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

A provocative examination of how systemic racism in education funding is sustained.

For people who care about urban school districts like Philadelphia’s, 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? 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 work to maintain the privileges of majority-white school districts. Liu 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. Taking a lesson from community organizers fighting for a racially equitable school funding system, Liu’s work is a bold call to address structural racism at the root and organize from a place of abundant justice.

Roseann Liu is assistant professor in the college of education studies at Wesleyan University and visiting assistant professor in Asian American studies at Swarthmore College. Prior to academia, she was a policy and program evaluation researcher and a public school teacher.