Statewide Voucher (tuition tax credit scholarship) Program: Diverting Funds from failing Traditional Public Schools

A statewide voucher or tuition tax credit scholarship program providing a tuition grant of $10,000 annually to any student attending a failing local public school district, which can be applied to any private religious or independent school, lacks educational equity and does not provide an equal educational opportunity for all students. Asymmetric information would adversely affect voucher users. Not all students have equal knowledge of or access to desirable private religious or independent schools. Private religious or independent schools may not be equitably available within a 20 mile radius. Tax credits disproportionately benefit the affluent and would result in the public subsidizing the voucher program. The voucher program provides an unequal opportunity for students to attend a private or religious school potentially providing a higher quality education. Moreover, state subsidies of religious schools violate the constitutional separation of church and state.

The voucher plan would divert scarce state funds from failing TPSs to private and religious schools. Failing districts are often found in poor urban areas. The failing schools, from which the voucher students would transfer, would lose enrollment based state and federal aid. These failing districts may be poor performing districts because they were traditionally under-resourced districts. These districts may have become failing because they lacked the property tax base with which to generate the revenues necessary to provide an educational quality commensurate with affluent districts. State and federal governments may have contributed to the under-resourcing by providing aid that neither funded all students’ needs nor accounted for the lack of a proper tax base.

A $10,000 tuition grant is inequitable. A $10,000 grant may be less than the per pupil cost for religious schools and independent schools’ tuition. If private religious or independent schools cannot reject potential voucher students even for lack of capacity, who pays the difference between the $10,000 tuition grant and religious schools’ per pupil cost or independent schools’ tuition creates inequities. Affluent parents could more easily afford to pay the delta while requiring all parents to pay the delta would disenfranchise low income and poor parents.

If private religious or independent schools are given no discretion on whether they can afford to accept voucher students, these schools might be forced to close, expand even if expansion was uneconomical, or create a two-tiered tuition scenario within the school with non-voucher students paying higher tuition to offset the voucher deficit. Should private independent schools have discretion, they might admit only voucher students whose parents were willing to pay the delta, fail undesirable voucher students (e.g., disciplinary records), or refuse voucher students that were more expensive to educate such as special education, ELL, and free-and-reduced-price lunch creating more inequities. Moreover, many religious schools are already financially distressed while others are closing due to budgetary pressures (see Baker, 2010).

Copying a practice common to professional sports, the voucher program would create student “free agents” who would have an opportunity to attend a private or religious school potentially providing a higher quality education. If the program did not require voucher students to attend their chosen school for the full academic year, these free agents could use their vouchers to transfer to another school midyear. Private or religious schools losing free agent voucher students during the year would lose voucher revenue. These schools would experience increased costs especially if they had hired additional personnel or built more classrooms and other facilities to accommodate voucher students.

If no deadline exists by which voucher students must enroll such as by April before the upcoming school year, enrollment would be difficult to forecast exposing operating budgets to greater risk. If private religious or independent schools are given no discretion on accepting vouchers students, the more desirable of these schools could suffer overcrowding and congestion. These problems could cause free agent voucher and more mobile non-voucher students to depart during the year exacerbating operating and financial problems. Housing values might plummet commensurate with increased school overcrowding. Also, enrollment increases stemming from vouchers might not be equally distributed among schools or by grade level.

If no provision is made to provide equally accessible and affordable transportation, vouchers would disproportionately benefit the affluent who can more easily afford transportation. Not all students would have equal access to private or public transportation including public light rail. If the failing school district was required to provide or pay for voucher student transportation, failing school costs would increase especially if transportation expenses were not capped.

Failing school neighborhoods or districts depress housing values because poor school quality is negatively capitalized in housing values. Low assessed housing values keep district property values low. Those who can vote with their feet move to districts providing housing and schools that better meet their preferences. White or middle class flight exacerbates the decline of neighborhoods as jobs and capital exit with them. Taxpayers are investors who want their major asset, their home, to appreciate in value. Home owners or catchment area residents have a vested interest in the success of their local TPSs because they strive to offset the risks posed by vouchers to their community-specific social capital and property values which cannot be easily diversified.

The voucher plan subsidizes private religious or independent schools at the expense of traditionally under resourced failing TPSs. The voucher plan is not a means for improving failing schools. On the contrary, the voucher plan creates a triple assault on failing TPSs. First, the voucher plan diverts essential funds away from needy TPSs. Second, the voucher plan causes failing TPSs losing voucher students to lose state and federal enrollment based aid. Third, failing TPSs’ costs increase because costs do not decrease proportionately with lost enrollment. The more mobile and affluent voucher students may be more likely to use vouchers. Losing voucher students increases the proportions of those more expensive to educate remaining in the failing TPSs increasing costs.

