Causes of Inequity in the Allocation of School Resources

IN THE LAST TWO DECADES public education in the United States has been heavily criticized. Both parents and taxpayers have been dissatisfied with the cost, the quality and the distribution of educational services. Perhaps no single issue has been more controversial than the one of equality of educational opportunity. Court rulings since 1954 have resulted in the elimination of dual school systems, the restructuring of state aid to education, and the reallocation of school district funds.1 Attempts to deal with the increased concern with equality have been made more difficult by the limitation on funds available for educational purposes. Urban areas have been particularly pressured by these forces. Many central cities are facing declining or stagnant tax bases and suburban governments have seen an increase in competition for public funds. Advancing tax rates to circumvent these pressures has met with increased resistance on the part of the taxpayer. This means that public officials are being forced to divide and re-divide a pie whose size has not grown in proportion to the demands upon it. This is particularly true in urban school districts. In these districts, the legal battle over equal educational opportunity has focused attention on the distribution of resources among public schools with different socioeconomic populations. Resource allocation has been used as a measure of educational opportunity because these inputs can be quantified and their distribution is subject to manipulation by school administrators. Although a number of studies have revealed that resources are not equally distributed, there is no consensus on the cause of the observed inequities. It is very difficult to change the pattern of resource allocation if the underlying cause of those patterns is not known. This paper examines alternative explanations and attempts to test them by use of data collected in an urban school district.