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Compounded Inequities: Tracking School Finance Equity for Districts Serving Low-Income Emergent Bilingual Students

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Book cover Dual Language Education: Teaching and Leading in Two Languages

Part of the book series: Language Policy ((LAPO,volume 18))

Abstract

School districts face different costs to produce the same level of educational opportunity because of differences in student populations, geographic variation in average wages, and district size. However, in many states, the school finance system fails to take these factors into account when distributing funds to school districts. Most prior analyses of state school finance systems focus on the relationship between district funding and the percent of low-income students in that district. Other studies explore funding for emergent bilinguals, who are typically classified as English language learners (ELLs) in state data systems. We present the first longitudinal descriptive evidence of the extent to which state school finance systems compound inequities for districts serving high concentrations of both low-income students and ELLs. We assess the extent to which high-ELL high-poverty districts are underfunded relative to otherwise similar districts in the same state and how these trends have changed leading up to and following the recession-era spending cuts. We find that prior to the recession, high-ELL districts received greater funding levels than otherwise similar low-ELL districts in the same state. However, recessionary spending cuts disproportionately impacted funding for ELLs. The remaining resource advantages for high-ELL districts are concentrated in low-poverty districts. We discuss implications for bilingual education and school finance policy.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Among countries in the OECD, only the United States, Turkey, and Israel provide more teachers per student in schools serving more advantaged students (OECD, 2016; see also Porter, 2013).

  2. 2.

    An educational production function refers to the broad set of analyses that estimate the amount of “output” produced in schools (i.e., test scores, graduation rates, or some other student outcome), based on a set of “inputs” such as funding, salaries, or teacher-student ratios.

  3. 3.

    The dollar figures presented in Table 4 are considered “predicted values” because they represent the predicted funding rate for districts at the 5th and 95th percentile of percent of ELL students in each state (roughly 0% and 35%), holding other cost-related factors constant. These figures are close approximations to actual funding levels of low- and high-ELL districts, but are adjusted for other differences in the cost of providing education including population density, district size, the percent of students with special needs, and geographic costs of wages.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA

    David S. Knight

  2. Center for Education Research and Policy Studies, University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX, USA

    Jesus E. Mendoza

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  1. David S. Knight
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Correspondence to David S. Knight .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Educational Leadership & Policy, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, USA

    David E. DeMatthews

  2. Department of Teacher Education, University of Texas at El Paso, El Paso, TX, USA

    Elena Izquierdo

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Knight, D.S., Mendoza, J.E. (2019). Compounded Inequities: Tracking School Finance Equity for Districts Serving Low-Income Emergent Bilingual Students. In: DeMatthews, D.E., Izquierdo, E. (eds) Dual Language Education: Teaching and Leading in Two Languages. Language Policy, vol 18. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10831-1_3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-10831-1_3

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