The idea of state funding of public k-12 schools is worth discussion.
Most posters have, with good reason, focused on the question of balancing
taxes and debates on regressivity. The idea of �full� state funding will
involve lots of other education/city issues, too. For example:
1.
How do you decided what �full� funding is? Does it include football, soccer,
lacrosse, water polo, International Baccalaureate, industrial arts, Java
programming? GLBT coordinators? Smaller class size?
Is it simply a flat sum to follow each student...which would hardly be fair.
Back in 1995 a long-forgotten group called the Coalition for Educational
Reform and Accountability, trying to rationalize state education
funding�proposing the state fund 100 percent of the �core� work� tried to
decide what is essential and what is a frill...and couldn�t do it.
2.
Any new plan could have major metropolitan significance beyond property
taxes. One example: assuming districts would still be allowed to allocate
funds and to float referenda, you could get some interesting, but potentially
harmful, entrepreneurial reactions that might affect housing decisions. With
the new clarity of funding, could districts be even more open about
�branding� themselves, e.g., the district that invests a higher percentage
of its resources in gifted education or the arts, creating some
self-fulfilling prophesies?
3.
Central cities have different and expensive needs. You�d need some serious
philosopher/statistician kings to develop an easily understandable formula to
address that. (A lot of the complexity now works to the benefit of
Minneapolis and what most of us would describe as social justice for kids
with the longest odds.)
4.
The Minneapolis school board�s mildly restrained reaction to the Profile of
Learning was an example of districts as �laboratories of democracy.� What
happens when the state funds it all? Would it be left to those bureaucRATS?
What would/should school boards do? Is local control viable today?
None of which is to say that a kid�s education should depend upon the
property wealth of the district in which her parents/guardians live. (It
shouldn�t. In a better world we�d be past that and debating whether a kid�s
education should depend on the wealth or mental health of parents/guardians.)
The idea of full state funding is a good one....between conception and
creation lies the shadow.
Dennis Schapiro
Linden Hills
