Education Week - March 6, 2019 - 4

United States Spends $23 Billion More
On White Districts Than Nonwhite Ones
Despite decades of court fights and countless state
and local political battles, a $23 billion gap remains
between the amount of money spent on predominately white school districts and predominately nonwhite ones, says a report by EdBuild, an advocacy
organization that pushes for equitable spending.
Although school funding advocates have been
making that point for some time, few national organizations have cited the disparity in such a stark
and dramatic way nor attempted to place a dollar
figure to the gap in spending.
For its study, EdBuild added up all the local and
state tax revenue spent in the 2015-16 school year
on districts that are more than 75 percent white and
on districts that are more than 75 percent nonwhite.
The authors found that, on average, the nonwhite
districts get $2,226 less funding per student than
the white districts. It found that the high--poverty
nonwhite districts receive $1,487 less per student
than the high-poverty white districts.
Some state policymakers, however, take issue with
the group's methodology. EdBuild, for example, did
not include charter schools, schools on Native American reservations, or states with racially monolithic
populations, such as Idaho. They also did not weigh
districts' size in order to figure out how geography
and district borders affect school resources.

-DAAREL BURNETTE II

Adam Beam/AP

NEWS IN BRIEF

Student Lobby

Florida High Court Approves Request
For Grand Jury Probe of School Safety

Republican state Sen.
Brandon Smith, along
with students from
Johnson County Middle
School, speaks to a
legislative committee in
Frankfort, Ky., last week.
The students asked
lawmakers to pass a bill
that would set up an
anonymous tip line for
students to report when
other students are vaping
or using e-cigarettes at
school.

The Florida supreme court has ordered a statewide grand jury with a broad mandate to investigate
school safety.
In addition, the panel will investigate whether
school districts or other agencies fraudulently accepted state school safety money, then failed to act,
and whether school officials illegally underreported
criminal incidents to the state.
The court acted in response to a Feb. 13 request
from Gov. Ron DeSantis, who asked for the grand
jury the day before the one-year anniversary of the
Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre.
The focus of the grand jury's work is broad, but
its intent is clear. In the aftermath of the Stoneman
Douglas massacre, in which 17 people were killed
and 17 injured, family members of those killed have
pushed for more accountability than they say has
been shown by the Broward County school board
and Superintendent Robert Runcie.-TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

Supreme Court Tosses Equal-Pay Ruling,
Citing Death of Appellate Judge
The U.S. Supreme Court last week threw out a
major ruling over gender-based pay discrimination
in education, saying that a federal appeals court
had improperly counted the vote of a recently deceased judge when it held that prior salary may not
justify a difference in pay between male and female
workers doing the same job.
The high court said the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the 9th Circuit erred when it issued an opinion written by Judge Stephen R. Reinhardt 11 days
after his death at age 87.
Reinhardt's vote was critical in the appeals
court's decision that under the Equal Pay Act of
1963, an employer does not have a valid defense
under the statute if it bases an employee's starting
salary entirely on her prior pay.
The 9th Circuit's decision had come in the case of
Aileen Rizo, a former math teacher who was hired
in 2009 by the Fresno County, Calif., office of educa-

Report Roundup

tion as a math consultant. She later learned that
her male colleagues had been hired as math consultants at higher steps on the office's salary scale.
The Supreme Court vacated the 9th Circuit's decision and returned the case to that court.

-MARK WALSH

Baltimore School Board Reverses
Decision on Arming School Police
Just weeks after a school shooting in Baltimore,
the city's school board last week reversed its initial rejection of legislation that would have allowed
armed school police officers.
Debate was revived after a shooting that wounded
a high school special education assistant on Feb. 8.
Police have said a student's 25-year-old relative, Neil
Davis, entered Frederick Douglass High School that
day and shot Michael Marks, who survived.
Baltimore has a sworn school police force that
can be armed during patrols outside school buildings and hours but must store weapons during the
school day.
-ASSOCIATED PRESS

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FEWER STUDENTS 'DISENGAGE' FROM SCHOOL, WORK
Fewer young adults of most racial and ethnic groups are "disengaged"-neither enrolled
in school nor working-today, finds a study by Junior Achievement.

Non-Hispanic White

2000
2017

Hispanic

Non-Hispanic Black

25
24

Non-Hispanic American Indian & Alaska Native
Non-Hispanic Asian/Non-Hispanic
Other Pacific Islander

Non-Hispanic Two or More Races

Non-Hispanic Other

SOURCE: Junior Achievement's analysis of data from U.S. Census Bureau

4 | EDUCATION WEEK | March 6, 2019 | www.edweek.org

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15

ARTS EDUCATION
"Investigating Causal Effects of Arts Education
Experiences: Experimental Evidence from
Houston's Arts Access Initiative"
Arts experiences can reduce disciplinary infractions, increase students' engagement, and
improve writing skills, says a new study by the
Rice Kinder Institute for Urban Research.
Forty-two Houston schools, representing
more than 10,500 students in grades 3-8, were
assigned by lottery to take part in the Arts Access Initiative, through which schools receive
influxes of arts education via community partnerships, local art organizations, cultural institutions, and teaching artists.
Researchers found schools that increased
students' access to arts education had 3.6
percentage points fewer students receiving
disciplinary infractions, 0.13 of a standard deviation higher writing performance on Texas
state tests, and significantly higher scores on

a survey of students' sense of compassion for
others.
-SASHA JONES
SCHOOL FINANCE
"Sharing the Wealth: How Regional Finance and
Desegregation Plans Can Enhance Educational
Equity"
Regional desegregation plans can help close
racial and socioeconomic disparities between
neighboring school districts, finds a new report
by the Learning Policy Institute.
Using case studies from regional plans in
Boston; Hartford, Conn.; and Omaha, Neb., it
found early evidence that interdistrict plans
can close racial performance gaps and reduce
concentrations of minority and poor students.
For example, a regional governance system for
11 Omaha-area districts led to a common tax
levy, the development of popular new magnet
schools, and significantly higher math and
reading performance for low-income students

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Education Week - March 6, 2019

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