The Huffington Post (9/21) reports that the Center for American Progress has released a report indicating that "inequitable per-pupil spending perpetuated by regressive state and local school-finance systems remains cause for concern in US public schools, despite state aid formulas designed to work to the contrary." The piece quotes the center's Cynthia G. Brown saying in a statement, "Inequitable funding of US public schools contributes significantly to the under achievement of our low-income and minority students. It's something we have to fix if we are to progress as a society." The Post adds, "The study's authors, Rutgers professor Bruce Baker and NYU associate professor Sean Corcoran, identify six states - Illinois, Texas, New York, Pennsylvania, Missouri and North Carolina - where combined state and local revenues and school resources are considerably lower in higher-poverty districts than they are in lower-poverty districts."
Writer Calls For Greater School Funding Equity.In commentary for Bloomberg News (9/21), Matt Miller of the Center for American Progress writes that the school finance system used in the US "dooms millions of poor children to the least-qualified teachers and most run-down facilities in the country. No other wealthy nation tolerates the funding disparities between rich and poor districts that the US does." Miller writes that rhetoric aimed at changing this system is "taboo" because it violates the principal of local control, and uses the Chicago teachers strike as a tool to illustrate this view.
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