Dear Editor
Dear Editor Financing Education In his "Schools, Money, and Politics" (NL, September 18), economic historian Robert Lekachman has written what may be the finest description so far of the...
...The startling difference between FSF and DPE stems in part from the fact that the Fleischmann Commission assumed it was sufficient to draw from a statewide school property tax only such money as required to replace the present statewide sum of local contributions...
...Also, some study needs to be done on the pros and cons of the existing state attempts to equalize financing for the schools...
...Can there ever be a major tax without "loopholes" for the nation's high priorities...
...Lekachman is a devoted equalitarian, as he states in his essay, but he maintains an admirable fairness and objectivity...
...What a delight to have the force of a good mind unleashed on this crucial subject...
...Lekachman and The New Leader deserve our praise and appreciation...
...Why, that is, should a community's deliberate decision for inferior schooling through inadequate tax rates or a particular philosophy deprive a child of proper instruction...
...Rich districts, under Serrano, face a choice between protecting their property tax rates (.FSF) or their power to maintain an expenditure gap between themselves and other districts (DPE...
...As it is, state governments already finance 40.9 per cent of all local school expenditures...
...Yet Lekachman probes like a great artist for the simplest, fairest solution and expresses his preference for the plan of Berkeley professor John Coons ????not without recognizing that "adjustments" may have to be made for the inner city children...
...It is all of these, locked together in exceedingly complex interplay...
...Albany, N.Y...
...If Serrano is upheld, the principle of equal schooling will have been clearly established, preempting the pleasant tradition that allows parents the option of deciding how much they want to pay for instruction...
...The Fleischmann Commission holds that such powers can be granted to parents and other members of the "school family" at the same lime that financing of education is centralized to the state level...
...The courts, after all, have repeatedly affirmed that a parent may not make the choice of no education for his child...
...Reading an article such as this on a major public issue facing the nation makes one realize the social utility of scholars????how they help us all in our democratic society to weigh the alternatives, feasibilities and consequences of the difficult decisions we must make...
...But the general contrast between the two proposals remains...
...One is that Lekachman to a considerable extent avoids the facile equation that links money and quality in education...
...However, in the Fleischmann version of FSF high spending districts????And these are generally the rich ones????Are "saved harmless" at their existing levels of expenditure per student...
...state expenditures went for local school distributions...
...If such powers become real, they could possibly be more important to citizens than the right to vote on a school district budget or bond issue...
...The Commission also recommends a degree of parental choice with respect to which school one's child is to attend...
...Charles Benson had two remarks to make about my article...
...Because my husband and I have been overseas for a year and relied on friends to send us our copies, we have lately been seeing The New Leader only in a very sporadic fashion...
...Although I agree that state aid has operated in a mildly egalitarian direction, it would be far more egalitarian if, with the exceptions noted by Dr...
...state, or income tax vs...
...Serrano holds that a child's right to an education should not be a function of the wealth of its parents and their neighbors...
...Consequently, while there would be a leveling, it would be to a plane not much higher than today's minimum...
...Samuel McCracken accurately registered my gloomy outlook...
...Northampton, Mass...
...I, likewise, have two comments on his valuable letter...
...Past experience seems to show that sooner or later, control will follow funding...
...We especially like John Simon's film reviews????whether we agree with them or not????And take great pleasure in following the workings of his highly cultured, severe yet sensitive mind...
...DPE, on the other hand, almost certainly implies property tax increases in rich localities...
...This fact, plus the recent findings about the importance of family and of job opportunities to any child's learning motivation and achievement, must, as Lekachman observes, also be weighed as we seek ways to improve the equality of opportunity in this nation...
...Considering the volume of printed material that comes to our house every fortnight, most of which produces nothing but an avoidance reaction in us, it is a real joy to receive your slender, uncluttered, intelligent publication...
...Since one inference from Lekachman's article is that there may not be enough money around to instruct everyone in the style to which the lucky ones are now accustomed, we ought to be seriously looking for ways to do more with less...
...feel FSF may come to be seen as the better choice...
...Though I have elsewhere been quite severe with the educational theories of the neoprogressives, I do find their argument that education is overcapitalized very persuasive...
...This is probably not the most effective time to say this, but I'll say it anyhow...
...The first concerns post-Serrano finance systems...
...I draw the conclusion, properly or not, that Lekachman believes rich suburbs will find district-power-equalizing (DPE) preferable to full-state-funding (FSF...
...In Portland, Oregon, for example, the school authorities are permitted to increase total expenditure by 6 per cent a year...
...London Samuel McCracken Robert Lekachman replies: The growing state role, stressed by Chancellor Boyer in his extremely gracious letter, merits extended discussion...
...And, as an additional blessing, the rich districts on Long Island and in Westchester (with a few exceptions) receive substantial school property tax reductions...
...This situation, in a city where the electorate is notoriously stable and property-owning, makes me wonder how many cities, under power equalization, would fund schools more munificently than a state-ordained minimum?if to do so the affluent would have to tax themselves at a rate sufficient to have their own cake and buy some for others...
...In 1970, 22.1 per cent of the total U.S...
...if you toss in the expenditures for public higher education, the proportion rises to one-third...
...Although such behavior might be entirely rational (given the choices imposed by the system) the taxpayers have of late been anything but rational in these matters...
...to spend more requires the explicit assent of the electorate...
...This issue is not merely one of rich vs...
...And he writes for all of us, not just bis fellow economists...
...Berkeley, Calif...
