Is funding education progressive?

Open letter to the Government

THE EDITOR, Madam:

I write with reference to the article, ‘Defunding UWI hurts primary, secondary education - professor,’ published in The Gleaner on January 30.

The purpose of this letter is to inquire whether funding education is progressive.

Thirty-five states of the United States of America have funding formulas that attempt to target low-income (poor-performing) students. To understand how well these formulas achieve that goal, we measured whether poor students tend to be enrolled in districts ( eg, cities, counties) with higher or lower per-student funding levels than non-poor students. A positive difference indicates that a state which spends more on educating poor students is generally progressive.

Note: We exclude Hawaii and Washington, DC, because they are both single districts.

CARGILL KELLY

cargillkelly@icloud.com