If vouchers were used to their logical extreme perhaps with full funding and transportation, large high poverty urban areas could lose students to the extent that the traditional public education system would close leaving a skeletal district. Lacking true TPSs, housing values might plummet further eroding the tax base and increasing the exodus of the remaining relatively more mobile and affluent taxpayers. Neighborhood erosion would accelerate driving out businesses and employment. If taken to the extreme, an unfettered voucher plan could culminate in the demise of urban areas with a preponderance of failing schools.

The provision of education through local public school districts in which students who live in the district attend its TPSs enables community members to get to know and understand one another. Fischel (2002) argues this “reduces the transaction costs of citizen provision of true local public goods” such as public education (p. 1). The public benefit of children attending their local schools rather than schools in more remote areas accrues to the families living in the catchment areas. This “network of adult acquaintances,” that Fischel (2002) defines as “community-specific social capital,” would be reduced to the extent voucher students left their residential district.

The publicness of local public schools is an argument against vouchers in the following sense. By enabling parents to select schools outside their communities and outside of local public supervision, vouchers work against the neighborhood and community networks that facilitate the bottom-up provision of local public goods. Community-specific social capital is more difficult to form if members of the community send their children to schools in other communities. (p. 1)

Vouchers erode community-specific social capital and, thereby, the public support necessary for proper public funding of public education.

References

Baker, B. D. (2010, March 23). Would $8,000 scholarships help sustain NJ private schools? [Web log post]. Retrieved from http://schoolfinance101.wordpress.com/2010/3/23/would_$8,000_scholarships_help_sustain_NJ_private_schools?

Fischel, W. A. (2002). An economic case against vouchers:  Why local public schools are a local public good. Dartmouth Economics Department Working Paper:  Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH.

 

Chartering In New Jersey: Diverting Funds from failing Traditional Public Schools

Increasing charter school availability would increase charter school market share of total district enrollment. Although charter schools would draw students from independent, private, and religious schools, charter school growth would result in many traditional public school (TPS) student transfers. Charter schools would draw students primarily from those TPSs that parents believe are providing an inferior educational quality or that do not meet their preferences.

Charter schools would divert funds from TPSs if charter schools receive 90% of the host district average per pupil costs by grade as charter schools do in New Jersey. TPSs losing students to charter schools lose state and federal enrollment based aid. TPSs’ costs increase because costs do not decrease proportionately with lost enrollment. If charter schools receive host district revenues based on a formula similar to New Jersey’s, charter schools would be given the incentive to locate in districts with high average per pupil spending and to enroll students whose cost to educate is below the district’s average.

Charter school expansion would draw students from religious schools possibly forcing some religious schools to close or merge. The influx of students who previously attended religious schools would increase the proportion of total district enrollment in public schools whether charter or TPS. This would increase the overall cost to the district of having charter schools because a greater proportion of students would be enrolled in public schools whether charter or TPS.

Charter schools could lower their costs while increasing the proportion of the higher cost to educate students remaining in TPSs by cream skimming in potential high test scoring, well behaving (e.g., no disciplinary records), or below district average cost to educate students or cropping out higher than district average cost to educate students such as special education, ELL, or free-and-reduced-price lunch students. Charter schools may not locate randomly but target large urban districts with high per pupil spending. District enrollment losses stemming from charter school transfers might not be equally distributed among schools or by grade level. Thus, charter school expansion would result in an inequitable distribution of school resources. The inequity would be exacerbated because large urban districts have been traditionally under resourced by state school aid formulas and lack a tax base with which to raise the revenues necessary to provide an educational quality commensurate with affluent districts.

If state charter school laws require TPS districts to fully fund district charter schools and pay student transportation to charter schools, large poor urban areas could lose even more students further increasing their costs and decreasing state and federal enrollment based aid. If no provision is made to provide equally accessible and affordable transportation, charter schools might disproportionately enroll more affluent students from families who can more easily afford transportation. Not all students would have equal access to private or public transportation including public light rail. This would result in inequitable access to charter schools.

Asymmetric information might favor more affluent families who would be more aware of charter school availability and quality. TPS catchment areas losing students to charter schools in other neighborhoods even within the same district might experience an exodus of the relatively more mobile and affluent parents with a corresponding decrease in housing values. If carried to its logical extreme, unfettered charter school growth could force TPS or TPS district closures leaving neighborhoods or districts without true TPSs.

