Comparable, Schmomparable
Evidence of Inequity in the Allocation of Funds for Teacher Salary Within California’s Public School Districts
Students work in the computer lab at the at the Dean L. Shively School in South El Monte, California.
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Event: Lifting the Fog of Averages
Inequity haunts U.S. public school finance. Some federal programs are demonstrably unfair in allocating funds to states, and there prevails in many states a negative relationship between the rate of student poverty in school districts and the amount of per student revenues made available by the state funding formula. There is also reason to believe that the distribution of funds to schools within districts systematically disfavors schools serving the highest concentrations of low-income students. The reason is that funds follow teacher experience. Teacher salary, the largest category of school expenditure, is tightly linked to seniority, which also confers transfer privileges. Teachers tend to exercise these privileges t