Our Schools Need Federal Aid:
LEWIS, ALFRED BAKER
Supreme Court's ruling on segregation makes help to poor states urgent Our Schools Need Federal Aid By Alfred Baker Lewis THE Supreme Court decision outlawing segregated public schools has made...
...Somewhat more than half of the cost of education is borne by cities, counties, towns and school districts, nearly all the rest by state governments, and only about 3 per cent by the Federal Government...
...Local government bodies have a very inflexible system of taxation...
...ALFRED BAKER LEWIS is President of the Union Casualty and Life Insurance Company of Mount Vernon, N.Y...
...Education has traditionally been the job of local government bodies...
...In World War II, 649,000 young men called up for the draft were rejected because of educational deficiencies, in addition to those classed as mentally deficient...
...The poorest school districts in the United States spend around $30 per child, the richest over $600...
...To some extent, this also applies to state governments...
...Control of education, like financing education, has traditionally been a local-government function...
...This and similar measures introduced in later Congresses would go a long way toward ending educational inequalities...
...She is doing nearly all she can, and if her schools are poor it is because she can't raise the funds to make them better...
...Thus, money may be spent for school lunches, child health programs or bus transportation for children going to parochial schools...
...When they attempt to tax corporate profits, incomes or gasoline, it is easy for the corporation or individual to move to another town or county...
...Accordingly, the proposed laws are careful to preserve local control and specifically forbid the Federal Government to dictate the appointment or discharge of any teacher...
...The old Wagner-Ellender-Taft bill passed the Senate with both liberal Catholic and liberal Protestant support...
...It would be reasonable to apply the same principles to Federal funds appropriated for education...
...By far the largest part of their revenue comes from real-estate taxes...
...But it will require equal educational facilities and opportunities much sooner...
...These vastly different rates of expenditure are inevitably reflected in unequal opportunities for education, shorter school terms, poorer teachers, equipment and transportation, and, finally, fewer children going on to high school and college...
...In the 17 states and the District of Columbia where educational segregation exists, the average current expenditure for a Negro pupil is only about 70 per cent of the average for white pupils...
...These differences in educational opportunity are not due so much to indifference to education where schooling is poorest as to differences in the economic capacity of the different school districts...
...When we examine the percentage of relative tax-paying ability actually spent for public schools by different states, we find that Mississippi, which shows up at the bottom of the list in decent schools, is actually third from the top...
...Negroes are concentrated in the Southern states, where educational facilities are below the national average even for white children...
...The greatest barrier to a Federal-aid-to-education law is the fight over aid to denominational or parochial schools, mostly those of the Catholic Church...
...Usually, the poorest states have the highest birth-rates...
...Consequently, the taxable capacity per child of different states varies widely...
...The latter alternative is not likely to be accepted...
...If we say that, because Protestants represent over 50 per cent of the population, we will deny the Catholic minority any part of their demands in the realm of education, we are being unreasonable...
...There is another reason for unequal educational opportunities, namely racial segregation and discrimination...
...Where there is a minority among us as large as the Catholic one, the members of the majority owe it to democratic principles to grant at least some of their demands...
...We provided Federal funds for students to go to denominational schools and colleges under the National Youth Administration program and again under the GI Bill of Rights...
...There are differences in average per capita income in the different districts, and also differences in the number of children per 1,000 population...
...Of those 14 years old and over, 9.4 per cent had never completed the fifth grade, which means that they could not intelligently discharge the duties of citizenship...
...These bills set up a reasonable formula for determining the taxable capacity of different states...
...Negroes suffer further because of segregation...
...The principle of no Federal funds to church schools is not absolute...
...The other alternatives will require a lot of money to be spent quickly and by states where the taxable capacity is low and the birth-rate high...
...Either new school buildings or classrooms and equipment to take care of Negro children along with whites will have to be provided, or a lot of money spent on the existing substandard schools for Negroes which will now have to take white children from the neighborhood—or else a good many white children will have poorer-paid teachers, poorer education and worse facilities than now...
...If the separation of Church and State were an absolute principle, we would logically have to lax church property: but we exempt such property...
