Neediest Students Not Receiving Fair Allocation
of School Construction Funds
After a decade of unprecedented enrollment growth and
spending on school construction, most of the nation’s
high-wealth and middle-class communities have high quality
public school buildings, while inadequate facilities
hamper education for millions of low-wealth children
and their communities. A recent report from the BEST
collaborative, “Growth and Disparity:
A Decade of U.S. Public School Construction,”
calls for changes in state and federal education policy
to improve school facilities, especially in places where
children now must try to learn in dilapidated and inadequate
buildings. The report also explains that school facilities
equity has improved significantly for low-income students
in states that have faced successful school funding
lawsuits in the past decade.
School and Community Vitality
“Every community deserves a public school around
which it can build and sustain neighborhoods and community
connections,” writes Mary Filardo, Executive Director
of the 21st
Century School Fund, in the foreword to the study.
Every child and teacher, she explains, deserves a safe,
healthy school building that supports education. However,
the study reports that, between 1995 and 2004, low-wealth
communities had about half as much funding available
for capital projects as their more affluent counterparts.
Despite record-level spending nation-wide, “the
schools in poor condition 10 years ago received the
least investment.”
State and Federal Support Recommended
In a nutshell, the
report concludes that:
- Closing the disparity gap in school building quality
is an integral part of closing the achievement gap and
should be added as one of the goals of NCLB.
- The contribution of state and federal funding for
school construction should increase to at least the
percentage of funding for day-to-day school operations
– an average of 56 percent (47 percent state and
9 percent federal funding).
- Because school districts cannot meet facilities needs,
these needs should be incorporated into the programs
and funding of federal and state agencies such as the
Department of Housing and Urban Development and FEMA.
- Additional research about the impact of school facilities
on learning and better data collection are needed and
should be supported by state or federal funds.
Disparities and State-by-State Spending
“Growth and Disparity” found that “public
school districts built more than 12,000 new schools
and managed more than 130,000 renovation and improvement
projects” between 1995 and 2004. While districts
spent $600 billion, including construction, equipment,
land acquisition, interest and other costs, $363 billion
was for the “hard costs” of construction
alone – according to U.S. government and other
sources.
The study analyzes and offers charts of facilities
spending, broken down by family income, by race and
ethnicity, and by community wealth. Despite the record
levels of facilities funding in the past decade, the
report finds wide disparities in all of these demographic
breakdowns. The report also provides state-by-state
detail for per-student facilities spending, enrollment,
growth, and percentage of spending on new construction.
The data shows that most states increased school construction
expenditures over the last 10 years, but those with
successful court cases that included challenges
to school facility inadequacies spent almost 25
percent more. The report points to these cases as examples
of how “targeted state intervention can greatly
remedy school facilities spending disparities.”
BEST
BEST, the Building Education Success Together collaborative,
describes one of its primary focuses as an emphasis
on improving public school facilities, because high-quality
facilities promote both quality education and community
vitality. BEST also works “to better understand
the impact of facility condition and design on learning
and teaching” and has published a series of reports
on these issues. The 21st Century School Fund manages
the BEST collaborative.
Prepared by Molly A. Hunter, November 9, 2006
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