interventions to reach those most in need. And with evidence of disparities in expenditures, teacher quality, and student achievement in hand, legislators, policy makers, and courts may be more receptive to initiatives for more sufficient funding.

CONCLUSION

According to the Education Law Center, The greatest obstacle to achieving equitable and adequate school funding continues to be the lack of political will in statehouses … to increase the level of investment in public education, made more compelling by the ever-mounting evidence that money matters.90 The same can be said of scholars, judicial activists, and district-level leadership who do not use a CReT lens or take the steps needed to inform themselves and their communities about how equitably (and adequately) they are resourcing all their students. NOTES

1 Farrie, D., & Sciarra, D.G. (2021). 2021 Making the grade. How fair is school funding in your state? Education Law Center. https://edlawcenter.org/assets/MTG%202021/2021_ELC_ MakingTheGrade_Report.pdf 2 Farrie & Sciarra, 2021, p. 2. 3 Rebell, M.A. (2018). School funding: The role of the courts. National Association of State Boards of Education, 18(3), 5–10. https://nasbe.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/2018/09/ Rebell_September-2018-Standard.pdf 4 Verstegen, D.A. & Driscoll, L.G. (2008). Educational opportunity: The Illinois dilemma. Journal of Education Finance, 33(4), 331–351. www.press.uillinois.edu/journals/?id=jef 5 Owings, W.A. & Kaplan, L.S. (2020). American public school finance. Routledge. p. 164. 6 Dewey, J. (1960). Philosophies of freedom. In R.J. Bernstein (Ed), On experience, nature, and freedom. Bobbs Merrill, p. 296. 7 Obhof, L.J. (2005). DeRolph v State of Ohio’s long road to an adequate education. Brigham Young University Education and Law Journal, 1. Article 5, 83–149. https://digitalcommons. law.byu.edu/elj/vol2005/iss1/5 8 Owings & Kaplan, p. 162. 9 Farrie & Sciarra, 2021, p. 6.

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10 Rebell, 2018. Playing Devil’s advocate, it is important to acknowledge that evidence of dilapidated buildings and poor resources may be attributed to both inadequate funding and managerial incompetence. 11 Levine, G.F. (1991). Meeting the third wave: Legislative approaches to recent judicial school finance rulings. Harvard Journal on Legislation, 28(2), 507–542; Thro, W.E. (1990). The third wave: The impact of the Montana, Kentucky, and Texas decisions on the future of public school finance reform litigation. Journal of Law and Education, 19(2), 219–250. 12 West, M.R., & Peterson, P.E. (2016). The adequacy lawsuit: A critical appraisal (p. 10). Brookings. www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/schoolmoneytrials_chapter.pdf 13 Thro, 1990; Heise, M. (1995). State constitutions, school finance litigation, and the “third wave”: From, equity to adequacy. Temple Law Review, 68(3), 1151–1176. https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1549&context=facpub 14 West & Peterson, 2016. 15 These “Most Consequential” school adequacy and equity cases come from: Stanford University (n.d.). Landmark US cases related to equality of opportunity in K-12 education. Lawsuits. School Finance. Equality of Opportunity in Education. McCoy Family Center for Ethics in Society. https://edeq.stanford.edu/sections/landmark-us-cases-related-equalityopportunity-education; Alexander, M.D. co-author, American public school law, 9th ed. West Academic, personal communication, November 18, 2021. 16 Brittain, J.C. (2004, November). A look at Brown v. Board of Education in 2054. Seattle Journal for Social Justice, 3(1), Article 20, 29–43. https://digitalcommons.law.seattleu.edu/sjsj/ vol3/iss1/30 17 Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954). 18 McUsic, M.S. (2004). The future of Brown v. Board of education: Economic integration of the public schools. Harvard Law Review, 117(5), 1334–1377. (p. 1334). https://doi. org/10.2307/4093256 19 The Brown case actually consolidated five pending school desegregation cases. In chronological order, the five consolidated cases were 1949: Briggs et al. v. Elliott et al. (South Carolina); 1950: Bolling v. Sharpe (District of Columbia); 3 May 1951: Davis et al. v. County School Board of Prince Edward County, Virginia et al. (Virginia); June 1951: Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (Kansas); October 1951: Gebhart et al. v. Belton et al. (Delaware), August 1952. 20 Briggs v. Elliott 98 F. Supp. 529(E.D.S. C 1951); Brinson, C.S. (2021, March 23). Briggs v. Elliott brought us Brown v. Board of Education. Here’s how. American Experience. PBS. www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/blinding-isaac-woodard-briggs-v-elliott/ 21 Serrano v. Priest, 5 Cal. 3d 584, 487 P. 2d 1241, 96 Cal. Rptr. 601 (1971). 18 Cal. 3d 728, 557 P.2d 929, 135 Cal. Rptr. 345 (1976). The case spanned three California Supreme Court opinions between 1971 and 1977. 22 Justia US Law (2021). Serrano v. Priest. https://law.justia.com/cases/supreme-court/3d/5/584. html 23 Only Hawaii did not have local school district control of education. Hawaii Law Review §§296-2, 298-2 (1968). 24 FindLaw (2018, January 3). Separate and unequal: Serrano played an important role in development of school district policy. https://corporate.findlaw.com/law-library/separate-andunequal-serrano-played-an-important-role-in.html 25 Turner, W. (1971, August 31). Coast court questions the school tax. The New York Times. Archives. www.nytimes.com/1971/08/31/archives/coast-court-questions-the-school-tax.html 26 Coons, J.E., Clune III, W/H., & Sugarman, S.D. (1970). Private wealth and public education. Harvard University Press, p. 4. 27 Chin, E.G.H. (1976). An analysis and review of school financing reform. Fordham Law Review, 44(4), Article 2. 773–795. https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/flr/vol44/iss4/2 28 San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1, 93 S.Ct. 1278, rehearing denied, 411 U.S. 959, 93 S.Ct. 1919 (1973). 29 Alexander, K., & Alexander, M.D. (2019). American public school law (p. 61). West Academic Publishing. 30 As a result, “unfunded mandates” – requirements that a state or local government perform certain actions with no accompanying money provided – occur. Examples include the increased student standardized testing and reporting requirements of the 2001 federal No Child Left Behind Act.



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31 411 U.S. 1 (1973). San Antonio Independent School District et al., v. Rodriguez et al. Supreme Court of the United States, at 12–13. https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=13531894 237346705488&hl=en&as_sdt=6&as_vis=1&oi=scholarr; Orozco, C. (1995, November 1). Rodriguez v. San Antonio ISD. Handbook of Texas. Texas State Historical Association. www. tshaonline.org/handbook/entries/rodriguez-v-san-antonio-isd 32 Rodriguez, 411 U.S. at 44. 33 Dworkin, R. (1977). Taking rights seriously (p. 19). Harvard University Press. 34 Levin, B. (1974). Introduction to reform through state courts. Law and Contemporary Problems, 38(3), 309–311. 35 Robinson v. Cahill, 62 N.J. 473, 303 A.2d 273, cert. denied, 414 U.S. 976 (1973) (Robinson I); Robinson v. Cahill, 63 N.J. 196, 306 A.2d 65 (1973) (Robinson II); Robinson v. Cahill, 67 N.J. 35, 335 A.2d 6 (1975) (Robinson III); Robinson v. Cahill, 67 N.J. 333, 339 A.2d 193, reprinted in corrected form, 69 N.J. 133, 351A.2d713 (1975) (Robinson IV); Robinson v. Cahill, 69 N.J. 449, 355 A.2d 129 (1976) (Robinson V); Robinson v. Cahill, 70 N.J. 155, 358 A.2d 457 (1976) (Robinson VI); Robinson v. Cahill, 70 N.J. 464, 360 A.2d 400 (1976) (Robinson VII). 36 In fact, the New Jersey state share of the total operating cost of public schools was only about 28%, the federal share was approximately 5%, leaving the localities the balance, about 67%. Nationally, the state’s share of public school funding was about 4%. See: U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (1970). Digest of Education Statistics, Council of State Governments, Local School Expenditures: 1970 Projections. As cited in Thro, 1989. 37 The Rodriguez decision was announced on March 21, 1973, and the New Jersey Supreme Court decision on Robinson v. Cahill was announced on April 3, 1973. See: Thro, W.E. (1989, January). To render them safe: The analysis of state constitutional provisions in public school finance reform litigation. Virginia Law Review, 75(8), 1639–1679. https://doi. org/10.2307/1073248 38 N.J. Constitution, article VIII, § 4, 1. 39 Robinson v. Cahill (1973), at 491, 303 A.2d at 282 and at 496–97, 303 A.2d at 285. Not until Robinson V did the state supreme court clarify “thorough and efficient” as the level of education that would give each child an equal opportunity to compete in the labor market and to fulfill his/her citizenship role. 40 Heise, 1995, p. 1160. 41 Education Law Center (2021). The history of Abbott v. Burke. https://edlawcenter.org/litigation/abbott-v-burke/abbott-history.html 42 Abbott v. Burke, 100 N.J. 269, 495 A. 2d 376, N.J (1985). There have been several dozen rounds of litigation in Abbott, from the early 1980s, and spanning four decades. 43 For a more complete account of the Abbott history, see: Education Law Center, 2021, The history of Abbott v. Burke. https://edlawcenter.org/litigation/abbott-v-burke/abbott-history.html; Education Law Center (2021, February). From courthouse to statehouse – and back again. The role of litigation in school funding reforms. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED612468.pdf 44 Lichtenstein, J.S. (1991). Abbott v. Burke: Reaffirming New Jersey’s constitutional commitment to equal educational opportunity. Hofstra Law Review, 20(2). Article 6. 429–493 (p. 474). https://scholarlycommons.law.hofstra.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1738&context=hlr 45 Lichtenstein, 1991, p. 484, note 345. By holding the 1975 Act unconstitutional only as it applied to 28 districts, the Supreme Court of New Jersey conversely upheld the constitutionality of the Act as it applied to the overwhelming majority – 95% – of school districts. 46 Lichtenstein, 1991. 47 In these districts, about 70% of the students were low income, and 77% were children of color. See: Chakrabarti, R., & Sutherland, S. (2013). New Jersey’s Abbott districts: Education finances during the Great Recession. Current Issues in Economics and Finance, 19(4), 1–9. New York Federal Reserve Bank. www.newyorkfed.org/research/current_issues/ci19-4.html 48 On January 31, 2017, the New Jersey Supreme Court denied (without prejudice) that state’s motion to be relieved from certain aspects of collectively negotiated agreements related to Abbott. On November 30, 2021, the U.S. Education Department ordered New Jersey to restore millions in state aid cuts to comply with the American Rescue Plan to meet Maintenance of Equity requirements. See: Education Law Center (2021). The history of Abbott v. Burke. https://edlawcenter.org/litigation/abbott-v-burke/abbott-history.html; https://edlawcenter.org/ assets/files/pdfs/abott-v-burke/archives/Abbott%20XXII/M_378_16_Abbott_v.%20burke_1. pdf; ELC (2021, November 30). U.S. Education Department orders New Jersey to restore

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millions in state aid cuts to comply with American Rescue Plan. https://edlawcenter.org/news/ archives/school-funding/u.s.-education-department-orders-new-jersey-to-restore-$143-million-in-state-aid-cuts-to-comply-with-american-rescue-plan.html. 49 Heise, 1995, p. 1162. 50 Bauries, S.R. (2010). Foreword: Rights, remedies, and Rose. Kentucky Law Journal, 98, 703–716. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/law_facpub?utm_source=uknowledge.uky.edu%2Flaw_facpub %2F15&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages; Riley, S.P. (2020). Revisiting Rose and its effects: A thirty-year retrospective. Kentucky Law Journal, 108(3). Article 6. 557–576 (p. 560). https://uknowledge.uky.edu/klj/vol108/iss3/6 51 Rose v. Council for Better Education., Inc., 790 S.W.2d 186 (Ky. 1989). 52 Currie, D.P. (1986). Positive and negative constitutional rights. University of Chicago Law Review, 53(3), 864–890. 53 Bauries, 2010; Riley, 2020. 54 Krauth, O. (2020, April 11). On shaky ground: How did Kentucky’s watershed education reform act hold up after 30 years? Courier Journal. www.courier-journal.com/story/ news/2020/04/11/kera-30-how-did-kentucky-education-reform-act-hold-up/4870847002/ 55 Kelly, 2019. 56 Dawahare, 2004, p. 35. Kentucky public schools produced a functional illiteracy rate of 48.4% in the state’s eastern most counties; nationally ranked 43rd in per pupil expenditures for education; ranked last place nationally for citizens over 25 years old with high school diplomas; and students falling well below national norms on standardized achievement tests (and markedly lower in Appalachian districts). 57 Walker, R. (1989, June 14). Entire Kentucky school system is ruled invalid. Education Week. www.edweek.org/education/entire-kentucky-school-system-is-ruled-invalid/1989/06 58 Rose, 790 S.W. 2d at 212. 59 Krauth, 2020. 60 Social Protection–Human Rights (2015). The right to sound education in the City of New York. Legal Depository. https://socialprotection-humanrights.org/legaldep/the-right-to-soundeducation-in-the-city-of-new-york/ 61 CFE is now the Center for Educational Equity, CEE, a non-profit corporation consisting of community school boards, individual citizens, and several parent advocacy organizations. 62 The Campaign for Fiscal Equity (2013). Safeguarding sound basic education: Constitutional violations in New York State. Research Brief. http://www.centerforeducationalequity.org/ publications/know-your-educational-rights/29767_Know_Your_Rights_128-1.pdf 63 After the first two years of funding, the state froze, then slashed, state education funding. Another round of compliance litigation and legislative actions followed. In 2014, New Yorkers for Students’ Educational Rights (NYSER) v. State of New York picked up the mantle. In 2021, in related litigation, New Yorkers for Students’ Educational Rights (NYSER) v. State of New York, the state agreed to fulfill $4.2 billion over the next three years to fully fund its court-ordered requirement to fully fund high needs schools. See: New Yorkers for Students’ Educational Rights (NYSER) 68 Misc. 3d 672 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 2020); NYSER, 2020; Rebell, M.A. (n.d.). Background facts on why NYSER litigation was initiated. Litigation Papers. NYSER.org. http://nyser.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/BACKGROUND-FACTS-ONWHY-NYSER-LITIGATION-WAS-INITIATED.pdf; Teachers College (2021, October). New York State agrees to fulfill $4.2 billion promised to schools in case led by TC’s Michael Rebell. Education Policy. Teachers College Newsroom. www.tc.columbia.edu/articles/2021/october/ ny-state-agrees-to-fulfill-42-b-to-schools-in-case-led-by-tcs-michael-rebell/ 64 Heise, 1995. 65 Heise, 1995. 66 Reardon, S. (2011). The widening academic achievement gap between the rich and the poor: New evidence and possible explanations. In G.J. Duncan & R.J. Murnane (Eds.), Whither opportunity: Rising inequality, schools, and children’s life chances (pp. 91–116). New York: Russell Sage. 67 Sosina, V.E. & Weathers, E.S. (2019). Pathways to inequity: Between-district segregation and racial disparities in school district expenditures. AERA Open, 5(3), 1–15. https://doi. org/10.1177/2332858419872445 68 See: Borman, G.D. & Dowling, N.M. (2008). Teacher attrition and retention: A metaanalytic and narrative review of the research. Review of Educational Research, 78(3), 367–409. https://doi.org/10.3102%2F0034654308321455; Lankford, H., Loeb, S., &



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Wyckoff, J. (2002). Teacher sorting and the plight of urban schools: A descriptive analysis. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 24(1), 37–62. https://doi.org/10.3102 %2F01623737024001037; Aikens, N.L., & Barbarin, O. (2008). Socioeconomic differences in reading trajectories: The contribution of family, neighborhood, and school contexts. Journal of Educational Psychology, 100(2), 235–251. https://psycnet.apa.org/ doi/10.1037/0022-0663.100.2.235; Duncan, G.J. & Magnuson, K. (2011). The nature and impact of early achievement skills, attention skills, and behavior problems. In G.J. Duncan & R.J. Murnane (Eds.), Whither opportunity: Rising inequality, schools, and children’s life chances (pp. 47–69). New York, NY: Russell Sage. 69 Knight, D.S. (2019). Are school districts allocating resources equitably? The every student succeeds act, teacher experience gaps, and equitable resource allocation. Educational Policy, 33(4), 615–649. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0895904817719523 70 Baker, B.D., Farrie, D., & Sciarra, D. (2018, February). Is school funding fair? A national report card (7th ed.). Rutgers Graduate School of Education and Education Law Center. https://edlawcenter.org/assets/files/pdfs/publications/Is_School_Funding_Fair_7th_Editi.pdf; Owings & Kaplan, 2020. 71 Chetty, R., Friedman, J.N., & Rockoff, J.E. (2014). Measuring the impacts of teachers II: Teacher value-added and student outcomes in adulthood. American Economic Review, 104(9), 2633– 2679. http://dx.doi.org/10.1257/aer.104.9.2633; Feng, L. & Sass, T.R. (2017). Teacher quality and teacher mobility. Education Finance and Policy, 12(3), 396–418. https://doi.org/10.1162/ EDFP_a_00214; Jackson, C.K. (2012). Non-cognitive ability, test scores, and teacher quality: Evidence from 9th grade teachers in North Carolina (Working Paper No. 18624). Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. www.nber.org/papers/w18624 72 Abott, C., Kogan, V., Lavertu, S., Peskowitz, Z. (2018). School district operational spending and student outcomes: Evidence from tax elections in seven states. EdWorkingPaper No. 19–25. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2020.104142; Jackson, C.K., Johnson, R.C., & Persico, C. (2015). The effects of school spending on educational and economic outcomes: Evidence from school finance reforms. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 131(1), 157–218. https://gsppi.berkeley.edu/~ruckerj/QJE_resubmit_final_version.pdf; Lafortune, J., Rothstein, J. & Schanzenbach, D.W. (2018). School finance reform and the distribution of student achievement. American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 10(2), 19–25, https:// pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/app.20160567; Johnson, R.C. (2011, January, Revised 2015, September). Long-run impacts of school desegregation & school quality on adult attainments. National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 16664. www.nber.org/ papers/w16664; Candelaria, C.A. & Shores, K.A. (2019). Court-ordered finance reforms in the Adequacy Era: Heterogeneous causal effects and sensitivity. Education Finance and Policy, 14(1), 31–60. https://doi.org/10.1162/edfp_a_00236 73 Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA 2015). Pub. L. No. 114-95 § 114 Stat 1177 (2015–2016). U.S. Department of Education. www.congress.gov/114/plaws/publ95/PLAW-114publ95.pdf 74 ESSA, 2015, requires schools to identify and address equity concerns, including (1) new school-by-school per-pupil spending data on annually updated “easily accessible and user friendly” report cards; (2) to identify and address any inequities in resources for schools that need support and improvement; (3) to ensure that students from low-income families and students of color are not disproportionately taught by “ineffective out-of-field, or inexperienced teachers”; and (4) to incentivize districts to implement strategies for funding schools based on student need. See: Amerikaner, A. (2018). Making ESSA resource equity provisions meaningful. The State Education Standard, 18(3), 15–17. https://nasbe.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/2018/09/Amerikaner_September-2018-Standard.pdf; Fusarelli, L.D., & Ayscue, J.B. (2019, September 23). Is ESSA a retreat from equity? Phi Delta Kappan, 101(2), 32–36. https://kappanonline.org/essa_retreat-from-equity-fusarelli-ayscue/; ESEA, 1965, section 1111(g) (1) (B); Cook-Harvey, C.M., Darling-Hammond, L., Lam, L., Mercer, C., & Roc, M. (2016). Equity and ESSA: Leveraging educational opportunity through the Every Student Succeeds Act. Palo Alto, CA: Learning Policy Institute. https://learningpolicyinstitute.org/ product/equity-essa-report 75 Fusarelli & Ayscue, 2019. 76 Cohoon, D. (2021). Measuring up: A case study of school finance equity among five middle schools [Unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Old Dominion University. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1264&context=efl_etds; Duplain, N. (2021). School finance equity: An intradistrict audit [unpublished doctoral dissertation]. Old Dominion

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University. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1260&context=efl_ etds. Study limitations include the small sample size, “hidden inequalities” within schools or among specific populations – including as access to high-quality teaching. academic rigor, personalized time and attention, the quality of instructional resources – that are not publicly available or easily quantified. 77 Skrla, L.E., McKenzie, K.B., & Scheurich J.J. (2009). Using equity audits to create equitable and excellent schools. Corwin. 78 These publicly available sources include state report cards, the state Department of Education, and the National Center for Education Statistics. School personnel can access in-house records. 79 Verstegen, D.A. (2015). On doing an analysis of equity and closing the opportunity gap. Educational Policy Analysis Archives, 23(41). http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v23.1809 80 To find “cents per dollar” in student expenditures, we create a ratio to determine for every $1 spent at the highest per-pupil expenditure school, what the fraction would be in terms of “cents per dollar” at the lower per-pupil expenditure schools. This enables us to make comparisons that the public can relate to, aiding in communication and advocacy efforts. Using a “cents per dollar” ratio, as Thurgood Marshall did when arguing Brown, can strongly impact listeners. 81 Verstegen D.A. (2015). On doing an analysis of equity and closing the opportunity gap. Educational Policy Analysis Archives, 23(41). http://dx.doi.org/10.14507/epaa.v23.1809 82 Verstegen & Driscoll, 2008. 83 Doctoral Advisor William A. Owings developed the a priori ratings in 2020 with doctoral students Chris Cahoon and Nicole Duplain. 84 Hedges, L., Laine, R., & McLoughlin, M. (1994). Does money matter? A meta-analysis of studies of the effects of differential school inputs on student outcomes. Educational Researcher, 23(3), 5–14. https://doi.org/10.3102%2F0013189X023003005; Greenwald, R., Hedges, L. & Laine, R. (1996). The effect of school resources on student achievement Review of Educational Research. 66 (3), 361–396. https://doi.org/10.2307/1170528; Jackson, C.K., Johnson, R.C., & Persico, C. (2016). The effects of school spending on educational and economic outcomes: Evidence from School Finance Reforms. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 131 (1), 157-218. https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjv036 85 Adapted from Cahoon, 2020, dissertation final draft, p. 102. 86 Investigators are encouraged to construct as many tables as they need to compile data during the data collection, organization, and analysis process. They may want to prepare new, more easily understood tables for the communication and advocacy phases. 87 Total student spending and cents per dollar are determined by dividing the total spending by the number of students. For example, if the total spending was $18,507,488 and the number of students was 2251, then $18,507,488 divided by 2251 equals a per-pupil expenditure of $8221.90. 88 Kaplan, L. & Owings, W. (2020). Teacher turnover in high-poverty schools: Unintended or intended outcome of unitary salary schedules and transfer policies? Journal of Academic Perspectives, 2020(4), 1–22. First published August 2, 2021. www.journalofacademicperspectives.com/app/download/970446884/Kaplan_Owings.pdf 89 Martin, C., & Lewis, J. (2019, September). The state of equity measurement. White Paper. Metropolitan Housing and Communities Policy Center, Urban Institute. www.urban.org/ sites/default/files/publication/101052/the_state_of_equity_measurement_0_0.pdf 90 Farrie & Sciarra, 2021, p. 2; McKillip, M., & Luhm. T. (2020, April). Investing additional resources in schools serving low-income students. Education Law Center. https://edlawcenter. org/assets/files/pdfs/publications/Investing_in_Students_Policy_Bri.pdf



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CHAPTER 5 Colorism, Caste, Structural Racism, and Racial Colorblindness

INTRODUCTION

In America, too often it comes down to race. Race – a social construct1 – plays a prominent role in our history and culture. In its wake, Americans enact an invisible and unspoken phenomenon that enables everyday people of the leading societal group to believe the distortions and stereotypes about certain “others” that their society marginalizes. Our shared belief system normalizes inequities, making what would otherwise be considered unacceptable into something commonplace, unexceptional, “just the way it is.” Using a critical resource lens, we are coming to recognize that public policies directing housing, 2 health care, 3 the tax code,4 and natural disaster relief, 5 for example, treat Whites and people of color differently. These disparities continue, in part, because our society socializes us not to see the favoring or disfavoring of different groups as anything but ordinary. Families, the media, and school curricula can desensitize people, first as children and then as adults, to accept something that conflicts with the law, social norms, or their own basic behavior code. And if we do see unfairness, we learn to rationalize it away. And in the end, the inequities persist. In this space, Critical Resource Theory reflects how over the generations, our nation’s elites use their power and resources to benefit themselves and those who look like them and to disadvantage those who do not. Many of these policy domains have metrics – dollars, personnel, or other tangible measures – defining their practices and outcomes that could clarify these inadequacies and inequities and provide actionable data for increasing fairness. This chapter’s discussion of how race and the social constructs related to skin color issues affect American norms offers a social context within which CReT can be useful.

