Public School Financing

Report Outline
Impending Change in School Support
Financial Plight of U.S. Education
Challenges Ahead in School Finance
Special Focus

Impending Change in School Support

Impending reforms in the manner of financing public schools in the United States are likely to be as far-reaching in their social consequences as the movement to desegregate the schools that was mandated by the Supreme Court in 1954. In a certain sense one follows inevitably on the other, for both look to an equalization in the quality of the education the government provides to each child in the nation. Recent court decisions underline the interlacing of school finance issues with those concerning equal opportunity, the war on poverty, and the continuing struggle to eliminate the penalties of racial segregation in American life.

President Nixon and other government leaders across the country are responding positively to the implications of those decisions. The President promised in his State of the Union address on Jan. 20 that at some time in 1972 he will propose reforms in taxing for public school support that “will be revolutionary.” School finance reform is becoming a paramount issue in a number of state legislatures, including those in four states where courts have recently struck down present methods of public school support. Expert studies of taxation in relation to school support abound. Academic authorities whose technical studies have long pointed to the deficiencies in the prevailing method of financing public schools have reason to believe that the hour for action has come. Virtually no one considering the problem of education finance believes the existing structure of tax support for public schools should be left as it is, or could be preserved without serious damage to the schools and ultimately to society itself. The call is for a drastic overhaul.

Two major deficiencies in public school financing have converged to spur the call for change: (1) the inadequacy of school budgets in many places, especially in the central districts of the big cities, to meet the demands being made on the schools, and (2) the great disparities in the amount of money available for school use from one state to another and from one community to another within the same state.