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Nearly 70 years ago \u2013 in its 1954\u00a0Brown v. Board<\/a>\u00a0decision \u2013 the Supreme Court framed racial segregation as the cause of educational inequality. It did not, however, challenge the lengths to which states went to ensure the unequal funding of Black schools.<\/p>\n Before Brown, Southern states were using segregation to signify and tangibly reinforce\u00a0second-class citizenship<\/a>\u00a0for Black people in the United States. The court in Brown deemed that segregation was inherently unequal. Even if the schools were \u201cequalized\u201d on all \u201ctangible factors,\u201d segregation remained a problem and physical integration was the cure, the Court concluded.<\/p>\n That framing rightly focused on segregation\u2019s immediate horror \u2013 excluding students from schools based on the color of their skin \u2013 but obscured an important fact. In addition to requiring school segregation, many states also had long segregated school funding. Some had used \u201cracially distinct tax<\/a>\u201d policies that reserved separate funds for white and Black schools. Other states had\u00a0moved school funding responsibility and control<\/a>\u00a0from state officials to local communities. Local officials could then\u00a0ensure inequality without any specific law mandating it<\/a>.<\/p>\n Brown\u2019s focus on physical segregation inadvertently left important and less obvious aspects of local funding inequality unchecked. Those practices still drive underfunding in predominantly poor and minority schools. Through the University of South Carolina School of Law\u2019s\u00a0Constitutional Law Center<\/a>, since 2021 we have been documenting the\u00a0historical connection<\/a>\u00a0between segregation and states\u2019 reliance on local school funding. In our view, until states stop relying so heavily on local school funding, the equal educational opportunities that Brown first sought will remain out of reach for K-12 students in the 21st century.<\/p>\n A large body of evidence shows \u201cmoney matters<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Increased spending\u00a0improves<\/a>\u00a0college attendance rates, graduation rates and test scores. But, as a 2018 report revealed, school districts enrolling \u201cthe most students of color receive\u00a0about $1,800, or 13%, less per student\u201d<\/a>\u00a0than districts serving the fewest students of color.<\/p>\n A more recent\u00a0analysis<\/a>\u00a0further demonstrated that school funding cuts during the Great Recession disproportionately affected Black students and exacerbated achievement gaps.<\/p>\n Most school funding gaps have a simple explanation: Public school budgets rely heavily on\u00a0local property taxes<\/a>. Communities with low property values can\u00a0tax themselves at much higher rates<\/a>\u00a0than others but still fail to generate anywhere near the the same level of resources as other communities.<\/p>\n In fact, in\u00a046 of 50 states<\/a>, local school funding schemes drive more resources to middle-income students than poor students. The local funding gap between districts mostly serving middle-income versus poor students in\u00a0New Jersey<\/a>, for example, is $3,460 per pupil. While state and federal programs often send additional funds to poor students, they are insufficient to fully meet the\u00a0additional needs of low-income students<\/a>.<\/p>\n In Brown v. Board, the court glossed over the history of school segregation and its nuances. The court said it was impossible to \u201cturn the clock back to 1868,\u201d when the nation adopted the Fourteenth Amendment, or \u201ceven 1896,\u201d when the court authorized segregation. Instead, it\u00a0declared<\/a>\u00a0that \u201cwe must consider public education in the light of its full development and its present place in American life throughout the Nation.\u201d<\/p>\n This pivot let the court tackle segregation on a slate scrubbed clean of history\u2019s mess. But it also deprived the court of any serious consideration of Southern states\u2019 complex and racially motivated system of local school funding.<\/p>\n Later court decisions did not even recognize that a problem with local funding might exist. To the contrary, they put a preference on local funding over remedying inequality. In the 1973 case of San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, the court rejected a challenge to the inequality local school funding causes, reasoning that \u201clocal control\u201d over school funding was\u00a0\u201cvital to continued public support of the schools\u201d<\/a>\u00a0and \u201cof overriding importance from an educational standpoint as well.\u201d<\/p>\n A year later, in Milliken v. Bradley, the Supreme Court blocked a desegregation remedy that would have spanned multiple districts. Finances and local autonomy were at the heart of the court\u2019s rationale. It\u00a0wrote<\/a>, \u201cNo single tradition in public education is more deeply rooted than local control over the operation of schools.\u201d In its view, desegregation between districts would destroy that tradition and create a host of problems regarding local school funding.<\/p>\n To be sure, those decisions did not preclude desegregation within individual districts. But the Court declared desegregation and school funding inequality that occurs between school districts \u2013 as opposed to within school districts \u2013 as largely beyond the reach of federal judicial power.<\/p>\n Our research<\/a>\u00a0reveals that during\u00a0the South\u2019s Reconstruction<\/a>, Black people and progressive whites saw\u00a0state control<\/a>\u00a0as the solution to inadequate and unequal education. They adopted\u00a0policies to that effect<\/a>, many of which were\u00a0enshrined in state constitutions<\/a>\u00a0rather than laws reversible by the legislature.<\/p>\n Local communities were certainly important to the implementation of schools, but states like\u00a0Texas<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Virginia<\/a>\u00a0centralized school administration, school finance and a variety of other policies. Some states, such as\u00a0South Carolina<\/a>, placed the core issue of physical segregation under state control and prohibited it outright.<\/p>\n Then, during the Jim Crow era, localism became the tool to\u00a0reverse this progress and equality<\/a>. States\u00a0increased reliance on local taxation<\/a>, gave local\u00a0white officials discretion<\/a>\u00a0over state funds, and\u00a0constitutionally secured segregation<\/a>. Some went so far as to craft\u00a0color-coded funding systems<\/a>\u00a0where white taxes\u00a0funded white schools<\/a>\u00a0exclusively.<\/p>\n Others, like\u00a0South Carolina<\/a>, achieved the same end by letting taxpayers select which of the segregated schools would receive their funds. Southern leaders openly linked local funding and control to the\u00a0\u201cwisdom\u201d of segregation<\/a>.<\/p>\n The development of Northern local\u00a0school systems<\/a>\u00a0was historically distinct. Yet, even in some Northern states, racial antagonism and concerns over segregation prompted pushes for\u00a0local decision-making<\/a>. More generally, some Northern states followed a trajectory similar to Southern states: Illinois, for example, imposed a\u00a0statewide property tax<\/a>\u00a0for\u00a0white education<\/a>\u00a0with supplemental local funding before the Civil War. Ironically, though, it ultimately became one of the states\u00a0most dependent on local funding<\/a>.<\/p>\n While Brown v. Board declared school segregation itself unconstitutional, other related aspects of segregated schools \u2013 particularly the decentralization of school funding \u2013 continued unchecked after it. The longer those aspects remained, the more courts accepted them as a neutral aspect of delivering public education.<\/p>\n An important step in remedying entrenched school funding inequalities is to first recognize that they are rooted in the history of Jim Crow segregation. Another potential step is to return to the more centralized approach of Reconstruction \u2013 an\u00a0approach<\/a>\u00a0that states during their progressive eras have long recognized. And this step makes good constitutional sense, too. After all,\u00a0every state constitution<\/a>\u00a0places the ultimate obligation to fund and deliver public education on\u00a0states<\/a>, not local governments.<\/p>\nWhat\u2019s wrong with local funding<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Missed opportunities to cure local funding<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Funding, control and segregation<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Toward a more fair system<\/strong><\/h4>\n