Other People's Children
We feel every child has the right to an equal educational opportunity, but we do not wish to pay for the education of our poorer neighbors' children.
When it comes to funding the education of the nation's children, two principles are at work. The first, often enunciated, and on which there is a rhetorical consensus, is that we feel every child has the right to an equal educational opportunity. The second, almost never publicly enunciated, but effectively at work wherever funding policy is made, is that we do not wish to pay for the education of our poorer neighbors' children. Thomas Jefferson ran into this second principle a long time ago. When he proposed a modest plan of free education for white children in Virginia, he was turned down by his fellow planters, who were willing to send their own children to be tutored or to attend private schools, but were not willing to be taxed to pay for the education of their poorer neighbors' children.
Two centuries later, to our credit as a nation, we have achieved free, public education in all 50 states, but it is badly marred by inequalities in expenditures. The principle of equality of educational opportunity implies a rough equality in the amount of money spent each year on a child's education. There might be differences in costs in different areas of the country; and some children, because of special needs or special talents, might require more money spent on them. Nevertheless, a rough equality of expenditure follows logically from our commitment to equality of educational opportunity. Yet large differences in what we spend on a child's education exist among states and within states. Wealthier school districts within even one county spend more than twice as much per pupil annually than poorer districts in the same county. Parents of a child in Mississippi, of course, would be happy to have half the amount of money spent on their child's education as is spent on a child in Westport, Conn.
Over the last few decades, many decent people in this country have understood this basic unfairness, and sought remedies for it. Recognizing that differences in educational expenditures are partly traceable to differences in real estate wealth among school districts, they have sought legislatively to change state aid formulas to help poorer districts. Others have sought to base school funding in a progressive state income tax rather than in real estate taxes. Altered state aid formulas have provided some help to poorer districts, but have hardly approached equal funding. Calls for a change from a real estate to a state income tax have not...
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