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This chapter shines a light on some of these social constructs and unspoken phenomena. It explores the societal factors – colorism, caste, structural racism, and racial colorblindness – that shape and sustain the racial attitudes and material disparities between Whites and peoples of color that we see today. Colorism, caste, and colorblindness are cognitive ideations about people’s skin tone that influence our thoughts and actions. Sometimes operating beneath conscious awareness, they persuade us to design and enact public policies that limit resources and opportunities for people of color. Structural racism is a system in which public polices, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other norms work – often in reinforcing ways – to maintain racial group inequities. Because solving a problem can be difficult unless you can see it, we highlight these social constructs, beginning with a brief history. RACE AS POLICY IN THE UNITED STATES

American ideas about race began in 1619 after the first Africans arrived in Virginia as the colony’s leaders tried to refine the distinctions about who could and could not become enslaved. This undeveloped land needed much intensive physical labor to make it flourish. The 1630 colonial census considered few Africans important enough to list by name, age, or arrival date – unlike most European inhabitants, free or indentured. Over time, colonial laws granted English and Irish indentured servants greater privileges than the Africans who worked beside them. Through a process of testing the boundaries of human categories, the American societal order evolved. When Africans in America began converting to Christianity, their new spiritual status jeopardized the original colonists’ religion-based hierarchy. Instead of Christianity being the key to societal acceptance, race – as noted by skin color and phenotype – became the marker of social, political, and economic viability.6 In this way, the Europeans adopted a new identity: White. Assigning people of color to a race created a system of hereditary classes (i.e., castes) that divided those whose physical appearance enabled them to claim observable Caucasian ancestry from others whose appearance indicated otherwise. The caste system and caste solidarity enabled Whites to establish and keep their societal superiority.7 Colonists soon realized that without Africans’ cheap labor and deep experience cultivating sugarcane, tobacco, cotton, and rice, Southern agricultural and mercantile undertakings would fail.8 The Africans’ dark skin color made them visually stand apart from pale English and Irish indentured servants. Africans could not run away and disappear into the general population. Over time, the institution of slavery made



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degrading and harshly regulating one group of humans – people of color  – seem normal, customary, even righteous. A civil war, a president’s assassination, and the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution legally ended slavery in America, granted citizenship, and entitled formerly enslaved persons to vote. But these momentous events did not end discrimination and inequality. During the 1870s, social scientists both North and South employed “objective” (but unscientific) graphs, charts, and other means to “prove” African Americans’ biological, psychological, intellectual, and moral inferiority. This spirit justified and animated the Southern Jim Crow’s race-based codes, their unequal justice system, and other discriminatory practices nationwide.9 With the racial hierarchy in place, every new immigrant to the United States entered a preexisting order arising from slavery that positioned the extremes in human pigmentation at either end. Peoples with skin pigments of yellow, red, or brown fell in between. From around the world, oppressed peoples, if they were White, passed through Ellis Island, their skin color granting them entrée to the U.S.’s dominant caste and its political, economic, and social benefits. In turn, to prove themselves worthy of admittance, each new immigrant group entered an unspoken pact of separating and distancing themselves from the established lowest caste. For nearly 250 years, “for [12] generations in perpetuity,”10 one human subgroup remained as chattel slaves, the “unifying foil” that strengthened the social hierarchy, their place firmly at the bottom. The disfigured relationships between Whites and those with darker skin pigmentation were handed down through the generations – despite the reality that ­science finds that human beings are 99.9% identical, genetically.11 The conceptual ideations of colorism and caste would embed themselves in American societal structures and institutions that would continue to treat dark- and light-skinned persons differently. Accordingly, we accept the “illogic” of racial categories because this is what we are taught and what we see around us. As historian Neil Irvin Painter observes, “Americans cling to race as the unschooled cling to superstition.”12 COLORISM AND EQUALITY

Since our nation’s early colonization, influential leaders decided that light skin pigmentation – like their own – would justify exploiting those with darker hues. This social construction, race, would become the basis for creating a societal hierarchy that assigned White persons with assets the highest status and people of color, especially Africans and Indigenous, the lowest. Colorism13 – the practice of treating lighter

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skinned people more favorably, giving them better access to resources like adequate housing, a strong education, and good jobs over darker skinned people – would mold our social norms, politics, policies, and access to resources. These policies and practices would create and sustain structural ­racism – the totality of ways in which societies foster racial discrimination through laws, institutional practices, and public policies – that continue in American society today.14 Although the preference for pale skin, blond hair, and European features traces back to ancient Greece and Rome,15 some believe that blackness as a concept had already infused the English language with negative connotations (i.e., evil, sin, filth, devil’s food cake)16 before the European traders made their initial contact with Africans. By contrast, whiteness had positive associations and images (i.e., virtue, God, cleanliness, angels’ food cake).17 European exploration and colonization of the Americas, Asia, and Africa imposed their beauty standards on the Indigenous groups they found. Today, the European norm for attractiveness is international, operating within any racial or ethnic group.18 In the United States, colorism is a product of racism. Colorism and racism use the same hierarchy: a light complexion and European physical characteristics viewed as more valuable and attractive than dark skin and observable African characteristics.19 But whereas racism involves discrimination against individuals based on their racial category, colorism involves discrimination against dark-complexioned persons based on their skin color. 20 Of course, the two categories overlap. This preference for light-skinned persons and unconscious stereotypes about skin color persists. Children internalize attitudes (often below the level of conscious awareness) about African Americans and other dark-complexioned persons at early ages and keep them into adulthood. 21 Images on television, movies, magazines, online sites, and elsewhere continually reinforce this belief. So powerful are these colorist messages that persons perceiving that they do not meet these beauty criteria often use hair straighteners and skin-lightening creams as cosmetic efforts to appear White – closer to the European beauty norm – with or without consciously realizing it. 22 Sometimes the colorism biases come from within one’s own ethnic group. After emancipation, the dark/light division continued as African Americans constructed social classes based on skin color.23 African Americans’ preference for light complexions and European features dates to the antebellum era when skin color often determined an enslaved person’s work assignments. Typically, dark-skinned slaves labored in the fields while light-skinned (usually mixed race) slaves worked in their owner’s (often family members’) homes. This unofficial privilege afforded light-skinned enslaved people made having a pale complexion an asset

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within their community.24 “Color Struck,” an old saying among African Americans, refers to individuals who believe and act as if their lighter complexion and European features represent the archetype of beauty and desirability.25 It also represents a way to gain better treatment in a White dominant society. For example, Black/dark-skinned men may marry light-skinned women to advance their children’s interests in a White society.26 Although Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and other laws protect against discrimination based on skin color, courts have been less receptive to claims alleging intra-racial discrimination.27 Academic research documents colorism, but policy makers have tended to ignore it.28 Nonetheless, awareness of colorism is becoming more mainstream. While we tend to think of colorism as occurring only within African American communities, its practice is worldwide and exists within all communities of color. In Mexico, for instance, light-skinned Mexicans are among the most powerful politicians, businesspersons, and celebrities. Those with Indigenous features – such as darker skin and Native Mexican phenotypes – are scorned. 29 Despite America’s increasingly multiracial society, skin color bias continues. Evidence suggests that in the United States, socioeconomic disparities resulting from colorism can be as serious as those typically attributed to racism.30 A 2021 nonpartisan Pew Research Center survey finds that Afro-Latinos perceive that their darker skin limits their chances for getting ahead.31 The recent uproar about the absence of Afro-Latinos in leading roles in the movie musical, “In the Heights”32 illustrates the research findings that an entrenched color hierarchy among non-White ethnic groups operates to disadvantage dark-skinned Blacks and Latinos. Studies find that these darker complexioned persons tend to have lower incomes, lower educational attainment, less prestigious employment positions, 33 worse health outcomes, 34 and receive longer sentences from the criminal justice system35 than light-skinned Blacks and Latinos.36 Even with the entrenched color hierarchy, the concept of “whiteness” is continually being redefined. For most of American history, anyone not Anglo-Saxon found placement somewhere on the descending scale of human “pollution.” As recently as 1970, Louisiana law set the Black–White boundary at “one-thirty-second or less of Negro blood.”37 Using twenty-first-century genetic testing, some of the law’s finer scale categories – such as a quadroon as one-fourth Black and a sextaroon as one-sixteenth Black – would be classified as Caucasian.38 Since race relations are learned, changing social conditions and new learning can change people’s beliefs and practices. Nonetheless, America’s experience with colorism would prompt the nation to establish an unofficial caste system. 102

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AN AMERICAN CASTE SYSTEM

British-American anthropologist Ashley Montague was among the first to assert that race is a social construct, not a biological one. To understand America’s divisions and disparities, he wrote, we enter the mythology of race; and when we speak of race, we really mean the caste system and the problems that it creates.39 Caste is a socially constructed, specific, socially limited status group that curbs or creates barriers between members of different status groups. A learned, culturally based state of mind, caste denotes who is perceived to be subordinate and who is perceived to be superior. It regulates the “inferior group” members’ social ranking, respect, privileges, resources, and social mobility. Derived from the Portuguese word, casta, caste is a Renaissance-era word meaning “race” or “breed.” Among the earliest European traders in South Asia, the Portuguese applied the term to the peoples they saw in India whose physical appearance differed from their own. Caste is neither hatred nor personal. Rather, it is familiar routines and unthinking expectations, the centuries-old patterns embedded in our society that appear to us as the natural order of things. Caste differs from a class. Class is dynamic; caste is static. Class is a measure of one’s standing in a society, denoted by education level, income, occupation, and other characteristics such as accent, discernment, and manners that reflect socioeconomic status. Class status can be earned through education and hard work or lost through poor decisions or misfortune; and class members have a greater degree of social mobility than do caste members. By contrast, caste lasts from birth to death and continues to pass on one’s place in the social hierarchy to one’s children through the generations. Over time, wealth and class may insulate some people born into the subordinate caste, but it cannot protect them from embarrassing efforts by “superior” caste members to put them in their place or remind them of their inferior caste position. For example, in 2003, Harvard Law graduate and Illinois state senator Barack Obama was mistaken for a waiter at a swanky New York City garden party.40 Was this “mistake” based on race, caste, or class? Was it both and more? It does not matter. Because in the end, it is our society expecting that certain people treat other people unlike themselves disrespectfully. Although caste systems around the world may vary in detail, they share similarities: a societal hierarchy with circumscribed roles and conduct permitted (or not) for caste members in the larger society. Racism and Caste in the United States

In Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent, journalist and Pulitzer Prize winning author Isabel Wilkerson concludes, “Caste does not explain



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everything in American life, but no aspect of American life can be fully understood without considering caste.”41 In the United States, caste infuses our race relations, setting expectations for where one fits on the social ladder. Race provides the basis for this distinction. In Wilkerson’s view, until the early 1970s, peoples of color were treated as members of an inferior caste. In the American South, Jim Crow’s overt discrimination kept African Americans and Whites separated in almost every facet of life. By comparison, over time, Irish, Germans, Italians, Scandinavians, Poles, and other Europeans were rarely treated as members of an inferior caste. Because American society has interwoven caste and race – they may overlap, occur at the same time, or be part of the same event – separating the two may be difficult. As Wilkerson sees it, any action or institution that “mocks, harms, assumes or attaches inferiority or stereotype on the basis of the social construct of race can be considered racism.” By comparison, casteism is about positioning and restricting these hierarchical positions as related to others to keep the status as it is to maintain one’s own ranking, advantage, or privilege. For marginalized castes, casteism means currying favor of those in the dominant caste and trying to keep those below oneself on the hierarchy from gaining ground. These behaviors anchor the caste structure firmly in place.42 In Wilkerson’s view, racism operates to confuse and distract from the underlying structural and more powerful caste. In this way, many people can be casteist – working to keep the hierarchy in place – without being racist in the traditional sense. That is, they are not actively and openly discriminating against another group. By contrast, actual racists would, by definition, be casteist, their racial animus requiring that those they perceive as beneath them on the social hierarchy know and keep their place. So, what some people might call racism may be simply another sign of how much we have internalized the larger American caste system.43 An American Dilemma

In 1944, Swedish economist and international scholar Gunnar Myrdal and a team of researchers commissioned by the philanthropic Carnegie Corporation produced An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy.44 Arguably, this report – a 5-year, 45-­chapter interdisciplinary study – is the most comprehensive study of race in America. The report openly acknowledges the country’s racism as an obstacle to advancing the nation’s egalitarian values. Myrdal’s outsider perspective gave him a credibility that no American could offer in a “self-critique.” In 1954, the Supreme Court’s decision that “separate but equal” education for Black children was harmful to their development cited Myrdal’s data as evidence.45

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Myrdal observed how invisible systems and enforced social norms and attitudes uphold America’s racial caste system. According to Myrdal, segregated schools and churches help drive these caste beliefs and practices by teaching foundational tenets to children about society that frames their perceptions of themselves in the world. By forcing social and economic restrictions upon the Black group by the White group, social discrimination becomes a powerful way to keep African Americans from advancing in any areas of life. Likewise, disparate investments in schools create disparate learning opportunities for White and Black children. These societal limits keep African Americans isolated economically and subjugated by the race caste system.46 Studies continue to affirm that education’s intergenerational benefits occur as grandparents pass along their advantages and disadvantages to parents who continue the process with their own children.47 Educational and social disparities exacerbate the income gap and eventually the wealth gap. Further, Myrdal asserts, this caste system stands opposed to values expressed in the “American Creed” – the “inherited” aspirational ideals of freedom, justice, of “all men created equal.” Instead, the “colorline” – mostly unspoken – is wholly recognizable in custom and matters practiced by both Blacks and Whites.48 He also stripped away the pseudoscientific façade of social science’s prejudicial mythology about African Americans.49 Critics responded both positively and negatively to Myrdal’s characterizations of American values. Some asked whether he put too much faith in Enlightenment ideas, the U.S. Constitution, the public school system, and the Protestant church’s “pervasive moralism.”50 Others faulted his argument; expressed suspicion of his sponsor’s intent (i.e., conflict of interest);51 his optimistic proposals and their expected pace;52 and other concerns.53 Despite the critics, Myrdal’s work brought the caste concept and its workings in American society to public awareness. Over seven decades later, Wilkerson would expand these ideas and bring them greater public visibility. The Eight Pillars of Caste

In Caste, The Origins of Our Discontent, Wilkerson studies caste systems in the United States, India, and Nazi Germany and identifies eight basic pillars on which these societal hierarchies rest. “To truly understand America,” she notes, “we must open our eyes to the hidden work of a caste system that has gone unnamed but prevails among us to our collective detriment.”54 These caste tenets underlie and continue to support today’s structural racism. We will discuss them briefly.



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1. Divine Will and the Laws of Nature. Each society with an operating caste system points to its ancient texts and lore in which a divine being or spirit foretells how the universe will be organized, the position that each member would fill, and their placement (status) within that society. In the Western world, the Bible’s story of the Great Flood relates how Noah survives and foretells that his sons would be progenitors of all mankind. But when Noah’s grandson, Canaan (Ham’s son) happens to see a drunk Noah naked, Noah curses Canaan and all his generations to follow. They would be the “lowest of slaves” to his brothers. Churchgoing and families’ religious observances passed this story down through the centuries, across continents. In the Middle Ages, some Old Testament interpreters described Ham as being black-skinned and asserted that Noah’s curse was intended against all dark-skinned peoples. The Spaniards, Portuguese, Dutch, and English used this and other Biblical passages to condemn the “children of Ham” and justify the kidnap, enslavement, and violence against millions of dark-skinned “others.” With this ideology in hand, Europeans in the New World created a hierarchy in which the lightest-skinned peoples would be the superior caste and the darkest would be the subordinate caste. Although slavery officially ended in 1865, the caste structure remained intact. 2 . Hereditability. Each caste society relies on clear lines of demarcation in which everyone has a rank at birth and a role to perform. The caste into which one is born is the caste in which a person and his/her descendants will remain throughout life. Caste is immutable, fixed from birth to death. Disrupting this social order agitates those who would enforce it. Starting in 1662 colonial Virginia, by both law and custom, children inherited their mother’s caste. In arguments beyond these limits, a child would generally take on the status of the lower-ranking parent. This law allowed enslavers to claim Black women’s (most of whom were slaves) children as their property. This standard represented a rupture from English legal precedent that gave children their father’s status. One could logically argue that colorism, discussed above, helps facilitate the idea that one’s heredity – the skin tone with which one is born – contributes to one’s societal value and caste. 3. Endogamy and the Control of Marriage and Mating. Endogamy enforces caste boundaries by forbidding marriage outside one’s group and prohibiting sexual relations – or even the hint of romantic interest – across caste lines. Early in its founding, the American 106

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caste system used law, custom, and rigorous enforcement to keep the castes separate and to close off the bloodlines of those assigned to the upper rung. This keeps resources and relationships within caste lines. At the same time, it blocks opportunities for developing empathy, an awareness of commonalities, or a sense of shared purpose between members of different castes. Separation makes it more likely that dominant caste persons would judge those lower on the societal hierarchy as unlike them, less human, undeserving of compassion, and a threat to be countered. In 1691, Virginia outlawed marriage between Blacks and Whites. Other colonies followed. In fact, 41 of the 50 states would make interracial marriage a crime, punishable by fine and imprisonment. In the South, African Americans could be killed for breaking (or be suspected of breaking) this caste rule. The U.S. Supreme Court did not overturn these bans until 1967. 4. Purity versus Pollution. Caste systems believe in the dominant caste’s purity and the lower castes’ pollution. In their allegiance to colorism, the United States – alone among Western Hemisphere c­ ountries – created a hierarchy based on racial absolutism: a single drop of African blood – and varying amounts of Asian or Indigenous blood – could spoil the “purity” of someone who might otherwise be presumed to be European. This taint would disqualify the person from admittance to the dominant caste.55 Using this rationale, the United States enforced caste by banning immigration of “yellow-to-copper or brown toned” Chinese and darker complexioned Southern and Eastern Europeans just before and after 1900. Well into the mid-twentieth century, most of the lowest caste children, typically children of color, attended segregated schools and studied from separate sets of textbooks. In many states, hospital wards, railroad platforms, railroad cars, buses, drinking fountains, beaches, lakes, pools, and cemeteries – all private and public human activities – segregated Whites from Blacks to avoid “pollution.” Those in the middle castes who met the definition of White could benefit from full citizenship, access resources that could propel their social mobility, rise to higher status positions (to the extent their efforts, talents, and good luck would take them), and expect respect in their daily interactions from subordinate groups. 5. Occupational Hierarchy. A caste system bases its division of labor on one’s position in the hierarchy. The hierarchy’s economic purpose is to ensure that society’s tasks needed to function – often the dirtiest, most debasing jobs – are handled regardless of people’s preference (or not) for doing them. Thus, African Americans were mainly

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restricted to sharecropper and servant roles – maids, janitors, grounds keepers – even into the twentieth century. Exceptions might be made for slaveowners’ mixed-race children to learn skilled trades such as carpenters or blacksmiths needed for large plantations to function. This occupational prohibition blocked African Americans from earning money and amassing even a modicum of wealth from their own labors, forcing them into economic dependence on the dominant caste that followed them into freedom. After the Civil War and the Great Migration, those African Americans able to move North and West found that they could leave the South but not their caste. Southern and Eastern Europeans could join unions and relocate into better neighborhoods than could Black citizens. During the Great Depression, only 5% of African Americans were listed as white-collar workers (such as ministers, teachers, and small business owners catering to other Black people). “A Negro may become a locomotive fireman, but never an engineer,” concluded historian Bertram Doyle in the 1930s.56 The caste parameters did allow African Americans to become entertainers, a role presenting no threat to White intellect or leadership. 6. Dehumanization and Stigma. Dehumanization is “a [purposeful] process, a programming … to attach a … taint of pollution to an entire group … and program everyone to no longer believe what their eyes can see.”57 This type of thinking reduces marginalized subordinates to an “undifferentiated mass of nameless, faceless” others who serve as shock absorbers for each nation’s collective fears and setbacks. A form of groupthink, a caste system relies on dehumanization to permanently exclude marginalized groups outside human norms so that any action taken against them can appear as reasonable. Their stigma makes them undeserving of empathy. Instead, they became objects that higher caste individuals can control. For example, Africans brought to the American auction block were forced to smile (to bring a higher price) and disrobe (so potential buyers could inspect their teeth and bodies as they would cattle). Captors and American owners took away Africans’ given names and assigned them new ones, erasing their past identities as Yoruba (from Nigeria), Ashante (from Ghana), sons of fishermen or daughters of village midwives. Regarding Black people in antebellum America, abolitionist minister William Goodell wrote, “he is accounted criminal for acts which are deemed innocent in others, punished with a severity from which all others are exempted…. unprotected by law.”58 7. Terror as Enforcement. Those who dominate caste systems use physical violence and psychological dread to keep lower caste members 108

