School Funding

The issues that tend to dominate the news cycle are those that are easily sold as belonging to one side of the political aisle. As well, the influence of any such issue should be easily distorted into something earthshaking. In the context of today’s Climactic Washington Circus, John Cole wrote the following:

I have always agreed with this. Breeding should not be rewarded. In the same way that Cole was prompted by the similarly absurd mortgage tax credit, my thoughts turned to the daytime locus of children.

School funding has always struck me as odd. It is terribly obvious that everything that needs to be known of a typical public school can be learned by a cursory glance at the neighborhood(s) it services. Everything from the state of repair of the facilities to the availability of special education to the overall quality of the education can be thus assessed. There are certainly exceptions, but the trend is obvious and overwhelming. Schools receive a certain amount of money from the Federal and State governments. But a large fraction of a schools resources are provided locally. Specifically, much of a school’s funding is received from property taxes. The result? Schools in predominantly well-to-do neighborhoods are generally considered good schools, and schools in poor neighborhoods are considered poor schools.

Might there be a fundamental change in social mobility if all students across the board enjoyed the same level of resources from preschool through high school? Just a thought.