Funding for public schools
Most of the funding for schools comes from the states themselves.
In fact, generally speaking, about 92% of the money for public schools comes from state and local sources, the Federal government only provides about 8% of the money for public schools in our country.
In the 2018-2019 school year about $800 billion went to public schools throughout the country—only about %8 came from the Federal government, as I have said, 47% came from state funds and 45% came from local funds.
In fact, in the 2018-2019 school year—on a national basis—37% of the total amount of money going to public schools came from local property taxes.
If one local school system has access to:
clean bathrooms
music teachers
theater and arts classes
fully stocked science labs
new library books
textbooks for every child, etc.
That makes a difference. I have read about the cases that were going on in Michigan, for example, where students complained of there being something like 34 students in a room, but only 6 six textbooks.
Or, in one case, it was claimed that a student taught a middle school math class for some time, when the school was not able to get a substitute teacher.
Or that students had to stand up during class or use the teacher’s desk because there were not enough desks in the room.
Or of students having to play in the halls because their playground and/or gym needed repairs.
When you have a high quality education that leads directly to the ability to get more lucrative jobs, the ability to go to and do well in college, the ability to learn new things and perhaps run you own business…education leads to so much in our society. We have to ask ourselves if the system of local property taxes and wealth holds back too many of our schools.
Thurgood Marshall spoke to this very issue we he wrote his famous dissent in the San Antonio Independent School District et. al, v. Rodriguez, Term: October 1972.
“The Court today decides, in effect, that a State may constitutionally vary the quality of education which it offers its children in accordance with the amount of taxable wealth located in the school districts within which they reside. The majority's decision represents an abrupt departure from the mainstream of recent state and federal court decisions concerning the unconstitutionality of state educational financing schemes dependent upon taxable local wealth. More unfortunately, though, the majority's holding can only be seen as a retreat from our historic commitment to equality of educational opportunity and as unsupportable acquiescence in a system which deprives children in their earliest years of the chance to reach their full potential as citizens.”
National Center for Education Statistics. (2022). Public School Revenue Sources. Condition of Education. U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences. Retrieved Sept. 24, 2022, from https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator/cma.
Supreme Court of the United States. San Antonio Independent School District et. al, v. Rodriguez. October Term, 1972. Justice Thurgood Marshall, Dissenting.