Education Funding

High Court Rejects Governor’s Private School Aid Plan

October 8, 2020 Michelle Liu, AP News. Resist! Education Funding, Private schools, South Carolina, Vouchers

Columbia, SC - The South Carolina Supreme Court ruled Wednesday a program created by Gov. Henry McMaster to allocate $32 million in federal pandemic aid to private and religious schools is unconstitutional because the public money would directly benefit the schools. In the court’s opinion, Chief Justice Don Beatty acknowledged the effects of the coronavirus pandemic on the lives of South Carolinians and the state’s education system, and the “unprecedented challenges” faced by state leaders including McMaster.

A Decade Of Research On The Rich-Poor Divide In Education

July 8, 2020 By Jill Barshay, The Hechinger Report. Educate! Education, Education Funding, Inequality, Systemic Racism

Education inequality is not just a divide between rich and poor but also between the ultra-rich and everyone else. In 2020, a Pennsylvania State University researcher documented how the wealthiest school districts in America — the top 1 percent — fund their schools at much higher levels than everyone else and are increasing their school spending at a faster rate. The school funding gap between a top 1 percent district (mostly white suburbs) and an average-spending school district at the 50th percentile widened by 32 percent between 2000 and 2015, the study calculated. Nassau County, just outside New York City on Long Island, has the highest concentration of students who attend the best-funded public schools among all counties in the country. Almost 17 percent of all the top 1 percent of students in the nation live in this one county.

Frustrated Parents Rally Nationwide To ‘Reclaim Our Schools’

October 9, 2016 Rebecca Klein, www.huffingtonpost.com Educate! Education, Education Funding, Education reform

By Rebecca Klein for Huffington Post. More than 100,000 people took part in a nationwide “walk-in” at more than 2,000 schools in 238 cities, according to the event organizer Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools (AROS). They were joined by some high-profile guests, including Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Kaine. At her Brooklyn school, Joseph and other community members protested the state funding system, which advocates say disadvantages needy schools. People in other cities rallied over issues like the expansion of charter schools and high-stakes student testing. Thursday’s walk-ins were the third time AROS said it had set up such an event and represented its largest effort so far. The alliance, which includes the nation’s two largest teachers unions and the Annenberg Institute for School Reform, advocates for equal educational opportunities, especially for low-income students of color.

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