Should charter schools exit the district or close once TPSs have closed, districts would be left without the provision of true public education. Lacking public schools, districts would be forced to transport their students to other TPS districts or seek admission to non-district charter schools depending on available capacity. The impact of extreme charter school expansion would result in an inequitable distribution, accessibility, and availability of public education whether charter schools or TPSs. The inequity would most adversely affect those least able to afford or having limited access to education alternatives.

 

Redistributing Statewide Taxes on Non-residential Properties: No Guarantee of Educational Funding Equity

Imposing statewide taxation of nonresidential properties and redistributing these pooled property tax revenues aims to reduce the per pupil tax base variation across communities that results in inequitable per pupil expenditures, inequitable educational resource distributions, and unequal educational opportunities. Property tax based inequities enable affluent districts’ to raise property tax revenues above state minimums and above the levels poor districts can raise. Affluent districts have an unfair advantage to provide an educational quality superior to poor districts resulting from their superior property tax base. Students in poor districts attend under resourced schools that lack the means with which to provide an educational quality commensurate with affluent districts.

A policy change that reduces the positive correlation between expenditures and ability to pay or that weakens the negative relationship between expenditures and the fraction of poor families in the community will be judged to be moving in the direction of a more equitable distribution of education services. (Ladd, 1976, p. 145)

Thus, property tax based inequities result in educational inequities and unequal educational opportunities among districts.

However, imposing statewide taxation of nonresidential properties and redistributing the statewide pooled nonresidential property tax revenues creates inequities. Disparities in per pupil property wealth and local property tax revenues causing inequities in per pupil expenditures would remain unless the redistribution of pooled nonresidential property tax revenues equalized per pupil expenditures among TPSs and districts. Total pooled nonresidential property tax revenues may be insufficient to equalize per pupil expenditures without additional state funding.

Commercial and industrial properties may be unequally distributed throughout the state creating inequities. Some districts may have a disproportionately large share of commercial and industrial properties with high assessed values. Replacing these districts’ nonresidential property tax revenues with lower statewide uniform property tax revenue would reduce their ability to provide the resources necessary for a quality education leading to a reduction in per pupil expenditures. Inequities would result to the degree that reductions were not based on a district’s ability to pay for the provision of quality education.

A statewide uniform nonresidential property tax creates inequities because property assessment practices can vary by region or county. Differences in property assessment practices result in different valuations of similar properties that are not a function of market forces among districts, regions, or counties. Nonresidential property tax abatements create inequities for the commercial and industrial businesses enjoying them if canceled by the state, and create problems for the statewide pooled property tax revenues should municipalities award abatements following the imposition of the statewide tax which the state could not cancel.

Inequities would be created depending on the proportions of local school, municipal, county, and nonresidential property taxes before imposition of the statewide tax. Districts relying disproportionately on residential property taxes or without nonresidential property taxes would receive incremental statewide nonresidential property tax revenues. Districts relying disproportionately on nonresidential property taxes most likely would experience a reduction in nonresidential property tax revenues that would shift the property tax burden to residential properties. Districts with disproportionately high shares of non-taxable properties (e.g., houses of worship, governmental facilities, universities, and parks) and nonresidential properties would experience a significant property tax burden shift to residential properties. Increasing the tax burden disproportionately on residential properties would lower housing values causing the relatively more mobile or affluent homeowners to move to districts meeting their preferences.

Imposing statewide taxation of nonresidential properties and redistributing the pooled nonresidential property tax revenue would not eliminate educational inequities stemming from property wealth inequality unless the redistribution equalized the ability to pay for education among districts statewide. Property tax based inequities would remain because affluent districts would retain the ability to raise property tax revenues above poor districts’ maximum levels. Affluent districts would continue their unfair advantage of providing an educational quality superior to poor districts because of their superior tax base. Poor districts may be under resourced because they lack the tax base necessary to provide an educational quality commensurate with affluent districts. Although redistributing statewide uniform property tax revenues would reduce per pupil expenditure disparities, the redistribution is unlikely to achieve educational equity by itself as Ladd (1979) concluded from her study of the Boston SMSA.

Without the assurance of a highly redistributive aid program, however, the equity case for removing business property from the local tax base in the Boston SMSA, where equity is defined in terms of the pattern of education expenditures, is a weak one.  (p. 149)

Thus, additional state revenues would be necessary to equalize per pupil expenditures, the ability to fund district education equitably, and equalize educational opportunities.

References

Ladd, H. F. (1976). State-wide taxation of commercial and industrial property for education. National Tax Journal, 29(2), 143-153.

