Democratic Plans to Boost School Funding Don't Pander to Teachers--They Seek an Important Goal This Nation Has Never Before Attempted
With few exceptions, the various Democratic plans for public education share a common theme: more funding, less privatizing.
Candidates Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders have promised to dramatically increase or triple current federal funding for low-income students and curtail charter school growth. Elizabeth Warren recently went even further, promising to quadruple federal funding for low-income students and end federal funding for charter expansion.
These proposals have provoked a deluge of harsh responses from commentators. Increasing public education funding and limiting charters, critics say, is nothing more than pandering to teacher unions and demonizing charter schools. While this critique may resonate on the surface, it ignores a decade of gross underfunding and privatization of public education. As my research shows, addressing these problems is key to improving student achievement.
Shrinking government by shrinking education
The way taxpayers do or do not fund public schools goes to the core question of the role of government in democracy. Public schools have long consumed the lion’s share of state and local tax dollars. No other single program comes close.
Many of the earliest statewide tax systems came into existence for the express purpose of funding schools. And later major expansions of state taxes, like the state income tax in New Jersey, were solutions to unequal funding across school districts. Education holds this special status because state constitutions specifically require legislatures to fund uniform and adequate systems of public schools.
Powerful politicians and advocates, however, object to the demands public education places on government. The Koch brothers, for instance, have claimed that government illegitimately coerces excessive taxes from the wealthy and redistributes them to the masses through social programs. Public education is one of the forms of redistribution that most concerns them.
The Kochs’ donor network heavily invests in campaigns to reduce public school expenditures, expand charter schools and subsidize private education through vouchers and tax credits. The theory behind these campaigns is CONTINUE READING: Education Law Prof Blog