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in their place, too afraid to think of fighting back. By their very cruelties, the dominant caste reinforces their higher position, proving their power and superiority. For enslaved Africans in the United States, raw physical assaults were daily facts of life. The horrors are too graphic to retell here. 59 But as property, any material losses from slave deaths or incapacity as the result of punishment at their masters’ hands “would have to factor into the cost of doing business.”60 And the terror continued until well after slavery’s formal end. 8. Inherent Superiority versus Inherent Inferiority. Caste hierarchy rests on the assumptions (and ongoing reminders) of the higher caste’s inborn superiority and the inherent inferiority of those below them. Anthropologists Audrey and Brian Smedley note that the lowest caste person’s “unquestioned inferiority had to be established” for it to become the basis for [Africans in America’s] permanent servile status.”61 Deference and degradation went hand in hand. Even after emancipation, signs, signals, and customs – such as the Confederate flags flying over Southern statehouses, Confederate statues at every Southern courthouse, or requiring African Americans to walk in the gutter when White people strode on the sidewalk – visibly elevated those at the top and disrespected those at the bottom. Likewise, in certain regions, African Americans were not permitted to drive better cars, wear finer clothes, or have larger homes than Whites.62 After World War I, many African American soldiers were attacked and killed for wearing their army uniforms. Despite their patriotic national service, they were behaving out of their subordinate place. Into the 1960s in the American South, even boarding a public bus was a closely choreographed exercise designed for maximum humiliation and stigma for lowest caste persons. This expression of power occurred regardless of the relative intelligence, morality, or gifts (or their absence) of the superior or the debased. In 1944, with Americans in military uniforms fighting overseas, a public school district in Columbus, Ohio sponsored an essay contest, “What to do with Hitler after the war?” That same year, a Black youth was forced to jump to his death because he sent a Christmas card to a White girl at work. In this context, one 16-year-old girl responded, “Put him in a black skin and let him live the rest of his life in America.” She won the contest.63 Despite praise for Wilkerson’s work,64 some suggest that a legitimate debate exists about whether the caste concept is applicable to the United States.65 Critics take issue with her use of caste, rather than race, suggesting that it confuses readers; notes a distinction that may be more semantic and



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rhetorical than real; or are used interchangeably.66 Some point to omissions in her argument (such as not critiquing capitalism or ignoring Africa)67 or call her analysis of Nazi Germany’s and India’s caste systems “superficial.”68 Nonetheless, Wilkerson’s insights about caste can help us better understand how our society constructed its norms and institutions to advantage those of European descent and disadvantage Indigenous peoples, Africans, and other peoples of color. And Caste adds support to the CReT (and other critical) orientation: looking beneath the surface of societal practices to see the influences that enable those with power to influence the society in ways that amass more resources for themselves and those like them while denying access to resources to those unlike them. Both concepts offer a mental model and clear language to better understand our own culture. And as colorism and caste pervade how we construct our institutions and policies, avenues for making these disparities tangible and quantitative become possible. STRUCTURAL RACISM IN PUBLIC POLICY

Many believe that racism is the result of individual prejudices: a bad actor’s intentional behavior that discriminates against a particular victim. Others claim that racism stems from formally race-neutral policies and practices that inadvertently disadvantage certain racial or ethnic groups – even though these polices can produce “foreseeable, even if unintended, racial harms.”69 For example, with 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, the middle class-oriented evacuation plans assumed New Orleans residents owned cars. The plans did not account for many low-income African American residents who didn’t.70 As a result, the storm’s aftermath disproportionately harmed low-income people of color living in vulnerable coastal areas. Katrina did not produce the harmful realities of structural racism; it exposed them. On closer look, these disparate outcomes reflect a more complex reality of multiple institutions interacting – such as years of neglectful public policies that disinvested in urban, segregated communities – in an ongoing process to generate racialized outcomes.71 The structural racism concept asserts that racism is not always a function of personal bias or intentional discrimination. Rather, structural racism (sometimes called systemic or institutional racism) refers to the totality of ways in which societies – through public policies, institutional practices, cultural representations, and other norms – foster racial discrimination and perpetuate racial group inequities through mutually reinforcing systems of housing, education, employment, earnings, benefits, credit, media, health care, and criminal justice.72 Over time, structural racism’s discriminatory effects are cumulative, creating a “vicious circle” of interlaced effects that advantage people with fair complexions and disadvantage people of color.73 110

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According to political sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva (2017), structural racism is a form of “racism without racists,” visible in public policies that place communities of color at a disadvantage.74 In his view, we create our societal structures, inhabit, and maintain them. In turn, they “recreate us by shaping identity and imparting [and normalizing] social meaning.” 75 If left undisturbed, these structural arrangements and practices buttress biased beliefs, values, and resource distribution.76 For instance, many see it as “normal” and ordinary that children of color, especially from low-income families, will perform worse in school than White children. Those who assume this may not know (or choose to forget) that over the decades, political influence has shaped housing patterns that, in turn, locate many low-income Black and Hispanic youth in high-poverty neighborhood schools.77 This arrangement affects these children’s later educational attainment, employment opportunities, contacts with the criminal justice system, access to health care, and increased racial segregation. In short, racism is not necessarily unintentional or individualistic. Rather, institutional practices and cultural patterns enacted over time and across many domains work to preserve, entrench, and deploy racial inequities without relying on racist actors. Racialized outcomes result. What may appear to be the result of random decisions by many individuals may actually stem from deliberate government policy to advantage White persons and disadvantage people of color. Once in place, these structures seem to have their own logic and momentum that reproduce and normalize their meaning. They become the cultural default, takenfor-granted, commonplace. Each area of structural racism in American society is large and complex enough to merit its own book, as Richard Rothstein’s The Color of Law does with housing policy and Dorothy Q. Brown’s The Whiteness of Wealth does with the tax code.78 Given our topic’s scope – how we as a society rationalize these unfair policies and practices to benefit those with societal influence and handicap those without it – we cannot offer an exhaustive review of structural racism in our society. Instead, we focus on the relationships between government policy, housing discrimination, and schooling. Then, we address some of the reasons for our inability or unwillingness to see (and dismantle) the discriminatory policies and practices around us. Housing Policy

The racial and economic stratification that defines our nation’s urban areas did not just “happen.” It results from an array of public policies, including exclusionary zoning practices and federally backed mortgages



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that offer examples of seemly race-neutral policies with discriminatory racial impact. Beginning in the 1910s, federal and local officials promoted zoning ordinances to reserve middle-class neighborhoods for single-family homes that lower-income peoples of all races could not afford. The goal was to prevent racial integration.79 Residential areas zoned for Whites were clean, spacious, attractive, and contained no commercial or industrial presence. Residential areas identified for African Americans tended to be in the poorest, least desirable locations, often containing rooming houses, commercial development, or environmentally unsafe industries that created substantial risk for property values, turning many African American neighborhoods into slums.80 Ironically, residential gentrification – when urban renewal displaces African Americans living in lowincome neighborhoods from their homes, razes the area, and builds new dwellings that the original residents cannot afford to buy or rent – occurs later in some of these same locales.81 This unhidden public policy consciously and deliberately segregated every metropolitan area in the country. Zoning for racial segregation persisted into the late twentieth century. The availability of federally insured mortgages created another obstacle to Black homeownership. In 1934, the Federal Housing Administration (FHA), formed to improve housing standards and conditions, developed insured amortized mortgages to advance homeownership nationwide. Between 1935 and 1940, the Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) created color-coded maps of every metropolitan area divided into zones of foreclosure risk based on the occupants’ race. It assigned grades “A” (minimal risk, coded green) to “D” (hazardous, coded red) to city neighborhoods that reflected their “mortgage security” – literally “redlining” or “greenlining”– boundaries around areas determined to be “good” or “poor” financial risks. Bankers and other mortgage lenders used these maps to decide who would receive insured mortgages. As a result, mostly White families were able to obtain mortgages, leave cities, and build equity in new middle-class neighborhoods. But the zoning practices discussed above made African Americans ineligible for these mortgages because banks and the FHA consider the presence of nearby rooming houses, commercial development, or industries to create risk to the property value of single-family areas. As White residents relocated, central cities lost population, jobs, and tax revenues for municipal services (including schools) for those left behind, largely people of color, who were least able to bear them.82 Redlining and similar restrictive and discriminatory housing policies did not end until the Fair Housing Act of 1968 (FHA). One study finds that between 1934 and 1968, 98% of FHA loans went to Whites.83 112

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The 1977 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) further outlawed redlining.84 Yet even after the FHA, redlining continued informally as individual realtors “steered” Whites and persons of color to different neighborhoods.85 Restrictive covenants – deed clauses that listed purchasers’ obligations (such as not selling or leasing their home to African Americans) – also limited where African Americans could live. Undoing this legacy is difficult. With these policies in place, African Americans could not accumulate the generational wealth – a source of present-day capital – that comes from owning their own homes growing in market value. Instead, they missed out on “trillions of dollars … through appreciating housing assets” backed by federal loans between 1932 and 1962.86 A Redfin Real Estate Brokerage report (2020) finds that the typical homeowner in a redlined neighborhood gained 52% less – or $212,023 less – in personal wealth generated by property value increases than a homeowner in greenlined neighborhoods, contributing to the substantial wealth gap between Black and White families.87 Further, redlining’s impact on neighborhood schools is long lasting. A 2021 study finds that nationwide, districts and schools located today in historically redlined neighborhoods have less district-level per-pupil revenues, larger shares of Black and non-White student bodies, less diverse student populations, and worse average achievement test scores relative to those located in “A”, “B”, and “C” neighborhoods.88 Clustering lowincome families into impoverished communities would affect the resources their public schools and children receive and the educational opportunities these could buy. Of course, not all marginalized students attend urban schools. Over the past 40 years, millions of minority families – Black, Latino, Asian, and immigrants – have moved out of the nation’s largest cities and into suburbs. Some families have ample resources to support their moves. Others of more limited means left cities because rents grew too high and affordable housing lay elsewhere.89 In 2015, for the first time, the suburbs became home to more poor residents than cities (16 million poor people in suburbs, 13 million in cities).90 These realities bring urgent equity concerns to suburban schools, too. Segregated Neighborhoods, Schools, and Student Outcomes

More than six decades after the Supreme Court declared “separate but equal” to be unconstitutional, schools remain heavily segregated by race and ethnicity and insufficiently funded.91 Black children are five times as likely as White children to attend schools that are highly segregated by race and ethnicity and more than twice as likely as White children to attend high-poverty schools. Intertwined race and poverty make Black students doubly disadvantaged.92



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Neighborhoods powerfully shape residents’ access to social, political, and economic opportunities and resources and profoundly impact children’s opportunities for healthy development and wellbeing.93 The connections between neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) and child and adolescent outcomes are well documented,94 although precisely how the effects work needs further study.95 Since city planners typically locate schools in neighborhoods where their students live, poor students tend to attend high-poverty schools. Studies find the disparity in average school poverty rates between White and Black students’ schools is consistently the single most powerful correlate of achievement gaps: poverty, not race, is the driver.96 By comparison, impoverished students perform better if they live in middle-class neighborhoods and/or attend more affluent and integrated schools.97 In fact, many argue that the achievement gap is really an opportunity gap – drawing attention to the lack of resources, poor learning environment and facilities, and other obstacles that low-income students face throughout their educational careers.98 Neighborhood and school segregation may each contribute independently to academic/opportunity (academic) achievement gaps.99 Because neighborhood conditions appear to impact children’s cognitive development and long-term educational outcomes,100 residential segregation may lead to achievement/opportunity gaps if it means that children of different races systematically live in higher- or lower-quality neighborhoods.101 Studies find that under-resourced (typically high-poverty) schools tend to have lower school quality, higher dropout rates, greater student exposure to the criminal justice system,102 and increased teen pregnancies (which impact life outcomes).103 Studies on segregated schools also suggest students have lowered ability to live and work in diverse environments104 and hold more racially prejudiced views later in life.105 Studies also find that desegregating schools and increasing resources can, over time, virtually end a large portion of the achievement/opportunity gap between low-income and non-poor students. After analyzing data on over 4,000 children born between 1950 and 1975 who attended court-ordered desegregated schools, Berkeley Professor of Public Policy Rucker Johnson finds positive long-term impacts. After five or more years that Black children attend desegregated schools, the higher their likelihood of graduation, the higher their adult earnings, the better their general health status, the lower likelihood of adult poverty and spending time in jail.106 In a different study, Johnson and colleagues determine that school finance reform that equalized school spending between lowand high-income districts (meaning a 20-percentage point increase in per-pupil spending each year for all 12 years of public school for 114

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children from poor families) leads to increased educational attainment, 25% higher earnings as an adult, and a 20-percentage point reduction in the annual incidence of adult poverty. These effects are so large that they eliminate between two thirds and all the gaps in these adult outcomes between children raised in poor and non-poor families.107 Integrated schools (schools where children are racially mixed in classrooms and all receive the rigorous, high-status curriculum) rather than desegregated schools (where children of color can enroll but are typically separated racially or socioeconomically into high and low academic tracks) are likely to give students more equal access to essential resources such as better school facilities, highly qualified and effective teachers, rigorous academic courses, increased private and public funding, and social and cultural capital.108 And the positive outcomes for students – educational and occupational attainment, reduced levels of racial and ethnic prejudice, and better adult health and wellness – extend well beyond high school.109 They become intergenerational. Although middle-class White youths benefit from racial/ethnic diversity in school, low-income children and children of color appear to gain the most.110 CReT can help educators and policy makers identify the conditions that produce disparities and generate the data to advocate for increased and/or more equitable funding in under-resourced schools (as discussed in Chapters 1 and 4). This conceptual lens may also be applied to compare resource disparities or similarities between and among schools in varied districts that have comparable student demographics. RACIAL COLORBLINDNESS THEORY

Color-blind racial ideology (CBRI) – referred to here as racial colorblindness – sometimes called strategic colorblindness111 – is “the widely held belief that skin color does not play a role in interpersonal interactions and institutional polices/practices.”112 More narrowly, it is the “avoidance of talking about race – or even acknowledging racial ­difference – in an effort to avoid the appearance of bias.”113 As a social cognition,114 racial or strategic colorblindness is a cognitive, not a perceptual dimension. People see race; they just don’t acknowledge it. It embodies the view that the United States has evolved beyond race and racism – is “post-racial.” The thinking goes, if one does not see race, one cannot be a racist or discriminate. Thus, racial colorblindness seeks to justify and explain away racial inequalities in society used to keep the social hierarchy in place under the “cover of innocence.”115 Although racial colorblindness lacks a single consensual definition, many descriptions tend to highlight the importance of de-emphasizing group differences to reach a higher good: people as individuals rather

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than members of social categories like race.116 In contrast, many considered it to be an “ultramodern” form of racism.117 The consensus on the value of racial colorblindness is mixed. Legal scholars debate whether the law should be racially colorblind to achieve equal legal outcomes or be race conscious to account for existing racial inequities.118 Certain psychologists posit that racial colorblindness may be a fair-minded strategy that people use to ignore interracial division in efforts to see each person as an individual and reduce racial prejudice.119 Similarly, majority group members tend to prefer a racially colorblind approach that de-emphasizes social group membership and removes the need to address racial inequities.120 By comparison, some social science scholars tend to view racial colorblindness as a contemporary form of racism, a legitimizing ideology used to justify the racial status quo that has harmful impacts on the lives of peoples of color.121 Empirical studies suggest that racial colorblindness is a complicated phenomenon. Racial colorblindness results from several cultural shifts. After the Civil Rights era, Whites’ expressions of overt racism – such as using openly racist language – became socially unacceptable.122 Fewer Whites endorsed negative stereotypes about Blacks. As a result, contemporary forms of prejudice have morphed away from the Jim Crow’s “in your face” racism that justified Blacks’ social standing as the product of their alleged inherent biological and moral inferiority. Avoiding such facile arguments, these “new racism” practices are subtle, covert, institutional, and seemingly nonracial. In this view, Blacks’ current status is the result of market dynamics, “naturally occurring phenomena,” and supposed “cultural limitations.” CBRI’s denial that racism exists allows individuals to ignore the existence of contemporary racial inequities, relies on the myth of meritocracy that blames marginalized persons for their own lack of advancement,123 and explains away discriminatory housing policies as the outcome of people’s “natural tendencies” to want to live with others like themselves.124 Further, the CBRI stance ignores the well-documented racial bias in areas including housing,125 the legal/justice system,126 health care,127 and the tax code,128 all of which are evident using a Critical Resource Theory lens. Surveys find little meaningful difference between Millennials (born 1982–2000) and their GenX (born 1965–1980) or Baby Boomer (born 1946–1964) parents in their views on racial colorblindness.129 Color Evasion and Power Evasion

A synthesis of the interdisciplinary literature on racial colorblindness finds two interrelated components. The first, color evasion, is the denial or minimization of the existence of racial differences (and privilege) by

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emphasizing sameness (i.e., “I don’t see a person’s color”). The second, power evasion, the denial or minimization of racism/institutional discrimination and White privilege130 by emphasizing equal opportunity (i.e., asserting that “Everyone has the same opportunities to get ahead” and claiming that affirmative action is “reverse racism”).131 Here, the focus is on power relationships in society, not on skin color. Color Evasion

In an ideal world, “not seeing race” may be an aspirational goal to lessen racial prejudice. But when considering race and racial justice, the racially stratified United States is not an ideal world.132 Studies document the persistence of racial disparities in education, health, income, wealth, poverty, and incarceration that burden people of color more than other groups in our society.133 These realities challenge the assertion that “race doesn’t matter.” Persons of color elected to public office, sitting on the Supreme Court, or earning millions in business remain the exceptions. Thus, to deny race and ignore racism’s continuation falsely perpetuates the myth of equal access and opportunity; blames people of color for their poor life circumstances and outcomes; and enables Whites to live in a false state of “ignorance, naivete, and innocence.”134 Studies also find that people who endorse higher levels of racial colorblindness often show increased prejudice toward racial minorities as compared with those holding a multicultural (i.e., support for the presence of several distinct cultural or ethnic groups within a society) perspective.135 The color-evasion practice also has been shown to have harmful effects on young children.136 Power Evasion

The literature contains three core interrelated types of evading responsibility for holding the societal power that perpetuates racism. These include denying, minimizing, and/or distorting blatant forms of racism (i.e., “Racism is a thing of the past, not today”); institutional racism (i.e., “Certain policies and practices unfairly benefit racial and ethnic minorities”); and racial privilege (i.e., “White people do not have certain life advantages because of their skin color”).137 Not considering power in defining racism allows socially and politically dominant persons to ignore institutional racism and avoid identifying problematic policies and practices and blame marginalized people for their own lack of progress. But rather than reduce interracial tensions, mounting empirical data suggest that racial colorblindness actually promotes racism.138 In fact, studies suggest that instead of reducing racial prejudice, ignoring race and not acknowledging racism actually reflect White racial intolerance,



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racial anger, racial fear;139 and limited empathy among Whites toward Blacks (i.e., when they “blame the victim”).140 Likewise, those who argue that race and racism have nothing to do with whom the police arrest, charge, and sentence with crimes may reflect a colorblind orientation that ignores well-documented racial bias in the legal/justice system.141 Studies also find evidence that racial colorblindness is associated with negative behaviors and attitudes toward racial and ethnic minorities. For example, individuals who avoid discussing race tend to appear more hostile in interracial interactions,142 and have less diverse social networks.143 Racial colorblindness has been linked with less support for affirmative action policies,144 less support for confronting racism,145 greater approval of racial insensitivity (such as racially themed parties),146 show less awareness of cultural diversity issues,147 and are less receptive to learning about other racial and ethnic groups.148 And since people across racial groups in the United States are socialized in the same culture, anyone – Whites or peoples of color – can adopt a racially colorblind perspective, regardless of their racial group memberships.149 But whereas racial colorblindness for Whites is linked to racial privileges and animus, for people of color it is linked to internalized racism, blaming themselves and those like them for inequitable outcomes.150 Besides being undesirable, racial colorblindness may also be impossible. People are continually monitoring, categorizing, and assessing their world. Identifying a person’s skin tone is a normal part of meeting one’s basic innate “fight or flight” survival needs.151 Social cognitions such as racial colorblindness can be either explicit or implicit. Briefly, explicit bias refers to partiality that is conscious and that the holder can overtly state. Implicit bias refers to partiality built on a framework of ingrained attitudes embedded in our socialization from childhood through adulthood that results from automatic cognitive processes that often occur outside of conscious awareness or control, motivating a person’s actions without their mindfulness. Both forms of cognition can influence a person’s beliefs, attitudes, expectations, nonverbal behaviors, physiological responses, and social actions.152 As a result, even without a recognition of blatant prejudice or ill will, people’s implicit biases can lead to discriminatory actions. Relatively recent studies have considered the distinction between explicit and implicit forms of bias and their effects on interracial interactions.153 Studies find that both high- and low-prejudiced individuals express implicit bias that can affect their behavior.154 By adulthood, most Americans have been exposed to family and cultural experiences that generate enough negative messages about African Americans and other marginalized groups that as much as 80% of White Americans hold unconscious bias against Black Americans. And the message is so 118

