Dear Editor

...Dear Editor Lekachman I would just like to say that I found the article by Robert Lekachman ("Schools, Money and Politics" NL, September IS) excellent, both in its argument and its prose Albany Ewald B Nyquist Commissioner of Education, New York State Robert Lekachman's sensible and informative piece has given me second thoughts on, among other things the matter of doing away with the property tax And it suggests what steps we may have to take, and what obstacles we may have to oveicome, to see that poor lids get as much money spent on their schools as rich kids But the article seems to proceed from assumptions that need to be questioned These might be summed up more money spent on schooling = better schooling = more money later in life In the fii st place Christopher Jencks' new study, Inequality A Reassessment of the Effect of Famih and Schooling in Amenca, seems to show that the correlations between amount of schooling and success in school, on the one hand, and later income on the other, are very much weaker than we had supposed Second, if schooling is a race for a scarce supply of well paid and desirable slots m society, nothing we can do to the school-racetrack can prevent us from having more losers than winners In the third place, the effort to equalize spending between schools does not change the fact that putting most of our public educational resources into institutions benefits those students who can stay in school the longest—for many and obvious reasons the children of the well-to-do Finally as long as people believe that their children's life chances depend on having more money spent on their schooling than most other children, as long as we have, m short, the competitive consumption of schooling, we can never spend enough Because what most people, or communities of people want from schools is "Get my kid(s) ahead of all those other kids," and because schools allow or encourage people to believe that they can somehow satisfy this demand, our educational system is in a hopeless position There will not be much true educating done as long as one of the fundamental tasks is, or is believed to be, to determine who goes where and who gets what Boston John Holt Robert Lekachman's article on school finance is a generally excellent review of the issues There are, however several additional problems regarding equalization that deserve attention 1 Equalization of expenditures must take account not only of variations m the cost of educating different sorts of children, but variations in the cost of many services from one district to another It costs far more to build a classroom in Manhattan than m upstate New York, for example Similarly, New York City must pay higher salaries than Scarsdale to get the same teacher or administrator Befoie implementing a statewide equalization program we therefore need to develop local "cost of school services" indices that will allow us to give each district equal purchasing power rather than just equal income per pupil Otherwise, big cities will again be shortchanged 2 Formulas that make district expenditure depend on tax effort but not wealth have obvious appeals, but they also have several drawbacks First, there is the question of whether one should look at "effort" strictly in terms of school taxes, or whether one should look at the overall property tax (or property and local sales tax) rate Is it reasonable to penalize, say, New York City because its school tax rate is low, when its total tax rate is very high...

...I am inclined to think not Second, one must ask whether it is desirable on ethical grounds to penalize children because their parents (or other parents m their district) vote for a low school or municipal tax rate Taken together, these complications make me wonder whether tying school expenditures to local effort is really worth the trouble 3 Like most other observers, Lekachman assumes that if states assume more responsibility for school finance, they will assume more control over school policy This seems logical But as far as I know, nobody has ever demonstrated that it is true Do states that pay high fractions of total school costs exert more control over local boards than states that pay low fractions of total costs...

...I do not know, but until this can be shown, I remain skeptical about claims that full state funding means a reduction in local control over school policy Cambridge, Mass Christopher Jencks May I congratulate The New Leader on publication of Robert Lekachman's thoughtful article, "Schools, Money and Politics" It is an excellent statement of the complexity of the issues involved, and a reminder that change in any one variable m our society may have far-reaching effects No doubt my own involvement in New York City is in part responsible for my conviction that the major educational problem of the day is urban Statewide formulas that relate taxable property to the number of school-age children tend to shortchange the big cities because the favorable property-to-children ratio is more than offset by other urban expenditures which have sky-rocketed in the past quarter-century While New York or Seattle appeared well able to subsidize rural areas at one time, increasing urban costs for welfare, public health care and police have reduced the ability of large cities to provide as they once did for education The first essential, m my view, is securing adequate financial means for support of education Allocation of these funds, whether local state or national should be tied to an educational cost index in each community that includes the following factors 1 The cost of providing all educational services, the ' standard" programs as well as those suited to particular local needs such as remedial instruction enrichment courses and ancillary services (heallh nutrition child care, after-school programs etc ) 2 The cost of living for teachers in a specific community as related to compensation for persons in equivalent occupational groups in the same community 3 The cost of governmental operations in toto for the community so that educations share remains constant regardless of other tax liabilities Finally I find the New York State proposal to limit expenditures in favored school districts unattractive We continue to live under a system of relatively private enterprise where people may buy what they wish to pay for To prevent affluent communities from buying the quality of educational services they wish for their children in public schools would sunply destroy public education in those districts Efforts should be directed at moving the floor for expenditures up not leveling downward support that the affluent wish to provide New York Citv Milton J Gold Dean of Piogiams in Education, Hunter College A pleasure ol teaching is meeting high-quality young people Robert Lekachman was one of the first in my experience and one of the best His article, 'Schools Money and Politics" reveals again the capacity of his mind and the clarity ot his writing No author can do everything of course and Lekachman did not pretend to deal with all aspects of the current debate on school financing But two points in particular seem worth mentioning First the property tax as it applies to land deseives our strong support We should, I believe, place heavy reliance on it for financing local government Schools can be included (withm limits), but there are reasons for deciding to use the revenues more for other purposes As for the value added tax, Lekachman might modify his views if he were to consider the alternatives (eg, the regressive nature of taxes on corporation earnings to the extent that the burden is shifted to consumers) Second, the discussion of schooling emphasizes equality-naturally, since the 14th Amendment is involved Yet to me it seems that we should say more about "better" education The "liberal" may assume a greater willingness of the majority to pay taxes for this than is in fact the case Indeed financing better education across the state has less appeal, I suspect, than paying for services at home I wish we knew what makes people willing to vote taxes on themselves, but experience suggests that votmg funds for schools at home will generally result in more financing for schools than voting over a whole state I should like to see this faced more frankly New York City C Lowell Harriss Professor of Economics, Columbia University...