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Funding schools based on local property tax was institutionalized as a way to ensure rich people don’t have to pay for poor people’s education.

by zwkrt 4y ago

mrep 4y ago
Except local property taxes only pay for about half of k-12 education. The other half comes from federal and state governments and the way they give out funding is to selectively counteract that misallocation such that 47 states actually allocate more per-student funding to poor areas than to wealthier ones on average according to this article [0] and it has been this way since at least 1995. [0]: https://apps.urban.org/features/school-funding-do-poor-kids-get-fair-share/ https://apps.urban.org/features/school-funding-do-poor-kids-...
- uup 4y ago
  > only pay for about half That's a lot. From your own link, a vast majority of schools are regressive, i.e poor people get less.
  - blululu 4y ago
    The 50:50 figure is in aggregate. You would not be able to infer if the distribution is a regressive based on that number alone. The linked article does not say that the vast majority of schools are regressive. "A handful - Nevada, Wyoming and Illinois are weakly regressive, and the majority have a weakly progressive distribution of funding to poo vs non poor students"
    - uup 4y ago
      I see, I didn't realize the graph of progressive / regressive changed as your scrolled the page. Actually, looking at the data further, you can't really draw a conclusion about whether or not the funding is regressive or progressive. The local funding is definitely regressive, but you'd need to know how state and federal funds were distributed across schools to know if the end result was progressive or regressive. For instance, if federal funding was evenly distributed to every school, that would still be regressive.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Some of the worst districts in my state have the most funding and highest teacher pay. The best teachers still don't want to work there because being called the c-word by 1st graders or having a 3rd grader threaten to stab you (and seem like they really mean it) and not being able to do anything about it because the two fights and one baggie of drugs admin's had referred to them by noon today has them too busy to spend any time on "minor" stuff like that, plus having lockdowns with police patrolling the halls and yelling at anyone who so much as pokes a head out a door without clearing it with them first, due to credible threats of violence, several times per year, makes you want to do literally anything else as a career in a hurry. 15-20% higher pay than the next-best-paying district doesn't make it worth it. Schools can't fix poverty and ghettos no matter how much money you give them, but trying that is simpler than fixing the real problems that cause very, very "bad" schools, so that's what we do, even though it will never work.
lambdaphagy 4y ago
1. School funding is actually somewhat progressive: https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/2017/06/22/no-us-school-funding-is-actually-somewhat-progressive/ https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/2017/06/22/no-us-school-f... 2. People who are concerned about the allegedly regressive character of public school funding would do well to spell out their model of how spending affects basic math and writing performance. For almost all of history, every educated person studied under conditions that made the most impoverished reservation school in North Dakota look like Andover.
blululu 4y ago
This takes a consequence of a decentralized government and attributes it to the intent. The origins of public schools in America take their form from the structure of American government in the era when they formed. 200 years ago American government was virtually non-existent at the state and federal level. The oldest public education law in America comes from the Massachusetts Bay Colony which required every township of a certain size to establish a basic grammar school. The reason it was done at the local level is that there was no state wide administration to capable of collecting and managing the taxes, budgeting and administrating schools in that era. Thus it was handled at a very local level. While a lot of modern education funding reforms in America focus on redistributing funds to support poorer communities, this is not an immediate win. In states like California where local property taxes have been effectively abolished by a voter backed constitutional amendment, there are big challenges in fairly negotiating the allocation of resources across the different regions of the state.
robotbikes 4y ago
And it has continued for decades even after being declared unconstitutional in Ohio. So it is hard to change the attitude many people who live in suburbs have. The movement for integrated schools (https://integratedschools.org/podcasts/ https://integratedschools.org/podcasts/) is one group of people trying to fight the racial inequity aspect of this but considering the magnitude of the problem it is a big hill to climb.
caeril 4y ago
I'm not sure where you live, but where I live, school funding is taxed and allocated at the county level. The county contains both extremely impoverished and extremely wealthy areas, in roughly a bell curve distribution. Schools are funded on a per-student basis within the county.