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widespread in American society that one third of Black Americans hold anti-Black bias against themselves.155 Ironically, studies also suggest that when a person believes oneself to be objective, the individual is more susceptible to biases.156 Plus, implicit biases can lead one to act in a manner inconsistent with one’s expressed beliefs.157 In short, despite one’s conscious mindset about race, implicit bias is never off the table. To be fair, under certain conditions, adopting a racial colorblind approach is not always a harmful strategy for dealing with diversity issues. For example, in high-conflict situations involving elevated levels of potential intergroup conflict or competition, it may be beneficial to adopt a colorblind approach because it leads to reduced expressions of explicit bias.158 To sum, racial colorblindness reflects America’s changing beliefs and social norms concerning race at this moment in history. But most people are not perceptually colorblind to skin tones. Using social categories including race is adaptive and functional when dealing with our complex social world. Further, not everyone agrees that racial colorblindness is either possible or desirable.159 Recognizing different skin color groups does not automatically lead to discrimination. Rather, it is the person’s judgments, values, and behaviors regarding those groups as shaped by family and societal influences that may be problematic. FROM NORMALIZATION TO INCREASED EQUITY

Colorism, caste, structural racism, and racial colorblindness infuse our society, shaping awareness of ourselves and those whose skin pigmentation differs from our own. Centuries-old frames of reference “color” how we see the world, normalizing inequities and inequalities as “just the way it is.” U.S. history textbooks reinforce this process, including or excluding, stressing, or superficially covering facts to portray our country as triumphant, honorable, powerful, and wise to justify the status quo.160 Normalization, a sociological theory, is a method by which behaviors and ideas are made to seem routine in everyday life. When consciously used as a tactic, normalization can desensitize or manipulate another person to agree to or accept something that conflicts with the law, social norms, or their own basic behavior or moral code. Our seeming acceptance of poverty and poor educational opportunities for marginalized children reflects how we consider “ordinary” a societal shortcoming that denies access to resources for “others.” Psychologists explain how people “normalize” inequities in our society. Most Americans are optimistic about racial progress, believing our society is good and fair, with racial equality largely achieved.161 Highincome White Americans may be especially partial to view their own

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elevated status as based solely on their individual merit and hard work rather than on the persistence of racial or class-based discrimination.162 They tend not to attribute their elite standing to winning the birth lottery, chance, or unfair advantage. Nonetheless, data suggest that Americans – Whites especially – are largely unaware of the marked persistence of Black–White racial economic inequality in this country. A 2019 study finds that respondents misperceive the wealth gap to be around 80-percentage points smaller than its actual size. Investigators surmise that this “strikingly” inaccurate error in public consciousness stems from people’s desire to see our society as a meritocracy, swaying them to find confirming information and discount facts that suggest society continues to be racially unequal and unjust. Acknowledging the realities undermines their faith in the narrative of America’s inherent goodness and racial progress.163 Some suggest that this desire to remain “willfully ignorant” of racial inequalities (what psychologists call “motivated social cognition”)164 is anchored in cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance theory, a core social psychology phenomenon, posits that when individuals face a conflict between two seemingly irreconcilable beliefs or contradictory facts, they experience discomfort that they want to resolve quickly and easily.165 To end their distress, they contextualize, rationalize, and/or minimize the facts of racial inequalities rather than shatter their belief in racial progress (and perhaps lessen the merit in their own accomplishments). For instance, they might point to high-status and high-achieving persons – such as media mogul Oprah Winfrey or pharmaceutical giant Merck’s CEO Kenneth Frazier – as Black exemplars of reduced racial disparities. Two decades of research indicate that White people in the United States are motivated to rationalize the current societal structure as the optimal solution even when confronted with ongoing social problems.166 They may even devalue those who work to change the system.167 And if many Americans are overly optimistic about the extent to which our society has achieved racial equality, they may be unlikely to weigh equity-enhancing polices with the seriousness and urgency they deserve.168 The United States is projected to become a more racially and ethnically diverse society. In 1900, approximately one in eight people in this country were a race other than White. By 1990, that number was nearly one in five. By 2000, the proportion was nearly one in four.169 By 2044, more than half of all Americans are projected to belong to a minority group (any group other than non-Hispanic White alone).170A growing body of research suggests that perceiving the increasingly nonwhite share of the U.S. population can provoke status threat171 among White Americans. 120

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This seeming “threat” can negatively affect support for equity-enhancing policies.172 This reality suggests caution when approaching policies that would increase equity. Psychologists suggest that providing key information about the societal context – the role of societal norms and structural factors in the past and present that create differential outcomes by race (i.e., “racism without racists”) – could be helpful.173 They also suggest that the best ways to garner support for public policies that increase equity should highlight solutions, such as how to advance the very equality that people believe we have already achieved.174 In this context, using a solutions-oriented CReT lens can leverage Americans’ commitment to equality of opportunity – enabling an American meritocracy to become more of a reality. Making inadequate and inequitable school funding policies transparent, tangible, and improvable means making them less amenable to being minimized, misperceived, rationalized, justified, or discounted. CONCLUSION

Isabel Wilkerson metaphorically refers to America as an old house that we have inherited. “With an old house, the work [of repair and upkeep] is never done, and you don’t expect it to be.” You ignore the cracked foundation and the flooded basement at your own risk because it will never go away. Live with it long enough, and the unthinkable becomes normal, “just the way it is.” Yet ignorance is no defense from the repercussions from inaction. We did not build the house, but we now own the property. So, it is ours to repair.175 CReT is intended to pitch in with the renovations. NOTES

1 Social construct is a shared idea with no inherent meaning that people in a society create and accept, such as gender roles or the age at which society considers a person to be adult. 2 Lukes, D., & Cleveland, C. (2021, March). The lingering legacy of redlining on school funding, diversity, and performance. EdWorkingPapers. Annenberg, Brown University [Online]. www.edworkingpapers.com/ai21-363; Rothstein, R. (2017) The color of law. W.W. Norton & Company. 3 See: Mandavilli, A. (2021, June 2). Medical journal blind to racism as health crisis, critics say. The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2021/06/02/health/jama-racism-bauchner.html ?referringSource=articleShare; Power-Hays, A., & McCann, P.T. (2020, November 12). When actions speak louder than words – Racism and sickle cell disease. New England Journal of Medicine, 383(20), 1902–1903. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp20221; Tanner, L. (2021, May 11). US doctors group issues anti-racism plan for itself, field. Associated Press. https:// apnews.com/article/business-race-and-ethnicity-science-coronavirus-pandemic-health-bdff6225b933e47997291cd6fe7e87a5 4 See: Brown, D.Q. (2021). The whiteness of wealth. How the tax system impoverishes Black Americans – and how we can fix it. Penguin Random House; Drucker, J., & Hakim, D. (2021, September 19). How accounting giants craft favorable tax rules from inside government. The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2021/09/19/business/accounting-firms-taxloopholes-government.html?referringSource=articleShare; Saez, E., & Zucman, G. (2020). The triumph of injustice. How the rich dodge taxes and how to make them pay. W.W. Norton & Company.



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5 See: Flavelle, C. (2021, June 7). As warming fuels disasters, relief often favors white people. The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2021/06/07/climate/FEMA-race-climate.html?refe rringSource=articleShare; Flavelle, C. (2021, October 27). FEMA says it’s still working to fix racial disparities in disaster aid. The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2021/10/27/ climate/fema-aid-racial-disparities.html?referringSource=articleShare 6 At first, religion (Christianity as a proxy for Europeans), not race as we know it, defined people’s status in the American colonies. Wilkerson, I. (2020). Caste. The origins of our discontents (pp. 40–42). Random House. 7 Stampp, K.M. (1956). The peculiar institution: Slavery in the ante-bellum South. Knopf. 8 Smedley, A., & Smedley, B.D. (2012). Race in North America: Origin and evolution of a worldview. Westview Press. 9 Myrdal, G. (1944). An American dilemma. The Negro problem and modern democracy. 2 volumes. Routledge. 10 Gross, A.J. (2008). What blood won’t tell: A history of race on trial in America. Harvard University Press. 11 Harvard Magazine. (2008, May–June). Race in a genetic world. John Harvard’s Journal. www.harvardmagazine.com/2008/05/race-in-a-genetic-world-html 12 Painter, N.I. (2011). The history of white people. W.W. Norton & Co., p. xii. 13 The term “colorism,” has been attributed to Alice Walker who defined it as “prejudicial or preferential treatment of same-race people.” Walker, A. (1983). If the present looks like the past, what does the future look like? In search of our mothers’ gardens. Womanist Prose (p. 290). Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. 14 Myrdal, 1944, pp. 75–78. 15 Ware, L. (2013–2014). “Color struck”: Intragroup and cross-racial color discrimination. Connecticut Public Interest Law Journal, 13(1), 75–110. 16 For a sensitive and powerful description of how colorism affects being a Black child in the U.S., see: Margaret Burroughs’ 1963 poem, “What Shall I Tell My Children Who Are Black?” (Reflections of an African-American Mother). www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/146263/ what-shall-i-tell-my-children-who-are-black-reflections-of-an-african-american-mother 17 Jordan, W.D. (1968, 2012). White over black: American attitudes to the negro, 1550–1812. Second edition. University of North Carolina Press. 18 Dixon, A.R., & Telles, E.E. (2017). Skin color and colorism: Global research, concepts, and measurement. Annual Reviews. Annual Review of Sociology, 43 (July), 405–424, https://doi. org/10.1146/annurev-soc-060116-053315; Hunter, M.L. (2011). Buying racial capital: Skinbleaching and cosmetic surgery in a globalized world. Pan African Studies, 4(4), 142–164. 19 See: Harris, A.P. (2008). From color line to color chart?: Racism and colorism in the new century. Berkeley Journal of African-American Law and Policy, 10, 52–69. http://dx.doi. org/10.15779/Z380C9X; Telles, E. (2009). The significance of skin color. In E.N. Glenn (Ed.), Shades of difference: Why skin color matters (pp. 7–24). Stanford University Press; Sue, C.A. (2009). The dynamics of color. In E.N. Glenn (Ed.), Shades of difference: Why skin color matters (pp. 114–128). Stanford University Press. 20 For a more complete discussion of the history of colorism, see: Kalunta-Crumpton, A. (2019). The inclusion of the term ‘color’ in any racial label is racist, is it not? Ethnicities, 20(1), 115–135. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1468796819884675 21 See: Brown, R. (2010). Prejudice: It’s social. Psychology (2nd ed.). Wiley-Blackwell, p. 136. 22 Ware, 2013–2014, p. 77. 23 Banks, T.L. (2000). Colorism: A darker shade of pale. U.C.L.A Law Review, 47, 1705–1724. https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/fac_pubs/217 24 Jones, T. (2000). Shades of brown: The law of skin color. Duke Law Journal, 49, 1487–1557. https://scholarship.law.duke.edu/faculty_scholarship/72; Nittle, N.K. (2021, February 28). The roots of colorism, or skin tone discrimination. This bias was born in the practice of human enslavement. ThoughtCo. www.thoughtco.com/what-is-colorism-2834952 25 Krasner, D. (2005, Winter). Migration, fragmentation, and identity: Zora Neale Hurston’s Color Struck and the geography of the Harlem Renaissance. The Scholar and Feminist Online, 3(2). http://sfonline.barnard.edu/hurston/printdkr.html; A person is considered light-skinned by applying the “paper bag test:” when compared to a paper grocery bag, is the person’s complexion that color brown or lighter. Lighter complexioned persons (i.e., lighter skin hued than the paper bag) were included in elite African American social circles. 26 G. Adegbalola, personal communication, January 16, 2022.

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27 Banks, 2000, pp. 1724–1736. 28 Jones, T. (2011). Intra-Group Preferencing: Proving Skin Color and Identity Performance Discrimination. New York University Law Review & Social Change, 34(4), 656–707. https:// socialchangenyu.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Trina-Jones_RLSC_34.4.pdf 29 NPR (2021, November 4). Latinos find that darker skin hurts their chances of getting ahead, a study says. Author. www.npr.org/2021/11/04/1052593455/latinos-darker-skin-colorismdiscrimination; Ware, L. “Color struck”: Intragroup and cross-racial color discrimination. Connecticut Public Interest Law Journal, 13(1), 75–110. (page 76). https://cpilj.law. uconn.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/2515/2018/10/13.1-“Color-Struck”-Intragroup-andCross-Racial-Color-Discrimination-by-Leland-Ware.pdf 30 See: Hall, R.E. (2010). An historical analysis of skin color discrimination in America: Victimism among victim group populations. Springer. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-44195505-0; Hall, R.E. (2008). Racism in the 21st century: An empirical analysis of skin color. Springer. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-79097-8; Rondilla, J.L. & Spickard, P. (2007). Is lighter better? Skin-tone discrimination among Asian Americans. Rowman & Littlefield; Hochschild, J.L., & Weaver, V. (2007). The skin color paradox and the American racial order. Social Forces, 86(2), 643–670. https://doi.org/10.1093/SF%2F86.2.643; Ware, L., & Wilson, D.C. (2009). Jim Crow on the “Down Low”: Subtle racial appeals in presidential campaigns. Journal of Civil Rights and Economic Development, 24(2), 299–342. http://scholarship.law. stjohns.edu/jcred/vol24/iss2/3 31 Lopez, M.H., Gonzalez-Barrera, A., & Arditi, T. (2021, November 4). Majority of Latinos say skin color impacts opportunity in America and shapes daily life. Pew Research Center. www. pewresearch.org/hispanic/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2021/11/RE_2021.11.04_LatinosRace-Identity_FINAL.pdf 32 Castillo, M. (2021, June 15). The limitations of “Latinidad”: How colorism haunts “In the Heights.” NRP. www.npr.org/2021/06/15/1006728781/in-the-heights-latinidad-colorismcasting-lin-manuel-miranda; Garcia, M., Barcia, S.E., Herrera, I.O., de Leon, C., Phillips, M., & Scott, A.P. (2021, June 21; Updated June 22). “In the Heights” and colorism: What is lost when Afro-Latins are erased. The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2021/06/21/movies/ in-the-heights-colorism.html 33 Baynes, L.M. (1997). If it’s not just black and white anymore, why does darkness cast a longer discriminatory shadow than lightness? An investigation and analysis of the color hierarchy. University of Denver Law Review, 75(1), 131–185. https://heinonline.org/HOL/ LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/denlr75&div=13&id=&page=; Hochschild & Weaver, 2007; Vedantam, S. (2010). The hidden brain: How our unconscious minds elect presidents, control markets, wage wars, and save our lives. Spiegel & Grau Trade Paperbacks. 34 Laidley, T., Domingue, B., Sinsub, P., Harris, K.M., Conley, D. (2019). New evidence of skin color bias and health outcomes using sibling difference models: A research note. Demography, 56(2), 753–762. https://doi.org/10.1007/s13524-018-0756-6 35 Tonry, M. (2010). The social, psychological, and political causes of racial disparities in the American criminal justice system. Crime and Justice, 39(1), 273–312. https://doi. org/10.1086/653045; Pizzi, W.T., Blair, I.V., & Judd, C.M. (2005). Discrimination in sentencing on the basis of Afrocentric features. Michigan Journal of Race and Law, 10, 327–353. https:// heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/denlr75&div=13&id=&page= 36 For a more complete discussion of colorism and its societal impact, see: Banks, 2000; DuBois, W.E.B. (1899/1996). The Philadelphia negro: A social study. University of Pennsylvania Press; Frazier, E.F. (1957/1997). Black bourgeoisie: The book that brought the shock of self-revelation to middle-class blacks in America. Free Press Paperbacks; Jones, 2000; Uzogara E.E, Lee, H., Abdou, C.M., & Jackson J.S. (2014). A comparison of skin tone discrimination among African American men: 1995 – 2003. Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 15(2), 201–212. https://doi.apa.org/doi/10.1037/a0033479; Ware & Wilson, 2009. 37 Marcus, F.F. (1983, July 6). Louisiana repeals black blood law. The New York Times. www. nytimes.com/1983/07/06/us/louisiana-repeals-black-blood-law.html 38 Wilkerson, 2020, pp. 124–125. 39 Montague, M.F.A. (1947). The nature of race relations. Social Forces, 25(3), 336–342. https:// doi.org/10.2307/3005675 40 Franke-Ruta, G. (2013, July 19). The time Obama was mistaken for a waiter at a Tina Brown book party. The Atlantic. www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2013/07/the-time-obama-wasmistaken-for-a-waiter-at-a-tina-brown-book-party/277967/



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41 Wilkerson, 2020, p. 324. 42 Wilkerson, 2020, p. 324. 43 Wilkerson, 2020, pp. 70–72. 44 Myrdal, G. (1944). An American dilemma. The Negro problem and modern democracy. 2 volumes. Routledge. 45 Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U.S. 483 (1954); Cohen, S. (2004, Fall). The lasting legacy of An American Dilemma. Carnegie Results. Carnegie Corporation of New York. https:// media.carnegie.org/filer_public/98/65/9865c794-39d9-4659-862e-aae1583278a8/ccny_cresults_2004_americandilemma.pdf 46 Myrdal, 1944, pp. 642–644. 47 Jencks, C., & Philip, P. (Eds.) (1998) The black-white score gap. Why it persists and what can be done. Brookings. www.brookings.edu/articles/the-black-white-test-score-gap-why-itpersists-and-what-can-be-done/; Johnson, R.C. (2011, January; Revised 2015, September). Long-run impacts of school desegregation & school quality on adult attainments. National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper 16664. www.nber.org/papers/w16664 48 Myrdal, 1944, pp. 573–576. 49 Ellison, R. (1944). An American dilemma: A review. Teaching American History. https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/an-american-dilemma-a-review/ 50 Hughey, 1992, p. 534; Jackson, W.A. (1990). Gunnar Myrdal and America’s conscience: Social engineering and racial liberalism, 1938–1987 (p. 51). University of North Carolina Press; Hughey, M.W. (1992, Summer). Americanism and its discontents: Protestantism, nativism. and political heresy in America. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 5(4), 533–553. Quotation from p. 534. 51 As many Black folks say, “The bread you eat is the song you sing.” G. Adegalola, personal communication, January 16, 2022. 52 See: Lyman, S.M. (1998). Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma after a half century: Critics and anticritics. International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society, 12(2), 327–389. www.jstor.org/stable/20019973 53 Lyman. 1998; Spark, C.L. (2001). Race, caste, or class? The Bunche-Myrdal dispute over An American Dilemma. International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society, 14(3), 465–511. www.jstor.org/stable/20020091 54 Wilkerson, 2020, p. 30. 55 Wilkerson, 2020, pp. 155–157. 56 Doyle, B.W. (1937/1971). The etiquette of race relations in the South: A study in social control (p. 154). Schocken. 57 Wilkerson, 2020, p. 141. 58 Goodell, W. (1853). The American slave code in theory and practice (p. 287). American and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society. 59 For more complete descriptions, see: Brown, J. (1855). Slave life in Georgia: A narrative of the life, sufferings, and escape of John Brown, a fugitive slave, now in England. L.A. Chamerovzow (Ed.) W.M. Watts Publisher. https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/jbrown/jbrown. html; Dollard, J. (1937). Caste and class in a Southern town. Yale University Press; Wilkinson, 2020, pp. 151–158. 60 Wilkerson, 2020, p. 154. 61 Smedley, A., & Smedley, B.D. (2012). Race in North America: Origin and evolution of a worldview (p. 99). Westview Press. 62 Wilkerson, 2020, pp. 160–161. 63 Adamic, L. (1945). A nation of nations (p. 201). Harper. 64 Dutt, Y. (2020, September 17). Feeling like an outcast. Review. Foreign Policy. https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/17/caste-book-india-dalit-outcast-wilkerson-review/; Mack, K.W. (2020, July 31). Running deeper than race: America’s caste system. Review. The Washington Post. www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/running-deeper-than-race-americas-caste-system/2020/07/30/501af1 9a-c7a5-11ea-a99f-3bbdffb1af38_story.html; Rao, A. (2020, September 1). The world of analogy: On Isabel Wilkerson’s “Caste: The origins of our discontents.” Reviews. Los Angeles Review of Books. https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/the-work-of-analogy-on-isabel-wilkersons-castethe-origins-of-our-discontents/; Wabukem H. (2020, August 10). “Caste” argues its most violent manifestation in treatment of Black Americans. NPR. www.npr.org/2020/08/10/900274938/ caste-argues-its-most-violent-manifestation-is-in-treatment-of-black-americans 65 Mack, 2020, July 31.