...Doubtless, it will be a few years before the decision is effectively enforced throughout the South, especially in the rural areas...
...Yet, there are few absolute principles in politics: and the so-called principles of separation of Church and State, and that no Federal funds shall be given to church schools, are not really such...
...Financing education primarily by local real-estate taxes inevitably means poorer schools in localities where poor people predominate...
...The New England and Middle Atlantic states, which give relatively better educational opportunities than the national average, are in the lower half of the list of states when judged on ability to pay...
...Yet, because poverty and fecundity often go together, such locations are the very ones with a large number of children in proportion to the total population...
...This average is greatly pulled up by the figures in Kentucky, Oklahoma, West Virginia and Missouri, where discrimination against Negroes is negligible...
...12 per cent of all rejections were due to educational deficiencies...
...It provided that the states may spend money received from the Federal Government for aid to education on parochial schools if the latter are recognized by state law as part of the public-school system...
...In most cases, they simply do not have the financial strength to do much more...
...It is on just this point of racial inequality in educational opportunities that the recent Supreme Court decision declaring racial segregation in schools unconstitutional has made the need for Federal aid to education particularly acute...
...The Supreme Court has held that states may spend their tax funds for the welfare of children going to parochial schools, as distinguished from direct appropriations to such schools...
...This seems a reasonable compromise, certainly more reasonable than the Catholic demand that parochial schools get Federal funds even when public opinion in a particular state is overwhelmingly opposed...
...Mississippi spends $80 per child for education, while the Middle Atlantic states spend $262...
...Francis Cardinal Spellman of New York has demanded that funds from any program of Federal aid to education be allocated to parochial schools on an equal basis with public schools...
...The more extreme Protestants, on the other hand, have opposed this...
...Mississippi spends only 30 per cent as much for Negroes as for whites on education, South Carolina only three-fifths as much, and Arkansas and Georgia only two-thirds as much...
...According to the 1950 census, 5 per cent of our 7- and 8-year-olds were not enrolled in any school...
...Washington's contribution is mostly for vocational education and rehabilitation, plus funds for students in the Reserve Officers Training Corps...
...they simply require reports on how the Federal funds are spent...
...In general, the Southern states, where the educational opportunities offered are poor on the average, are shown to be making relatively far greater efforts in proportion to their tax-paying capacity...
...It also has the strong political advantage that it transfers the struggle over giving public funds to parochial schools from the Federal to the slate level...
...Why should this inequality or complete lack of educational opportunities exist in the richest country in the world...
...We are still far from providing the equal educational opportunities necessary to make democracy a reality...
...this divisive issue need not prevent Federal aid to education, which is badly needed...
...This is the situation in a few states in which there are localities with hardly any non-Catholic children, so that it would be extremely costly to provide public schools parallel to the parochial schools...
...New York, which spends the largest amount of money per child, is nonetheless near the bottom when the amount spent is related to tax-paying ability...
...They give a much larger proportional contribution from Federal funds to states whose taxable capacity is below the national average, provided that the low-capacity states are making a vigorous effort on their part to finance education, and provided also that they do not reduce their contributions from state and local sources below the amount they were spending for education in the last year before adoption of the law...
...It is only fair to say that, in every case, the percentage spent for education of Negro children has improved in the past decade...
...In that way...
...Whole states as well as localities also differ considerably in the average wealth and income of their inhabitants...
...Generally speaking, the low-income states have the heaviest educational responsibility and provide the least adequate school opportunities...
...Supreme Court's ruling on segregation makes help to poor states urgent Our Schools Need Federal Aid By Alfred Baker Lewis THE Supreme Court decision outlawing segregated public schools has made the old issue of Federal aid to education more acute...
...A bill for such aid actually passed the Senate a few years ago, sponsored by the late Senator Robert F. Wagner of New York, a New Deal Democrat, the late Senator Robert A. Taft, a conservative Republican, and Senator Allen Ellender of Louisiana, a Dixiecrat...
...Proposals for Federal aid to education get support from Senators and Representatives who agree on practically nothing else except opposition to sin and support of home and family...
Vol. 37 • December 1954 • No. 49