 

Increasing State Equalization Aid 10%: No Guarantee of Equitable Educational Funding

Although increasing state equalization aid 10% would improve the distribution of education funding and local fiscal capacity, state equalization aid does not ensure equitable funding at levels commensurate with affluent districts. This approach tries to ensure equal local property tax burden and more equal total educational funding benefitting districts with low local fiscal capacity. However, state equalization aid does not achieve equity with affluent districts spending at higher levels. State equalization aid improves housing in traditionally low property value per pupil districts by improving the resources the district needs to provide an improved educational quality. The higher quality education provided by the district is capitalized improving property values. Although state equalization aid programs can lead to greater per pupil spending in traditionally under resourced districts, state equalization aid programs can result in lower average per pupil spending or a leveling down (Hoxby, 2001).

Typical state equalization aid programs have caps on the amount of state aid a district can receive which disadvantage economically challenged districts. Caps prevent the provision of a high level of equal educational opportunity stemming from equitable allocation of educational funds. Caps set below the per pupil aid level necessary to equitably fund education commensurate with affluent districts function like foundation aid programs. Metzler (2003) found that various approaches to improving equity in state aid including flat grants, foundation grants, percent equalization aid, guaranteed tax base, guaranteed yield, and full state funding result in no significant difference in the equitable distribution of education resources among districts. Metzler (2003) summarized “that while a state’s school finance approach is unrelated to equity outcome measures, it is significantly related to both the total spending per pupil and the percentage of that spending that comes from the state (rather than local districts)” (p. 588). Metzler (2003) concluded that “Percentage equalizing programs … are mathematically equivalent to a flat grant approach if states impose a ceiling on equalizing aid” (p. 591).

States often distribute aid using various approaches in addition to their state school funding formula which can offset programs intended to increase the equitable distribution of resources. Metzler (2003) describes how New York State manipulates its state school funding formula which uses a percentage equalizing approach to such an extent that the approach becomes “functionally equivalent to a foundation program” (p. 592). New York State’s school funding formula manipulation results in “one of the most inequitable allocations of resources in the country, with a wealth neutrality score of .17 (5^th highest in country) and a coefficient of variation of .20 (2^nd highest in the country)” (Metzler, 2003, p. 593). Thus, New York State reduces its state school funding formula to a minimal adequacy level with a basic guaranteed state funding level that is relatively constant for all districts regardless of aggregate student need.

References

Hoxby, C. M. (2001). All school finance equalizations are not created equal. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 116(4), 1189-1231.

Metzler, J. (2003). Inequitable equilibrium:  School finance in the United States. Indiana Law Review, (36)3, 561-608.

 

End Educational Redlining to Achieve Educational Equity and Equal Opportunity

Redlining is the racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic status place-based financial and institutional exclusionary practices used to exploit targeted groups. Traditional redlining denies or limits access to essential public and private sector goods and services, and capital especially mortgages to targeted groups based on race, socioeconomic status, and place of residency while making public and private sector goods and services, and capital especially mortgages more available in more racially homogeneous, White neighborhoods (Aalbers, 2011; Squires & Kubrin, 2005). Thus, redlining causes the disinvestment of targeted areas often having disproportionate concentrations of poverty and racial and ethnic minorities (Aalbers, 2011; Squires & Kubrin, 2005). Redlining undermines local housing markets lowering property values and erodes tax bases causing the more affluent and mobile residents to leave. Redlining often culminates in neighborhood abandonment that ultimately deteriorates communities.

The Home Owners Loan Corporation (HOLC) was created to refinance urban mortgages and make low interest loans to owners of foreclosed real estate. HOLC is often blamed for the institutionalization of redlining through its creation of a loan risk rating system that used residential maps to indicate the risk of providing capital especially mortgages and making real estate investments by neighborhood. The rating system had four categories of risk assigned the colors green, blue, yellow, and red. Map areas ranged from those colored green, contained within green lines, or “greenlined” with low to negligible risk and high profit potential compared to areas colored red, contained within red lines, or “redlined” with high risk and low profit potential (Aalbers, 2011; Jackson, 1985; Sharp, 2008; Squires & Kubrin, 2005). Thus, HOLC’s rating system established a legacy of neighborhood property values, housing, and residential compositional patterns.

HOLC’s rating system especially its appraisal process had racial, ethnic, and religious components. These components restricted greenlining to homogenous, affluent, White Christian areas, and bluelining applied to stable neighborhoods often including Jewish communities with relatively high socioeconomic status (Aalbers, 2011; Jackson, 1985; Sharp, 2008; Squires & Kubrin, 2005). Yellowlining applied to economically declining areas with relatively poor quality housing, deteriorating infrastructure, low socioeconomic status, and concentrations of racial and ethnic minorities while redlined area residents, who were disproportionately members of high poverty and minority groups especially African Americans living in poor quality houses, were denied access to financial services and mortgages (Aalbers, 2011; Carr & Kutty, 2008; Freund, 2010; Sharp, 2008; Squires, 2003; Squires & Kubrin, 2005).

