Gender as a Useful Category for School Finance

ABSTRACT

School finance scholars focus attention on the roles that race and class play in the provision of educational opportunities. Recent school finance research, however, ignores the role that gender contributes in providing students equitable and adequate educational outcomes. Gender—originally included in school finance studies—has disappeared from recent work in school finance. This article engages feminist critical theory to describe the social context of gender in finance studies, and uses secondary data to illustrate how the inclusion of gender can be helpful in highlighting the need for more adequate funding in order to provide equal educational outcomes.

Notes

1. Adopted in 1972, Title IX was designed to help mitigate gender-based discrimination in educational settings by providing equal access, but not necessarily equal outcomes, for girls and women. Title IX, however, is typically invoked only in the arena of equality in school athletics, and despite its status as federal law, lacks the teeth of enforcement, leaving it largely a symbolic policy. Although the law allows the federal government to withdraw funding if a school does not comply with Title IX policy, enforcement is lacking.

2. As noted on page 3, Guthrie et al. present a more complicated notion of adequacy, drawing strong connections to the concept of adequacy.

3. See “Planning Allotment Formulas” at http://www.ncpublicschools.org/fbs/allotments/state/.

4. See http://app.doe.k12.ga.us/ows-bin/owa/qbe_reports.public_menu?p_fy=2000.