The influence of race in school finance reform.

• Author: Ryan, James E.

It would be an exaggeration to say that school finance reform is all about race, but largely in the same way that it is an exaggeration to say that welfare reform is all about race. Like welfare reform, the controversy generated by school finance litigation and reform has, on the surface, little to do with race. Battles over school funding, which have been waged in nearly forty state supreme courts and at least as many state legislatures, instead appear to be over such issues as the redistribution of resources, retaining local control over education, and the efficacy of increased expenditures.(1) But just as race seems to be an influential undercurrent in welfare policy and debate, so too does it appear to influence school finance litigation and reform. Whereas the role of race in welfare reform has been well canvassed,(2) the influence of race in school finance litigation and reform is virtually unexamined.

Indeed, the only direct evidence bearing on the topic consists of two studies of popular attitudes toward school finance reform, one conducted by Professor Douglas Reed in New Jersey and the other by Professor Kent Tedin in Texas.(3) Both New Jersey and Texas have witnessed long court battles over school finance.(4) The Reed and Tedin studies indicated that white citizens in both states inaccurately perceived school finance reform as primarily benefiting blacks.(5) Reed's study also indicated that nonwhites tended to support school finance reform more than whites,(6) and Tedin's study revealed that the level of support among whites depended as much upon racial attitudes as it did upon self-interest -- e.g., some whites whose school districts stood to gain from school finance reform opposed such reform for reasons apparently having to do with their attitudes toward blacks.(7)

The Reed study, which involved surveying 800 New Jersey residents, and the Tedin study, which involved surveying 1,000 Texas residents, are obviously fairly limited and do not "prove" much of anything. Nonetheless, the studies; raise and offer some support for the hypothesis that race plays a significant role in school finance reform. I believe that hypothesis is true, that it is not well understood, and that it carries enormously important implications for school finance reform in particular and education reform in general. Indeed, if I am correct and race does play an influential role in school finance reform, school finance scholars and practitioners should begin paying closer attention than they have to the dynamics ,of race relations and school desegregation; historians and legal scholars should recognize with added confidence the wisdom of the NAACP's desegregation strategy; and civil rights attorneys, courts, critical race theorists, and conservative critics of desegregation should hesitate., before abandoning the goal of desegregation.

I intend to explore the influence of race in school finance reform not by following the methodologies of Tedin and Reed and searching for further evidence of popular attitudes, but by surveying the history and success of minority districts in school finance litigation. Specifically, this Article examines how predominantly minority districts have fared when they have been involved in school finance litigation and how legislatures have responded to successful school finance challenges. Based on my review of the pertinent data, it appears that minority school districts -- particularly urban minority districts -- do not fare as well as white districts in school finance litigation. More precisely, minority districts do not win school finance cases nearly as often as white districts do, and in the few states where minority districts have successfully challenged school finance schemes, they have encountered legislative recalcitrance that exceeds, in both intensity and duration, the legislative resistance that successful white districts have faced.(8) As this and additional evidence suggests, there are strong reasons to believe that the racial composition of the school district plays an influential role in determining its success or failure in school finance litigation and legislative reform.

As already suggested, this evidence is significant for academic, historical, and practical reasons. First, the evidence offers further proof that one must understand the dynamics of race relations and school desegregation in order to understand fully the limits and dynamics of school finance reform.(9) Second, the evidence presented here suggests that the principle underlying the NAACP's desegregation strategy -- namely, that green follows white -- appears to have been a sound one, as the somewhat precarious financial situations facing predominantly minority districts stand in contrast to the relatively sound funding received by integrated districts. Lastly, the evidence is relevant to the current debate about returning to de facto segregated neighborhood schools and/or consciously creating single-race schools for minorities. There is waning support these days for continuing efforts to integrate schools, while there is growing support for educational reforms directed at improving the education provided within racially isolated schools.(10) What has been missing from this debate is consideration of the financial consequences of returning to de facto segregated schools or pursuing single-race schools; this Article suggests that the consequences could be significant and deserve to be part of the contemporary debate about school desegregation.

The Article proceeds in four Parts. Part I examines the current expenditure levels of minority districts in order to ascertain whether these districts are underfunded relative to other districts within their respective states. It turns out that, contrary to conventional wisdom, most minority districts are not relatively underfunded, but they are likely to become so when they lose funds that have been directed to them through court-ordered desegregation decrees. For those minority districts already funded below average, as well as for those that will soon fall into that category, school finance reform is of obvious importance. Parts II and III accordingly assess the performance of minority districts in school finance litigation and reform. In Part II, I examine how predominantly minority districts have fared when they have been involved in school finance litigation, and in Part III, I examine legislative responses to court decisions. Based on this examination, I conclude that race does appear to play an influential role in school finance litigation and legislative reform, and in Part IV, I discuss in some detail the academic, historical, and practical implications of this conclusion.

A brief caveat is in order before proceeding. It seems clear from the evidence examined that minority districts -- particularly urban minority districts -- do not fare well in school finance litigation, and it seems reasonable to conclude that race is playing an influential role in determining outcomes. I would be the first to acknowledge, however, the limitations of my approach: there are a number of factors not related to race that cause plaintiffs to lose in court and that cause legislators to respond quickly or slowly to court orders, and I cannot pretend to have controlled for those numerous factors. The brush I am using is too broad. This Article thus represents a first look at the evidence and an invitation to those with the appropriate analytical skills to take a closer inspection of the data. In the meantime, however, the patterns noted below should enter the conversation about the future of school finance reform, the dismantling of desegregation decrees, and the financial implications of returning to or promoting majority-minority schools.

1. MYTHS AND REALITIES REGARDING RACE AND SCHOOL FUNDING

   Most black students -- roughly two-thirds -- attend elementary and secondary school in central city districts. Most central city districts, in turn, are populated primarily by minority students -- generally African-American and Hispanic. These students are also disproportionately poor, and they generally perform below average on standardized tests.(11) Poor students have greater educational needs and require more resources to educate than do affluent students.(12) Schools dominated by poor students will therefore usually be more expensive to operate than schools populated by middle- and upper-income students. In addition, because of generally higher costs in urban areas, as opposed to rural or suburban areas, inner city schools are typically more expensive to operate.(13) The greater needs of poor children, coupled with the greater costs of operating urban schools, virtually guarantee that urban schools will have to spend more than average simply to provide average educational opportunities.

   Although there is general agreement regarding the higher costs of educating poor children, particularly poor children in urban districts, there is much discord concerning the relationship between expenditures and achievement. An intense debate is raging within the education policy world regarding the extent to which we can expect resources to improve the academic achievement of urban minority students.(14) For purposes of this Article, I would like to put this debate to one side and assume that resources will help these students. The question that I would like to address instead is the likelihood that students in predominantly minority districts will receive resources sufficient to provide an adequate education.(15) A natural starting point for this inquiry is an examination of current expenditure levels in predominantly minority districts.

   It is easy to imagine, perhaps too easy, that predominantly minority schools are also the most poorly funded. This is the impression left by Jonathan Kozol's Savage Inequalities, a well-known and searing -- but largely anecdotal -- account of high poverty, urban...