The Lafayette Journal & Courier has a pretty sensible editorial discussing how the current school funding issues are the result of actions taken by the General Assembly on property taxes. They note that shifting school funding from property taxes to sales taxes has led to the current shortfall for local schools.
They blame the current state of things on partisan bickering. I’m not sure that’s the case, necessarily. It’s a policy choice to rely on sales tax instead of property taxes. If the vote to proceed in this fashion was unanimous, it wouldn’t make the policy any more successful. And I’m not sure that full cooperation among lawmakers would have made the ideal solution any more obvious. In hard times, there is just less money to go around. The choice is between a funding mechanism that reflects this hardship and passes it along to schools or one that stays level, thereby taking proportionately higher amount of available money. The former is fair, but sacrifices education; the other preserves education but does so by making the tax bite bigger.
In any case, the J&C cautions against enshrining the current property tax caps into the Constitution — this, once again, changes nothing currently but only ties our hands in the future if we find that this is the wrong policy choice — it’s a caution I share, but I think that ship has sailed. Perhaps I’m cynical about my fellow citizens’ ability to see nuance beyond “taxes = bad” and to appreciate the difference between a statutory provision and a constitutional one. I think the Constitutional amendment will pass in a landslide and we’ll be no better off for it.
California, here we come!
A couple things: first, that in my youth, “conservative state” did, in some small way, mean “one which avoids making bad law based on popular madness of the moment, at least in theory”. And wouldn’t it be nice to have our politically fearless and uncompromisingly forward-looking Governor oppose compounding the error, especially when he’s already reaped all the political benefits out of it he could? Though I suppose “saddling future administrations with intractable deficits” is one way to deal with the disappearance of your own “surplus” (which must be quite a problem, since Mitch and his boys are spending so much time trying out viable PR responses they’re letting Becky “GED” Skillman do the ribbon cutting).
And second, y’know, if we’re going to use a poor economy as an excuse to cut the meat out of education–grinding our seed corn, as Jeff Davis used to say–then let’s be honest about it and drop all the platitudes about public education. Why go to the expense of teaching little Johnny the whole alphabet when T-A-X C-U-T-S is all he really needs?
I strongly disagree with the contention that this amendment is a ship that has already sailed. The only reason it will sail is precisely because everyone will assume that it will sail and, therefore, do nothing to fight it. But if people who oppose it actually stand up and expose the unfairness of the amendment and the damage the legislation has already done, then it can be defeated.
One more thing. We also need to expose the lie represented by the term “tax caps.” This amendment does not provide any tax caps – only caps on the PERCENTAGE of a property’s assessed value. Thus, if the economy heats up, causing a property’s assessed value to increase, the owner’s property tax will go up – even if it’s at the maximum percentage.
Doug, While I respect you and this blog very much, I do disagree. Money doesn’t make for better education. A friend of mine has a kid in the Herron Charter School. They spend less, they don’t have fancy classrooms, but the education is excellent.
Unlimited tax dollars typically leads to wanton spending, an excess of highly paid educrat administrators, and little accountability to the taxpayer or to the children.
Case in point. IPS spends the equivalent of fancy private schools on its children. Yet, the IPS board couldn’t even tell me what their goal for student graduation is this year during a board meeting a couple months back. Interesting, Dr. White whined about the $26 million dollar cut he had to make and at the same time said IPS could do it easily because of the drop in enrollments. If we had not forced the hand, he would have spend that $26 milllion on God knows what. He would not have returned that money to us.
In that same meeting Dr. White admitted that he spends thousands of taxpayer dollars each year on off budget/off mission tables at luxurious galas.
I betcha Park Tudor knows what percent of kids it plans to graduate and since Park Tudor’s administrator is paid privately, I really don’t care that he spends their money on luxurious galas.
While I share Melissa’s sentiment that “Money doesn’t make for better education”, I just can’t seem to understand this proposed amendment.
If we want to lower (or maintain) the costs of education, why don’t we work to decrease expenditures (and make our expenditures more efficient) rather than concentrate our efforts on the funding of the schools? It just seems to me that we are looking at the wrong end.
Melyssa. Disagreement is fine. Encouraged even. In a lot of cases, I think where you can point to better results from fewer resources, I’d first look to see if the student populations are comparable. For example, I recall a buddy of mine from Cincinnati being very proud of his private Catholic school which had very good results while paying its teachers very little and having a relatively small budget. But, the thing is, that school could kick out the bad eggs with relatively little fuss, and it was a mostly self-selected group made up of kids whose parents generally gave a damn.
