The average gap in poverty rates between neighboring school districts is around 5%. But that difference is much starker along what a new study calls the “100 most economically segregated borders,” where the economic divide has surpassed 30 percentage points.
These disparities are a result of districts being created to serve either poor or wealthy, or white or non-white communities, according to New America’s “Crossing the Lines” report. This, of course, leaves the less affluent districts with lower property tax bases to support schools.
“Along the school district borders that mark the steepest racial and economic divides, students are getting shortchanged,” the report’s authors write. “In too many cases, the districts serving more students in poverty or more students of color are more cash-strapped than their neighbors.”
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The difference in local revenue along those most segregated borders is an average of $4,119.46 per pupil, and state funding doesn’t always close the gap. For example, when state and local funding are combined in Ohio, higher-poverty districts receive about 14% more per pupil. But next door in Pennsylvania, school systems get 11% less.
Moreover, there are impacts on both sides of the boundaries. “In all of the districts defined by these borders,” the researchers add, “children are segregated from their peers, deprived of the opportunity to learn alongside students of different backgrounds.”
Divides beyond poverty
Gaps along school district boundaries also persist along racial lines. While more than half of public school students identify as students of color, 46% of these learners attend just 1% of all districts, the report explains.
A closer look at this divide finds that neighboring districts are an average 14 percentage points “apart in their proportions of students of color.” But that gap soars to nearly 80% along the most-segregated boundaries, the study finds. “The separation is, on average, between a district that is 92.4% white and a district that is 86% students of color,” the authors state.
The solutions start with district leaders lobbying for new state policies, such as redrawing districts intentionally to serve a more racially and economically diverse mix of communities, the report advises.
Superintendents and their teams can also advocate for eliminating or reducing the use of local property taxes to fund school systems. Alternative funding methods would pool property taxes across multiple districts to “share the wealth,” the report contends.
“If local property taxes are to remain a significant source of school funding,” the authors conclude, “guardrails should be put in place to ensure that communities of different wealth levels pay their fair share toward school funding totals—no more and no less—and that local funds are appropriately constrained, to limit the kind of extravagant spending in high-wealth districts that creates ground-level inequality.”
