Lessons from Baker and DiCarlo: Combine Adequate Funding with Integration

JVonkorff on Education has been advocating that to deliver a constitutionally required adequate education to students of color, lower income students and English language learners Minnesota must combine three fundamental reforms: 

(1) fully funding the cost of delivering that education; 
(2) Rigorous accountability for efficiently implementing effective practices, and
(3) fostering racial and economic school integration. 

While integration is a worthy end in itself, without adequate funding, integration schemes are unlikely to fulfill the constitutional requirement. In Segregation and School Funding: How States Reinforce Inequality and What to Do about It “Bruce D. Baker, Ph.D., a nationally recognized expert in school finance and education policy and a professor at the University of Miami, and Matthew P. Di Carlo, Ph.D., a senior fellow at the Albert Shanker Institute provide convincing research and experience based evidence that neither integration alone, nor increased funding alone, will deliver the adequate education to which Minnesota integration and school finance advocates aspire.

 Integration advocates rely on research supporting significant educational benefits to students attending racially and economically integrated schools. Unquestionably, Minnesota desperately needs comprehensive reform to address the educational needs of students of color, English language learners, and lower income students. For example, only 17 percent of black students in Minneapolis who are not English language learners score proficient in reading, as compared to 74 percent of white students, and that gap is growing. Sixty four percent of Minneapolis black students who are not English language learners score in the lowest “Does not Meet” category as compared to 12 percent of Minneapolis white students. Students in that category read significantly below grade level, have difficulty understanding the main ideas of grade-level passages and struggle to interpret vocabulary and context. 

Something radical clearly must be done: Baker and Di Carlo’s work suggests that integrating schools can make a contribution, but to deliver an adequate education to those students we must combine integration with enough funding to deliver an adequate education that meets all state standards, just as the Minnesota Supreme Court’s Skeen decision requires. 

The challenge facing policymakers is not simply how much Minnesota spends on education, but whether the state is spending enough—and in the right places—to ensure that every student has a genuine opportunity to meet Minnesota’s academic standards. Education finance scholars Bruce Baker and Matthew DiCarlo argue that the relationship between school segregation and school funding is not accidental but systemic. As they explain,

 it is helpful to think of segregation and funding inequity as part of a self‑reinforcing cycle—a national problem whose causes and consequences vary across regions but are often especially resistant to policy solutions outside the South (Baker & DiCarlo, p. 3).

 When racially and economically isolated schools are underfunded, too many of their students do not thrive educationally.  Consequently, parents are scared by the published test scores and tend to migrate to other schools, even if their own students seem to be doing well. As the percentage of underfunded students rises, the school is forced to implement unattractive reductions and the downward spiral continues

 In Segregation and School Funding, they write:

“Many higher-poverty, disproportionately Black and Hispanic districts have to spend a lot more than their lower-poverty, whiter counterparts to achieve the same outcomes, but they typically spend about the same or just a little bit more, at best. This segregation-fueled disconnect between what districts need and what they actually get is the beating heart of school funding inequity.” (p. 4) 

Although their new book does not target Minnesota, it identifies six important lessons for Minnesota educators and for integration and funding advocates alike: 

Lesson 1: Equity Does Not Mean Equal Funding One of Baker and DiCarlo’s central insights is that equitable school funding is not the same as equal funding:

“Equal opportunity… is not just about how much districts spend. It is, rather, about how much they spend relative to what they need.” (p. 19) 

Indeed Minnesota constitutional education clause case Skeen v. State (1993) adopts this very principle. In Skeen a group of school districts—primarily from non‑metropolitan areas—argued that the Minnesota Constitution requires the state to provide the same funding resources per student to every school district. The Minnesota Supreme Court rejected that argument because equity requires greater funding to schools overcoming greater needs. The Court held that the constitutional requirement is not equal funding across districts, but adequate enough funding to afford each student with an adequate education that meets Minnesota’s educational standards. In other words, the Court recognized that the goal of school finance is not equal dollars but enough funding to provide an equally adequate education that meets all state standards. 

The Skeen requirement aligns closely with Baker and DiCarlo’s analysis. Students arrive at school with very different needs. Students living in poverty, English language learners, and students who have historically been underserved often require additional instructional support, specialized services, and expanded learning opportunities in order to meet the same academic standards as their peers. For that reason, equitable school finance systems must allocate more resources to students with greater needs. The goal is not equal spending, but equal opportunity to meet state standards. 

