The Role of School Funding Cases in Exacerbating Educational Inequity

Education has long proved itself essential to fostering a healthy democracy, as schooling teaches children the importance of collaboration, creativity, and civic engagement.¹ Understanding this connection between education and democracy leads to the question of how to design education systems to best meet the needs of a democratic society. In the Left Alternative, left-wing philosopher Roberto Unger takes this argument further by arguing that instituting a public education system that “frees the mind” and prioritizes cooperation is necessary to overcome the central shortcoming of American politics, which he defines as its concession to working within the confines of current institutional arrangements.² Unger argues for a progressive alternative consisting of policies designed to promote the free exercise of our creativity and self-determination to free us from these established arrangements. This argument raises the following question: how do we create an education system that will aid in this pursuit of a democratic alternative? To optimize education’s function in a healthy democracy, it is necessary to massively reform school finance systems away from the San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez (1973) framework, which made it constitutional to apportion funding for public schools based on property taxes.

The current method of funding public schools is inherently flawed and must become more reliant on state funding rather than local property taxes. Currently, all public schools are at least partially funded by the local property taxes of the district.³ This practice was upheld in the U.S. Supreme Court case San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez (1973), in which the court decided that relying on property taxes for school revenue is constitutional because "the Equal Protection Clause does not require absolute equality or precisely equal advantages."⁴ The Rodriguez plaintiffs comprised low-income families of Mexican-American backgrounds whose school districts had significantly fewer resources than local districts with higher property tax values. While the plaintiffs made arguments on both race and class discrimination, the Court found that no suspect class was in question and instead focused on the issue of class discrimination alone, which the Court dismissed as a category not entitled to constitutional protection. As a result, the Court applied the rational basis standard of review rather than strict scrutiny. The majority opinion held that the tax system at issue is rationally related to a legitimate governmental interest and is therefore constitutional. The 5-4 decision also solidified that education is not a protected constitutional right, reversing the lower court’s decision.

The widely-studied effects of inequitable public school funding demonstrate that the Court’s refusal to recognize education as a constitutional right has discriminatory outcomes— a reality that the majority opinion falsely rejected. Post-1990 school finance reform efforts caused “increases in the achievement of students in these districts, phasing in gradually over the years following the reform.”⁵ This finding proves that the Court’s decision cripples the U.S. education system’s ability to provide quality education to all students. The district of the plaintiffs in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez (1973), Edgewood, still gets fewer funds from the state of Texas than wealthier districts over 40 years later. Edgewood receives approximately $5,000 less per student than Alamo Heights and “continues to lag on academic measures, and many of its students score below grade level.”⁶ The reality is that litigation plays a crucial role in determining educational equity, and relying on states to reform education themselves results in discriminatory outcomes that are harmful to the health of our democracy. Education is critical to the functioning of our democracy, and funding is a crucial determinant of academic success. Thus, there is a solid basis for viewing education as a constitutionally protected right and changing educational funding to be more reliant on state and federal funding rather than local property taxes.

Some argue that classifying education as a fundamental right would open up a slippery slope in allowing all kinds of different unenumerated rights to be drawn from the Constitution on the purported claim that they are essential to democracy. While this may be true, the fundamental purpose of the United States system of government is to guarantee equal justice under the law. Accessibility and equity in education are essential to providing children with the ability to reach their full potential as citizens and, therefore, must be federally protected. In his dissent in San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez (1973), Justice Thurgood Marshall effectively argued that The Supreme Court of the United States must consider the societal importance of the interest at hand, even if it is not explicitly mentioned in the Constitution. Justice Marshall wrote, "as the nexus between the specific constitutional guarantee and the nonconstitutional interest draws closer, the nonconstitutional interest becomes more fundamental and the degree of judicial scrutiny applied when the interest is infringed upon on a discriminatory basis must be adjusted accordingly."⁷ The Court’s decision to pass the issue of education to the states is insufficient, as Justice Marshall rejected the majority’s belief that the political process will properly handle educational discrimination, arguing that federalism “has proved singularly unsuited to the task of providing a remedy for this discrimination.”⁸

Relying on property taxes for education funding entrenches inequality by providing more funding for wealthier neighborhoods. It stifles our ability to ensure that a high-quality education is accessible to each student in America. Students cannot become context-transcending individuals and reach their full potential as citizens when their context determines the resources of their local public school. Therefore, educational equity and preventing explicit class discrimination must be seen as a significant enough government interest to justify constitutionally protecting the right to education, as reform measures have proven to equalize student performance.⁹ Our current public education financing system exacerbates inequality, harming student outcomes and failing to serve its purpose in a democracy. Zip codes should not determine whether a student receives a quality education. To transform our public school system, we must institute more equitable funding methods and view education as a fundamental constitutional right.

References

¹Edward L. Glaeser, Giacomo A. Ponzetto, and Andrei Shleifer, “Why Does Democracy Need Education?,” Journal of Economic Growth 12, no. 2 (2007): pp. 77-99, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10887-007-9015-1.

² Roberto Mangabeira Unger, “Democracy Realized: The Progressive Alternative,” (London, Verso: 1998).

³ Dan Thatcher, “The role of the property tax in Public Education Funding.” Accessed March 16, 2022. https://www.ncsl.org/research/education/funding-approaches-the-property-tax-and-public-ed.aspx.

⁴ San Antonio School District v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1 (1973).

⁵ Julien Lafortune, Jesse Rothstein, and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach. 2018. “School Finance Reform and the Distribution of Student Achievement.” American Economic Journal. Applied Economics 10 (2): 1–26, https://doi.org/10.1257/app.20160567.

⁶ 2016-17 Texas Academic Performance Report, (Edgewood: 2017), https://rptsvr1.tea.texas.gov/cgi/sas/broker?_service=marykay&year4=2017&year2=17&_debug=0&single=N&title=2017+Texas+Academic+Performance+Reports&_program=perfrept.perfmast.sas&prgopt=2017%2Ftapr%2Ftapr.sas&ptype=P&level=district&search=district&namenum=Edgewood&district=015905.

⁷ San Antonio School District v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1 (1973).

⁸ San Antonio School District v. Rodriguez, 411 U.S. 1 (1973).

⁹ Lafortune, Julien, Jesse Rothstein, and Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach. 2018. “School Finance Reform and the Distribution of Student Achievement.” American Economic Journal. Applied Economics 10 (2): 1–26, https://doi.org/10.1257/app.20160567.