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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.
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.
205 pages, Paperback
Published March 20, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
August 20, 2025
Money is important. It helps combat against problems such as ignorance and hunger. This author shows how the schools in my specific parts of Pennsylvania have had trouble getting enough money for all students who are not White, even as of last year.
I liked carrying this book around, incidentally, since the "Fail" is clearer to see than the rest of the title, so it emphasized whatever I was saying.
There are other issues Liu raises in the text, for example, an unwillingness to be accountable, but the largest one I see is a lack of capital.
In the end, I don't think there is a why, I think that more people need to acknowledge that inequality is a problem that exists.
I liked carrying this book around, incidentally, since the "Fail" is clearer to see than the rest of the title, so it emphasized whatever I was saying.
There are other issues Liu raises in the text, for example, an unwillingness to be accountable, but the largest one I see is a lack of capital.
In the end, I don't think there is a why, I think that more people need to acknowledge that inequality is a problem that exists.
May 15, 2025
Definitely not an ethnography. At best, a portrait of Pennsylvania legislators from the view of an advocacy group that sees the legislature as their enemy.
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews