Back to School, and to Widening Inequality

Even where courts have requiring richer school districts to subsidize poorer ones, large inequalities remain.

Rather than pay extra taxes that would go to poorer districts, many parents in upscale communities have quietly shifted their financial support to tax-deductible "parent's foundations" designed to enhance their own schools.

About 12 percent of the more than 14,000 school districts across America are funded in part by such foundations. They're paying for everything from a new school auditorium (Bowie, Maryland) to a high-tech weather station and language-arts program (Newton, MA).

"Parents' foundations," observed the Wall Street Journal, "are visible evidence of parents' efforts to reconnect their money to their kids." And not, it should have been noted, to kids in another community, who are likely to be poorer.

As a result of all this, the United States is one of only three, out of 34 advanced nations surveyed by the OECD, whose schools serving higher-income children have more funding per pupil and lower teacher-student ratios than do schools serving poor students (the two others are Turkey and Israel).

Other advanced nations do it differently. Their national governments provide 54 percent of funding, on average, and local taxes account for less than half the portion they do in America. And they target a disproportionate share of national funding to poorer communities.

As Andreas Schleicher, who runs the OECD's international education assessments, told the New York Times, "the vast majority of OECD countries either invest equally into every student or disproportionately more into disadvantaged students. The U.S. is one of the few countries doing the opposite."

Money isn't everything, obviously. But how can we pretend it doesn't count? Money buys the most experienced teachers, less-crowded classrooms, high-quality teaching materials, and after-school programs.

Yet we seem to be doing everything except getting more money to the schools that most need it.

We're requiring all schools meet high standards, requiring students to take more and more tests, and judging teachers by their students' test scores.

But until we recognize we're systematically hobbling schools serving disadvantaged kids, we're unlikely to make much headway.