Cities and towns customarily finance public education from local real estate taxes. However, it has become increasingly more difficult to generate sufficient public funds to finance quality education for schools where families with low or moderate income live. Teachers in West Virginia have protested over the inadequate teachers’ salaries, and the budget for Brockton schools is inadequate to provide a quality education.
When confronted with this problem, the usual reaction, after cutting costs to the bone, is to turn to the state for funding. This approach usually works, at least in part, because of the argument that the state has primary responsibility for public education.
When the state legislature does not adequately respond, the city or town has no choice but to sue. Claremont, New Hampshire has most recently established that judicial precedent. In 1993 they sued to establish the liability of the state for public education, and the town won. While the general responsibility might be established, there is still some disagreement in various states about the scope of that liability.
Conservatives oppose extending that responsibility to the federal level. In earlier times, the objective of public education was just reading, writing and arithmetic. There would also be enough American history to establish the value of patriotism. After that, the state responsibility ended.
There is still much debate today about the adequate scope of public education. As late as the 1950s, no more than 5 percent of the U.S. population went to college to earn bachelor’s degrees. Today that number is up to 35 percent. With the emergence of technology a more extensive education is required to be a productive member of the nation’s workforce, even at a moderately high level.
Calculus is substantially more than simple arithmetic, and the ability to communicate effectively and write a satisfactory style is more than reading literature that is devoid of complexity. Now civil rights require that the state also must spend funds on those with special needs.
Compliance with the New Hampshire Supreme Court required the legislature to increase funds for public education from $150 million to $875 million per year. In Massachusetts, Gov. Charlie Baker just signed a state budget for fiscal 2018 of $4.747 billion for public schools and higher education will cost $1.16 billion.
The first requirement of equality of opportunity is quality education. The disparity as reported in the Boston Globe story on the Brockton schools indicates that the wealthy town of Weston is able to spend nearly twice what the state requires for public education while Brockton is unable to meet even the statutory amount. Brockton also has a three times higher percentage of high and special needs students.
Equal access to quality education is a civil rights issue, but the availability of well-educated citizens is critical for the economic prominence of the nation. It is time to reconsider some of the assumptions about public education in order to meet the needs of a more technologically complex economy.