I think we can have universal education or we can have effective, low cost education for some kids; I tend not to think we can have both.
Mitch was fully informed by research from myself and others that moving to a sales tax based or income tax based system to provide funding for education would result in a lack of funding. This type of system failed in Michigan and elsewhere when economies fail. It is not a reliable source of revenue, as was the property tax. But he knew this and chose to push his reforms ahead regardless of the facts. He wants the public schools to fail and to have to keep whining about not having enough money. IPS spends nowhere near the amount per student that those good private schools in Indianapolis spend and the private schools get to pick and choose their students. What mitch and tony want is to transfer tax money to private and parochial schools-subsidize church run schools–and they are moving forward on this. Charters for a parochial catholic school–if they promise not to teach religion–and vouchers for parental choice. As has happened elsewhere, the private schools opt to not participate in the voucher programs (the vouchers are often not even a third of the annual tuition at the private school) and the parents are usually left with the choice of a local catholic school. Private and catholic schools are hurting for money and are suffering a lack of enrollment. They are looking to vouchers to keep them from going out of business.
Here’s an interesting take from Shaw Friedman from the Region which I also enjoyed:
howeypolitics.com/main.asp?SectionID=10&SubSectionID=27&ArticleID=6006&TM=38912.89
Hopefully I got the link on here ok. With the way the state economy has been the last couple years, I sure hope people take a closer look at property tax caps before they vote (and look at how fickle sales taxes can be in relation to the ups and downs of the economy). Thanks for putting it out there more Doug to at least get some more discussion going!
Melyssa, you’ll forgive me if I happen to display a certain weariness with your argument, since I’ve been hearing it for thirty years now 1) without a single instance of its proponents recognizing that the numbers game is considerably more complex than $A>$B, and 2) without their ever offering a solution or addressing the ambiguity of the examples they cite.
Let’s use the statistics I quoted to Mike Kole a while back: compare his Hamilton Southeastern district, one of the state’s wealthiest, with IPS, the state’s largest, its second most impoverished, and a mere ten miles away. IPS has just over twice as many students. In 2007, IPS spent almost $14,500 per student; HSE spent a shade above $10,000.
But that’s not money spent educating each student. It’s total tax expenditures divided by student population. IPS’s buildings are relics, 50 to 100 years old in most cases. Expensive to heat and cool–there are still some elementary schools with no air conditioning. My wife’s high school classroom first got A/C four years ago (it got its first computer lab in 2002). IPS has the state’s largest transportation system, of course, and thanks to four decades of public schools serving as a political football, it has to bus children from the entire district to every magnet and special-focus junior high and high school in the city; HSE students go to one of two high schools, where the district does an admirable job of meeting all educational needs, plus time out to take a dip in either of the competition-sized pools.
That’s before we get to the actual students: 30% poverty rate vs. 3.2%; 80% free and reduced-price lunch vs. 9%; 19.5 vs 14.6 special education students; 10% vs 4% English learners.
Such programs cost money, are mandated by the state or Federal government, and are reflected in the amount of tax money the district receives. IPS gets almost $40 million in Title 1 (Educational aid to the disadvantaged) funds, and $11.5 million in Individuals with Disabilities Education Act funds. Because it’s the one which is educating those students. HSE gets $2.5 million combined for those programs. Federal school nutrition funding: $15.8 million vs. $1 million. Of that $4500 per student expenditure gap between the districts, nearly $2000 comes from the Federal government.
So, at the very least, let’s just lose the suggestion there’s some proof here that “money doesn’t improve education”. (Which, curiously, is the single example in American life where anybody tries the argument). If you’d like to continue, then tell us why we shouldn’t try to improve nutrition among the nation’s poorest children, or teach non-native speakers to read and write English, and you can argue with the Court over whether public schools–unlike private, and, contrary to the law, unlike charters–must spend whatever is necessary to educate every disabled student presented to them.
You will, by the way, get plenty of support around IPS for throwing rocks at Eugene White, but mostly bemused chuckles about the Herron school, the well-connected flavor of the month which garnered national attention (from Newsweek) for its AP programs, with no mention of the fact that only 46% of its students passed. Like all charters, any problem students wind up back at IPS. I don’t impugn their efforts, or their motives; I’m glad your friend’s child has found a good fit. It’s just that whenever something gets touted as the Simple Solution to Complex Problems I begin by securing my wallet.
