Few people oppose educational equity as a policy goal in the abstract, yet it remains a fraught

and contentious issue. Disputes surround not only how to achieve equity but, more
fundamentally, how we define and measure it. This article draws on school finance research
and policy to discuss critical questions about how we define, measure and, ultimately, address
educational inequities.
Educational equity, also referred to as "Equity in education", is a measure of achievement,
fairness, and opportunity in education. The study of education equity is often linked with the
study of excellence and equity.
Educational equity depends on two main factors.
a. fairness, which implies that factors specific to one's personal conditions should not
interfere with the potential of academic success.
b. inclusion, which refers to a comprehensive standard that applies to everyone in a
certain education system.
Three related concepts on defining equity
1. Horizontal equity examines whether students in “equal” situations receive equal
resources. Because it focuses on equality, horizontal equity is the easiest to identify and
measure, but because students rarely have the same needs or circumstances, it is often
the least useful concept for policymaking.
2. Vertical equity stresses that students with different needs should receive different levels
of resources. While this is an easy concept to support in practice, the devil is in the
details. What unequal circumstances qualify for additional resources and how much
more should be targeted to those students? Poverty, disabilities and limited-English
proficiency are common factors generating additional funding, but there are numerous
other possibilities on which less consensus exists: race, immigrant status, and parents’
education level, to name several. While there are numerous “ballpark” estimates of the
additional resources needed to provide equitable educational opportunities, the
estimates can vary widely from state to state and researcher to researcher.
3. Equal opportunity focuses on whether the resources available to a student are
systematically linked to factors that might be considered “illegitimate.” Again, we can
identify a myriad of possible factors, such as income and race. Because the vast
majority of local resources for education are raised through property taxes, though,
equal opportunity often focuses on whether spending is primarily a function of a school
district’s wealth, thereby violating the principle of equal opportunity. But what if some
portion of the relationship is due to wealthier school districts choosing to tax themselves
more heavily than poorer districts and is not simply attributable to wealth differences?
Here, the legal and policy implications are murkier.
Equity vs. equality
Equity
Equity recognizes that some are at a larger disadvantage than others and aims at compensating
for these peoples misfortunes and disabilities to ensure that everyone can attain the same type
of healthy lifestyle. Examples of this are: “When libraries offer literacy programs, when schools
offer courses in English as a second language, and when foundations target scholarships to
students from poor families, they operationalize a belief in equity of access as fairness and as
justice”.[3] Equity recognizes this uneven playing field and aims to take extra measures by
giving those who are in need more than others who are not. Equity aims at making sure that
everyone's lifestyle is equal even if it may come at the cost of unequal distribution of access and
goods. Social justice leaders in education strive to ensure equitable outcomes for their students.

Equality
The American Library Association defines equality as: “access to channels of communication
and sources of information that is made available on even terms to all--a level playing field--is
derived from the concept of fairness as uniform distribution, where everyone is entitled to the
same level of access and can avail themselves if they so choose.”[3] In this definition of equality
no one person has an unfair advantage. Everyone is given equal opportunities and accessibility
and are then free to do what they please with it. However, this is not to say that everyone is then
inherently equal. Some people may choose to seize these open and equal opportunities while
others let them pass by.

Challenges in educational equity

1. Income and class - Income has always played an important role in shaping academic
success. Those who come from a family of a higher socioeconomic status (SES) are
privileged with more opportunities than those of lower SES. Those who come from a
higher SES can afford things like better tutors, rigorous SAT/ACT prep classes,
impressive summer programs, and so on. Parents generally feel more comfortable
intervening on behalf of their children to acquire better grades or more qualified teachers
(Levitsky). Parents of a higher SES are more willing to donate large sums of money to a
certain institution to better improve their child's chances of acceptance, along with other
extravagant measures. This creates an unfair advantage and distinct class barrier.

2. Costs of education -The extraordinarily high cost of the many prestigious high schools
and universities makes an attempt at a "level playing field" for all students not so level.
High-achieving low-income students do not have the means to attend selective schools
that better prepare a student for later success. Because of this, low-income students do
not even attempt to apply to the top-tier schools for which they are more than qualified.
In addition, neighborhoods generally segregated by class leave lower-income students
in lower-quality schools. For higher-quality schooling, students in low-income areas
would have to take public transport which they can't pay for. Fewer than 30 percent of
students in the bottom quarter of incomes even enroll in a four-year school and among
that group, fewer than half graduate.

3. Tracking - Another contributor to the inequality in the education system is tracking.

Tracking sorts students into different classes or groups based on ability or future plans.
The point of tracking is to create an environment in which the student's abilities match
both the curriculum as well as the other student's in the class.[5] This separation,
 however, creates an inequality within itself. Starting at an extremely young age, the
sorting of students mimics a hierarchy similar to what may form later in life. Students are
both viewed and treated differently depending on which track they take. The quality of
teaching and curricula vary between tracks and as a result, those of the lower track are
disadvantaged with inferior resources, teachers, etc. In many cases, tracking stunts
students who may develop the ability to excel past their original placement.

4. Increase migration and diversity - As increased immigration causes problems in

educational equity for some countries, poor social cohesion in other countries is also a
major issue. In countries where continued migration causes an issue, the ever-changing
social structure of different races makes it difficult to propose a long-term solution to
educational equity. On the other hand, many countries with consistent levels of diversity
experience long-standing issues of integrating minorities. Challenges for minorities and
migrants are often exacerbated as these groups statistically struggle more in terms of
both lower academic performance and lower socio-economic status.
What Is Efficiency?
Efficiency signifies a level of performance that describes using the least amount of input to
achieve the highest amount of output. Efficiency requires reducing the number of unnecessary
resources used to produce a given output including personal time and energy. It is a
measurable concept that can be determined using the ratio of useful output to total input. It
minimizes the waste of resources such as physical materials, energy, and time while
accomplishing the desired output.
Efficiency occurs when outputs from education (such as test results or value added) are
produced at the lowest level of resource (be that financial or, for example, the innate ability of
students)

Approaches to efficiency
1. Staffing - staffing is such an important aspect of their budget that there was little
opportunity for efficiency elsewhere. Indeed, several argued that the only way they could
make any serious impact, especially if facing, for example, 10% cuts, would be to cut
down on staff. This was often such an important point for heads, that they found it hard
to think outside it and focus on other areas of efficiency.

2. Procurement - All agreed that value for money was essential when it came to the procurement
of goods and services. Everyone was keen to get both the best price and the highest quality, and
some pointed out that this came fairly naturally in any case, as they would invariably try to do
the same in their home lives. However, it was felt to be a difficult area in which to succeed, not
least because of the impression held by some that suppliers saw schools as easy targets, and
would therefore not offer them the best deals.
3. Energy saving - Energy efficiency was usually included as part of the curriculum, which meant
that it was seen as a highly relevant issue for most schools. As a result, some schools already
had stated energy-saving policies and had signed up to energy pledges. All schools were
required to display Energy Performance Certificates; the fact that these were displayed
 relatively prominently meant that heads were often more conscious of how well/poorly they
were doing.
4. Sharing resources - It’s not for the Government to dictate how schools should spend every
penny of their budget. Individual schools and their local communities know much better how
schools should be spending to support improved attainment for all their pupils.
5. Awareness and use of current sources -When asked to discuss which sources of information
they might turn to for information on financial efficiency, few identified many sources of
information that they would want to use. This was not necessarily due to a lack of awareness of
the resources available; rather, it appeared to exemplify the fact that most people thought they
were already doing what they could in terms of efficiency. As they saw little scope for
improvement in this respect, they naturally doubted whether they would find out any new
information from a website or document.
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