While **SlackerInc **contemplates having to admit he was wrong again, I’ll write this post:
So, **SlackerInc **spends a lot of time “thinking” about federal spending on black students, and apparently no time at all actually trying to actually understand it. So, since I’m bored waiting for someone, and since I’m much smarter than SlackerInc, I’ll just go ahead and solve his problem for him. Turns out it wasn’t very difficult.
First, a few facts:
Overall
There are about 50,485,000 total K-12 students
Black students are 15.6% of the K-12 student population, or about 7,848,000 students total
Title I
Title I supports about 14,900,000 students in total, approximately 27% of whom are black
Total Title I federal spending is 13,167,192,000, or about $884 per child
Special Education
Federal Special Education Programs support 6,612,752 students, 1,308,328 (or about 19.78%) of whom are black.
Total federal spending on special education programs is 10,821,981,000, or about $1,637 per student
Other
The rest of federal spending on K-12 students is nutrition programs and misc small amounts, so we don’t need to allocate it
State and Local
One final fact: on a state and local level, black students receive on average $334 less than white students. Multiplying $334 by the total number of black students tells us that black students are underfunded by 2,621,232,000.
The problem
So, a $2.6 billion deficit is a lot of money. The question **SlackerInc **has been impotently wrestling with is: is federal spending on black students sufficient to offset the shortfall in state and local funding.
Well, given the facts above, it’s not a difficult question.
First, the “excess” spending on special education for black students: (19.78% - 15.6%)7,848,0001,637 = 544,527,734
Second, the “excess” spending on Title I for black students: (27% - 15.6%)7,848,000884 = 794,425,125
And now we can conclude:
Shortfall of 2.6 billion less excess special education funding of 0.5 billion les “excess” Title I funding of 0.8 billion = overall shortfall of 1.3 billion
So, SlackerInc, I did the work that you were unable to do, and concluded that, as expected, black children receive less education funding than white children, even after taking federal spending into account.
You’re welcome