February 2, 2015 - 09:51
After reading the selections from City Kids, City Schools, which provided strong, negative opinions about how the government deals with poverty and "failing" schools, I revisited the article "Racial Bias in Pennsylvania's Funding of Public Schools." From the first read-through, I was struck at how the line-of-best-fit in the graphs so starkly separated the yellow and brown dots. On second look, I noticed a brown dot in the upper right corner -- an outlier -- at about 90% Free or Reduced Lunch and getting about $16,000 per student BEF (Basic Education Funding).
Not only does this district seem to have a large population of its students in poverty but also many students of racial minorities. I wonder what allows them to stand way above the rest, getting about twice as much as other districts with the same demographics. Did this district do something exceptional, is the school in particularily bad shape? While visualized data can be quite revealing, it doesn't always tell the whole story, I feel. Just as Stan Karp argues in NCLB's Selective Vision of Equality, even "small gaps" of $101 can make a huge difference. What about a gap of $8,000?