...The day has passed when what a boy or girl knows of history, civilization, and the larger world derives almost entirely from his school and its books...
...A powerful array of other educational institutions and instruments now delivers ideas and information to us all: radio, museums, huge public libraries, travel, television, magazines, films, summer camps, and much more...
...The other is the way he avoids a narrowly political, economic, educational, or social viewpoint, interweaving all these strands delicately in his analysis...
...Whether or not the next few years compel retrenchment in public education, I am all for responsible experimentation????provided always that localities, in accordance with the Serrano mandate, are equipped with equal resources per child...
...At the risk of overpraising the piece, I'd like to point to what I regard as its two especially valuable characteristics...
...Your magazine is a gem...
...This assumption, in turn, was based on the leveling-off of enrollment increases and the improved prospect for productivity gains through technology...
...It seems likelier that most local jurisdictions would settle for the statewide rate...
...Since Portland's expansion produces an annual increase in assessed valuation greater than 6 per cent, the result of this limitation has been a decline in the tax rate over the years...
...Angelika Robertson...
...Here I make only a marginal comment...
...To this end, the notions of the late Paul Goodman, and their development in practice by George Dennison, seem extremely promising...
...Dear Editor Financing Education In his "Schools, Money, and Politics" (NL, September 18), economic historian Robert Lekachman has written what may be the finest description so far of the educational financing issue raised by Serrano v. Priest and related cases...
...Ernest L. Boyer Chancellor, State University of New York I have two comments to make about Robert Lekachman's excellent article...
...Lastly, I hope discussions of the urgent matter of greater equality of school revenues will come to appreciate more than they have until now the new social context of schools...
...The various topics are dealt with always in an enlightening, nonten-dentious way...
...I have just completed a study for the California Senate on a fully effective dis-trict-power-equalizing plan and found that a threefold increase in property taxes would be required in some rich districts to maintain their present rates of spending per student...
...Two other states employ a modification of this scheme using each school district's wealth per pupil instead of a fixed tax rate...
...Both Dr...
...Once the cost of DPE becomes evident, though ????the cost, that is, of staying ahead of the pack...
...Thus, however elegantly the scheme of power equalization set forth by Lekachman may harmonize the rival values of option and equality, it seems unlikely to succeed in the face of Serrano and the conclusions to be drawn from it Even if power equalization turned, out to be consistent with equal education, I am not very hopeful about its practicability...
...I do wish that Lekachman had noted that the state governments have already played an unsung role in the growth of education in the postwar years...
...The absence of money can unquestionably reduce the quality of schooling, but there is very little evidence that lavish funding by itself will much raise it...
...On the matter of local control, I remain skeptical about the genuine political possibility of combining full-state-funding with an actual expansion of parental influence on local education...
...Schools????And colleges????have a wholly new place in American education...
...It is not too much to say that the tremendous leap that American education has taken both in quality and equality of opportunity since 1950 has been made possible chiefly by state aid...
...For it to work, taxpayers in affluent districts will have to be willing to tax themselves still more heavily than they now do, merely to maintain their present standard, indeed perhaps to avoid falling disastrously below it...
...Especially deserving of very close scrutiny axe the "guaranteed valuation" plans of Utah and Wisconsin, and the Hawaii plan where schools are no longer financed by localities, for they seem to approach many of the aims of Lekachman and the court's doctrine of equality...
...My second comment has to do with local control...
...Since much of higher education is already financed by the state governments, the shift of lower school funding from the local to the state level would make the state governments the central patrons and power of all American education...
...Of course, it is extremely difficult to run any school or university without adequate economic support, but there is much more to raising and equalizing the quality of education than raising and equalizing payments...
...But if this right is not dependent on what parents can pay, it is hard to see why it should be dependent on what they will pay...
...Kudos I would like to check with you on the status of our subscription...
...And in the most recent test of compulsory education laws, the case of the Amish, the thrust of the decision was that students in Amish schools had to receive educations as defined by the law...
...Sadly, not all the commentators on the school finances issue seem to be aware of that...
...Under FSF, it is true, districts lose the power to balance their budgets from local taxable resources...
...Finally, I fear that the current debate over school finance will contribute to the myth that money equals education...
...Charles S. Benson Staff Director, Fleischmann Commission Robert Lekachman's analysis is admirably fairminded and thorough????so much so as to leave me in a state not too far from despair...
...Boyer, the states did not diminish the money available for equalizing grants by giving per capita grants to both rich and poor school districts...
...Most parents now have little to say in the selection of school administrators, teachers, etc., nor can they exercise judgment effectively about programs and curricula...
...His essay is a model of thoughtful, informative analysis, on a subject cluttered with the often one-eyed views of angry taxpayers, financial budgeteers, radical reformers, local politicians, and school officials...
...Federal help has been minimal and still is????except for selected research...
...At present, 34 of the 50 states use the so-called Strayer-Haig-Mort plan, whereby the state makes up the difference between the level of expenditure and the amount of money raised locally by a fixed tax rate...
...property tax...
...suburb, or community vs...
...poor, or city vs...
...He may well be right about the preference of rich districts for full-state-funding over district-power-equalization, yet where the necessary tax increases are less dramatic than in the California districts he refers to, affluent parents might prefer to pay the price for autonomy...
...This is something to ponder...
...Yet the voters have regularly refused to increase school expenditure, even though school was forced to end a month early one year, and kindergarten had to be all but abolished the next...
Vol. 55 • November 1972 • No. 23