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66 Burden-Stelly, C. (2020, December 15). Caste does not explain race. Boston Review. https:// bostonreview.net/race/charisse-burden-stelly-caste-does-not-explain-race; Varadarajan, T. (2020, August 28). “Caste” review: The high cost of feeling superior. The Wall Street Journal. www.wsj.com/articles/caste-review-the-high-cost-of-feeling-superior-11598623029 67 Burden-Stelly, 2020; Dutt, 2020; Rao, 2020; Varadarajan, 2020. 68 Burden-Stelly, 2020; Ramesh, H. (2021, Winter). What Caste leaves out. Dissent. www.dissentmagazine.org/article/what-caste-leaves-out 69 Powell, J.A. (2008). Structural racism: Building upon the insights of John Calmore. North Carolina Law Review, 86(3), 791–816. Article 8. (Quote, p. 794.) http://scholarship.law.unc. edu/nclr/vol86/iss3/8 70 Berube, A., Deakin, E., & Raphael, S. (2006, June). Socioeconomic differences in household automobile ownership rates: Implications for Evacuation Policy. Goodman School of Public Policy, Berkeley. https://gspp.berkeley.edu/assets/uploads/research/pdf/berubedeakenraphael. pdf 71 Calmore, J.P. (1998). Race/ism lost and found: The fair housing act at thirty. University of Miami Law Review, 52(4), 1067–1130. https://repository.law.miami.edu/umlr/vol52/iss4/8; Powell, 2008. 72 Aspin Institute (n.d.). Structural racism. Glossary for understanding the dismantling of structural racism/Promoting racial equity analysis. www.aspeninstitute.org/wp-content/ uploads/files/content/docs/rcc/RCC-Structural-Racism-Glossary.pdf; Bailey, Z.D., Krieger, N., Agenor, M., Graves, J., Linos, N., & Bassett, M.T. (2017). America: Equity and equality in Health 3. Structural racism and health inequities in the USA: Evidence and interventions. The Lancet, 389(10077), 1453–1463. (Quote from p. 1453.) https://doi.org/10.1016/ s0140-6736(17)30569-x 73 Myrdal, G. (1944). An American dilemma: The Negro problem and modern democracy (pp. 75–78). Routledge. 74 Bonilla-Silva, E. (2017). Racism without racists. Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in America. Rowman & Littlefield. 75 Powell, 2008, p. 793. 76 Bailey et al., 2017, p. 1453. 77 Reardon, S.F., & Owens, A. (2014). 60 Years after Brown: Trends and consequences of school segregation. Annual Review of Sociology, 40(1), 199–218. https://doi.org/10.1146/ annurev-soc-071913-043152 78 Rothstein, 2017; Brown, D.Q. (2021). The whiteness of wealth. How the tax system impoverishes black Americans – and how we can fix it. Penguin Random House. 79 Rothstein, 2017, p. 75. 80 Kahlenberg, R.D. (2021, April 19). The “new redlining” is deciding who lives in your neighborhood. The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2021/04/19/opinion/biden-zoning-socialjustice.html?referringSource=articleShare 81 Zuk, M., Bierbaum, A.H., Chapple, K., Gorska, K., & Loukaitou-Sideris, A. (2018). Gentrification, displacement, and the role of public investment. Journal of Planning Literature, 33(1), 31–44. https://doi.org/10.1177/0885412217716439 82 Rothstein, 2017. 83 Lipsitz, G. (2008, July 15). Government policies and practices that increase discrimination. Still separate and unequal: The state of fair housing in America. The National Commission on Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity (pp. 69–70). http://www.prrac.org/projects/fair_housing_commission/chicago/chicago_briefing.pdf 84 U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. (n.d.). History of fair housing. Author. www.hud.gov/program_offices/fair_housing_equal_opp/aboutfheo/history; Federal Reserve History. (1977, October 12.) Community Reinvestment Act of 1977. www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/community-reinvestment-act 85 Krone, E. (2018, October 19). The new housing discrimination: Realtor minority steering. Chicago Policy Review. https://chicagopolicyreview.org/2018/10/19/the-new-housingdiscrimination-realtor-minority-steering/ 86 Lipsitz, G. (2006). The possessive investment in whiteness (pp. 5–7, 107). Temple University Press. 87 Anderson, D. (2020, June 11). Redlining’s legacy of inequality: $212,000 less home equity, low homeowners rates for Black families. Redfin News. www.redfin.com/news/redliningreal-estate-racial-wealth-gap/



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88 Lukes D., & Cleveland, C. (2021). The lingering legacy of redlining on school funding, diversity, and performance. EdWorkingPaper No. 21-363. Annenberg. Brown University. https:// doi.org/10.26300/qeer-8c25; www.edworkingpapers.com/sites/default/files/ai21-363.pdf 89 Frey, W.H. (2018). Diversity explosion. How new racial demographics are remaking America. Brookings. www.brookings.edu/book/diversity-explosion-2/; Kang, J.C. (2021, November 18). Everything you think you know about the suburbs is wrong. Opinion. The New York Times. www.nytimes.com/2021/11/18/opinion/suburbs-poor-diverse.html? referringSource=articleShare; Wilson, J.H., & Svajlenka, N.P. (2014). Immigrants continue to disperse, with fastest growth in the suburbs. Brookings. www.brookings.edu/research/ immigrants-continue-to-disperse-with-fastest-growth-in-the-suburbs/ 90 Kneebone, E. (2017, February 15). The changing geography of US poverty. Testimony. Brookings. www.brookings.edu/testimonies/the-changing-geography-of-us-poverty/ 91 See: Baker, B.D. (2018). Educational inequality and school finance. Why money matters for America’s students. Harvard Education Press; Bramhall, E. (2021. May 12). Why does segregation between school districts matter for educational equity? Housing Matters. Urban Institute. https://housingmatters.urban.org/articles/why-does-segregation-between-schooldistricts-matter-educational-equity; Rebell, M.A. (2017). The courts’ consensus: Money does matter for educational opportunity. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 674(1), 184–198. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0002716217732311 92 Garcia, E. (2020, February 12). Schools are still segregated, and black children are paying a price. Economic Policy Institute, Figures A and B, page 2. https://files.epi.org/pdf/185814. pdf 93 McArdle, N. & Acevedo-Garcia, D. (2017). Consequences of segregation for children’s opportunity and wellbeing. A shared future. Fostering communities of inclusion in an era of inequality. Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. www.jchs.harvard.edu/sites/default/ files/a_shared_future_consequences_of_segregation_for_children.pdf; Wilson, W.J. (2008– 2009). The political and economic forces shaping concentrated poverty. Political Science Quarterly, 123(4), 565–571. www.jstor.org/stable/25655565 94 See: McArdle et al., 2017; Sampson, R. J., Sharkey, P., & Raudenbush, S.W. (2008). Durable effects of concentrated disadvantage on verbal ability among African-American children. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 105(3), 845–852. https://doi.org/10.1073/ pnas.0710189104; Santiago, A.M., Galster, G.C., Lucero, J.L., Ishler, K.J., Lee, E.L., Kypriotakis, G., & Stack, L. (2014). Opportunity neighborhoods for Latino and AfricanAmerican children: Final report. U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of Policy Development and Research. www.huduser.gov/portal/Publications/pdf/ Opportunity_Neighborhoods.pdf 95 Sampson, Sharkey, & Raudenbush (2008); Chetty, Hendren, and Katz (2016); Santiago et al. (2014). 96 Samuels, C.A. (2019, October 2). Poverty, not race, fuels the achievement gap. Education Week, 39(7), 5. 97 Owens, A. (2018). Income segregation between school districts and inequality in students’ achievement. Sociology of Education, 91(1), 1–27. http://doi.org/10.1177/003804071774 1180; Reardon, S.F. (2015, October). School segregation and racial academic achievement gaps. CEPA Working Paper No. 15-12. Stanford University: Center for Education Policy Analysis. https://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/wp15-12v201510.pdf 98 Mooney, T. (2018, May 11). Why we say “opportunity gap” instead of “achievement gap.” One Day. Teach for America. www.teachforamerica.org/one-day/top-issues/why-we-sayopportunity-gap-instead-of-achievement-gap; The Glossary of Education Reform. (2013, September 9). Opportunity gap. www.edglossary.org/opportunity-gap/ 99 Reardon, S.F. (2015, October). School segregation and racial academic achievement gaps. CEPA Working Paper No. 15-12. Stanford University: Center for Education Policy Analysis. https://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/wp15-12v201510.pdf 100 See: Burdick-Will, J., Ludwig, J., Raudenbush, S.W., Sampson, R.J., Sanbonmatsu, L., & Sharkey, P. (2011). Converging evidence for neighborhood effects on children’s test scores: An experimental, quasi- experimental, and observational comparison. In G.J. Duncan & R.J. Murnane (Eds.), Whither opportunity? Rising inequality and the uncertain life chances of low-income children (pp. 255–276). New York: Russell Sage Foundation; Chetty, R., Hendren, N., & Katz, L.F. (2015). The effects of exposure to better neighborhoods on children: New evidence from the Moving to Opportunity experiment. Harvard University.

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101 Chetty, R., Hendren, N., Kline, P., & Saez, E. (2014). Where is the land of opportunity? The geography of intergenerational mobility in the United States. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 129(4), 1553–1623; Rothstein, J. (2017, August 15). Inequality of educational opportunity? Schools as mediators of the intergenerational transmission of income. Washington Center for Equitable Growth. https://equitablegrowth.org/working-papers/ inequality-of-educational-opportunity-schools-as-mediators-of-the-intergenerational-transmission-of-income/ 102 Tegeler, P., Mickelson, R.A., & Bottia, M. (2010, October). What we know about school integration, college attendance, and the reduction of poverty. Research Brief, Brief No. 4. New York, NY: The National Coalition on School Diversity. www.school-diversity.org/pdf/ DiversityResearchBriefNo4.pdf 103 Minghao, L., Goetz, S.J., & Weber, B. (2018). Human capital and intergenerational mobility in U.S. counties. Economic Development Quarterly, 32(1), 18–28. 104 Eaton, S. & Chirichigno, G. (2010, October; Updated 2011, March). The impact of racially diverse schools in a democratic society. Research Brief. Brief No. 3. New York, NY: The National Coalition on School Diversity. www.school-diversity.org/pdf/ DiversityResearchBriefNo3.pdf 105 Siegel-Hawley, G. (2012, October). How non-minority students also benefit from racially diverse schools. Research Brief, Brief No. 89. New York, NY: The National Coalition on School Diversity. www.school-diversity.org/pdf/DiversityResearchBriefNo8.pdf 106 Johnson, 2011, Revised 2015. 107 Jackson, C.K., Johnson, R., & Persico, C. (2014). The effect of school finance reforms on the distribution of spending, academic achievement, and adult outcomes. National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper 20118. www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/ w20118/w20118.pdf 108 Chiu, M.M. & Khoo, L. (2005). Effects of resources, inequality, and privilege bias on achievement: Country, school, and student level analyses. American Educational Research Journal, 42(4), 575–603; Schneider, M. (2002). Do school facilities affect academic outcomes? National Clearinghouse for Educational Facilities, November 2002. http://www. ncef.org/pubs/outcomes.pdf 109 See: Ashenfelter, O., Collins, W., & Yoon, A. (2006). Evaluating the role of Brown v. Board of Education in school equalization, desegregation, and the income of African Americans. American Law and Economics Review, 8(2), 213–248; Johnson, R.C. (2011 January; Revised August 2015). Long-run impacts of school desegregation & school quality on adult attainments. National Bureau of Economic Research. Working Paper 16664. Cambridge, MA: National Bureau of Economic Research. https://gsppi.berkeley.edu/~ruckerj/johnson_ schooldesegregation_NBERw16664.pdf; Braddock, J.H., III, & Gonzales, A.D.C. (2010). Social isolation and social cohesion: The effects of K–12 neighborhood and school segregation on intergroup orientations. Teachers College Record, 112(6), 1631–1653; Davies, K., Tropp, L.R., Aron, A., Pettigrew, T.F., & Wright, S.C. (2011). Cross-group friendships and intergroup attitudes: A meta-analytic review. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 15(4), 332–351; Johnson, 2011/2015. 110 See: Benner, A.D. & Crosnoe, R. (2011). The racial/ethnic composition of elementary schools and young children’s academic and socioemotional functioning. American Educational Research Journal, 48(3), 621–646; Clayton, J. (2011). Changing diversity in schools: The impact on elementary student performance and achievement. Education and Urban Society, 43(6), 671–695; Johnson, 2011/2015; Siegel-Hawley, G. (2013). How nonminority students also benefit from racially diverse schools. Research Brief No. 8. The National Coalition on School Diversity. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED571621.pdf 111 Apfelbaum, E.P., Sommers, S.R., & Norton, M.I. (2008). Seeing race and seeming racist? Evaluating strategic colorblindness in social interaction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95(4), 918–932. https://doi.apa.org/doi/10.1037/a0011990 112 Neville, H.A., Gallardo, M.E., & Sue, D.W. (2016). Introduction: Has the United States really moved beyond race? In H.A. Neville, M.E. Gallardo, & D.W. Sue (Eds.), The myth of racial color blindness: Manifestations, dynamics, and impact (pp. 3–21). (Quote from p. 5.) http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/14754-001 113 Apfelbaum et al., 2008, p. 918. 114 Social cognition refers to a complex set of mental abilities, conscious or unconscious, that underlie how individuals perceive, process, interpret, and respond to stimuli about



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other people. It is the way we think about others, either one-on-one or in group situations. See: Frith, U., Blakemore, S-J. (2006). Social cognition. In R. Morris, L. Tarassenko, & M.  Kenward (Eds.), Cognitive systems – Information processing meets brain science (pp. 138–162). Academic Press. 115 American Psychological Association, Task Force on Preventing Discrimination and Promoting Diversity. (2012). Dual pathways to a better America: Preventing discrimination and promoting diversity. http://www.apa.org/pubs/info/reports/promoting-diversity.aspx 116 Neville et al., 2016. p. 455. 117 American Psychological Association, Task Force on Preventing Discrimination and Promoting Diversity. (2012). Dual pathways to a better America: Preventing discrimination and promoting diversity. http://www.apa.org/pubs/info/reports/promoting-diversity.aspx 118 Peery, D. (2011. Spring). The colorblind ideal in a race-conscious reality: The case for a new legal ideal for race relations. Northwestern Journal of Law & Social Policy, 6(2), 473–495. https:// scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1070&context= njlsp; Crenshaw, K.W. (1988). Race, reform, and retrenchment: Transformation and legitimation in antidiscrimination law. Harvard Law Review, 101(7), 1311–1387. https:// harvardlawreview.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Crenshaw-Race-Reform-andRetrenchment-pdf.pdf 119 Apfelbaum, E.P., Pauker, K., Sommers, S.R., & Ambady, N. (2010). In blind pursuit of racial equality? Psychological Science, 21 (11), 1587–1592. https://doi.org/ 10.1177/0956797610384741; Correll, J., Park, B., & Smith, J.A. (2008). Situations colorblind and multicultural prejudice reduction strategies in high-conflict. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 11(4), 471–491. https://doi.org/10.1177/1368430208095401; Plaut, V.C., Thomas, K.M., & Goren, M.J. (2009). Is multiculturalism or color blindness better for minorities? Psychological Science, 20(4),444–446. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02318.x\ 120 Stevens, F.G., Plaut V.C., & Sanchez-Burks, J. (2008). Unlocking the benefits of diversity: All-inclusive multiculturalism and positive organizational change. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 44(1), 116, 119. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886308314460 121 Neville, H., Awad, G.H., Brooks, J., Flores, M.P., & Bluemel, J. (2013, September). Colorblind racial ideology: Theory, training, and measurement implications in psychology. American Psychologist, 68(6), 455–466. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/a0033282 · 122 Krysan, M., & Moberg, S. (2016, September 9). A portrait of African American and white racial attitudes. Trends in Racial Attitudes. University of Illinois Institute of Government and Public Affairs. https://igpa.uillinois.edu/sites/igpa.uillinois.edu/files/reports/A-Portraitof-Racial-Attitudes.pdf; Riley III, E.Y. (2021, January 15). Racial resentment and whites’ feelings toward Black Lives Matter: A Q&A with Dr. Emmitt Y. Riley, III. UC Press Blog. University of California Press. www.ucpress.edu/blog/54246/racial-resentment-and-whitesfeelings-toward-black-lives-matter-a-qa-with-dr-emmitt-y-riley-iii/ 123 Neville et al., 2013. 124 Bonilla-Silva, E. (2018). Racism without racists. Color-blind racism and the persistence of racial inequality in America (5th ed.) (pp. 2–3). Rowman & Littlefield. 125 Rothstein, 2017. 126 Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of colorblindness. New Press. 127 Mandavilli, 2021; Power-Hays & McCann, 2020. 128 Brown, 2021; Drucker & Hakim, 2021. 129 Donnella, D. (2017, January 14). Will racism end when old bigots die? Code Switch. NPR. www. npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2017/01/14/505266448/will-racism-end-when-old-bigots-die 130 White privilege is the inherent advantages that White people in this society possess based on their race. 131 Frankenberg, R. (1993). White women, race matters: The social construction of whiteness. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press; Neville et al., 2013; Mekawi, Y., Bresin, K., & Hunter, C.D. (2017). Who is more likely to “not see race”? Individual differences in racial colorblindness. Journal of Race and Social Problems, 9(1), 207–217. https://doi. org/10.1007/s12552-017-9211-3; Neville et al., 2013. 132 Appiah, K.A., & Gutmann, A. (1996). Color conscious: The political morality of race. Princeton University Press. 133 See: Apfelbaum, E.P., Sommers, S.R., & Norton, M.I. (2008). Seeing race and seeming racist: Evaluating strategic colorblindness in social interaction. Journal of Personality and Social

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Psychology, 95(4), 918–932. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0011990; Hanks, A., Solomon, D., & Weller, C.E. (2018, February 21). Systemic inequality. How America’s structural racism helped create the Black-White wealth gap. Center for American Progress. www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2018/02/21/447051/systematic-inequality/; Holoien, D.S., & Shelton, J.N. (2012). You deplete me: The cognitive costs of colorblindness on ethnic minorities. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 48(2), 562–565. https://doi. org/10.1016/j.jesp.2011.09.010l; Norton, M.I., Sommers, S.R., Apfelbaum, E.P., Pura, N., & Ariely, D. (2006). Color blindness and interracial interaction. Psychological Science, 17(11), 949–953. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2006.01810.x 134 Neville et al., 2016, p. 9. 135 Neville et al., 2013. 136 Apfelbaum, E.P., Pauker, K., Sommers, S.R., & Ambady, N. (2010). In blind pursuit of racial equality? Psychological Science, 21(11), 1587–1592. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797 610384741 137 Neville et al., 2013, p. 458; Norton et al., 2006. 138 Frankenberg, 1993, p. 455. 139 See: Loewen, J. (2005). Sundown towns: A hidden dimension of American racism. Touchstone; Neville et al., 2000; Richeson, J.A., & Nussbaum, R.J. (2004). The impact of multiculturalism versus color-blindness on racial bias. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40(3), 417–423. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2003.09.002 140 Forgiarini, M., Gallucci, M., & Maravita, A. (2011). Racism and the empathy for pain on our skin. Frontiers in Psychology, 2, Article No.108. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2011.00108 141 Alexander, 2010. 142 Apfelbaum, E.P., Pauker, K., Ambady, N., Sommers, S.R., & Norton, M.I. (2008). Learning (not) to talk about race: When older children underperform in social categorization. Developmental Psychology, 44(5), 1513–1518. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0012835 143 Tawa, J., Ma, R., & Katsumoto, S. (2016). “All lives matter”: The cost of colorblind racial attitudes in diverse social networks. Race and Social Problems, 8(2), 196–208. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1007/s12552-016-9171-z 144 Awad, G.H., Cokley, K., & Ravitch, J. (2005). Attitudes toward affirmative action: A comparison of color-blind versus modern racist attitudes. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 35(7), 1384–1399. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1559-1816.2005.tb02175.x 145 Zou, L.X., & Dickter, C.L. (2013). Perceptions of racial confrontation: The role of color blindness and comment ambiguity. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology, 19(1), 92–96. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0031115 146 Tynes, B.M., & Markoe, S.L. (2010). The role of color-blind racial attitudes in reactions to racial discrimination on social network sites. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 3, 1–13. https://doi.org/10. 1037/a0018683. 147 Wang, K.T., Castro, A.J., & Cunningham, Y.L. (2014). Are perfectionism, individualism, and racial color-blindness associated with less cultural sensitivity? Exploring diversity awareness in white prospective teachers. Journal of Diversity in Higher Education, 7(3), 211–225. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037337 148 Neville, H.A., Poteat, V.P., Lewis, J.A., & Spanierman, L.B. (2014). Changes in white college students’ color-blind racial ideology over 4 years: Do diversity experiences make a difference? Journal of Counseling Psychology, 61(2), 179–190. https://doi.org/10. 1037/a0035168 149 Neville et al., 2014, p. 461. 150 Speight, S.L. (2007). Internalized racism: One more piece of the puzzle. The Counseling Psychologist, 35(1), 126–134. https://doi.org/10.1177/0011000006295119 151 LeDoux, J. (1998). The emotional brain: The mysterious underpinnings of emotional life. Simon and Schuster; Krieger, L.H. (1995). The content of our categories: A cognitive bias approach to discrimination and equal employment opportunity. Stanford Law Review, 47(6), 1161–1248. http://hdl.handle.net/10125/66110 152 Kang, J., & Lane, K., (2010). Seeing though colorblindness: Implicit bias and the law. UC LA Law Review, 58(2010–2011), 465–520. https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage? handle=hein.journals/uclalr58&div=13&id=&page=. Kang and Lane argue that those critics who would challenge implicit bias research findings as “junk science” and “demand scientific rigor that is practically unachievable while not requiring the same factual assumptions undergirding the status quo” are trading on a “double standard”, (p. 505).



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153 Kang & Lane (2010); Neville et al., 2016; Norton, M.I., Sommers, S.R. Apfelbaum, E.P., Pura. N. & Ariely, D. (2006). Colorblindness and interracial interaction: Playing the political correctness game. Psychological Science, 17(11), 949–953. https://doi.org/10.1111/ j.1467-9280.2006.01810.x 154 Devine, P.G. (1989). Stereotypes and prejudice: Their automatic and controlled components. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology, 56(1), 5–18. (pp. 15–16.) https://psycnet.apa. org/doi/10.1037/0022-3514.56.1.5; Forscher, P.S., Chelsea, M., Dix, E.L., Cox, T.L., & Devine, P.G. (2017). Breaking the prejudice habit: Mechanisms, timecourse, and longevity. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 72(2017), 133–146. https://doi.org/10.1016/j. jesp.2017.04.009 155 Williams, D.R. (2013, May 29). Interview by Isabel Wilkerson, Providence, R.I., as noted in Wilkerson, 2020, p. 420. 156 Negowetti, N.G. (2014). Navigating the pitfalls of implicit bias: A cognitive science primer for civil litigators. St. Mary’s Legal Malpractice and Ethics, 4(1), 278–317. https://commons. stmarytx.edu/lmej/vol4/iss1/7 157 Allen, R.N., & Harris, D. (2018). Social justice: Combatting implicit bias in an age of millennials, colorblindness and microaggressions. University of Maryland Law Journal of Race, Religion, Gender, & Class, 18(1), 1–29. https://digitalcommons.law.umaryland.edu/cgi/ viewcontent.cgi?article=1309&context=rrgc 158 Correll, J. Park, B. & Smith, J.A. (2008). Colorblind and multicultural prejudice reduction strategies in high-conflict situation. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 11(4), 471–491. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1368430208095401; Shelton et al., 2005. 159 Jones, J.M. (1998). Psychological knowledge and the new American dilemma of race. Journal of Social Issues, 54(4), 641–662. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1998.tb01241.x 160 Apple, M.W., & Christian-Smith, L.K. (Eds.) (1991). The politics of the textbook. Routledge; Jeffries, H.K. (2018). Preface. In Shuster, K. (2018). Teaching hard history. American slavery. Southern Poverty Law Center (pp. 5–6). www.splcenter.org/sites/default/files/tt_hard_history_american_slavery.pdf; Loewen, J.W. (2013). Lies my teacher told me. Everything your American history textbook got wrong. The New Press. 161 Pinkney, A. (1986). The myth of Black progress. Cambridge University Press; Seamster, L., & Ray, V. (2018). Against teleology in the study of race: Toward the abolition of the progress paradigm. Sociological Theory, 36(4), 315–342. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0735275118813614 162 Brandt, M.J. (2013). Do the disadvantaged legitimize the social system? A large-scale test of the status–legitimacy hypothesis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 104(5), 765–785. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/a0031751; Kraus, M.W., & Tan, J.J. (2015). Americans overestimate social class mobility. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 58(1), 101–111. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2015.01.005 163 Kraus, M.W., Onyeador, I.O., Daumeyer, N.M., Rucker, J.M., & Richeson, J.A. (2019). The misperception of racial economic inequality. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 14(6), 899–921. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1177/1745691619863049 164 Kraus et al., p. 906. 165 Festinger, L. (1972). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Row, Peterson; Jost, J.T., Glaser, J., Kruglanski, A.W., & Sulloway, F.J. (2003). Political conservatism as motivated social cognition. Psychological Bulletin, 129(3), 339–375. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/00332909.129.3.339; Kunda, Z. (1990). The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 108(3), 480–498. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.108.3.480 166 Jost, J.T., Banaji, M.R., & Nosek, B.A. (2004). A decade of system justification theory: Accumulated evidence of conscious and unconscious bolstering of the status quo. Political Psychology,25(6),881–919.https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2004.00402.x 167 Laurin, K., Shepherd, S., & Kay, A. C. (2010). Restricted emigration, system inescapability, and defense of the status quo: System-justifying consequences of restricted exit opportunities. Psychological Science, 21(8), 1075–1082. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1177/0956797610 375448 168 Day, M.V., & Fiske, S.T. (2017). Movin’ on up? How perceptions of social mobility affect our willingness to defend the system. Social Psychological & Personality Science, 8(3) 267– 274. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1948550616678454; DeBell, M. (2017). Polarized opinions on racial progress and inequality: Measurement and application to affirmative action preferences. Political Psychology, 38(3), 481–498. https://doi.org/10.1111/pops.12342; Kraus et al., 2019.

