Critical School Finance

In this paper, we put forth a framework called Critical School Finance, articulating the framework itself and then applying it to school facilities finance. First, we go back to first principles and discuss what 'critical' denotes, revisiting critical theorist Max Horkheimer's seminal essay 'Traditional vs. Critical Theory.' Second, we offer five central concepts with which a Critical School Finance framework might be composed: inequity/inequality, dispossession, kleptocracy, extraction/super-expropriation, and racial capitalism. Third, we present examples of Critical School Finance scholarship from the arena of school facilities. We conclude with the suggestion that school finance is not aloof from the warp and woof of injustice, struggle, and power, and that critical education researchers should not shy away from the examination thereof; recommending that scholars across disciplines engage with the typically technical details of school finance from a critical perspective.