Funding schools based on local property tax was institutionalized as a way to ensure rich people don’t have to pay for poor people’s education.

by zwkrt 4y ago

Funding schools based on local property tax was institutionalized as a way to ensure rich people don’t have to pay for poor people’s education.

mrep 4y ago

Except local property taxes only pay for about half of k-12 education. The other half comes from federal and state governments and the way they give out funding is to selectively counteract that misallocation such that 47 states actually allocate more per-student funding to poor areas than to wealthier ones on average according to this article [0] and it has been this way since at least 1995. [0]: https://apps.urban.org/features/school-funding-do-poor-kids-get-fair-share/ https://apps.urban.org/features/school-funding-do-poor-kids-...

uup 4y ago
> only pay for about half That's a lot. From your own link, a vast majority of schools are regressive, i.e poor people get less.
- blululu 4y ago
  The 50:50 figure is in aggregate. You would not be able to infer if the distribution is a regressive based on that number alone. The linked article does not say that the vast majority of schools are regressive. "A handful - Nevada, Wyoming and Illinois are weakly regressive, and the majority have a weakly progressive distribution of funding to poo vs non poor students"
  - uup 4y ago
    I see, I didn't realize the graph of progressive / regressive changed as your scrolled the page. Actually, looking at the data further, you can't really draw a conclusion about whether or not the funding is regressive or progressive. The local funding is definitely regressive, but you'd need to know how state and federal funds were distributed across schools to know if the end result was progressive or regressive. For instance, if federal funding was evenly distributed to every school, that would still be regressive.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Some of the worst districts in my state have the most funding and highest teacher pay. The best teachers still don't want to work there because being called the c-word by 1st graders or having a 3rd grader threaten to stab you (and seem like they really mean it) and not being able to do anything about it because the two fights and one baggie of drugs admin's had referred to them by noon today has them too busy to spend any time on "minor" stuff like that, plus having lockdowns with police patrolling the halls and yelling at anyone who so much as pokes a head out a door without clearing it with them first, due to credible threats of violence, several times per year, makes you want to do literally anything else as a career in a hurry. 15-20% higher pay than the next-best-paying district doesn't make it worth it. Schools can't fix poverty and ghettos no matter how much money you give them, but trying that is simpler than fixing the real problems that cause very, very "bad" schools, so that's what we do, even though it will never work.

lambdaphagy 4y ago

1. School funding is actually somewhat progressive: https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/2017/06/22/no-us-school-funding-is-actually-somewhat-progressive/ https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/2017/06/22/no-us-school-f... 2. People who are concerned about the allegedly regressive character of public school funding would do well to spell out their model of how spending affects basic math and writing performance. For almost all of history, every educated person studied under conditions that made the most impoverished reservation school in North Dakota look like Andover.

blululu 4y ago

This takes a consequence of a decentralized government and attributes it to the intent. The origins of public schools in America take their form from the structure of American government in the era when they formed. 200 years ago American government was virtually non-existent at the state and federal level. The oldest public education law in America comes from the Massachusetts Bay Colony which required every township of a certain size to establish a basic grammar school. The reason it was done at the local level is that there was no state wide administration to capable of collecting and managing the taxes, budgeting and administrating schools in that era. Thus it was handled at a very local level. While a lot of modern education funding reforms in America focus on redistributing funds to support poorer communities, this is not an immediate win. In states like California where local property taxes have been effectively abolished by a voter backed constitutional amendment, there are big challenges in fairly negotiating the allocation of resources across the different regions of the state.

robotbikes 4y ago

And it has continued for decades even after being declared unconstitutional in Ohio. So it is hard to change the attitude many people who live in suburbs have. The movement for integrated schools (https://integratedschools.org/podcasts/ https://integratedschools.org/podcasts/) is one group of people trying to fight the racial inequity aspect of this but considering the magnitude of the problem it is a big hill to climb.

caeril 4y ago

I'm not sure where you live, but where I live, school funding is taxed and allocated at the county level. The county contains both extremely impoverished and extremely wealthy areas, in roughly a bell curve distribution. Schools are funded on a per-student basis within the county.