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169 Hobbs, F., & Stoops, N. (2002). Demographic trends in the 20th century. Census 2000 Special Reports, CENSR-4, U.S. Census Bureau. www.census.gov/prod/2002pubs/censr-4. pdf 170 Colby, S.K. & Ortman, J.M. (2015, March) Projections of the size and composition of the U.S. population: 2014 to 2060. Population Estimates and Projections. P25-1143. U.S Census Bureau. www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2015/demo/p251143.pdf 171 Status threat is the feeling among dominant group members that they are losing their social and political position and power in the society. In the United States, this occurs as White persons see themselves becoming a minority in an increasingly diverse society. See: Mutz, D.C. (2018). Status threat, not economic hardship, explains the 2016 presidential vote. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 115(19). https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1718155115 172 See: Craig, M.A., & Richeson, J.A. (2014). On the precipice of a “majority-minority” America: Perceived status threat from the racial demographic shift affects White Americans’ political ideology. Psychological Science, 25(6), 1189–1197. https://doi.org/10.1177 %2F0956797614527113; Craig, M.A., Rucker, J.M., & Richeson, J.A. (2018). Racial and political dynamics of an approaching “majority-minority” United States. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 667(1), 204–214. https://doi.org/1 0.1177%2F0002716218766269; Wilkins, C.L., Hirsch, A.A., Kaiser, C.R., & Inkles, M.P. (2017). The threat of racial progress and the self-protective nature of perceiving anti-White bias. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, 20(6), 801–812. https://doi.org/10.1177 %2F1368430216631030. 173 Kraus et al., 2019; Richeson, J.A., & Sommers, S.R. (2016). Toward a social psychology of race and race relations for the twenty-first century. Annual Review of Psychology, 67(1), 439–463. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-010213-115115 174 Kraus et al., 2019. 175 Wilkerson, 2020, pp. 15–16.



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CHAPTER 6 Education Socializing Children for American Democracy

INTRODUCTION

A nation relies on widespread schooling to survive and thrive. Teachers use their instructional practices and curricula to communicate their society’s norms, knowledge, beliefs, and skills to children, reproducing their culture across generations. In the United States, free, accessible public education, a fundamental right guaranteed by state constitutions, plays a vital socializing role in a demographically diverse society. Adequately and equitably providing essential resources to every public school is basic to fulfilling their democratic mission. In the late eighteenth century, our nation’s founders gave us two gifts relatively unknown at the time: a democratic republic and public education. These “gifts were inextricably intertwined.”1 Unlike living under an all-powerful monarch as they had known in England, the American republic form of government would enable educated citizens to govern themselves through elected representatives. The founders feared that without informed citizens, the nation could descend into mob rule or permit unscrupulous politicians to manipulate an ill-informed populace and gain power. At the end of the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, elder statesman Benjamin Franklin, one of the delegates, reportedly answered a question about what type of government we would have: “A republic, if you can keep it.” Successfully educating each student, regardless of parents’ income or zip code, with the capacities for informed thinking and appropriate civic behaviors is vital to sustain and continually renew our experiment in self-government. Applying a CReT lens to affirm sufficient and equitable resources for public schools – or assist in remedying the situation – can facilitate this endeavor.

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EDUCATION AS SOCIALIZATION FOR AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

According to American philosopher and educator John Dewey, society can exist only by “the constant reweaving of the social fabric” by communicating its values, ideals, standards, and beliefs from one generation to the next. 2 Similarly, French sociologist Emile Durkheim observed, “Society can survive only if there existed among its members a sufficient degree of homogeneity; education perpetuates and reinforces this homogeneity by fixing in the child from the beginning the essential similarities that collective life demands.”3 It is logical, then, that a society relies on widespread schooling to survive and thrive, communicating to children their society’s norms, knowledge, beliefs, and skills so they may safeguard and reproduce their culture across generations.4 Socialization has been described as the ongoing process of experiences and interactive relationships by which individuals learn and adopt the knowledge, skills, values, attitudes, societal norms, and expectations of a group in a particular community, larger populace, or culture. Although family and school are major agents facilitating this maturation process, peers, the media, and other major social institutions as religion and the legal system also shape it. The intent is for children to learn the capacities, habits, and attitudes that will enable them to fit into – that is, conform to – the immediate and larger society, able to interpret events, see them from certain shared perspectives, and affectively experience them in a way that serves the public good. Families are children’s primary socializers, helping them learn their individual identities, attain language (verbal and nonverbal), and develop cognitive skills. Families also teach their children how to think about morals, cultural values, and social roles. Through ongoing day-to-day interactions and feedback, children learn their parents’ expectations for them in countless areas of life. Children tend to accept societal norms to gain their parents’ (and others’) approval and interreact smoothly within their families and communities. As secondary socializers, schools help child learn and adopt the wider society’s norms, attitudes, and abilities to function well socially, emotionally, and intellectually inside and outside the academic environment. Schools enable students’ enculturation, improve their skills, and ideally, teach them how to build and apply knowledge in meaningful ways. A demographically diverse society, ideally, is one in which persons from a wide array of cultural, racial, social class, and ethnic backgrounds share a common loyalty to their nation’s ideals, norms, and civic practices. At their best, schools provide the settings and relationships for children and young people to engage with new people, new experiences, and new behaviors that advance their socialization. This includes getting to know, like, and respect classmates and teachers from



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different racial, ethnic, and cultural backgrounds as persons much like themselves. These interactions prepare young people with the attitudes and capacities they will need to interact effectively as adults at work and in their communities. Arguably, in our nation’s history, the common school – a public institution that mixed students from all family backgrounds to learn a nonpartisan and nonsectarian curriculum – was the fastest spreading reform with an egalitarian motivation that raised little nationwide disagreement. As David Tyack, a Stanford University American education history scholar, observes, in a society that offered few other government services, Americans created the most “comprehensive system of public schooling in the world.” During the nineteenth century, civic education was its primary purpose.5 PUBLIC EDUCATION IN THE EARLY AMERICAN NATION

For centuries, Western society’s interest in education was “aristocratic,” not “democratic.” It did not intend to advance individual freedom. Rather, society provided education to those who were already free, usually children of wealthy men with the material and cultural resources to spend on perfecting themselves and their offspring.6 Nonetheless widespread government-supported schooling was key to building our American nation. Profoundly influenced by the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Western European Enlightment’s humanistic ideas about education, our nation’s founders believed in the principle that the people, not their kings, had civil and political rights.7 Enlightenment thinkers and their American adherents saw education as an essential means to socialize young people into their societies. Educating young people was crucial to both economic prosperity and effective citizenship. British philosopher John Locke deemed education useful for the business of living (not simply as preparation to attend university) and for the possibility of advancing societal progress. In his view, education helped shape children’s psychological and motivational structure, enabling them to take rational control over their own lives.8 Endorsing this credo, our early national leaders believed the nation needed a public education system to support our experiment in democracy. Turning away from a government by elites, the founders hoped the common man with access to learning could prepare to govern themselves. George Washington saw the intimate link between education, the capacity to reason for oneself, and effective government. A free people would inevitably have opinions about their government, and he preferred that these views be enlightened.9 As he envisioned it, elementary and secondary education using a liberal arts curriculum would give children broad knowledge as well as the skills needed for citizenship: the capacity 134

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to reason critically for themselves and deal effectively with complexity, diversity, change, and interpersonal relations.10 It would also make U.S. citizens “more homogeneous” in the republican “particulars,” better able to discern what obligations – such as following laws, paying taxes, and informed voting – they must accept if their government were to function effectively. To fund this education system, Washington envisioned government and endowments-supported partnerships, especially to educate orphan and indigent children in useful subjects necessary for their citizenship and employment.11 Wealthy parents could always afford tuition for their children’s private education or hire tutors. John Adams, the second U.S. president, observed that if America were to have liberty and self-government, it had to provide education for its youths.12 Similarly, Thomas Jefferson, our third president, reasoned in the Declaration of Independence that government’s legitimacy depended on individual autonomy and consent. Elsewhere, he explained that education makes meaningful consent to the government’s exercise of power possible. The common man’s capacity to fully appreciate his own interests, resist the political agenda of those who would exploit him, and protect his own liberty depended on having an education.13 His vision for education was not all inclusive, however; neither women, the enslaved, nor indigenous peoples (unless they were willing to assimilate) were part of it.14 Nonetheless, these ideas would motivate many people, enslaved and free, to the promise of equal citizenship and the need to become educated if they were to attain their rightful place in American society. Similarly, James Madison, our fourth president, future first U.S. Chief Justice, John Jay, and revolutionary pamphleteer, Thomas Paine advocated for education as a necessary source of general knowledge for citizens in a democracy. National independence arrived first, and education followed closely behind it. After the Constitution’s signing in 1787, Washington, Adams, and Jefferson each urged the nation to expand education – at public expense – as quickly as possible. Educating all citizens was government’s responsibility, and state governments would provide it as a public good. They advocated “two fundamental concepts – that education was the citizens’ best guarantee of their rights and that the collective political body has the duty to provide it.”15 These beliefs would become a model for state and national activity. Some argue that at the time, citizens’ basic right to an education was so well understood and implicit, the federal Constitutions’ authors saw no need to put it in writing.16 PUBLIC EDUCATION FOR A GROWING NATION

At our nation’s colonial beginning, almost every American lived on a farm or in a small village. While many New Englanders wanted common

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schools at public expense to prepare children to meet their religious and civic obligations (that many in that region saw as one and the same), other more socially, economically, and religiously diverse colonies did not want one religious sect influencing their children. So, they refused to support taxes for public schools. To Southern plantation owners, using publicly funded education for poor Whites, indentured servants, and enslaved Africans was unthinkable. Outside New England, most communities reserved formal education for children whose parents could afford to pay for it. But the coming Industrial Revolution would create a widespread need for public schools. As late as 1820, the United States had only 13 cities of 8,000 people or more in 23 states, containing only 4.9% of the total national population.17 After 1825, an increasing number of villages evolved into cities, especially along the Atlantic Coast. Pennsylvania, New York, and New  England rapidly developed manufacturing economies. Factory work displaced home-and-village industries and informal apprenticeships, prompting rural populations to move to urban areas for employment. Increasingly, people lived and worked in close proximity with others different from themselves. These societal changes produced an entirely new set of economic, social, and educational challenges. Living in large, crowded cities made visible many social and moral problems that were less evident when people lived in small, familiar communities. The strain of trying to educate many more children than they had the resources to do successfully overwhelmed villages’ churches and private and charity school systems. As a result, people started demanding that state funds or grants partially support both church and philanthropic society schools. In various cities, several charity organizations arose to help address poverty, juvenile delinquency, and other growing urban problems. Public education would become a means of countering social change and socializing children of the poor for life in a stratified industrial society. Likewise, after the American Revolution, the strong sense of national identity created a demand for public, secular schools. After 1825, the new labor unions joined the demands for public schools because their members saw free education for their own children as their natural economic and political right. By 1828, all White men could vote, giving rich and poor, Westerners and Eastern manufacturing elites, employers and laborers greater influence in their government and their own affairs. Gaining the right to vote made White men of all social classes recognize that general education for knowledge and civic virtue was essential for their own children and society’s wellbeing. Governors began to recommend that their legislatures establish tax-supported schools. 136

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During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, public schools became the socializing agents to help rapidly assimilate large numbers of immigrants arriving from around the world. Public schools expanded in number and variety to meet these newcomers’ increased acculturation, literacy, and workplace demands. By the 1850s, more than 500,000 immigrants entered the U.S. annually, representing an increasingly wider range of ethnic and national backgrounds. Between 1840 and 1870, the country’s population doubled; it doubled again between 1870 and 1900. By 1900, one out of every seven Americans was foreign born.18 Large numbers of southern and eastern European immigrants, bringing unique traditions, beliefs, languages, and often Mediterranean skin tones challenged the homogeneity of earlier waves of western European newcomers. Social workers, politicians, and philanthropists quickly saw the solution for helping these newcomers assimilate: enrolling immigrant children in the public school system where they could become “Americanized” into upstanding citizens.19 Compulsory attendance and truant officers helped “sweep” recently arrived foreign children into the classroom. 20 At the same time, free public schools helped educate their neighborhood children into traditional American values. Although separate states provided their pupils with public schools in differing formats and varying degrees of access and academic rigor, they all shared this socializing mission. EDUCATION AS A FUNDAMENTAL (CONSTITUTIONAL) RIGHT

Education is so basic and essential – indeed, a fundamental right – to maintaining our experiment in self-government that the early Congress required every state to guarantee a free public education to all children by writing “education clauses” into their constitutions. Legally, a fundamental right is an entitlement, a protected claim, that individuals have inherently and need not be earned. Its foundation rests in moral law: everyone is eligible by virtue of being human. Fundamental rights hold a special place in the social contract between individual and state. Accordingly, a society incorporates a fundamental right into its system of values, giving it important weight relative to other societal values. 21 As a result, society cannot lightly deny, abridge, or sacrifice this right simply because most people find it inconvenient. At the same time, fundamental rights are not absolute and can be limited. But it requires compelling circumstances to do so: the government must show that society at large is in some way enhanced by denying an individual’s right. 22 The early U.S. Congress promptly made good on the founders’ education commitment. In the mid- and late 1780s, the westward expansion forced Congress to reclaim these lands from colonial states (that had

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seized them from Indigenous peoples) and establish a coherent plan to develop them. The Northwest Ordinances of 1785 and 1787 – including territories northwest of the Ohio River, encompassing the future states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin, and part of Minnesota – literally placed education at the center of the new nation’s plans for geographic expansion. Every new town had to set aside one ninth of its land and one third of its natural resources to financially support public education. The 1785 Land Ordinance required one of the new congressional districts, section 16, to be reserved for the maintenance of public schools within the township. The Continental Congress legislated this Ordinance before our national Constitution was ratified. Even today, the U.S. Legal Code treats the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 as one of our most significant founding documents. For more than 30 states, from the Ohio River to the Pacific Ocean, its principles have dictated admission terms to enter the union. In this way, the Northwest Ordinances mandated republican governments and provided for education’s role in them. The Ordinances placed public education on a level apart – as a central, required state function – from any other state or local government purpose. Yet despite its laudable intentions, without a formal government, tax base, or system for doing things, the Ordinances’ provision of land and resources never generated enough means to support a system of schools everywhere. Undeveloped frontier land had little monetary value; it had only potential. And although states did not have funds, it gave what it did have – land and the resources it could generate – to make publiclysupported education a reality. Nonetheless, the United States asserted that education was pivotal to its nationhood. By the early 1800s, only Prussia’s citizens had more access to education than Americans. 23 But for most of our nation’s first hundred years, universal access to a free public education was more aspirational than actual. Slavery was the most obvious breach; many states made it a crime for enslaved persons to read and write, concerned that opening their minds would encourage them to advocate for opening (and removing) the chains that kept them as property. The next big opportunity for the federal government to commit to education as a fundamental right arrived after the Civil War. Until Reconstruction (1865–1877), Southern schooling was random. Southern elites objected to educating the enslaved, formerly enslaved, or poor Whites, unwilling to pay taxes for public schools and to the symbolic message of individual agency public education would send. Elite planters had built their social and political system on the belief that skin color, not education, made one worthy of citizenship and power. Accepting the idea that education was important would muddle the normative lines 138

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between poor, uneducated Whites and the enslaved and reduce the elite’s firm hold on government and dominance. Accordingly, Southern White illiteracy was four times higher than that of Whites in the North. 24 Congress saw a direct link between the South’s lack of democracy and the absence of widespread education. Between 1865 and 1868, the U.S. began its most aggressive education project before or since. In 1867, the U.S. Congress passed laws to help fund and build schools throughout the South. It created a federal Department of Education and required Confederate states wanting to rejoin the Union to rewrite their constitutions to guarantee to establish and maintain statewide systems of public education open to all children regardless of race or socioeconomic backgrounds. By 1868, nine of the 10 states readmitted through the Reconstruction Act included a new affirmative education clause in their state constitutions. With education now clearly spelled out as a required state function, states gave education a preferential position relative to other state responsibilities not mentioned in this way. To conduct the work of building education through the South, Congress established the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands, or Freedmen’s Bureau, a unit of the War Department. Responsible for providing basic food, clothing, shelter, and fuel needed for immediate and temporary subsistence, the Bureau quickly moved to transitioning the emancipated persons toward lasting freedom and citizenship through education. It secured, leased, and helped build school facilities. It coordinated with Northern missionaries and local African Americans to find, hire, and place teachers throughout the South. It devised strategies to finance these efforts. Education received more than two thirds of the Bureau’s total budget during most years of its operation, 25 with the Bureau helping Black communities establish and maintain 4,000 schools, hire over 9,000 teachers, and educating over 200,000 Black students over eight years. 26 Although Congress had no leverage over Northern states, after the war, these states also recommitted to a republican form of government. They revised their constitutions to include an education clause. After 1868, all new states to the Union entered with an education clause in their state constitutions. No longer was Congress willing to leave its young citizens’ education to chance. The freedmen wanted to be citizens and understood the direct relationship between education and power within the society. 27 Christopher Span, a history scholar of this period, muses that becoming literate was as much a psychological victory for freedmen as it was an intellectual one. “Illiteracy was a vestige of slavery, a reminder of the blatant denial of one’s rights to self-advancement; it served as a badge of inferiority and social impotence. To become literate was to challenge this status.”28

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Education was “an essential step in the transition to freedom.”29 Affirming this belief, Hilary Green, another scholar, concludes, “African American children were in school to learn how to be something other than a slave.”30 American children’s fundamental right to an education did not go unchallenged. In 1876, the contested presidential election between Republican Rutherford B. Hayes and Democrat Samuel Tilden led to a political compromise: if the Democrats conceded the election to Hayes, he would withdraw Union troops from the South and end Reconstruction. This bargain would seal Southern democracy and education’s fate for most of the next hundred years. With Union troops gone, Southern Whites assaulted the governmental structures – schooling and voting – that had elevated Blacks into the body public. As a result, public education in the American South would continue, hobbled by unresolvable tensions: the idea too strong and popular to be undone but too threatening to enact fully and faithfully. Also in the South, the complex issue of taxes helped marshal White support to undo many of African American advances during Reconstruction. After Southern states ratified their new Reconstruction constitutions, taxes rose sharply to pay for the public school systems, other smaller social service projects, and to boost a sagging post-war economy. Before the war, planters had kept government and taxes limited by openly ignoring the public good. So, those who wanted to reduce state expenditures saw education for African Americans as low hanging fruit. 31 In the 1890s and beyond, cutting taxes – defunding education – would be solutions to Black voting, Black education, and higher taxes. Once again rewriting their constitutions, Southern states could both disenfranchise Black voters (using “understanding” clauses with reading and writing requirements and poll taxes to prove voter eligible) and segregate and underfund Black public schools. Further, making public school funding depend mainly on local tax revenues and giving local officials more sway in operating their schools would make high inequality possible. Wealthy areas could generously fund their White schools but not their Black schools. Similarly, local officials could spend more tax dollars and mandate a longer school year for White schools and spend much less and require a shorter school year for Black ones. Until 1880, state funding for public education for White and Black students was roughly equal.32 But under the newly revised state constitutions, school funding became wildly unequal. For example, in 1915, at the state level, South Carolina spent 12 times more on White students than on Black students.33 Florida spent more than twice as much on White students than on Blacks.34 By 1937, three fourths of all Mississippi 140

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counties were spending less than what the state gave them for their Black schools; nearly half the counties were spending less than 75 percent of the state’s appropriated education funds on Black students.35 In the early 1900s, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Louisiana did not even operate high schools for African Americans.36 These spending disparities had predictable outcomes. While localities built new schools for White children, African American children had to learn in larger groups in run-down buildings with ragged textbooks and a single teacher for all grades. Districts paid Black teachers much lower salaries than Whites, often on a one-to-three ratio. By 1950, White teachers earned on average $1,806 per year; their Black counterparts collected 39% of that total, or about $711 per year.37 The U.S. Supreme Court helped White citizens accomplish these ends. In a series of cases, the Court stepped away from Black citizenship and education rights. In United States v. Reese (1876), the Supreme Court declared the Civil Rights Act of 1870 unconstitutional, reasoning that Congress only had the power to prohibit racial discrimination in voting.38 In Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), the Court ruled “separate but equal” was acceptable practice in everyday life.39 In Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education (1899), the Court approved the denial of African American educational opportunity by permitting school districts to close high schools for African Americans while keeping White high schools open – despite African Americans paying taxes to support a high school their children could not attend.40 At mid-twentieth century, the high Court reversed course. In Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously returned public education to its foundational role in underpinning democracy. Justices asserted, “Today, education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments … to our democratic society … the very foundation of good citizenship … a right which must be made available to all on equal terms.”41 Further, it added, “Separate but unequal facilities are inherently unequal.”42 As discussed in Chapter 4, later Courts would take a different view on education as a fundamental right at the national level.43 Relief would come in state courts. Anchoring lawsuits in state constitutional language that specifically referenced education as a fundamental right, plaintiffs challenged state methods for funding public schools in 46 of the 50 states. Since 1989, plaintiffs have won over 65% of decisions based on “adequacy claims” – assertions that all students have a constitutional right to a meaningful educational opportunity.44 As a result, state court decisions have largely given shape and substance to schools’ philosophical underpinnings, making it very explicit that “[p]ublic education is not merely a function of government; it is of government.”45