Although traditional redlining involves denying, limiting access to, or arbitrarily increasing the cost of capital particularly mortgages to residents within targeted geographic areas, educational redlining applies to public school funding. Educational redlining applies traditional redlining’s practices to public school finance without traditional redlining’s four color geographic coding scheme. Educational redlining is the school finance exclusionary practices that result in the disinvestment of traditionally underserved and under-resourced traditional public schools (TPSs) and districts.

Educational redlining occurs when state funding formulae are not based on the total cost of educating each student. Current state funding formulae do not provide funding in formulaic coordination with local and federal funding. Thus, economically challenged districts lack the funding necessary to provide a quality education commensurate with the most affluent districts. State funding formulae do not fully account for the property wealth and income gap among affluent and poor districts; therefore, do not provide the funding necessary to close the fiscal capacity gap among affluent and poor districts. Instead, state formulae typically provide minimally adequate funding levels that maintain inequitable resource gaps.

Educational redlining denies students living in redlined (i.e., poor) districts equal access to an education commensurate with the quality of education provided by greenlined (i.e., affluent) districts. Redlined districts’ lower educational quality is negatively capitalized in housing values undermining housing markets, property values, and tax bases. This leads to a self-perpetuating adverse cycle in which redlined neighborhoods’ do not have the tax base necessary to properly fund education locally which increases reliance on state and federal aid. However, state and federal funding typically does not fund the full cost to educate all students because of inequitable state and federal formulae. Instead, state funding typically aims to achieve adequacy in funding levels rather than an equitable educational resource allocation among schools and districts.

Like traditional redlining, educational redlining is place-based and adversely affects many of the same communities suffering traditional redlining’s legacy. Educational redlining typically affects urban districts with large concentrations of poverty and racial and ethnic minorities. High poverty districts require more per pupil resources than low poverty districts to provide the same quality education. Thus, educational redlining results in the disinvestment of traditionally under-resourced districts lowering the educational quality provided.

To stop educational redlining, each district should receive the combined local, state, and federal funding to fully cover district educational costs, and account for the district’s fiscal capacity and cumulative educational redlining legacy. State formulaic aid that under funds redlined districts lacking fiscal capacity perpetuates the decline or stagnation of property values, tax bases, and local economies. An equitable state funding formula should account for differences in student education costs and different districts’ differential ability to provide and pay for a quality education.

Current state funding formulae and legislative approaches do not significantly improve educational equity and equal opportunity. Supporting this lack of educational equity and equal opportunity, Metzler (2003) found “no connection can be made between a state’s basic approach to education finance and the equality of educational opportunity provided to students” (p. 564). Although flat grants, foundation grants, percent equalization aid, guaranteed tax base, guaranteed tax yield, and full state funding provide some degree of wealth equalization, these funding approaches make little difference in the equity of their outcomes (Metzler, 2003). Metzler (2003) draws this conclusion despite Coons, Clune, and Sugarman (1970) designing the guaranteed tax base and guaranteed tax yield to achieve wealth neutrality. Metzler (2003) concludes that “almost no characteristic of a state’s school finance program—not even the basic funding approach—was significantly correlated with equity measures” (p. 586). Thus, inequities result from disparities in state school finance formulae especially among affluent and poor schools and districts.

 

 

References

 

Aalbers, M. B. (2011). Place, exclusion, and mortgage markets. Malden, MA:  Wiley-Blackwell.

Carr, J. H., & Kutty, N. K. (2008). Segregation. New York, NY:  Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group.

Coons, J. E., Sugarman, S. D., & Clune, W. H. (1970). Private wealth and public education. Cambridge, MA:  Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.

Freund, D. M. P. (2010). Colored property. Chicago, IL:  University of Chicago Press.

Jackson, K. T. (1985). Crabgrass frontier:  The suburbanization of the United States. New York, NY:  Oxford University Press.

Metzler, J. (2003). Inequitable equilibrium:  School finance in the United States. Indiana Law Review, (36)3, 561-608.

Sharp, G. (2008, November 30). 1934 Philadelphia Redlining Map. Retrieved from http://www.thesocietypages.org.

Squires, G. D. (2003). Racial profiling, insurance style:  Insurance redlining and the uneven development of metropolitan areas. Journal of Urban Affairs, 25(4), 391-410.

Squires, G. D., & Kubrin, C. E. (2005). Privileged places:  Race, uneven development, and the geography of opportunity in urban America. Urban Studies, 42(1), 47-68.

