Not always; in California, for example, property taxes were vitiated by Prop 13, and so the state budget covers most of education costs (60%), which in theory s

Not always; in California, for example, property taxes were vitiated by Prop 13, and so the state budget covers most of education costs (60%), which in theory should mean less local variation. In practice it means schools in wealthy districts hold "bake sales" where rich parents make sizeable donations (like auctioning off their timeshare in Tahoe) to their kid's school. The result is the same - schools full of rich kids have plenty of money, schools full of poor kids don't.