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Today, state court interpretations of its education clauses create an imposing body of law entitling the state’s children to a taxpayer-funded constitutionally adequate public education. In the courts’ view, public schools convey such important benefits to civil society that under certain conditions, states can limit parental control to advance and protect the people’s and state’s general welfare.46 In the twenty-first century, a widely educated public is still foundational for healthy democratic self-government. All 50 states protect their citizens’ right to a free public education, placing language into their state constitutions to protect it from partisan politics. Although the exact wording, judicial history, and interpretations vary by state, they share common principles. First, students have a constitutional right to an adequate (“quality” or “thorough”) or equal education (or both). Second, the state has the responsibility for ensuring quality or equal educational opportunities as specified in the state constitution. Public schools are publicly governed and controlled, free and common to all children. Third, public schools receive funding through state tax resources so the quality of a child’s education does not depend on private or personal influence or the localities’ financial capacities.47 Fourth, these cases affirm that the delivery of educational opportunity must stand outside or above the political forces and debates that propel other issues. Although the court may defer to the legislature on issues of curriculum or salaries (and politics typically will play a role here), a state’s fundamental commitment and obligations to education as required in their state constitutions is separate from shifting political and public opinion, to the extent possible.48 RESEARCH ON EDUCATION’S SOCIALIZATION FOR DEMOCRACY

Informed political participation is the keystone of democracy, the main way citizens influence elected officials and hold their government to account. Broad agreement exists that educational attainment is a major contributor of political participation.49 Earlier studies suggest that education helps children, adolescents, and young adults acquire the cognitive skills and information relevant to politics;50 build civic skills that facilitate engagement;51 and encourage political interest.52 Increased educational attainment is positively related to consistently expressed interest in politics, 53 time spent reading newspapers (a key way to obtain political information), 54 and the greater likelihood of participating in varied political activities (such as attending public meetings, contacting public officials, and following electoral campaigns).55 But despite the well-documented empirical correlations, some argue that the causal relationship remains unclear. Many weaknesses – including parental factors, 56 pre-adult characteristics57 that influence political participation, 142

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and non-random assignment to education58 – weaken the claims of causality.59 More recent research suggests that school and college may serve as proxies – not as causes – for predispositions, skills, and norms formed elsewhere, especially in the family. Schools’ connections to appropriate civic behaviors in the present and future may be indirect rather than causal. While not principal influencers of children’s political orientation or actions, the appropriate school experiences inside and outside the classroom likely help shape these attitudes and skills.60 Similarly, a large body of research confirms formal education’s central direct and indirect role in enhancing political knowledge. Those with higher education attainment are more likely to respond correctly to factual questions related to the main players and workings of their political system;61 are better able to place parties on issues and ideology; are more likely to form attitudes consistent with their own ideological bents;62 and are more likely to accurately assess their particular country’s overall respect for human rights as compared with those less educated.63 Research has also shown repeatedly that support for an assortment of politically liberal moral values and preferences for equality and tolerance grow with increased years of schooling.64 In established democracies, studies find the more educated citizens are more likely to support and defend core democratic values and principles65 as compared with members of new democracies and non-democracies.66 Thus, it is reasonable to conclude that after controlling for other variables, formal education enhances citizens’ capacity to acquire and process the information needed to accurately evaluate the political performance of their elected officials and institutions. And even though they do not yet vote or pay taxes, adolescents hold observable, often stable political opinions.67 The context in which socialization occurs also has a meaningful impact on acquiring lasting values and practices. Social interactions among college peers strongly influence their political behaviors even if their parents might disapprove.68 Likewise, during periods of unprecedented societal change, younger generations develop different sets of values than their elders. When this upheaval occurs, earlier socialization values and norms may no longer fit or be strong enough to challenge the present circumstances.69 Schools also play indirect roles in helping students develop political trust – the popular judgment about how well political institutions perform. Schools give students first-hand experience of bureaucratic rules and procedures directed at rewarding “correct” behavior and disciplining those who don’t act “appropriately.” Here, students experience how fairly, effectively, and efficiently (or not) societal institutions work and

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how adeptly organizational officials act (or don’t). From these formative events, young people can extrapolate to how well higher-level political institutions work, creating the basis (or not) of political trust.70 The more justly and respectfully students see their teachers treat them and their classmates and the evenhandedness they perceive their school rules’ enforcement to be, the more likely they are to express trust in their country’s political institutions.71 Further, school curricula – written, taught, and hidden – also play a major role in developing students’ political trust. Students who experience teachers who welcome debate and disagreement,72 and schools that provide trust-enhancing social experiences – such as looking at the effects of ethnic diversity in our society – report higher levels of political trust.73 But, whereas a large body of research finds the individual-level effects of formal written and taught curriculum in civics education is rather weak,74 the effects of the hidden curriculum – the ways teachers and students treat each other, and friendly interactions in demographically diverse hallways, lunchrooms, and high-status courses – may have greater long-term impacts on civic- and community-enhancing interpersonal behaviors. But these behaviors may be more difficult to accurately measure.75 Social norms are not frozen. Standards to evaluate democratic norms may change over time, especially among the more highly educated. Representative democracy may also change over time to better meet shifting demands for citizen voice and inclusion. Therefore, current research suggests that political predispositions, skills, and norms reflect a dynamic between the individual and their contexts or environments, especially families.76 Given schools’ sometimes direct and often indirect effect on young people’s civic knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors, schools – especially with knowledgeable and effective teachers – remain essential to prepare and reinforce effective and law-abiding civic participation in a democratic republic. BALANCING SOCIETAL NEEDS WITH INDIVIDUAL WANTS

Schools typically have three educative functions: socialization, qualification, and individuation. As discussed, socialization – teaching children the society’s values, norms, traditions, and world view – develops young people’s common loyalty and civic capacities to successfully navigate their particular culture. Socialization occurs explicitly in the written and oral curriculum and implicitly in the school culture or hidden curriculum.77 Qualification – or transmitting (academic) knowledge and skills accumulating over the years – readies individuals for further education and work. Individuation – enhancing or limiting the person’s capacities and capabilities – affects persons’ lives by shaping their growing 144

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sense of themselves in the world, honing their abilities for critical reasoning, and preparing them to take advantage of educational and economic opportunities. The relationship among the three is complicated and interconnected.78 Our nation’s early political and educational leaders worried about how to balance order (socialization) with liberty (individuation). How could public schools foster the common allegiance to our nation’s norms and values (order) and at the same time provide opportunities for ­students to pursue studies that advance their personal interests (liberty)? Political diversity –stressing schooling either for community or ­individual – was their most troublesome issue.79 This debate continues. Although some prefer to see socialization and education as more or less synonymous,80 others prefer to distinguish between socialization and education. In this context, socialization is the process of preparing someone to be competent within their society, more like training. By contrast, education is for individuation, teaching individuals to reflect critically on their own society and develop additional skills or attitudes of personal value (i.e., for specific interests, employment, or recreation) but of less clear worth to the larger community. This perspective implies that socialization fosters conformity, making people more alike in contrast to education that tends to make people more unique.81 According to American philosopher John Dewey, writing at the start of the twentieth century, education could not be defined apart from social experience (without becoming unduly scholastic and formal, separating those “educated” from the rest “socialized”).82 Therefore, schools need not choose between socialization and individuation. American schools should socialize as they educate their children. In a different vein, American philosopher Richard Rorty, writing nearly one century later, argues that “socialization has to come before individualization.” To this end, elementary and secondary education would “always focus on familiarizing young people with what their elders believe to be true, whether true or not.” Non-vocational higher education with older youths should incite doubt, stimulate imagination, and challenge the prevailing consensus.83 Educating young people to live in freedom could not be possible before enacting certain limits that fostered the society’s wellbeing.84 The choice between socialization and individuation need not be binary. Many concur that schooling incorporates both socializing and educating functions; the degree of each varies from activity to activity. For example, learning to read and write are matters of socializing – learning the conventions and basic expression of their nation’s language. These skills will enable young people to accept the basic responsibilities of citizens,

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parents, and employees. By comparison, learning to use them with deep understanding; the capacity to make sense of what they are learning and what is happening around them; the ability to take appropriate action in response to ideas and events; and the elegance, individual style, and aesthetic qualities beyond utility are educational/individuation domains. Both dimensions – socialization activities for social utility and educational/individuation activities to cultivate individuals as separate but interrelated persons – are valuable. The former learning activities homogenize students, a role needed to keep a society working whereas the latter are meaningful for maturing individuals’ discerning judgment and refined pleasures. Both socialization and education/individuation are essential schooling components for living effectively in a complex world as a citizen of a democratic republic. Yet when a society is experiencing exceptional change, earlier decisions about curricula’s socialization values and norms, individuation’s critical thinking, and their appropriate placement in K-12 classrooms may need to be rethought and rebalanced to meet the present circumstances.85 This discussion is not merely theoretical. Today, this historical tension is playing out anew. One example: the political furor about the retelling of our national origin story. Many educators (with community support) are infusing The 1619 Project86 – and similar narratives about the actual role race played in building the American nation – into K-12 curricula. They want a more accurate and inclusive accounting of African Americans’ part in shaping U.S. history. Introducing these allegedly “unsavory” or “divisive” realities of America’s past into the K-12 arena challenges not only the traditional timing for when school children’s socialization tapers off and a more truthful national accounting begins. It also challenges the triumphalism that our nation advances to cultivate students’ patriotism.87 Discerning the “appropriate” balance and timing for each classroom will reflect professional and community norms. Nonetheless, socializing American children to become patriotic citizens as they acknowledge discomforting historical realities can help them see themselves “as proud and loyal heirs to a tradition of increasing liberty and rising hope.” They can learn that their country has “slowly and painfully” freed itself from foreign rule; unshackled its enslaved; granted its women the vote; limited robber barons’ excesses; licensed its trade unions; opened its religious practices; widened its religious and moral tolerances; and built colleges in which half its people could enroll.88 And our nation continues to struggle towards a more perfect union for all who live here. Maintaining the “appropriate” balance between socialization and individuation involves considering public schools’ historic mission; the 146

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changing needs of the historical era; the current political, social, and economic milieu; and local conditions. Since education is a means of social initiation, the centralized state must attend to it, ensuring that it uses pedagogical influence to benefit the larger society rather than mainly serve private beliefs (of family, church, locality, and social class) that may not support – and may conflict with – the nation as a whole. Assuming that this agreement is even possible, in a free society, it will always be open to debate. CONCLUSION

Since our nation’s inception, generations of leaders and communities have identified public schools as essential socializing agents. Public schools would provide the learnings and shared societal norms, building national loyalty based in common values and principles for those born here and new arrivers. These skills and attitudes would underpin both individual and collective benefits, joining the personal “liberty” and the collective “one nation under God.” These essentials were foundational to functioning effectively as informed persons in a democratic republic. They still are. With public schooling guaranteed as a fundamental right by each state’s constitution, adequate and equitable funding remain cornerstones to this end. Over the generations, these shared values and commitment to maintain our democratic republic have been tested and contested, perhaps never more so than today. To ready young people to counter the widespread misinformation flowing to them from siloed media outlets and elsewhere, schools must renew their socialization mission with age-appropriate education/individuation curricula and effective instruction to build an informed and savvy citizenry. After consuming the current news of the day, it is not hyperbole to conclude that significantly shortchanging high-poverty schools – urban, suburban, and rural – undermines this goal and puts our civic freedoms and democratic republic at risk. While talent may be equally distributed, opportunity is not. A CReT orientation helps educators and community members question the current resource allocation practices, identify where a closer look and quantitative and qualitative analyses of school funding and policies within their locality or state might be needed, and propose remedies to enable public schools to properly fulfill their democratic mission. Every student regardless of family SES needs to develop the capacities to contribute to their own, their communities’, and our nation’s wellbeing. NOTES 1 Black, D.W. (2020). School house burning. Public education and the assault on American democracy. Hachette.



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2 Dewey, J. (1980). Democracy and education. Vol. 9, The middle works: 1916. J.A. Boyston (Ed.). Southern Illinois University Press, p. 6. 3 Durkheim, E. (1925/l956). Education and sociology. (Trans. and Intro. Sherwood D. Fox.) Free Press, p. 70. 4 Garrison, J., Neubert, S., & Reich, K. (2016). Democracy and education reconsidered. Dewey after one hundred years. Routledge. 5 Tyack, D. (2003). Seeking common ground. Public schools in a diverse society (pp. 11–12). Harvard University Press. 6 Jaeger, W. (1965). Archaic Greece: The mind of Athens, vol 1. Oxford University Press; Paideia: The ideals of Greek culture, trans. Gilbert Highet. New York University Press; Safstrom, C-A. (2019). Paideia and the search for freedom in the public of today. Journal of Philosophy of Education, 54(3), 607–618. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9752.12385. 7 Barzun, J. (2000). From dawn to decadence: 1500 to the present. HarperColllins. 8 Halsall, P. (Ed.). (1998). Modern history sourcebook: John Locke (1632–1704): Some thoughts concerning education, 1692. Internet modern history sourcebooks project. Fordham University. From English philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. P.F. Collier & Son [c.1910]. Harvard Classics, Vol. 37. https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1692lockeeducation.asp 9 Cubberley, E.P. (1947). Public education in the United States (p. 89). Houghton Mifflin; Cook, S.A. & Klay, W.E. (2018). George Washington and enlightenment ideas on educating future citizens and public servants. Journal of Public Affairs Education, 20(1), 45–55. https://doi.org /10.1080/15236803.2014.12001769 10 George Washington to William A. Washington, February 27, 1798 [letter]. From LOC, George Washington Papers, series 2, letterbook 21, image 83. Cited in Cook & Klay, 2018. 11 Cook & Klay, 2018. 12 Adams, J. (1765, September 30). A dissertation on the canon and feudal law no. 3. In R.J. Taylor (Ed.), The Adams papers, Papers of John Adams, vol. 1, September 1755–October 1773, p. 120. Harvard University Press. https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/06-0102-0052-0006 13 Holowchak, M.A. (2019). Thomas Jefferson. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https:// plato.stanford.edu/entries/jefferson/#Edu 14 Gordon-Reed, A. & Onuf, P.S. (2016). Most blessed of the patriarchs: Thomas Jefferson and the empire of the imagination. Liveright. 15 Black, 2020, p. 60. 16 Black, 2020. 17 Cubberley, 1920, p. 363. 18 Butts, R.F. (1955). A cultural history of Western education: Its social and intellectual foundations. McGraw Hill. 19 Denzin, N.K. (2010). Childhood socialization: Interactionist, historical, and contextual dimensions. In N.K. Denzin (Ed.), Childhood socialization (Revised 2nd ed.) (pp. 1–14). Routledge. 20 Tyack, 2003, p. 27. 21 Henkin, L., Newman, G.L., Orentliches, D.F., & Leebron, D.W. (1929). Human rights (p. 4). Foundation Press. 22 Alexander, K., & Alexander, W.D. (2018). American public school law (9th ed.) (p. 61). West Academic Publishing. 23 Go, S., & Lindert, P. (2010, March). The uneven rise of American public schools to 1850. Journal of Economic History, 70(1), 1–26. https://www.jstor.org/stable/2565406. 24 Black, 2020, p. 94. 25 Schnapper, E. (1985). Affirmative action and the legislative history of the Fourteenth Amendment. Virginia Law Review, 71(4), 753, 780–781. https://digitalcommons.law.uw.edu/ faculty-articles/304 26 Brinkley, A. (2014). American history connecting with the past (15th ed., volume 2) (p. 409). McGraw-Hill Education. 27 Williams, H.A. (2005). Self-taught: African America education in slavery and freedom (pp. 35–36). University of North Carolina Press. 28 Span, C.M. (2012). From cotton field to schoolhouse: African American education in Mississippi (p. 43). University of North Carolina Press.

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29 Green, H. (2016). Educational reconstruction. African American schools in the urban south, 1865–1890 (pp. 2–3). Fordham University Press. 30 Green, H. cited in Span, 2012, p. 43. 31 Pratt, D.O. (2018). Sowing the wind: The Mississippi constitutional convention of 1890 (p. 55). University Press of Mississippi. 32 Klarman, M.J. (2007). Unfinished business: Racial equality in American history (p. 43). Oxford University Press. 33 Klarman, 2007, p. 45. 34 Franklin, J.H. (2011). From slavery to freedom. A history of African Americans (9th ed.). McGraw-Hill, p. 87. 35 Bolton, C.C. (2005). The hardest deal of all: The battle over school integration in Mississippi, 1870–1980. University Press of Mississippi. 36 Klarman, 2007, pp. 46–47. 37 Bolton, 2005. 38 United States v. Reese, 92 U.S., 214 (1876). 39 Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896). 40 Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education. 175 U.S. 528 (1899). 41 Brown v. Board. Of Education. Of Topeka, Shawnee Cty., Kan., 347 U.S. 483, 489, (1954), supplemented sub nom, Brown v. Bd. Of Education. Of Topeka, Kan., 349 U.S. 294 (1955), at 493. 42 Brown v Board. of Educ. (1954), 495. 43 Alexander & Alexander, 2018, pp. 1217–1263; Black, 2020, pp. 147–149. 44 Rebell, M.A. (2018, September). School funding: The role of the courts. National Association of State Boards of Education. https://nasbe.nyc3.digitaloceanspaces.com/2018/09/Rebell_ September-2018-Standard.pdf 45 Edwards, N. (1955). The courts and the public schools. University of Chicago Press, p. 23. 46 Meyer v. State of Nebraska, 262 U.S. 390, 43S. Ct. 625 (1923); Fogg v. Board of Education of Union School District of Littleton, 76 N.H. 296, 82 a. 173 (1912). 47 Alexander & Alexander, 2018, p. 7. 48 Black, 2020, p. 219. 49 Mayer A.K. (2011). Does education increase political participation? The Journal of Politics, 73(3), 633–645. https://doi.org/10.1017/s002238161100034x 50 Campbell, A., Converse, P.E., Miller, W.E., & Stokes, D.E. (1960). The American voter: Unabridged Edition. University of Chicago Press; Delli Carpini, M.X., & Keeter, S. (1996). What Americans know about politics and why it matters. Yale University Press. 51 Rosenstone, S.J., & Hansen, J.M. (1993). Mobilization, participation, and democracy in America. Longman; Verba, S.K., Shlozman, L., & Brady, H.E. (1995). Voice and equality: Civic voluntarism in American politics. Harvard University Press. 52 Wolfinger, R.E., & Rosenstone, S.J. (1980). Who votes? Yale University Press. 53 Verba, S., Schlozman, K.L., & Brady, H.E. (1995). Voice and equality: Civic voluntarism in American politics, Harvard University Press; Delli Carpini &. Keeter, 1996. 54 Dee, T.S. (2004). Are there civic returns to education? Journal of Public Economics, 88 (9–10), 1697–1720. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2003.11.002; Elvestad, E. & Blekesaune, A. (2008). Newspaper readers in Europe. European Journal of Communication, 23 (4), 425–447. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0267323108096993; Shehata, A. &. Strömbäck, J. (2011). A matter of context: A comparative study of media environments and news consumption gaps in Europe. Political Communication, 28(1), 110–134. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2010.543006 55 Aarts, K. & Semetko, H.A. (2003). The divided electorate: Media use and political involvement. Journal of Politics, 65(3), 759–784. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2508.00211; Milligan, K., Moretti, E., & Oreopoulos, P. (2004). Does education improve citizenship? Evidence from the United States and the United Kingdom. Journal of Public Economics, 88 (9–10), 1667–1695. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2003.10.005; Pattie, C., Seyd, P., & Whiteley, P. (2004). Citizenship in Britain: Values, participation, and democracy. Cambridge University Press. 56 Coleman, J.S., Campbell, E.Q., Hobson, C.F., McPartland, J.M., Mood, A.M., Weinfeld, F.D., & York, R.L. (1966). Equality of educational opportunity. United States Government Printing Office. https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/ED012275.pdfl 57 Jencks, C., Smith, M., Acland, H., Bane, M.J., Cohen, D., Gintis, H., Heyns, G. & Michelson, S (1972). Inequality: A reassessment of the effect of family and schooling in America. Basic Books.