 

Using Critical Race Theory to Frame an Understanding of the Education Debt

In their ground breaking article, Ladson-Billings and Tate introduced critical race theory (CRT) to education and explained how usingCRTas a conceptual framework could be “applied to our understanding of educational inequity” (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995, p. 55).  AlthoughCRTderived primarily from the work of Derrick Bell, Alan Freeman, and Richard Delgado (Delgado & Stefancic, 2001) and is grounded in critical legal studies (CLS),CRThas become a distinct “method of analysis in educational research” and “to fully utilizeCRTin education, researchers must remain critical of race, and how it is deployed” (DeCuir & Dixson, 2004, p. 30).  Ladson-Billings and Tate used an analogy with critical race legal theory to help defineCRT.  

To make parallel the analogy between critical race legal theory and traditional civil rights law with that of critical race theory in education and multicultural education we need to restate the point that critical race legal theorists have “doubts about the foundation of moderate/incremental civil rights law.”  The foundation of civil rights law has been in human rights rather than in property rights.  Thus, without disrespect to the pioneers of civil rights law, critical race legal scholars document the ways in which civil rights law is regularly subverted to benefit whites. . . . We argue that the current multicultural paradigm functions in a manner similar to civil rights law.  Instead of creating radically new paradigms that ensure justice, multicultural reforms are routinely “sucked back into the system” and just as traditional civil rights law is based on a foundation of human rights, the current multicultural paradigm is mired in liberal ideology that offers no radical change in the current order.  Thus, critical race theory in education, like its antecedent in legal scholarship, is a radical critique of both the status quo and the purported reforms.  (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995, p. 62) 

AlthoughCLSchallenged the White system of meritocracy (DeCuir & Dixson, 2004, p. 27),CRTwent further in challenging the ways in which White supremacy and race-based power relationships are produced and perpetuated (Cook, 1995; Crenshaw, 1995; Dalton, 1995; Matsuda, 1995) based on racism as a permanent fixture in society (Bell, 1992, 1995; Lawrence, 1995; Ladson-Billings, 2009), identifying one’s own reality through storytelling or counter-storytelling (Delgado, 1990; Matsuda, 1995), the intersection of race and property rights or Whiteness as property (DeCuir & Dixson, 2004; Harris, 1993; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995; Ladson-Billings, 2009), and how civil rights legislation and educational reforms are enacted only if they ultimately serve the interests of Whites (Bell, 1980; Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995;  Ladson-Billings, 2009). 

CRTprovides a conceptual framework for understanding the inequalities in education that result primarily from race and racism and seeks an accelerated rate of educational reform. CRTfocuses on the ongoing adverse impact of racism and how institutional racism privileges Whites in education while disadvantaging racial minorities.  DeCuir and Dixson (2004) summarize the extent to which racism permeates our society:  

Furthermore, the notion of the permanence of racism suggests that racist hierarchical structures govern all political, economic, and social domains.  Such structures allocate the privileging of Whites and the subsequent Othering of people of color in all arenas, including education.  (DeCuir & Dixson, 2004, p. 27)  

Counter-storytelling uses personal narratives to highlight shared experiences of racism and dispel racial stereotypes especially those held by the majority as DeCuir and Dixson (2004) explain: 

Counter-storytelling is a means of exposing and critiquing normalized dialogues that perpetuate racial stereotypes.  The use of counterstories allows for the challenging of privileged discourses, the discourses of the majority, therefore, serving as a means for giving voice to marginalized groups.  (DeCuir & Dixson, 2004, p. 27)   

Storytelling helps racial minorities to use their experiences of racial oppression to strengthen their identities as would increasing the use of minority discourse in our schools.  

The core tenet ofCRTthat addresses the underlying rational for the inequalities of the educational system is property rights.  Ladson-Billings and Tate reflect the crucial role that property rights plays in our educational system particularly the notion of Whiteness as property in their argument for aCRTapproach to education, “U.S. society is based on property rights rather than human rights” and “the intersection of race and property creates an analytical tool for understanding inequity” (Ladson-Billings & Tate 1995, p. 47).  Ladson-Billings (2009) provides the historical connection of property rights and ownership to citizenship with implications for how the notions of citizenship as well as property rights and ownership affect minorities within the educational system. 

In the early history of the nation only propertied White males enjoyed the franchise.  The significance of property ownership as a prerequisite to citizenship was tied to the British notion that only people who owned the country, not merely those who lived in it, were eligible to make decisions about it.  (Ladson-Billings, 2009, p. 25) 

In this way, Ladson-Billings (2009) explains how property rights, citizenship, and race are crucial to understandingCRT’s conceptual framework for education.  

