The Way We Talk: Equity

This is the third in a series of posts reflecting on terminology pervading today’s polarizing debates about American education. In each post, we ask how various buzzwords—“professionalism,” “accountability,” and the like—influence the conversations we have. What are the strengths, weaknesses, and blind spots that come with framing our arguments in each of these terms? The hope is that assessing the implications of the way we talk will prompt more productive discussions about improving PreK-12 education.

"Professionalism" may be a newly fashionable alternative to the dominant hold "accountability" has on education debates today, but neither of these words makes sense without considering its relationship to "equity." When we talk of raising teachers' professional status or of dismissing ineffective instructors, it's almost always in the service of providing every American student a chance to succeed.

We extol the promise of a public school system that serves ALL of its students, that gives them ALL a fair shot. Put another way: educational equity is the very lynchpin of the American Dream. It is critical to a healthy democracy and meritocracy. Healthy democracies need an educated, informed citizenry. In the twenty-first century, this requires an equitable public education system. Meanwhile, a meritocracy deserving of the name must provide all individuals the opportunity to develop their potential and determine the course of their own lives. In a country with growing income inequality and a shrinking middle class, meaningful meritocracy depends on educational equity more than ever before.

If this seems obvious, that’s a testament to the central role that equity inhabits in our national creed: equity should be American public education’s governing rule and its central purpose.

Consider the rhetorical heft of Teach For America's vision statement: "One day, all children in this nation will have the opportunity to attain an excellent education.” Whatever your feelings on their program, there’s no question that this goal is the driving force behind the program’s recruiting success. It’s certainly what inspired me to join TFA—and to teach.

Sadly, calls for a more equitable education are inspirational largely because they are so overwhelmingly necessary. American education is bimodal—we run not one, but two public school systems. One serves the relatively privileged students, while the other serves their peers from low-income families.

Even sadder still, there are racial correlations to this class differentiation. The Latino Policy Forum notes that “Latinos (46 percent) and African Americans (44 percent) are more likely to attend schools within high poverty urban areas compared to just 10 percent of Whites.”

If every American school were well-funded and exceptionally run, these inequities wouldn’t necessarily be a problem. But that’s not the case. The Education Trust found that we spend approximately $773 less per pupil in high-poverty school districts than we do in low-poverty school districts. Even more disconcerting, we spend $1,122 less per pupil in high-minority districts than we do in low-minority districts. This sort of national aggregation of the data obscures even more outrageous gaps in specific states. In Illinois and New York, the funding gap grows to over $2,000 less per pupil in high-poverty districts than in wealthy districts.

Many see the funding gap as an easy proxy for the achievement gap. Fix the former and we’ll fix the latter. They’re not wrong. No matter how much we account for the dollars we spend, no matter how tightly we squeeze them for maximum student results, gaps in funding produce gaps in school effectiveness.

Note, however, that equity is not synonymous with equality. The relative gaps between American spending on low-income and wealthy students are unequal, but they are also inequitable. Indeed, if we take the promise of the American Dream seriously, perfectly equal funding for all students, schools, and districts would still be inequitable. That is, if we were serious about giving all students a fair chance to succeed in school, career, and life, we would probably conclude that equity demands unequal funding in favor of low-income students.

Unfortunately, when it comes to current efforts to establish equitable funding, the numbers are pretty bleak. A 2013 Educational Testing Service report found that “34 states provide some form of poverty-based supplement in their [funding] formulas.” Cause for celebration? Hardly. The report found that “only a handful of states actually ensure systematically higher levels of resources in higher poverty districts.” The vast majority of states are inequitably distributing scarce education funding.

It’s easy to discuss equity in terms of dollars. They’re countable. But equity isn’t just about money. It’s about how we use public resources. A 2011 Center for American Progress study found that “students who participated in the subsidized-lunch program were 12 percentage points more likely to be enrolled in the nation’s least-productive districts than the most productive.” In other words, we’re not just spending less on American students from low-income backgrounds—we’re also not spending that smaller amount as effectively as we should.

Similarly, a 2012 Education Trust study found that “a low-income student is more than twice as likely to have a low value-added ELA teacher as a higher-income peer, and 66 percent more likely to have a low value-added math teacher. These patterns are even more pronounced for students of color.” Again, things like teacher or district “effectiveness” are difficult to quantify. These studies—and others like them—rely on controversial metrics.

You need not accept their conclusions to notice that these studies still make equity their lodestar. Like TFA’s vision statement, the studies take it as a given that inequitable access to effective administration and classroom instruction is both a sham and a shame in the United States. It is a perjuring of the country we believe ourselves to be. This gets us to the heart of the matter. When we talk about educational equity, we’re actually talking about the relationship between education and democracy. Does our educational system sustain—or undercut—our political system?

Equity demands that we provide students with an education that gives them a fair shot. That won’t require identical resources or strategies for all students. We acknowledge this when we design and fund programs targeted to support students with special needs. We acknowledge this when we design and fund language support programs for students who come to school speaking a language other than English. We acknowledge this when we provide diverse school and curricular options for students and their parents. Flexibility and diversity aren’t just compatible with equity, they are essential to it. And that’s why the next installment of The Way We Talk will cover the implications of thinking about education reform in terms of choice.