When “Comparable” School Funding Isn’t Equal Funding

by David Safier

(TASL) In many school districts around the country, “comparable school funding” means that schools in high rent neighborhoods get more money than those serving poor students. I don’t know if this is true in Arizona in general or here in Tucson, but it’s something that needs to be looked into.

To understand why this happens, you’ll need to follow some fairly simple math. Those of you with a wee case of Math Anxiety should take Sheila Tobias’ advice from an earlier post and be willing to pay attention and have the confidence to know you can follow the mathematical logic. It isn’t tough, I promise.

Title 1 requires that any school district wanting federal funds meets the “comparability provision,” which is supposed to ensure that all schools are funded equally. But districts often interpret “comparability” to mean giving each school the same number of staff members per student, not the same amount of funding.

The problem with that is, schools in rich neighborhoods tend to have more experienced teachers than schools in poor neighborhoods. Most teachers who land in schools with affluent students tend to stay there, and teachers who serve poorer students often transfer out or leave the profession. Say what you want about teachers being an altruistic bunch, it’s tough spending your school day dealing with chronic discipline problems, assignments that aren’t turned in and home situations that leave you shaking your head or sobbing at the end of the day.

Obviously, experienced teachers have higher salaries than inexperienced teachers. Over an entire school faculty, the difference adds up to real money. In Baltimore, for instance,

“when teachers at one school in a high-poverty neighborhood were paid an average of $37,618, the average teacher’s salary at another school in the same district was $57,000.” Assuming the same number of teachers in each school—say, 20—the difference in dollars available for the two schools is $387,640.

In a large high school with 100 teachers, that means a school with the most privileged students could get almost $2 million more than one with the students who need the most help and attention.

This is clearly inequitable, and clearly wrong. Each school should get more-or-less the same amount of money per student. If salaries eat up less of the funds, let the school hire mentors to make the teachers more effective and aides who can give students individual attention. Let it buy extra computers, a wide variety of high interest books and magazines, and so on. Maybe even offer a 15% salary boost for teachers willing to work in those schools with the hardest-to-reach students. You might find, ironically, that better, more experienced teachers will begin to gravitate toward schools where they get higher salaries and have more money to purchase classroom materials and equipment.

I haven’t done the research in TUSD to know how it interprets the “comparability provision.” Someone with access to the district’s books and a head for numbers should look into the question. If Tucson is allocating more money to schools with privileged students, it needs to fix the inequity.