Education is funded entirely through taxes (first and secondary education, in some areas such as Europe tertiary education, is provided free or of cost (or low in cost) due to taxes, except for England where the average tuition is around nine thousand quid per year. In New York, one may get the excelsior scholarship if they or their family earns less than one hundred ten thousand per year which can reduce the costs of college to almost nothing. However, this only applies to the colleges run by the state.) The better the education system is, the more people will be educated. As people get a higher education. they will be able to attain higher paid jobs that require specializations that they would never have received had they not taken higher education. These higher paying jobs will allow for increased tax revenue that can, in turn, raise the standard of education as well as pay for better services in both quality and quantity. However, this comes at a cost. If the area is a low-income area, then it will need an external source of funding otherwise the education quality will be minimal and will yield less successful students than in areas where education is funded to the brim due to the location being a high-income area.
The South San Francisco Unified School District spends an average of $6,400 per student, while the South Huntington Union Free School District spends an average of $22,040 per student, and then there is the Sagaponack Common School District that spends a whopping $94,447 per student. (NPR) The amount of money Sagaponack spends is outrageously high compared to South Francisco, this is due to the much higher rates of property taxes in Long Island compared to the rest of the country. Due to this, New York is one of the few states that have a much higher rate of spending per student than the national average, one of only five to do so ( New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Wyoming, and Alaska) (NPR) " 90 per cent, comes from the money raised by state and local governments… states depend more heavily on income taxes, and local governments on property taxes," (Gordon) As said before, schools are funded through property taxes. An area that is low developed will be less desired and thus will have a lower land value which also means lower property taxes. However, an area that is more developed will be more desired will have much higher land values and in turn much higher property taxes. Compare the number of people that will pay fifty million or more to live in an apartment on the border of Central Park in Manhattan compared to the number of people that will pay fifty thousand to live in the middle of nowhere in Oklahoma.
However, this only hurts the poor. A school district that is poorly funded will not be able to meet the needs of its students which could result in poor test scores that could cause a possible takeover by the state. If the property taxes were to be raised, then this could result in people leaving the area due to being unable to afford the new rate or them not wanting to pay a higher rate. This will be a blow to the tax revenue as the number of people leaving could make the tax hike nought and could even drastically lower the total tax revenue if enough people leave. The only way to properly fund these districts is either by state or federal intervention by filling in the gaps in funding, or by developing the area to the point where people with medium income or high income decide to live there. The first option can help the school districts teach the students properly, therefore, leading to higher test scores and graduation rates. However, the second option while can help the poor, will most likely outprice them out of their own homes, possibly to the point where their property taxes will exceed their salary after taxes. ). "many states have placed limits on local property tax growth, California's Proposition 13 is the most well-known"(NCSL) California unlike New York has a limit on property tax growth which while can keep property taxes at affordable levels for low-income people , can result in low funded schools in some areas, such as South San Francisco.
In the novel, The Battle for Justice and Equality in New Jersey's Schools written by Deborah Yaffe, Raymond Abbot in the year 1981 attend a city school district that spends twenty-five per cent less per student than the wealthy suburbs of the state. He became a lead plaintiff in a massive class-action lawsuit that demanded equal funding for public schools. However, after winning multiple rulings in the New Jersey Supreme Court, Raymond Abbot dropped out of school and fought a cocaine addiction. (Yaffe 165) "New Jersey Supreme Court issued its landmark ruling mandating full‐day preschool programs for all three‐ and four‐year‐old children residing in thirty‐one of the state's most impoverished school districts, known as "Abbott districts." From a glance this seems like something that won't help the poor , however what many people don't realize is that a full preschool program can educate young children and at the same time have them taken cared of during the day which can allow the parents to peruse full-time jobs that they otherwise would have not been able to. The extra revenue made by these jobs can help fund schools or other programs which will eventually raise the low-income citizens in the area to medium income. The higher income one has , the higher percentage of their income will go to taxes as shown in the book Education, Land , and Location written by Gregory K. Ingram and Daphne A. Kenyon "the lowest-income quintile of earners paying 6.4 per cent of their income in taxes, the middle quintile paying 15.4 per cent, and the top 1 per cent paying 24.3 per cent. Conversely, state and local taxes are regressive, with tax burdens ranging from 12.4 per cent for the lowest-income quintile and 11.2 per cent for the middle quintile to 8.7 per cent for the top one per cent." (Ingram 190) By looking at the data, while the one per cent pays a higher tax percentage, they pay a much lower local tax rate compared to the low and middle quintiles.