Property ownership and Whiteness are necessary conditions for property rights which frames property in cultural as well as racial terms such that Whiteness becomes property.  Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995) cite Harris’ explanation of how the reification of race establishes Whiteness as property through Harris’ (1993) functions or rights of property, “(1) rights of disposition; (2) rights to use and enjoyment; (3) reputation and status property; and (4) the absolute right to exclude” (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995, p. 59).  Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995) use theCRTconceptual framework to explain how property rights not only serve the self-interest of Whites but also provide the undergirding for White hegemony over education.  Whiteness, therefore, becomes the ultimate property value that Whites leverage to perpetuate their system of educational advantages and privileges.  

Ladson-Billings and Tate (1995) use theCRTperspective to show that culturally based property rights help to explain how the privileges associated with Whiteness lead to the objectification and subordination of racial minorities especially African Americans within the education arena.  Harris’ (1993) rights of disposition indicate that property rights such as Whiteness are transferable but only when they serve the self-interest of Whites.  Although only Whites naturally possess Whiteness, Whiteness can be transferred such as by rewarding minority students for conformity to “White norms” or punishing minority students for violating “White norms” (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995, p. 59). 

Harris’ (1993) rights to the use and enjoyment of property are reflected in how the curriculum is structured and to whom its access is limited.  Whiteness provides Whites with certain social, cultural, and economic privileges (McIntosh, 1990) including control over who has the right to the use and enjoy school property such as the curriculum (Kozol, 1991).  Ladson-Billings (2009) explains that control over the curriculum empowers Whites to determine which students have access not only to top quality curricula but also honors programs, advanced placement courses, gifted and talented programs as well as those courses that prepare students for college admission and academic success.  Ladson-Billings uses theCRTconceptual framework to define a school curriculum “as a culturally specific artifact designed to maintain a White supremacist master script” (Ladson-Billings, 2009, p. 29).  DeCuir and Dixson summarize White control over the curriculum as having “served to reify this notion of Whiteness as property whereby the rights to possession, use and enjoyment, and disposition, have been enjoyed almost exclusively by Whites” (DeCuir & Dixson, 2004, p. 28).  

“CRTsuggests that current instructional strategies presume that African American students are deficient” and “intelligence testing has been a movement to legitimize African American student deficiency” (Ladson-Billings, 2009, pp. 29, 30).  These assumptions are consistent with Harris’ (1993) functions or rights of reputation and status property.  Ladson-Billings and Tate explain how Harris’ tenet applies to schools, “to damage someone’s reputation is to damage some aspect of his or her personal property” which when applied schools means that “to identify a school or program as nonwhite in any way is to diminish its reputation or status” (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995, p. 60).  Poor urban school districts with concentrations of minority students suffer poor reputations and low status as compared to their White suburban counterparts.  

The school system component that portrays Harris’ (1993) absolute right to exclude as well asCRT’s conception of American educational inequality and racism is the inequitable funding of schools that is based on property values.  Although wealthy school districts can afford a higher level of property taxes with which to fund their schools and provide a higher quality of education based on their higher property values, economically disadvantaged school districts are not able to raise the local property tax revenues necessary to fund a commensurate level of education for their students.  Ladson-Billings and Tate explain that a school’s curriculum is also a form of intellectual property that demonstrates Harris’ (1993) absolute right to exclude, “The quality and quantity of the curriculum varies with the ‘property values’ of the school” (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995, p. 54).  Ladson-Billings and Tate use curriculum to demonstrate how property rights accrue to property owners and the extent to which a school benefits from its property rights is in direct proportion to the amount and kinds of property it owns.  

The availability of “rich” (or enriched) intellectual property delimits what is now called “opportunity to learn – the presumption that along with providing educational “standards” that detail what students should know and be able to do, they must have the material resources that support their learning.  Thus, intellectual property must be undergirded by “real” property, that is, science labs, computers and other state-of-the-art technologies, appropriately certified and prepared teachers.  Of course, Kozol demonstrated that schools that serve poor students of color are unlikely to have access to these resources and, consequently, students will have little or no opportunity to learn despite the attempt to mandate educational standards.  (Ladson-Billings & Tate, 1995, pp. 54-55) 

In terms of the disparities in school district funding that disproportionately restrict the level, quality, and availability of financial, material, and human resources to low income urban school districts with concentrations of minorities, “CRTargues that the inequality in school funding is a function of institutional and structural racism” (Ladson-Billings, 2009, p. 31). CRT, therefore, seems to argue that Harris’ (1993) property function in terms of education is perhaps the most “powerful determinant of academic advantage” (Ladson-Billings, 2009, p. 32) because it represents the convergence of Whiteness as property and educational inequality. 