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58 Kam, C.D., & Palmer, C. (2008). Reconsidering the effects of education on political participation. Journal of Politics, 70(3), 612–631. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022381608080651. 59 Kam & Palmer, 2008. 60 Mayne, Q. & Hakhverdian, A. (2017). Education, socialization, and political trust. In S. Zmerli & T.W.G. van der M. (Eds.), Handbook on political trust (pp. 176–196). Edward Elgar Publishing. 61 Hyman, H.H, Wright, C.R., & Reed, J.S. (1975). The enduring effects of education. Chicago University Press; Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996; Milner, H. (2002). Civic literacy: How informed citizens make democracy work. University Press of New England. 62 Aarts & Semetko, 2003; Gordon, S.B. & Segura, G. M. (1997). Cross-national variation in the political sophistication of individuals: Capability or choice? Journal of Politics, 59(1), 126–147. https://doi.org/10.2307/2998218; Jacoby, W.G. (1991). ‘Ideological identification and issue attitudes’. American Journal of Political Science, 35(1), 178–205. https://doi. org/10.2307/2111443 63 Anderson, C.J., Blais, A., Bowler, S., Donovan, T., & Lishaug, O. (2005). Losers’ consent: Elections and democratic legitimacy. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/0199276 382.001.0001 64 Bobo, L. & Licari, F.C. (1989). Education and political tolerance: Testing the effects of cognitive sophistication and target group affect. Public Opinion Quarterly, 53(3), 285–308. https:// psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1086/269154; Hyman, H.H. & Wright, C.R. (1979). Education’s lasting influence on values. Chicago University Press; Nie, N.H., Junn, J., & Stehlik-Barry, K. (1996). Education and democratic citizenship in America. University of Chicago Press; Vogt, W.P. (1997). Tolerance and education: Learning to live with diversity and difference. Sage. 65 Dalton, R.J. (1994). Communists and democrats: Democratic attitudes in the two Germanies. British Journal of Political Science, 24(4), 469–493. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0007123400006967; Hibbing, J.R., & Theiss-Morse, E. (1995). Congress as public enemy: Public attitudes toward American political institutions. Cambridge University Press; McClosky, H., & Zaller, J.R. (1984). The American ethos: Public attitudes toward capitalism and democracy. Harvard University Press. 66 Evans, G. & Rose, P. (2007). Support for democracy in Malawi: Does schooling matter? World Development, 35(5), 904–919. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.worlddev.2006.09.011; Jamal, A.A. (2006). Reassessing support for Islam and democracy in the Arab world? World Affairs, 169(2), 51–63. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20672755; Kotzian, P. (2011). Public support for liberal democracy. International Political Science Review, 32(1), 23–41. https://doi. org/10.1177%2F0192512110375938 67 Mayne & Hakhverdian, 2017. 68 Beck, P.A. & Jennings. M.K. (1991). Family tradition, political periods, and the development of partisan orientations. Journal of Politics, 53(3), 742–763. https://doi.org/10.2307/2131578 69 Inglehart, R. (1977). The silent revolution. Princeton University Press; Inglehart, R. (1990). Culture shift. Princeton University Press; Inglehart, R. & Welzel, C. (2005). Modernization, cultural change, and democracy. Cambridge University Press. 70 Hakhverdian, A. & Mayne, Q. (2012). Institutional trust, education, and corruption: A micromacro interactive approach. Journal of Politics, 74(3), 739–750. https://doi.org/10.1017/ S0022381612000412 71 Abdelzadeh, A., Zetterberg.P., & Ekman, J. (2015). Procedural fairness and political trust among young people: Evidence from a panel study on Swedish high school students. Acta Politica, 50(1), 253–278. https://doi.org/10.1057/ap.2014.22http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/ ap.2014.22; Duke, N.N., Skay, C.L., Pettingell, S.L., & Borowsky, I.W. (2009). From ­adolescent connections to social capital: Predictors of civic engagement in young adulthood. Journal of Adolescent Health, 44(2), 161–168. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2008.07.007; Resh, N. & Sabbagh, C. (2014). Sense of justice in school and civic attitudes. Social Psychology of Education, 17(1), 51–72. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11218-017-9375-0 72 Claes, E., Hooghe, M., & Marien, S. (2012). A two-year panel study among Belgian late adolescents on the impact of school environment characteristics on political trust. International Journal of Public Opinion Research 24(2), 208–224. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijpor/edr031; Dassonneville, R., Quintelier, E., Hooghe, M., & Claes, E. (2012). The relation between civic education and political attitudes and behavior: A two-year panel study among Belgian late adolescents. Applied Developmental Science, 16(3): 140–150. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888 691.2012.695265

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73 Kokkonen, A., Esaiasson, P., and Gilljam, M. (2010). Ethnic diversity and democratic citizenship: Evidence from a social laboratory. Scandinavian Political Studies, 33(4), 331–355. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9477.2010.00253.x 74 Claes et al., 2012; Denver, D., &Hands, G. (1990). Does studying politics make a difference? The political knowledge, attitudes and perceptions of school students. British Journal of Political Science, 20(2), 263–79. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123400005809; Finkel, S.E. & Ernst, H.R. (2005). Civic education in post-apartheid South Africa: Alternative paths to the development of political knowledge and democratic values. Political Psychology, 26(3), 333–364. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9221.2005.00421.x 75 Finkel, S.E., Sabatini, C.A., & Bevis, G.G. (2000). Civic education, civil society, and political mistrust in a developing democracy: The case of the Dominican Republic. World Development, 28(11), 1851–1874. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0305-750X(00)00067-X 76 Mayne & Hakhverdian, 2017. 77 Hidden curricula refer to the unwritten, unofficial, and often unintended lessons, values, and viewpoints that students learn in school. Part of the school’s culture and climate, it consists of the unspoken or implicit intellectual, social, and environmental messages – the social norms and expectations – that the school communicates to students. This curriculum is considered “hidden” because it is usually not acknowledged or examined by educators, students, or the community. Its lessons may either complement or contradict the schools’ formal curriculum. Some say the hidden curricula should be acknowledged, examined (un-hidden), and explicitly taught to ensure than every student can access mainstream beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors. Others say that the hidden curriculum reinforces existing social inequalities by educating students according to their social class and social status. See: Anyon, J. (1980, Fall). Social class and the hidden curriculum of work. Journal of Education, 162(1), 67–92. https://www. jstor.org/stable/42741976; Wren, D.J. (1999, Fall). School culture: Exploring the hidden curriculum. Adolescence, 34(135), 593–596. 78 Biesta, G. (2020). Risking ourselves in education: Qualification, socialization, and subjectification revisited. Educational Theory, 70(1), 89–104. https://doi.org/10.1111/edth.12411 79 Tyack, 2003. 80 Durkheim, E. (1925/l956). Education and sociology (p. 75). (Trans. and Intro. Sherwood D. Fox). Free Press. 81 Egan, K. (1983). Educating and socializing: A proper distinction. Teacher College Record, 85(1), 27–42. 82 Dewey J. (1916/1997). Democracy and education (pp. 4, 27). Free Press. 83 Rorty, R. (2000). Education as socialization and as individualization. In M. Rorty (Ed.), Philosophy and social hope (pp. 114-126). Penguin. (Quotes from pp. 3–4). 84 Rorty, 2000. (Quotes from pp. 3–4). 85 Inglehart, 1977; Inglehart, 1990. 86 Hannah-Jones, N. (2019, August 18). The 1619 project. New York Times Magazine, 14–22. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/1619-america-slavery.html; Silverstein, J. (2021, November 12). The 1619 Project and the long battle over U.S. history. The New York Times Magazine. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/09/magazine/1619-projectus-history.html 87 Kaplan, L.S., & Owings, W.A. (2021). Countering the furor around critical race theory. NASSP Bulletin, 105(3), 200–218. https://doi.org/10.1177/01926365211045457 88 Rorty, 2000.



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INDEX

Note: Page numbers in italics refer to figures. Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes. 1619 Project 146 Abbott v. Burke case 79–80 academic quality 11, 85 academic tracking xiv, 36 achievement equity 85 achievement gaps xiii, 11, 53, 56, 62, 114 Adams, John 135 adequacy, in school funding 2, 53, 56, 80; claims 73, 76, 141; fiscal 60; litigation 82–83; see also equity, and adequacy advocacy 13, 66–67, 91 African Americans race and colorism in our society 98–102; caste system in United States 103–104; denial of educational opportunity 141; during Great Depression 108; housing policy for 112; slavery 108–109; social discrimination 105; see also Black people; people of color Africans 99–100 Afro-Latinos 102 Albert Shanker Institute 56 Alpha and Omega Syndrome (case study) xv, 4–7, 9, 53 American Dilemma, An (Myrdal) 104–105 Ashante, from Ghana 108 Atlantic, The 1 Baby Boomer 116 Baker, Bruce 54, 56 Bell, Derrick 35

152

blackness 101 Black people 108–109; homeownership hardship 112; as leaders 34; low paid teachers 141; negative stereotypes 116; per-pupil spending 5, 13, 53, 76; property taxes 58; quadroon/sextaroon 102; racial bias 37–38, 50n104; school segregation 113–115; “separate but equal” education 104–105 Bonilla-Silva, Eduardo 111 Bradley, Verda 37 Briggs v. Elliott case 76 Brown, Dorothy Q. 111 Brown v. Board of Education case 5, 35, 44, 53, 75–77, 141 Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) see Center for Educational Equity (CEE) Campaign for Fiscal Equity v. State of New York case 82 Carnegie Corporation 104 case study, and theory building 3, 14; Alpha and Omega Syndrome xv, 4–7, 9, 53; school equity audits 83; state’s education funding formula 7–8 Caste (Wilkerson) 103–104 caste system, in US 99; American Dilemma 104–105; pillars of 105–110; and racism 103–104 Caucasian 102 CBE see Council for Better Education (CBE) CBRI see color-blind racial ideology (CBRI)

CEE see Center for Educational Equity (CEE) Center for Educational Equity (CEE) 82, 95n61 Chetty, Raj 55 Christianity 99 civic skills 142 Civil Rights Act: 1870 141; 1964 102 Civil War 138 Clarendon County 5, 76 cognitive dissonance 120 color-blind racial ideology (CBRI) 115–116 color evasion 116–117 colorism, and equality 99, 100–102 Color of Law, The (Rothstein) 111 “Color Struck” 102 common schools 134, 135–136 Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) 113 conceptions of race, in America see race/ racism consequences of inequitable and inadequate school funding xiii–xvii; case study 1 4–7; what the case studies suggest 8–13; introduction, money and how it’s spent matters in education 53–56; disparities in funding, disparities in educational quality 61–63, 73–74; San Antonio, Robinson, Abbott, Rose, Campaign for Fiscal Equity court cases 77–82; case study 3 83–92, 147 Corley, K.G. 14–15, 20 Council for Better Education (CBE) 81 CPA see critical policy analysis (CPA) CRA see Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) Crenshaw, Kimberlé 36 CReT see Critical Resource Theory (CReT) critical pedagogy 32–34 critical policy analysis (CPA) 30–31 Critical Race Theory (CRT) xix, 2, 34–39, 44; criticism 39; education finance 36–37; empiricism 37–39 Critical Resource Theory (CReT) xix–xx; applying 13; case studies 3–8; as complete theory 15–20; family tree 17, 27–45; normalized school inequities 12–13; operation



28; resource allocation 11–12; taxpayer dollars 8–11; as valueadded theory 14–15; as a complete theory 15–20; family tree (figure) 17; how CReT operationalizes, borrows from antecedent theories (figure) 28; putting it all together 42–45; to remedy school funding inequities 63–66; outcomes of school finance litigation 82–18; case study 3 85–92; recognizing inequities in public funding policies 98–99, 121, 132, 147 critical social inquiry 30, 50n109 Critical Theory (CT) 1–2, 28–34, 43; criticism 31–32; in education 32–34; empiricism 30–31 CRT see Critical Race Theory (CRT) CT see Critical Theory (CT) cultural capital 61 culturally responsive curriculum 33 Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education case 141 data collection 13, 65, 85–86 dehumanization 108 democracy 20, 30; informed political participation 142; struggle for 33; see also socialization democratic republic 132, 144, 146–147 desegregated schools 35, 37, 114–115 Detroit 37 Dewey, John 30, 74, 133, 145 discrimination: failure 31; racial 18, 35, 101–102, 110, 141; social 105 disparity differences 3 diversity 120, 133 Douglas, Frederick 34 Driscoll, Lisa 87 Dubin, R. 15 DuBois, W.E.B. 38 Durkheim, Emile 133 early childhood programs 55 EdBuild 56 EdTrust (Education Trust) 65, 72n96 education: financial resources in 54–56; former US presidents about 134–135; functions 144–147; as fundamental rights 78, 137–142; and individuation 144–147; lacking student relationships 10; qualification

Index 153

154

144; socialization for democracy 133–134, 142–144; see also public education educational attainment 4, 11, 31, 55, 102, 111, 115, 142 educational opportunities 12–13, 142; equal 76, 79, 82, 142; improving 73; for marginalized children 119, 141; through political decisions 60, 142 Education Law Center (ELC) 80, 92 Education Week Research Center 56 ELC see Education Law Center (ELC) Emancipation Proclamation (1862) 36 endogamy 106–107 equitable fundings 53 equity, and adequacy 73–75; advocacy 91; audits (case study) 83–85; cases 76–82; data collection 85–87; graphic and narrative analyses 87–90; outcomes 82–83; questioning existing practices 85; stakeholders 91; weighting schemes 87–88, 89 equity audits, in schools 65, 74, 83–84, 92 equity/inequities, in school funding 53–54, 56–57; and educational quality disparities 61–63; importance of money 54–56; property taxes 57–58; state education funding formulas politics 58–61; using CReT to remedy 63–67 equity plus 76 ESSA see Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) Europeans 99, 101 Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) 6, 63, 65, 84, 91, 96n74 experiential knowledge 35–36 explicit racial colorblindness 118

FiveThirtyEight.com 38 Florida 140 Franklin, Benjamin 132 Frazier, Kenneth 120 free people 134 free/reduced-price lunch (FRPL) 4, 8–9, 56 Freire, Paulo 34 FRPL see free/reduced-price lunch (FRPL) fundamental rights 78, 137

fair funding 75 Fair Housing Act of 1968 (FHA) 112 Federal Housing Administration (FHA) 112 FHA see Fair Housing Act of 1968 (FHA); Federal Housing Administration (FHA) “fight or flight” response 118 fiscal adequacy 60 fiscal neutrality 74, 77 Fisher Body 40

IB program see International Baccalaureate (IB) program implicit racial colorblindness 118 inadequate funding 75 income gap xiii, 105 India 105 individuation 144–146 Industrial Revolution 136 inequitable/inadequate school funding 8–9, 12, 17, 44, 56, 73, 75, 121 influential theorization 15

Index

General Motors 40 GenX 116 Germany 105 Gioia, D.A. 14–15, 20 Goodell, William 108 Great Depression 108 Green, Hilary 140 Harris, A. 37 Hayes, Rutherford B. 140 Hechinger Report (2020) 57 Hegel, G.W.F. 29 hereditability, of caste 106 hidden curriculum 144, 151n77 high-poverty schools 4, 9–10, 56–57, 90; advanced courses disparities 11; increase in PPE 53–54; and lowincome students 62, 73, 111, 113 HOLC see Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) Home Owners’ Loan Corporation (HOLC) 112 horizontal equity 74 Horkheimer, Max 20, 29 housing policy(ies) 16, 37, 98, 111–113, 116 Hurricane Katrina 110

inherent superiority vs. inferiority 109–110 institutional racism 18–19, 117 integrated schools 115 International Baccalaureate (IB) program 11 intra-racial discrimination 102 Jay, John 135 Jefferson, Thomas 135 Jim Crow Law 100, 104, 116 Johnson, Rucker 54, 114 Kaplan, Leslie S. xiv–xv, 4, 6 Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) 81 Kentucky Supreme Court (KSC) 80–81 KERA see Kentucky Education Reform Act (KERA) Kilduff, M. 20 knowledge 29, 32; experiential 35–36; official curriculum 33 KSC see Kentucky Supreme Court (KSC) lack of transparency and school funding 8, 11–12, 58–61; from normalization to increased equity 119–121; normalizing racism in public policy 98–99; structural racism in public policy 110–111; structural racism in housing policy 113–115 Ladson-Billings, G. 36 Lafortune, Julien 55 Land Ordinance of 1785 138 Law (court cases), and school funding 75–83 laws of nature, for caste 106 Locke, John 134 logical thinking 34 Los Angeles County 77 low-income people 13, 18, 110 low-poverty schools 4, 7, 53, 56–57, 90 Madison, James 135 marriages, and caste 106–107 Marshall, Thurgood 5, 13, 76 Marx, Karl 29 Massachusetts 57 McKenzie, K.B. 85



Mexico 102 Michigan 37 microeconomic theory 61 Millennials 116 Milliken v. Bradley 37 minorities 35, 113, 117–118 miseducation 5–6 Mississippi 140–141 “mixture modeling” 39 money (financial resources), in education 54–56 Montague, Ashley 102 mortgage loan 112 motivated social cognition 120 Myrdal, Gunnar 104–105 NAACP see National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) NAEP scores see National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) scores 55 National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) 37, 76 neighborhood segregation 113–115 New England 136 New Jersey 79–80, 94n48 Noah (Bible) 106 normalization, of inequities 12–13, 119–121 Northwest Ordinance of 1787 138 Obama, Barack 103 occupational hierarchy, based on caste 107–108 OECD see Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) official knowledge curriculum 33 opportunity gap xiii, 83, 114 opportunity to learn (OTL) 62 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) 56 Organizational Behavior for School Leadership (Kaplan & Owings) xv organizations: board members benefits 41; exchange-based power relations 40

Index 155

OTL see opportunity to learn (OTL) Owings, William A. (Bill) xiv, xv, 4, 6 Paine, Thomas 135 Painter, Neil Irvin 100 Penn State study 57 people of color 18; academic tracking 36; assigning race 99; lack of academic achievement 31; public policy 35; tax burden 58 per-pupil expenditure (PPE) 64–65, 79, 89 Pew Research Center 102 Philadelphia 57 Plessy v. Ferguson case 141 political influences, in school funding 8, 11–12, 58–60 political participation 134–135, 136, 142, 144 political trust 143–144 politics 21n5 power 1, 40 power evasion 117–119 PPE see per-pupil expenditure (PPE) practical utility 14 practical verification, of social enquiry 30 pragmatism 67 pre-adult characteristics 142 prescience scholarship 15 programmatic equity 85 property taxes 57–58, 77 public education 3, 137; and democratic republic 132, 144, 146–147; in early America 134–135; funding 7, 16, 19, 43–44, 59, 142; for growing nation 135–137; balancing societal needs with individual wants 144–147 public funding policy inequities 13, 16, 18, 27 public policy(ies) xviii; caste system 103–110; colorism and equality 100–102; race-neutral 35; racial colorblindness theory 115; structural racism 110–115 pupil-to-teacher ratios 55 purity vs. pollution, caste 107 Q methodology 31 quadroon (1/4th Black) 102

156

Index

qualification 144 Quantitative Critical Theory (QuantCrit) 18, 38–39 race/racism 18–19; and caste system 103–110; colorism and equality 100–102; denying forms of 117; institutional 117; normalization to increased equity 119–121; policy in US 99–100; racial colorblindness theory 99, 115, 117–119; as social construct 35, 98, 100; structural racism 110–115 racial absolutism 107 racial bias 38, 50n103 racial colorblindness 99, 115; color evasion 117; power evasion 117–119 racial discrimination 18, 35, 101–102, 110, 141 racial inequalities 120 racial oppression 39 racial privilege 117 racial segregation 113–115 RDT see Resource Dependence Theory (RDT) Rebell, Michael 75 Reconstruction Act (1868) 139, 140 Redfin Real Estate Brokerage 113 Reich, Robert 1 residential gentrification 112 resource allocation 8; caste system 103–110; colorism and equality 100–102; political bargaining 11–13; racial colorblindness 115; structural racism 110–115; see also Critical Race Theory (CRT); Critical Resource Theory (CReT); Critical Theory (CT); Resource Dependence Theory (RDT) Resource Dependence Theory (RDT) xix, 2, 40–42, 44–45 resource inequities 62 reverse racism 117 Robinson v. Cahill case 75, 78–79 Rorty, Richard 145 Rose v. Council for Better Education case 80–82 Rothstein, Jesse 55 Rothstein, Richard 111 Rural School and Community Trust 6 Rutgers University 9, 56, 61

San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodrigues case 75, 77–78 Schanzenbach, Diane Whitmore 55 Scheurich, J.J. 85 school funding xviii, 2; inequitable/ inadequate xiii–xiv, 8–9, 12, 17, 44, 56, 73, 75, 121; lack of transparency 8, 11; and law 75–83; political influences in 8, 11–12, 58–60; and structural racism 36; see also equity/ inequities, in school funding schools: academic quality 11; common 134, 135–136; desegregated 35, 37, 114–115; educative functions 144; equity audits (case study) 83–84, 92; facilities 11; finance litigation 77–78, 80, 82–83; funding inequities 56–57; improved facilities 55; inequalities 2, 12–13, 36; integrated 115; lowpoverty 4, 7, 53, 56–57, 90; as organization 10–11; racism in 18–19; segregation 76, 113–115; see also high-poverty schools scientific utility 14 segregated schools 76 self-criticism 34 sense giving 15 sensemaking 15 Serrano v. Priest case 75, 77 SES see socioeconomic status (SES) sextaroon (1/16th Black) 102 Skrla, L.E. 85, 87 slavery 99–100, 108–109, 138 Smedley, Audrey 109 Smedley, Brian 109 social cognitions 118 social constructs 35, 44, 98, 100, 103, 121n1 social control 33 social discrimination 105 socialization: for democracy 133–134, 142–144; and individuation 144–147 social resources 10 socioeconomic status (SES) 4, 53 South Carolina 5, 140 Span, Christopher 139 stakeholders 13, 66 STAR experiment, Tennessee Project 55 state education funding formula 7–8, 58–61



State’s School Tax Relief (STAR) Program, New York 59 statistics 16 status threat 120–121, 131n171 stigmatization 108 strategic colorblindness see racial colorblindness structural racism 18–19, 99, 101, 110; housing policy 111–113; racial segregation 113–115 students rights 142 Syracuse University 9, 61 systemic/institutional racism see structural racism Tate, W.F. 36 taxpayer dollars, to different communities 8–11 teachers 55; inexperienced 10; quality 85 teen pregnancies 114 terror enforcement 108–109 Texas 78 theories of resource allocation see Critical Race Theory (CRT); Critical Resource Theory (CReT); Critical Theory (CT); Resource Dependence Theory (RDT) theory building 3, 14 Tilden, Samuel 140 Topeka, Kansas 76 Truth, Sojourner 34 Tyack, David 134 unequal schooling 19 United States (US): public education 132; racism as policy 99–100; Southern schooling 138–139; status threat 120–121, 131n171; see also caste system, in US United States v. Reese case 141 urban school 80, 83, 113 US see United States (US) Verstegen, Deborah 87 vertical equity 74 Virginia 106–107 Washington, George 134–135 wealth 21n5

Index 157

wealth (fiscal) neutrality 74 wealth gap xiii, 105 weightings, Verstegen and Driscoll’s 87–88, 89 Whetten, D.A. 15 “white logic” 38 whiteness 36–37, 101, 102 Whiteness of Wealth, The (Brown) 111

158

Index

Whites 35, 99; housing policy for 112; negative stereotypes about Blacks 116; per-pupil spending 5, 13, 53, 76; racial privilege 117 Wilkerson, Isabel 103–104, 109–110, 121 Winfrey, Oprah 120 Yoruba, from Nigeria 108