Are property taxes really a good way to fund education?

Great Debates
21

Once again the OP believes he has discovered some problem that needs to be fixed, where his understanding is wrong.

Who lives in state or county, where the property taxes from the rich neighborhood only fund the school in the rich neighborhood? And the property taxes from the poor neighborhood is the only source of funding for the school in the poor neighborhood?

That’s not how it works. Where property taxes fund the schools, taxes collected across the entire school district, normally across the entire city or even county, rich and poor neighborhoods alike, pay, and then it usually distributed equally based upon student population at each school.

22

Well, my school district is small - and one of about fifty in the Twin Cities Metro. You can have about 400 graduating Seniors in a district - or you can have thousands. Our district is small, with a heavy free/reduced lunch population - i.e. ill funded. The school district I grew up in is half the size, but since I graduated, their socio-economic profile has changed and they are now a rich district. Their border is maybe five miles from our border - there is a district in between. So yes, the richest suburbs (i.e. districts) have property tax levies that support them, while the poorest are supported by the property taxes they can raise.

There is some state and federal aid, although the state aid was cut drastically for schools, increasing the funding disparity.

23

Yeah my school district in suburban Philly only had one high school. This was not rural.

24

That’s typical for the townships around Philadelphia.

25

Where I live (in NJ) there is a specific property tax for the schools, separate from the general municipal and county property taxes. But state aid to both the schools and municipality are significant. There’s a complex formula designed to try to even out funding differences.

But as a several have noted, the premise that funding differences have a lot to do with differences in school performance is questionable. You could obviously construct hypotheticals where it was, and probably find some real world cases where it’s true, but as a general explanation, doubtful.

In my area, gentrifying urban one, the public school student population has been somewhat shifting toward the demographics of the ‘newcomers’, but a lot of their kids still go to private and Catholic schools. The public school student body is mainly working class minority, native born and immigrant groups not known for good school performance, with some from immigrant groups who are known for it, plus some upper middle class kids. Net result: spending is high by NJ standards, so sky high by national standards, performance is poor by NJ standards (better by national standards but not great).

The dominant factor in school performance is who the students are, including all factors comprising that general category of variable. Reforms which ignore that, or simply seek to shuffle people around to average things out, are misguided. It’s not only important that students do equally well or even that poorer performing students’ performance is lifted. It’s important that the best students are encouraged to excel. That’s the only way for the country to compete in a world of countries few of whom are as obsessed with equality of outcome among people of different groups as the US tends to be, or as some people would have it be anyway.

26

boffking I happen to agree with you. However do you realize this is heresy for a liberal to have this opinion ? This will never happen with democrats in office, as they are too beholden to the teacher unions.

27

Actually, one of the first states in the nation to implement school choice - even across districts - was rather blue Minnesota - with the support of unions.

I’m pretty liberal and I love the IDEA of school choice, even across districts. In practice, its complicated.

We will bus inter-district for school choice. But if you are outside the district you generally need to get to the district border to catch a bus (or have someone drive you). This isn’t practical once you are outside where bus lines run (most of the suburbs and towns in Minnesota) if both parents work. Which isn’t just poor people - its a lot of the middle class as well.

Transportation is a pretty major expense, even within the district, for moving kids around. So having the schools pay transportation outside of the district means more money - and money is scarce and the demands are many.

In the Midwest, it can be an hour ride to the high school you are supposed to go to. There are kids who go to school in Warroad who spend an hour on the bus - and have to go through Canada every day to get to school and home. School choice is not a practical option for kids who live in small towns strung out through rural areas. So while it addresses the issues in some districts, it isn’t going to do a lot for my friend in Northern Minnesota, whose school is less than awesome - but its the only one within a reasonable distance.

Even if you solve the transportation to and from school issue (my son lived with Grandma during the week the year we took advantage), now your kid’s friends aren’t in the neighborhood. This is an issue with charters as well - one of my friends needs to drive her kids 45 minutes to see their friends regularly - since the students are from all over town.

