How to Fix Public School Financing
Far too many US public schools suffer from a lack of adequate funding. Solving the problem will require ending public education’s dependence on local property taxes, a funding mechanism that heavily reproduces inequality.
Many well-off suburban voters are unwilling to adequately fund public schools or redistribute tax dollars to districts that are hurting for resources. (Deb Cohn-Orbach / UCG / Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
As the carnage wreaked by the Trump administration on the federal government continues apace, the relevance of progress by other means assumes greater importance. The United States happens to be blessed, or saddled, with the most decentralized public sector among relatively rich nations.
So the time of state and local governments is coming to the fore. The hope for “municipal socialism” in New York City under a Mayor Zohran Mamdani is only the most dramatic example. Opportunities for constructive reform are legion among the nation’s more than 80,000 state and local governments.
One of my long-standing pet peeves with the US left is its indifference to our country’s federalism. State governments have a lot of sway here, given that under the Constitution they are sovereign entities. Now some of them are trending into redoubts of anti-Trump activism.
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