Lesson 2: Adequate Funding Must Be Defined by the Cost of Meeting Standards As a corollary to Lesson 1, Baker and DiCarlo emphasize that the real question for school funding systems is not simply how much money is spent, but whether schools have the resources necessary to achieve the outcomes states expect of them. They write that school finance systems should: “Account for differences in the cost of achieving equal educational opportunity across school districts.

Proper determination of districts’ costs—setting ‘funding targets’ for each district… is the foundation of any state’s system.” (p. 26) 

In their framework, cost refers to the amount of funding a district needs to reach a particular educational goal. If those costs are miscalculated—or ignored—then the entire funding system may fail to provide equal opportunity. In practical terms, Minnesota must answer a fundamental question: What does it cost to ensure that students from low‑income families, students of color, and English language learners can meet Minnesota’s academic standards? 

Lesson 3: Segregation Concentrates Educational Need Baker and DiCarlo also emphasize that school funding cannot be understood separately from patterns of racial and economic segregation.

“Districts serving larger shares of students of color also tend to serve larger shares of low-income students, special education students, English language learners, and other groups that require more funding to achieve common outcome goals.” (p. 34).

 Schools serving high concentrations of poverty and language diversity often require smaller class sizes, additional literacy and language support, expanded counseling and social services, extended learning time, and specialized instructional staff. When those schools are underfunded, parents with choices are driven away to avoid schools that appear to be failing. 

Lesson 4: Integration Alone Is Not Enough Advocates for integration have invested significant effort in promoting school integration through litigation and advocacy.   Research shows that integration can produce important benefits. But Baker and DiCarlo caution that integration alone cannot solve educational inequality. 

“Disparities in funding adequacy are a big factor in maintaining those gaps, and closing adequacy gaps is a key tool for narrowing outcome gaps.” (pp. 48–49) 

Lesson 5: Money Matters Citing modern research, Baker and Di Carlo write: “There is an emerging consensus… that spending more improves outcomes, and spending less hurts outcomes. Money leads to better results because the things that cost money lead to better results.” (p. 23) 

Recap: Integration and Funding Reform Must Be Addressed Together Baker and Di Carlo write: 

“The idea that one can choose between racial and economic segregation, or between racial and economic inequality, is false. Breaking the cycle of unequal opportunity and unequal outcomes requires addressing both.” (p. 54) 

Equity in school funding does not mean treating every school the same. It means ensuring that every student—regardless of race, income, or language background—has access to the resources required to succeed.

Baker and DiCarlo's New Book Calls for a Unified Strategy to Combine Funding Reform and School Integration

 JvonKorff on Education has been urging that Minnesota must fix its broken school funding system to provide enough funding to provide students of color, lower income students and English language learners with an adequate education that meets all state standards, as the constitution requires.  There can be no legitimate dispute that Minnesota's current public system is failing too many students of color, lower income students and English language learners. In Segregation and School Funding: How States Reinforce Inequality and What to Do About It, Bruce Baker and Matthew Di Carlo, two leading school finance scholars have urged that states like Minnesota must combine school finance reform and school integration -- economic and racial -- as one unified strategy.  Their book is a welcome wake up call to those who mistakenly advocate for simplistic single-factor fixes to Minnesota's system of public education.  This post and a few following posts will summarize the wisdom delivered in Baker and Di Carlo's "Segregation and School Funding," but that summary will be no substitute for reading this important contribution.   Take my advice, and get yourself a copy.  

The single factor approach to fixing Minnesota's public education identifies just one thing to solve a complex problem:  Integration, school choice, adequate funding, charter schools, or vouchers.   For over two decades advocates have urged that Minnesota's constitution requires full and adequate funding, enough funding to afford each student with an adequate education that meets all state standards under the Skeen decision.   But the legislature has never attempted to implement that decision.  Indeed, since 2004, the state of Minnesota has not even attempted to determine what it would cost to deliver an adequate education the students Minnesota schools now leave behind. 

For well over two decades others have argued that school integration is the solution, but those integration cases provided no permanent long lasting solution.   Decades ago, Minnesota advanced one of the country's first aggressive charter school reforms, combined with open enrollment, asserting that school choice and school experimentation. While school choice has provided a solution for individual students, generally, at scale, charters have not provided a better education to those students.   