According to Ladson-Billings, “We do not have an achievement gap; we have an education debt” (Ladson-Billings, 2006, p. 5).  Ladson-Billings argues for reframing educational inequality inCRTterms by substituting her concept of an “education debt” for the achievement gap notion “as a way of explaining and understanding the persistent inequality that exists (and has always existed) in our nation’s schools” (Ladson-Billings, 2006, p. 4).  Ladson-Billings (2006) uses the national fiscal debt and deficit not only as metaphors for what she describes as the national education debt and deficit but also to demonstrate how the national focus on the educational achievement gap is misplaced.  That is, focusing on the educational achievement gap is a “misleading exercise” because achievement gap discourse “moves us toward short-term solutions that are unlikely to address the long-term underlying problem” caused by racism and reverse the policies that result in educational inequality (Ladson-Billings, 2006, p. 4). 

Ladson-Billings defines an educational deficit as equivalent to an annual fiscal operating deficit or the annual net of excess expenditures over revenues while the national education debt represents the cumulative legacy costs of educational inequality.  

The education debt is the foregone schooling resources that we could have (should have) been investing in (primarily) low income kids, which deficit leads to a variety of social problems (e.g., crime, low productivity, low wages, low labor force participation) that require on-going public investment.  This required investment sucks away resources that could go to reducing the achievement gap.  Without the education debt we could narrow the achievement debt.  …The message would be that you need to reduce one (the education debt, defined above) in order to close the other (the achievement gap).  (Ladson-Billings, 2006, p. 5) 

Although the nation has a long-standing accumulated education debt that has been amassed at the expense of disadvantaged students especially racial and ethnic minorities, the debt can not be eliminated as long as its debt service continues.  Ladson-Billings explains the challenge inherent in debt service that exacerbates the educational equity gap: 

When nations operate with a large debt, some part of their current budget goes to service that debt.  I mentioned earlier that interest payments on our national debt represent the third largest expenditure of our national budget.  In the case of education, each effort we make toward improving education is counterbalanced by the ongoing and mounting debt that we have accumulated.  That debt service manifests itself in the distrust and suspicion about what schools can and will do in communities serving the poor and children of color.  (Ladson-Billings, 2006, p. 9) 

Ladson-Billings’ (2006) notion of the education debt seems to argue that focusing on the achievement gap ignores how the education debt burdens African American students with race-based costs that are imposed by a racially biased school system. 

Ladson-Billings’ education debt concept refutes the achievement gap notion that largely ignores the importance for schools to have the proper educational inputs or financial and human resources with which to achieve the proper outcomes that the achievement gap defines in terms of test scores rather than what students actually learn in school and whether this learning process prepares them for success as adults.  The assumption embedded in the achievement gap is that the blame for schools failing to produce equal test score results among minority and majority students is placed on the students and teachers rather than on the unequal distribution of essential educational inputs.  Ladson-Billings’ (2006) education debt concept, therefore, reframes the achievement gap inCRTterms of educational inequality by shifting the paradigm to the equity gaps in school funding.  

The educational equity gap is a function of the unequal distribution of educational resources among our schools that disenfranchises low income urban school districts especially those with concentrations of minorities.  This results in continuing equity gaps and educational inequality.  In terms of theCRTconceptual framework, closing the educational equity gap by redistributing financial, material, and human resources requires that all schools have the necessary capacity to improve the achievement of all students especially racially, ethnically, and economically disadvantaged students such that every child is able to maximize his/her potential.

Shifting the paradigm to the equity gaps in school funding raises a question that if the amount, quality, and availability of financial, material, and human resources for all schools were equalized by race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and unique student needs would this rethinking of how to address educational inequality not only eliminate the annual education deficit and replace it with an education surplus but also ultimately pay down the education debt?   Ladson-Billings suggests that the answer may be found within theCRTconceptual framework.

CRTtakes to task school reformers who fail to recognize that property is a powerful determinant of academic advantage.  Without a commitment to redesign funding formulas, one of the basic inequities of schooling will remain in place and virtually guarantee the reproduction of the status quo.  (Ladson-Billings, 2009, p. 32) 

TheCRTconceptual framework for addressing educational inequality helps to frame the research question of what would constitute a model state school funding formula that distributes the necessary financial, material, intellectual, and human resource inputs equitably so that disadvantaged schools could achieve high levels of educational outcomes such as student achievement, learning, and knowledge-based skills which at least meet or exceed those of affluent schools for all students but especially those who are members of racial or ethnic minorities?  

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