Equity concept, meaning and implementation

Education Finance

Student’s Name

Institution

Equity refers to giving individuals the treatment that they deserve. Equity concept holds that all district schools in the state must give same resources to all the students within that state in such a way that no student is made better off or worse off than the other in terms of educational resource allocation. It has two perspectives: One is on whether resources allocated to each school in the districts are the same irrespective of the commitment level of the local taxpayers. The second focuses on individual students in the district in ensuring that they are funded equally irrespective of the commitment of the taxpayers within that district.

Wealth neutrality ensures that district funding does not solely depend on district income but rather on what an educated public wants. Wealth neutrality concept looks at both state and local revenue, the school expenditure and the property wealth of a given district. Wealth neutrality is achieved through distribution of educational resources as per the taxpayers’ priority and preferences rather than fiscal capacity of the district or state (Thompson, Crampton & Wood, 2008). This can be achieved mathematically by calculating a lower cost of educational resources to students or district schools that have the least capability to afford those resources. Every state is faced with the problem of accurately measuring equity as it requires sophisticated statistical methods and procedures.

Horizontal equity refers to financing the school districts in a fair manner. It requires that equal individuals receive equal treatment in terms of fund distribution. Horizontal equity is achieved by looking at any form of unfair distribution of funds amongst the district schools (Thompson, Crampton & Wood, 2008). Moreover, horizontal equity ensures that students’ expenditures are equal to the ratio of student to teacher and teacher resources are equal across all the relevant measurement criteria. It is mostly used in comparing large but similar subgroups of students such as students in medical school of various universities in a given state.

Vertical equity relates to the treatment of unequal individuals such as an ordinary student and a special student such as a severely disabled one. The unequal individuals are normally required to pass same examination. Vertical equity recognizes and resolves the legitimate differences in some students, hence the need for additional educational resources to those disabled students. In such a case, funding for the additional educational resources required by the disabled students must be factored to arrive at the funding per weighted student (Thompson, Crampton & Wood, 2008).

According to Thompson, Crampton & Wood (2008), horizontal equity entails equal distribution of educational resources to the diverse groups of students. It ensures that equal students in terms of physical, geographical and economic characteristics are treated equally. This perspective focuses on students with same educational needs hence, they require same educational resources. Vertical equity on the other hand entails discrimination of the disparate individuals (Thompson, Crampton & Wood, 2008). It acknowledges that some students such as the disabled students have certain extra educational needs that require extra resources in order to bring them at par with the others in the same class. Vertical equity aims at ensuring that a school takes care of the diverse needs of learners.

Vertical equity ensures allocation of varying resources to schools in order to take care of the needs of its diverse students whereas horizontal equity ensures allocation of same resources to schools for use by students with the same level of academic needs. Horizontal equity can be quantified with ease whereas vertical equity cannot because its choices are usually based on values which also vary from school to school. What is deemed as right in one school may be deemed wrong in another. Vertical equity focuses on “appropriate treatment” that entails allocating educational resources taking into consideration the characteristics of the schools, students and the various programs in place.

Adequacy refers to educational resources that are just sufficient to meet standard or quality of education set. It suggests that educational resources be availed in school in order to provide students with the necessary skills and knowledge that they require. The concept also refers to provision of adequate fund for a school to educate the ordinary student to the standard stipulated by the state, plus some extra funds for disabled students to cater for their special needs to enable them to be at par with the ordinary students as well. Adequacy is arrived at by school financial committees using economic cost function approach, successful school district approach and cost of the effective school approach or professional consensus approach.

Thompson, Crampton & Wood (2008) asserts that the concept of adequacy reinforces the concept of Vertical equity. This is because it not only requires that sufficient funds be allocated to schools to enable students meet the set educational targets and quality, but also ensures that extra funds are availed to cater for the extra resources required to enable the special students to also compete favorably with the ordinary ones. Funding for the district schools comes from various including revenues from federal, state, local governments and also grants. Federal government usually allocates some amount for towards education. The states also play a vital role in ensuring that district schools receive funding. The local taxpayers also bear the burden of funding education in the respective schools in the locality. However equalization is usually done by the federal government in order to achieve fiscal neutrality.

Thompson, Crampton & Wood (2008) argues that the unique problem with property tax in funding schools is the fact that some districts have fewer if not, limited resources in terms of business or investment ventures within them hence low property values. This in turn leads to their inability to offer some services that are available in the rich districts. This necessitates the state to come for their rescue through equalization programs in which the state calculates lower costs for those districts which are unable to pay for the services. Mort’s contribution to equalization concept is evident, although it differs with that of Cubberley, who put more emphasis on reward for effort. Their concepts helped the institutionalization of the state aid systems. Updgraff on the other hand argued that there should be variation in state aid based on local wealth and their tax effort. He subsequently came up with the formula that combines equalization and reward for tax efforts.

Equalization program refers to the methods and formulae that are used by states in order to ensure equitability in school or educational funding. Flat grants refer to a type of grant where all school district in a given state are provided with fixed amount of funds irrespective of the locality’s fiscal capacity. Equalization grants provides large amount of funds to the localities incapable of raising their own while at the same time giving less funds to those localities that are able to raise their own funds.

Foundation programs is a type equalization grant mechanism in which the lowest level of per student funding is set to be met by both local and state funding system. Guaranteed tax base rate (GTB) is a type of equalization grant where all school districts are assumed to have same level of per student property tax base after which a decision on the amount of funding to each locality is made based on their fiscal capability. Multitier grants entail a combination of the two or more of the aforementioned grants with some form of percentage equalization (Thompson, Crampton & Wood, 2008).

Full state funding is a grant in which all state educational resources are made available to all students in equal amounts regardless of district school location and the locality’s fiscal capacity. Need equalization refers to offsetting of inequalities among students which are as a result of economic and physical limitations through use of programs such as bilingual education, early childhood education and special education. Cost equalization refers to measure by which the state offsets expenditure inequalities by some district schools which arises as a result of geographical and economical conditions.

References

Thompson, D. C., Crampton, F. E., & Wood, R. C. (2008). Money and Schools. Larchmont, NY: Eye on Education.