The endnote of Baker and Di Carlo's book exclaims: 

More than seventy years after Brown v. Board of Education promised equal educational opportunities for students of color, US public schools remain stubbornly segregated, with large gaps in the adequacy of funding by race and income.  In Segregation and School Funding, Baker and Di Carlo reveal the cycle that keeps resource starved schools at a perpetual disadvantage and shows how to break it. 

Baker and Di Carlo argue for a multi-faceted multi-factor solution that marries school integration with full funding based on "full-dollar cost funding " of education students with greater needs.   I commend that book to you as providing an understandable window on school funding and integration issues. 

Three Fundamental Causes. Inadequate funding is only one of the three major causes of Minnesota's failure to address the educational needs .  The first, of course, is Minnesota's persistent failure to deliver enough funding to cover the cost of delivering an adequate education to schools serving students of color, lower income students and English language learners.  The second is racial and poverty concentration.   Because Minnesota's legislature has never attempted to deliver funds necessary to cover the full cost of delivering an adequate education to those students, for school districts with very high percentages of underfunded students, those funding shortfalls mount up and create a cycle of inadequacies. 

A third is a lack of accountability for utilizing best practices.  Minnesota has operated under a radical local control paradigm, in which school districts are free to ignore best practices, to keep on doing what they've been doing, despite mounting evidence that these strategies are not working for the students with greatest needs.  The danger of funding with lack of accountability has been starkly illustrated by the recent Minnesota fraud scandals.  There is no evidence at all, that Minnesota school districts are characterized by fraud: in fact, when fraud is discovered, it is widely recognized as a great aberration. But there is evidence that Minnesota districts and charters are not subjected to adequate supervision for efficient use of best practices.   

Baker and Di Carlo's book focuses primarily on major metropolitan areas such as Baltimore, Kansas City, and Oakland, but their recommendations apply to Minnesota school districts as well. In fact, in an analysis using Minnesota education data, Baker and colleagues examined whether Minnesota's funding is sufficient to meet the needs of students who historically have faced educational barriers  Their analysis of Minnesota's school finance system was summarized in an article published in Minneapolis School Voices. 

The analysis, sponsored by the Shanker foundation,  assessed whether each Minnesota district had enough funding to deliver national average outcomes to all students. This average-outcomes test is a lower standard that the Minnesota constitutional standard --enough funding to afford each student with an adequate education that meets all state standards.   Even though Minnesota’s overall K-12 funding ranks above the national average, the Shanker foundation data found that Minnesota's statewide total funding masks deep and persistent inequities in how the money is distributed. While most school districts have enough funding to meet average academic outcomes, districts with higher concentrations of students who need extra academic support do not have adequate funding to serve those students effectively. (Minneapolis Schools Voices):

“The least adequately funded districts in Minnesota include both Minneapolis Public Schools and St. Paul Public Schools, which is consistent with national patterns of below adequate funding in large, diverse, urban school districts. But the list also includes many districts outside of the Twin Cities, like Worthington, St. Cloud, Chisholm and Mabel-Canton — and suburban districts, including Columbia Heights and Brooklyn Center.” 

This finding matters because the students who need the most – including those qualifying for free and reduced-price meals, students experiencing unstable housing, students of color, and English learners – are significantly more likely than their peers to be enrolled in districts where funding is below adequate. 

For example, the study showed:

• About 17.4 % of Minnesota students are enrolled in districts with below-adequate funding — yet students identified as needing the most from public education are two to four times more likely than other students to be in those districts.

• English Learners and students experiencing poverty face particularly stark disparities in funding adequacy compared to their peers. 

Segregated Schools exacerbate inadequate funding: Baker and Di Carlo's work describe how segregation and inadequate funding feed on each other.  There are many reasons why segregated schools may result in impaired educational results.  Baker and Di Carlo point out that states general fail to provide districts with enough funding for students with greater needs.  

Equal opportunity is not just about how much districts spend.  It is, rather, about how much they spend relative to what they need.   Due in large part to racial and economic segregation, districts vary widely in terms of how much they need to spend to get their students’ performance up to where it should be.  …This imbalance of costs and fiscal capacity, driven by segregation, is a the core of school funding inequity.  Modern school finance systems are supposed to close those gaps.   Baker at 19-20

In following posts, Jvonkorff on Education explore Baker and Di Carlo's insights further.   In the meantime, the book is readable and persuasive.   Get on the net and buy yourself a copy.