The Economics of Equity in K-12 Education

This book informs the American Education Stakeholders about the importance of empowering our learners with new knowledge, skills, and ability to help them become more effective and influential in society. The United States ranks 25^th on the list of OECD countries in its overall poverty gap between people in poverty and affluent people, and ranks 26^th in its poverty gap for children born into poverty and children from affluent families. Considering new educational funding measures at the federal, state, and local levels, the American educational system must focus on implementing programs that equip children with multidimensional human capital that enables them to be upwardly mobile, particularly in an era of intense technological change with the expansion of automation and artificial intelligence. These goals are not new. We believe that now is an important time to articulate and commit to the transmission of human capital for children and identify the practices that best promote it.

This book aims to make recommendations to educational programming that should be invested in that has shown potential in mitigating the opportunity gap and increasing human capital. With long aftershocks, the pandemic’s dramatically decreased educational opportunities may mean that America’s future workforce will be devastated by the declining number of children in our pre-K-12 system, a phenomenon predicted to begin showing its effects in 2025, with a higher number of students projected to be below grade level in skilled areas. Simply increasing funding will have little impact in driving improved outcomes if the funds are not used wisely; indeed, expenditures per student have roughly tripled since 1960.

This book recommends a systems-level approach to the American education system. The authors believe that without deeply considering the underlying incentives and governance of educational programming initiatives, more money alone will not solve the skills gap and declining out comes among learners. This handbook will be essential to state and local entities to make systemic recommendations to practitioners, college professors, and researchers.