Ending the Education Trap

Few things are as essential to American democracy as sound education. Education not only trains future politicians in the skills necessary for good government, but also inculcates future voters with the democratic values needed to make responsible decisions in the voting booth. But if urban school districts are allowed to remain in their current decrepit condition, the quality of life in our democracy would be seriously threatened.

Last January, President Bush signed into law an education act that, among other things, was meant to give children in failing public schools the right to transfer into better schools. But, as The New York Times noted last Thursday, hardly any students eligible for a transfer have even applied, much less received one. Why? Because inner-city public school systems—the ones with the most problem schools—have virtually no space for additional students. In Chicago, for instance, only 1,170 of the 145,000 students eligible for transfer will actually change schools; in Los Angeles, where 223,000 students are theoretically eligible for a transfer, not a single student will get one.

The Times article notes that New York State currently considers 529 schools failing under the provisions of this act, 70 of them in New York City alone.

Why are so many urban public schools failing? The answer lies in an insidious trap that our society created over the past century, a trap that leaves inner-city schools underfunded while the suburban middle class educates its children in well-equipped, well-funded public schools. This trap is called defensive incorporation.

Defensive incorporation is one of the dirtier secrets of suburban life. By incorporating as separate cities before nearby cities can annex them, suburban regions evade paying for the social services used by the urban poor. Because school districts are most commonly created within cities, and because school districts are commonly funded through local property taxes, wealthy and middle-class Americans are able to escape paying for the poor's education.

The system of funding public education through local property taxes has become so drastically inequitable that it may constitute a violation of the 14th Amendment's provision which guarantees citizens the equal protection of the law. Although this system of funding public education has never been challenged before the Supreme Court, it has been taken to task in some states. In 1990, for instance, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled that the state's system of funding schools was so inequitable that it violated New Jersey's constitution, which demands that the state provide every student with a quality education.

While many states have similar provisions in their constitutions and are susceptible to these kinds of legal challenges, a national effort is needed to combat the funding of schools through property taxes. Such an effort is needed because suburban areas may not lie in the same state as the metropolitan areas from which they drain tax revenue.

The New York metropolitan area extends into New Jersey and Connecticut; Philadelphia's extends into New Jersey and Delaware; and Washington's extends into Virginia and Maryland. Thus, these cities will not receive the funding for education they so drastically need unless inequities are ended in all of the states in which suburban residents dwell.

The property tax system of school funding can be challenged on 14th Amendment grounds because the Constitution envisions state governments as unitary rather than federal systems. Local governments thus lack the sovereignty state governments exercise within the federal government. The Constitution envisions local governments as mere administrative units of the states. When a state's system of local control creates vast inequities, that state is failing to provide the equal protection of the laws.

One solution would be to continue funding schools via property taxes, but with taxes collected by the state rather than by local government. This solution would allow states to continue spending the same share of tax revenues on education. But spending would be equitable across localities and school districts.

A far better solution to the poor state of inner-city public schools would be a lawsuit aimed at overthrowing the property tax system of school funding. While the federal government lacks the authority to initiate such a lawsuit, state and local advocacy groups such as the one that got New Jersey's property-tax funding system overturned could be of enormous benefit to urban schools. Such advocacy groups would not only improve school conditions by filing lawsuits against their respective states; they would be improving the health of American democracy itself. J.R. Wilheim is a Columbia College senior concentrating in religion and history.