Then there are the capacity issues. Wayzata has one of the best districts in the state. Everyone close to that end of town would like their kids to go to school there. But since Wayzata property taxes and levies support the school, the kids in the district are entitled to go - everyone else is “if we have room.” They run out of room pretty fast.

28

I’m sure that has an effect. The question is what is the net change, since there’s also an effect in the other direction. I’m skeptical of an article that ends with “some parents say”. I mean, some parents are going to say lots of different things, regardless of what the facts are.

Which effect dominates probably depends on how restricted housing is in the area. Places where a house in the best school district costs much more could see more poorer kids going to the best schools, since transportation is cheaper than rent/mortgage in the good district. Places where the house in the best school district costs more, but not way more might see the opposite effect.

29

In California property taxes for schools go to the state, where they redistributed according to a formula set when the process started, one which may not make any sense today. No way of changing it, since LA schools did well, and they have a lot of clout in the legislature.
But I agree that the money, up to a point, is not indicative of results. In our district one high school does much better than the others. They get no more money, and their physical plant is not even the best in the district. Their area does have the most expensive houses, but their quality is more due to parental involvement (sometimes over-involvement) than more funding. When one of the elementary schools in this area was moved to another high school (over the almost dead bodies of the parents) test score averages at the new school soared.
I believe there are restrictions on raising money for education - things like trips or teams are okay, but you can’t use it for schools proper. But that is yet another indicator of more parental involvement.

30

I live in Vermont, and my town has one school, no choices.

Here the school board sets the next years budget, and then the town folk vote yes or no. Most often no the first few times, obviously since they reduce it every time…

When the budget is approved, they tell us taxpayers what our taxes will be next year, which comes out of the property tax.

I guess rich towns could choose to pay more and have better schools, but seriously- who’s gonna vote to pay higher taxes?

31

Not including federal taxes- I pay property taxes, sales taxes, state income taxes, local income taxes, city income taxes, school district income taxes, and school fees directly to the school for each kid. Outside of the school fees and district income taxes I am not sure what else goes directly to education. Oh yeah, I guess property taxes since they vote on raising them every year (or sometimes twice a year) since there’s apparently some weird mechanism that does not allow any future spending planning. I don’t if property taxes is the best way, but it least it seems less complicated. AFAIK, property taxes were the main funding source in my previous state and they seemed to manage well.

32

To the OP, No, linking property tax to education spending is not optimal, in my opinion.

In general, I think that linking any government income to any government spending is mostly a political solution to a financial problem.

In CA there is/was some tobacco tax that funds(ed) anti-smoking efforts - why should the amount spent on a health improvement and education program be related in any way to the amount gained from a sin tax? Only for political justification, not for any real budgetary reasons. Was the amount of the tax effective while not being overly expensive for the poor who can’t quit? Was there another option for the sin-punishing or tax revenue? Was the amount of money spent optimal for the benefit? Could the smoking reduction funds have been used better elsewhere, or would 50% more money have made it 100% more effective?

I know that this is how compromises are pushed through. An objective view might see linking of the amounts between certain income sources and certain budget items as sometimes arbitrary. Even where the tax and program link is logical, it might not be the best way to determine the tax level, or the spending level for the two things.

In CA we have prop 13 (passed in 1978-ish), Partially, it reduces taxes for people that have lived in the same home for a long time by not reassessing the value until it is sold. OK, nice to give a tax break to mostly older people, but why does this particular subsidy cost schools any money? Prop 13 also limited property taxes to 1%. There are other sources of funds for Education in CA, but prop 13 has been pointed at as a major reason that school funding has been lower than it could have been.