Without wealth you can yearn for the stars, however, with wealth, all you will yearn for is more wealth. As people with high income get to the point where they make enough to be considered the ‘one per cent' they too will realize that they can make more money using any method possible. It has been two years since the Panama papers have leaked ("The Panama Papers are 11.5 million leaked documents that detail financial and attorney-client information for more than 214,488 offshore entities"(CNN) ) the amount of money channeled into offshore entities to avoid taxes is an enormous amount that could have been better spent on public services such as education. This makes it even harder for low-income areas to be funded. "The state's wealthiest resident had reportedly "shifted his personal and business domicile to another state," Frank W. Haines III, New Jersey's legislative budget and finance officer, told a State Senate committee. If the news were true, New Jersey would lose so much in tax revenue that "we may be facing an unusual degree of income tax forecast risk," Mr Haines said. The New Jersey resident (unnamed by Mr Haines) is the hedge-fund billionaire David Tepper. In December, Mr Tepper declared himself a resident of Florida after living for over 20 years in New Jersey."(Frank) Just by having one person leave, the entire budget of New Jersey was at risk, "Tax experts say his move to Florida could cost New Jersey — which has a top tax rate of 8.97 per cent — hundreds of millions of dollars in lost payments."(Frank) the hundreds of millions that New Jersey lost would change the budget drastically. One of the first things that are cut is most often education and as a result, the whole New Jersey education system is affected due to one person moving.
To summarize , in many cases property taxes are high in order to fund education in order to properly teach students, however in time, this can drive away both the poor and the rich by either making it too high for the poor to afford or too high for the rich to justify living there when they can move to somewhere equally desirable but with much lower tax rates. In order to properly fund schools, it is needed for funding to be done on a federal level, rather than on a local level. If this were to be done, then schools can be properly funded based on an areas need. By doing this, it can guarantee that education will not be cut if a wealthy resident decided to leave. Once this is done then the rates of graduation could drastically improve which in turn will lead to higher paying jobs and higher tax income.
Works Cited
Yaffe, Deborah. Other People's Children : The Battle for Justice and Equality in New Jersey's Schools. Rivergate Books, 2007. EBSCOhost, hs1.farmingdale.edu:2443/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e000xna&AN=225406&site=eds-live.
Ingram, Gregory K. Education, Land, and Location. Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, 2014. EBSCOhost, hs1.farmingdale.edu:2443/login?url=http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e000xna&AN=864667&site=eds-live.
Gordon, Nora. "How the Tax Bill Hurts the Poorest Schools." The New York Times, The New York Times, 12 Dec. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2017/12/12/opinion/congress-tax-bill-education.html.
Turner, Cory, et al. "Why America's Schools Have A Money Problem." NPR, NPR, 18 Apr. 2016, www.npr.org/2016/04/18/474256366/why-americas-schools-have-a-money-problem.
"The Role of the Property Tax in Public Education Funding." National Conference of State Legislatures, www.ncsl.org/research/education/funding-approaches-the-property-tax-and-public-ed.aspx.
The Middle Of Her Sophomore Year. "Americans Are Moving to Europe for Free College Degrees." CNNMoney, Cable News Network, money.cnn.com/2016/02/23/pf/college/free-college-europe/index.html.
Frank, Robert. "One Top Taxpayer Moved, and New Jersey Shuddered." The New York Times, The New York Times, 21 Dec. 2017, www.nytimes.com/2016/05/01/business/one-top-taxpayer-moved-and-new-jersey-shuddered.html.
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