School Finance, Race, and Reparations

Disparities in Teachers’ Access to Schools’ Collective Social Assets Based on Role, Race, and Poverty

“…Disparities in access to social resources based on school characteristics (i.e., high poverty and serving more students of color) may be symptoms of the many ways systemic racism and classism influence public schooling, including (a) financial disinvestment in these schools (Green et al, 2021); (b) negative stereotypes about schools serving socioculturally minoritized students (e.g., Early & Shagoury, 2010); and (c) administrators’ perspectives that these schools are less desirable places to work, resulting in higher leader turnover and less qualified leadership (Béteille et al, 2012). Collectively, these and other factors may deprive schools serving socioculturally minoritized students of the capacity to build social assets over time, thus resulting in less supportive work environments.…”

“…Using data from Massachusetts, Johnson et al (2012) found teachers in high-poverty schools rated working conditions below the mean and those in low-poverty schools rated working conditions above the mean; these disparities explained most of the variance in attrition. Disparities in social assets in high- and low-poverty schools may be related to other disparities, such as experienced principals (Béteille et al, 2012) and school funding (Green et al, 2021). However, few studies have examined these disparities among beginning teachers.…”

“…At the same time, weaker social supports are not an inherent feature of schools serving more students of color but rather a symptom of systematic social disinvestment in communities of color (Adamson & Darling-Hammond, 2012). Schools serving the highest concentrations of students of color receive, on average, 15% less per-pupil funding than schools serving the fewest students of color; furthermore, funding disparities based on race appear substantially larger than those based on SES (Green et al, 2021). Financial disinvestment may leave teachers more overloaded, with less time to support one another (Adamson & Darling-Hammond, 2012).…”

Special Education Teachers of Color Burnout, Working Conditions, and Recommendations for EBD Research

“…Teachers of color must constantly grapple with the tension and desire to transform schools into affirming spaces for students of color, and the burdens of an environment that requires witnessing and dealing with White colleagues' racism toward both themselves and their students (Pizarro & Kohli, 2020). Furthermore, systematic social disinvestment in these students (P. Green et al, 2021) means that they are often doing so with systematically weaker resources and supports than teachers serving affluent, White students without disabilities (Mason-Williams et al, 2022).…”

Separate Remains Unequal: Contemporary Segregation and Racial Disparities in School District Revenue

“…Our study deviates from the norm of segregation research by focusing on segregation and school funding patterns between districts within states instead of segregation between schools within districts (Reardon & Owens, 2014). This is because school funding policies, decisions, and allocations largely take place at the state level, and districts within the same state are subject to many of the same education, school funding, and local property taxation policies (Green et al, 2021). Also, states generally grant districts the power to draw, create, and dissolve attendance boundaries in ways that would directly affect segregation.…”