Why then is Public School funding not equal to all districts regardless of income level?
It is evident you know little of how education is funded in the first place. I'll give you a clue, the people in congress have little to do with it. Yes there are federal assistance programs such as title one status for schools, but the dollars poured in from that level are minuscule. Think about 5% of the budget and those programs target inner city public systems in the first place. Education funding is left up to the states as far as budgeting is concerned. Some states put the dole totally on the state level, some dole out from the county level, and some dole out on the local level. In order to tell you only need to see where and how your school committee operates. You have one for your city or town it is local, and its county level it is at the county level. They set the larger portion of the budget in cooperation with the people setting the municipal budget (town hall, city hall, or county seat). At least eighty percent of any school budget will come from local sources: property tax, sales tax proportion, or income tax proportion the latter two decided oftentimes by mathematical formulas based on census data. The state often times has a grant system in place meant to encourage what they consider good administrative and educational practice. They watchdog this through the state department of education.
The Problems
Poor areas start with a smaller pie and have a tendency to have poor leadership with fucked up priorities. They then fuck everything up so the state won't trust them with grants because they have no clue how to implement the changes for the quid pro quo. Then the money they do have they squander, because well... they are incompetent. Then there is the fact that some poor communities aren't simply poor but are clutched by the sicknesses of institutionalized poverty: the second and third generation welfare cases, gangs, drugs, and broken homes. Its a hard road up when the street keeps telling you its hopeless and mom or dad are too busy being a teenager to raise you. wealthy towns don't have these problem, but sometimes they will even short change public ed because they don't put there kids in that system. I can think of a few town in my state that do just that. Yet all of these issues existed before slavery and exist in even the most homogenized of countries. It has more to do with the fact that people aren't equal on the individual level, and so in every pie fight there are winners and losers. As the saying goes victory has a thousand father's, but failure is an orphan.
Most of you are Whites, and have argued ferociously against this, demanding "mythical evidence".
Now we are going into argumentum ad hominem territory their, Tamerlane. That's a fallacy, too. The makeup of my character or personality has nothing to do with this argument so leave it out like a person of character should.
I'm not an Educator so I would not know if such disparities exist today.
I am and I work in an inner city district with a large non white population. Disparity exists but it is not really so much along racial lines as it is among the ability to compete for the pie and the priorities of the locality. For example the state sets a minimum shelf for per pupil spending. If the local district goes below that shelf for whatever other spending priorities then the state will withdraw some of its matching funds as a punishment. Some cities and towns short change their districts because they'd rather spend it elsewhere.
I think your mistake here is assuming this sixty five percent is united and homogenous. That is not the case. Democratic decisions are not the result of a rational actor as you are positing. It is the end result of organizational infighting and compromise. We elect individuals who take their personal issues, their constituents issues, and their party's issues to the hill for a battle royale. What comes out is often a jabberwocky of compromise and patronage. There's more to it than white men in smoky rooms figuring out a new scheme to short change the mongrel races. It's really more stupid and mundane than that.