Mr. doghouse,
Stop with the facts!! My head is going to explode :)
See, pointing out the problems IPS faces that these high-performing schools do not face is beside the point. We know that IPS is out of control and wastes far too much money on administration and such. The teachers are so bad that the students are not able to learn enough to pass istep+. And it is all the fault of the unions. NOT :)
You did not mention that IPS has to spend a ton of money on security and its own police force, something most other schools do not even have to consider. And given that many of the IPS students come from broken homes where adults do not set positive role models and do not emphasize education, it is a wonder that IPS does as a good a job as it does.
I note you mentioned that somehow charters are able to get around the law on special ed students. For some reason, no one at the state looks into this. On the other hand, pointing out that a Newsweek best school only has a grad rate of 46% is blasphemy. You are never supposed to look beyond the star articles for the numbers that are readily available but never seem to be appropriate for the star to cite.
Anyway, property tax caps are not going to stop your property tax from increasing. mitch has quick hands, he can stick a blade in your back while his thugs grab your wallet faster than you can say compassionate conservative. :)
Just a few quick observations:
(1) If you want a school with better test scores, don’t worry so much about buildings or teachers or equipment — they don’t take tests. Enroll smarter students — they take tests. However, if you really want to test school performance, a more useful measure is the difference between the performance of the students and their parents…a school that can take kids from loser parents and turn them into winners — now that’s something I’d like to see!
(2) Property taxes are a great way to raise government funds. You can’t hide land. There is no ‘gray economy’ land. There are no offshore bank accounts in which to hide your land — corporations, partnerships, absentee landlords, all must pay — probably why corporate style Republicans hate property tax.
(3) Is it a paradox that free market types — who believe that money is essentially the true measure of utility — typically argue that this proposition does not apply to education? Not saying more money means a better education, any more than a more expensive care is a better car. But I find that even though one often gets less than one paid for, one rarely gets more.
Re: #2 But, there are TIFs and Exempted lands.
Wow – AKLA – are you kidding? “Stop with the facts”? What a weird statement. Though I agree with your thoughts on mitch, please, please, please – pay attention to the facts!
Amen, Doghouse! I’m a special needs high school teacher in the north part of the state, and your assessment is pretty right on in its generalities regarding mandates, requirements, and spending/allocation. And charter schools? Yikes.
Another ignored issue with school funding is how monies are given for point issues and unable to be spent on other things. The whole example of new school buses & astroturf while laying off teachers. It is often the case the transportation money is from a separate bucket that salaries come from.
I remember seeing the network running IPS at one time a few years back, it rivaled a Fortune 100 Wide-Area network. However, that money also comes from a grant intended on networking only.
So, while a school might only want to pay for two more teachers, it will end up not having any money for that yet have money for new school buses AND a state of the art computer network.
It is for cases exactly like this that we need to have no state or federal involvement in education. Permit this to be a local issue, funded with local money, however they see fit. Marion County might want to use dining taxes for education (rather than playgrounds for millionaire athletes). Hamilton County might decide that they want more homeowners & use salary taxes for education.
While talking about taxes, this reminds me of a tax system I thought of that might work better. Make each county responsible for taxing its businesses, employees, and residents in whatever system they like. The state can then tax the county based on whatever method they wish. Then, we remove the IRS by allowing the federal government to tax the states at a set rate.
I really feel that consolidation of power is one of the biggest issues with our current system of government. We want Washington to fix issues in Indiana, so all of the fighting is there. I think our government would work much better if only the biggest issues were resolved in Washington, with far fewer laws being passed there. Allow the local governments to be most specific in their laws, so people can find places that reflect their values & live there.
Interesting take on ultra-local control, but I think that system will create just as many problems as ultra-central control.
The first thing that jumps at me is ultra-local control would simply widen the gap between the haves and the have-nots.
The system actually worked pretty well until we left stable property tax for volatile sales/income tax. It wasn’t perfect, but at least there was stability. When they moved to the other funding method, the state really needed to loosen the cuffs just a tad. Schools simply aren’t setup to respond to revenue cuts as quickly as they happened at the beginning of the year.
I would like to see the walls broken down between funds to an extent, but that will only do so much. There is a limited pool of money, and only so many ways to slice it up.