District-level black-white funding disparities in the United States, 1987-2002

Abstract

A large body of literature examines disparities in school funding across districts. Berne and Stiefel (1984) developed the standard framework for measuring school finance equity, and the measures catalogued there have been applied extensively to assess funding disparities across districts. Much of this literature has focused on measures of dispersion in district spending, the disparity in funding between high-wealth and lowwealth districts, or the link between family income and the spending in a student's district. Less studied is the link between race and district-level funding disparities. It is often assumed that because black students tend to live in low-household income