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Designed to Fail: Why Racial Equity in School Funding Is So Hard to Achieve

Online ISBN:
9780226832708
Print ISBN:
9780226832692
Publisher:
University of Chicago Press
Book

Designed to Fail: Why Racial Equity in School Funding Is So Hard to Achieve

Roseann Liu
Roseann Liu

Assistant Professor

Wesleyan University
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Published online:
19 September 2024
Published in print:
20 March 2024
Online ISBN:
9780226832708
Print ISBN:
9780226832692
Publisher:
University of Chicago Press

Abstract

For people who care about urban school districts like Philadelphia, addressing the challenges that these schools face often boils down to the need for more money. But why are urban districts that serve Black and Brown students still so perennially underfunded compared to majority-white ones? Relatedly, why is racial equity in school funding so hard to achieve? In Designed to Fail, Roseann Liu provides an inside look at the Pennsylvania state legislature and campaigns for fair funding to show how those responsible for the distribution of school funding were fully invested in maintaining the privileges of majority-white school districts. Both vital and eye-opening, Designed to Fail analyzes how colorblind policies, political structures, and the maintenance of the status quo by people in power perpetuate wide and deepening racial disparities in education funding. The “design” that Designed to Fail uncovers is therefore dynamic, ever stewarded, and a result of a thousand small decisions made by individuals in power. Taking a lesson from community organizers fighting for a racially equitable school funding system, Liu calls on us to abandon the myth of scarcity that tells us to settle for “a little less inequity,” and to instead organize from a place of abundant justice.

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