As an example of where a tax for a specific program gets abused in a different way, in the 80s, SS taxes were raised, and the “extra” money was put in a “trust fund”. In reality, the extra income was just used to lessen the need to borrow from the public for federal deficits over the past 30 years (around $6 trillion total). So the earmarked extra SS money that we were “putting under a mattress” for all these years has not really been saved, and that difference has in fact been a regressive tax on the working class.
Back to property taxes going to education: In the case of a factory getting a no-property tax deal, I don’t think it is right that the schools have to pay for an employment program through nearly invisible reduction of the schools’ income, without that being publicly discussed. If the state wants to give the new venture an incentive to move in, then do it on budget and call it “job opportunity program”. If the state wants to reduce education spending then that should be in the state budget too.

So I guess my argument is this: Linking a tax to funding for a project leaves it open to backdoor manipulations, and links spending to income where good tax policy and budget priorities could indicate different amounts for both the tax and the project fund.

33

here in ca weve had the choose your school thing for 5 years or so

34

“Across the entire city or even county” makes it sound like a county is a huge region. Usually IME the disparities people are concerned with are those between districts, not within them. What are the differences between the richest and poorest counties of the whole state? How is that just, or good for the state’s future?

35

I just checked my school district’s budget. 91% of revenue comes from “local” (within the district) sources – almost all of it is property taxes. A fair portion of the 5.65% of the funding received from the state came from a special program which ended this year.

36

Similar here. We’re a small state though, there are counties larger than us in other states. We have a few districts getting much more state help than most of the towns. Most of our towns and cities have their own school districts, although 3 towns do maintain a single high school, creating another of our fictional locations known as Chariho.

37

This isn’t correct. Donations can be used for the school proper - if you are defining that to mean teacher salaries or other school provided programs like music, art, or even teacher aids. I know in my kids’ school, the parent faculty club asks for a donation each year per student. I make it through my work which matches it.

Some districts have prohibited the practiceand distribute these donations equally, but there is no law that I am aware of that prohibits this kind of donation to a class.

There are also avenues to donate to a specific classroom which has happened at our school as well. That’s why we do have a computer lab, as well as some teachers have a half dozen or dozen computers that were donated to the specific classroom. I know if any teacher of my kids asked for a donation for a certain thing, they would almost certainly get it.

No matter what scheme is put into place to normalize funding, those with means will ensure their children have the best possible opportunity for education.

38

It sounds like the OP would really prefer that, rather than funding come locally (for whatever definition of local is appropriate to where you live) that education funding be done as a state level and allocated proportionally to every school in the state. I’m not saying our current system is great, but there are a number of problems with that:

  1. “Why should I pay taxes for some school on the other side of the state!?” I realize this is more a general argument against taxation, but at least with local schooling you can see that your taxes are going to Timmy next door’s education

  2. What happens when one school district legitimately needs more money per pupil, say to hire security in high crime areas?

  3. People like having local control instead of “some bureaucrat in <capital> made this policy”

  4. And the biggest real objection, the wealthy and educationally motivated parents are going to move to wherever the best school district ends up being, and the best teachers are going to want to teach in the best school district so the teacher evaluations have better outcomes, and the poorer parents this policy was supposed to help will still be stuck in low-performing school districts. Just as it is now.
    If I’ve set up a strawman about statewide instead of district wide funding, I apologize for my misunderstand and disregard the above.

39

I don’t care much more if Timmy next door goes to a better school than someone on the other side of the state. Granted, I’m in a small state now, but I’ve lived and paid school taxes in a bigger state. My concern for Timmy only carries over from my concern for my own kids. But the greater concern is for everybody to get a good enough education that will make them productive citizens. When schools fail all the other taxes I pay go up. We pay for poor education in the justice and penal system, in welfare, in health care costs.

40

All true, but that’s an argument for more funding (or better policy) more so than an argument for or against property-tax funding on a district by district level.

I have long felt that the easiest way to fix education would be to make the starting salary of a teacher the same as the starting salary of an engineer (with similar mid-career and top out salaries). You’ll have a much larger pool of qualified candidates trying to get into education which is one of the few ways to improve the system (since you can’t change the students or the parents).