For progressive activists and reformers, the head start given to students at wealthy school districts compared to those in poor ones has long been a source of contention. They believe that all students, no matter what their income, should be entitled to a quality education.
A major obstacle to this is that the bulk of school district funding comes from local property taxes, which gives wealthy districts with more valuable property a huge advantage. Reformers have filed lawsuits and rallied in state legislatures, such as in Pennsylvania, to fix this.
The Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court ruled in February that the state’s school funding system is unconstitutional and must be reformed. The court’s decision could lead to other states trying to tackle the issue of guaranteeing all students the right to a quality education, no matter their income.
The petitioners in this case were represented by O’Melveny & Myers LLP, the Education Law Center-PA, and the Public Interest Law Center. “By all measures this is a historic decision,” Claudia De Palma, a staff attorney with the Public Interest Law Center, tells The Progressive. “It is a declaration that education is not only a right in Pennsylvania, but a fundamental right.” De Palma represented the school districts, parents, and organizations that brought the Pennsylvania school funding case.
A recent study by Research for Action confirmed that Pennsylvania has one of the worst school funding gaps in the country between students of color and their peers. In the state, only 62.6 percent of students of color attended schools with certified teachers compared to 86.9 percent of white students. This more than twenty-four point gap was the second largest in the fifty states. The contrast between well-funded schools—with up-to-date textbooks, modern computers, and gleaming facilities—and schools in poorer districts—with leaky buildings, out-of-date textbooks, and often no computer access—is jarring.
And such funding differences tend to widen the gap between those districts in terms of drop-out rates, academic performance, college attendance, and lifetime earning potential.
On the flip side, funding advocates cite the following positive results in boosting state and federal spending in low-income school districts:
- One study that found spending increases improved high school graduation rates among low-income students and increased their adult earnings by 10 percent
- Another study that determined allocating more money to low-income schools reduced the achievement gaps by 20 percent
- Boosted graduation rates in schools that increased spending by 12 percent
Problems with unfair state school funding formulas are widespread. The New Jersey-based Education Law Center, which was not involved in the case, has put together an interactive map, grading the states on their efforts to make school funding more equitable. Twenty-seven states received a grade of “F.” One of the measures the analysis used to assess states’ funding formulas is “Funding Distribution—the extent to which additional funds are distributed to school districts with high levels of student poverty.” There are ten states that are graded “F” on this measure and ten that are graded “D.”
Education Law Center also did an in-depth report on the four states that were the most successful in reducing the funding gaps between affluent and poorer school districts—Massachusetts, Kansas, Washington State, and New Jersey—and found these states had the following political characteristics in common:
- Litigation and the courts played a key role by clarifying the state’s responsibility, putting pressure on the legislature to come up with a fairer funding system should the old one be found unconstitutional.
- Successful campaigns didn’t just rely on the courts but also used grassroots political pressure to build support among lawmakers to adopt new and fairer school funding systems.
- Successful campaigns used research in many forms, at all stages, and for multiple audiences.
“A lot of the good news in Pennsylvania was what happened outside of the courtroom [through grassroots public pressure],” says David Sciarra, executive director of the Education Law Center. “That was key.”
“This is going to be a generational [change], De Palma adds, “[but now] the challenge is that it is going to take all parties to move the needle in a way that is not going to happen overnight.”
“The fight for equitable school funding in the courts and in the legislature, never ends,” Sciarra notes. “It never gets solved in one fell swoop.”
Much of the difficulties in addressing school funding unfairness stem from a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court case, San Antonio Independent School District vs. Rodriguez. “San Antonio found there is no right to education in the federal U.S. Constitution,” De Palma explains. “But state constitutions, including Pennsylvania’s, included a specific clause that establishes a right to education. Our [Pennsylvania] case was based on a state right to education.”
“We do not have one educational system in the U.S.. We have fifty,” Sciarra says.
Will the court decision have ripple effects beyond the borders of Pennsylvania? Sciarra believes it will for two reasons.
One is Pennsylvania's recent election of pro-public school gubernatorial, legislative and supreme court candidates will make all the difference. Sciarra believes the state will serve as a political model for other states. It conveys the hopeful message: “Don’t give up…We have to build strong political movements state by state to protect, strengthen and preserve our public education systems.”
The other reason he cites is the legal precedent that the Pennsylvania decision sets for other states.
“Absolutely, just the way they [the plaintiffs] used the precedent in New York, New Jersey, Kansas, Washington State, and Massachusetts—Pennsylvania now adds to that precedent which is very important because it helps build a body of law that sister state courts can look to guide them,” Sciarra says.
While progress towards achieving school funding equity is long, grinding, and will likely take decades to achieve, the recent decision by the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court will most certainly give it momentum in other states taking up the issue.