The Education Law Center lists the most fiscally distressed districts in the nation. You will note that one of them is Shelby County, Tennessee, where the Gates Foundation and Stand for Children expended a great deal of effort to introduce charters and district consolidation as a mini-bandaid to the district’s financial problems. The Gates Foundation paid to bring in the Boston Consulting Group to offer advice a few years back on merging districts, not on how to solve its fiscal problems. The Gates Foundation gave Shelby County a grant of $90 million over seven years to improve teacher quality. Yet Gates never addressed the basic fiscal disadvantage of the district. Presumably he thought that if he could VAM the teachers, then the test scores would go up, and the district’s budget would not matter. But it does matter. Once again, the Gates Foundation proved that it addresses the wrong problems and diverts attention from the need for a fair tax code that would reduce the billions accumulated by people like Bill Gates!
ELC RELEASES 2017 LIST OF NATION’S MOST FISCALLY DISADVANTAGED SCHOOL DISTRICTS
47 Districts in 20 States
Education Law Center released today the 2017 list of the most financially strapped public school districts in the nation. The 2017 list includes 47 school districts in 20 states, with every region of the country represented. Over 1.5 million children are educated in these districts, attending underfunded schools under severe fiscal distress.
The report – “America’s Most Fiscally Disadvantaged School Districts” - identifies school districts across the country with higher than average student need and lower than average funding when compared to other districts in their regional labor market.
“A district’s funding level relative to other districts in the same labor market is perhaps the most important factor in whether schools have the resources they need, including effective teachers,” said Dr. Bruce Baker of the Rutgers Graduate School of Education and a co-author of the report. “School districts must compete for teachers and support staff, the largest share of any district’s budget. Districts are fiscally disadvantaged if they don’t have the funding to offer competitive wages and comparable working conditions relative to nearby districts and other professions.”
Among the report’s key findings are:
Sumter, South Carolina, and Shelby County, Tennessee, face extreme fiscal conditions, with nearly 3 times area poverty rates and less than 84 and 83 percent, respectively, of the average state and local revenue per pupil. School funding levels in Tennessee and South Carolina are among the lowest in the nation.
Reading and Allentown, Pennsylvania, are also in extreme distress, with nearly 2.5 times area poverty rates and below 80 percent of the average state and local revenue per pupil.
Chicago and Philadelphia are again the most fiscally disadvantaged large urban districts in the nation. Illinois and Pennsylvania have a highly regressive school funding systems, marked by wide funding disparities between low and high poverty districts.
California has the highest number of fiscally disadvantaged districts.
Massachusetts has a relatively progressive funding system, but Lowell is severely disadvantaged with a poverty rate 2.6 times higher than surrounding areas and only 83 percent of the average state and local revenue per pupil.
Connecticut has four districts on the list, while Michigan and Arizona have three fiscally disadvantaged districts.
“These findings again show that Governors and Legislatures in far too many states stubbornly resist investing in K - 12 education so all children have the resources needed to succeed in school,” said David Sciarra, ELC Executive Director and a report co-author. “The states with districts on this list chronically underfund their poorest schools, leaving behind thousands of vulnerable children. This is our national hall of shame.”
America’s Most Fiscally Disadvantaged School Districts is a companion report to Is School Funding Fair? A National Report Card. For the complete Report Card, please visit: http://www.schoolfundingfairness.org
Education Law Center Press Contact:
Sharon Krengel
Policy and Outreach Director
skrengel@edlawcenter.org
973-624-1815, x 24
Diane Ravitch's blog 
You said it all, Diane, “Once again, the Gates Foundation proved that it addresses the wrong problems and diverts attention from the need for a fair tax code that would reduce the billions accumulated by people like Bill Gates!”
But shouldn’t Bill Gates be allowed to circumvent the tax codes because he does such great things with all of his money (sarcasm!). Talk about a man who is a malignant narcissist. You wonder why there isn’t a cozy relationship between Gates and Trump?…they are too much alike and they threaten each other.
Lisa,
You are right! Bingo.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education.
Are any of you following the information on college remediation?
Ed reform uses college remediation rates as proof that K-12 public schools are failing. But aren’t college remediation determinations made on the basis of a standardized test?
What if the test is pushing too many into remediation, as seems more and more likely?
What if the issue is not K-12 schools but instead colleges relying too much on remediation sorting schemes?
What if ed reformers love of “data” blinded them to what seems like an obvious question to me- is it K-12 schools or is it colleges? Why did everyone assume the remediation sorting was accurate?
Both Gates and DeVos are examples of big money dictating policy by buying our representatives. With politicized public education, public schools are subjected to the whims of billionaires. This never would have happened if people like Clinton hadn’t passed laws to toss public schools into the free market free for all.
I appreciate the work of the Education Law Center and Rutgers for analyzing our antiquated methods of funding education. I only wish they had some authority to make the flat and regressive funding states to change their funding systems to provide more equitable funding methods.
What law did Clinton pass to put schools into the free market. Which Clinton? When?
Bill Clinton incentivized the establishment of charters with his New Market Tax Credits. Both Bill and Hillary were involved in TFA as well.
View at Medium.com
The map of states showing fairness is totally baffling. No key, no indication of what the scores or the color coding means, if anything.
Not helpful.
I am constantly amazed that despite knowing how there is a correlation between parents socio-economic position and a students performance, that schools are not equally funded. How does it make sense to have schools partially funded by the district and the taxes collected in that area? Historically, the schools reflect the area they are in, so why are we not trying to support the schools in districts that have a lower economic demographic? Sure, foundation donations certainly help, but its time for a revolution in school funding.
Another thing to consider is the idea of “word poverty”. Maryanne Wolf, in “The Proust and the Squid” says, “in a survey of three communities in Los Angeles, there were startling differences in how many books were available to children. In the most underprivileged community, no children’s books were found in the homes; in the low-income to middle-income community there were, on average, three books; and in the affluent community there were around 200 books” (Wolf 103). If children in underprivileged communities are not in a word-rich environment at home, then the schools should definitely encourage that environment, however, without the funds, they may not be able to. Another study by Andrew Biemiller “finds that children who come to kindergarten in the bottom twenty-fifth percentile of vocabulary generally remain behind the other children in both vocabulary and reading comprehension. By grade 6 approximately three full grades separate them from their average peers in both vocabulary and reading comprehension; they are even more dramatically behind children whose vocabulary in kindergarten was at or above the seventy-fifth percentile. In other words, the interrelatedness of vocabulary development and later reading comprehension makes the slow growth of vocabulary in these early years far more ominous than it appears when viewed as one unfortunate phenomenon” (Wolf 103).
There are many other examples that show the impact of income and location on the school and performance of students. We need to support these schools more and solve the problem of “fiscally disadvantaged districts” to adequately help our students with any future endeavor, particularly preparing them for college and careers.