Trust Parents And Teachers: An Easy And Elegant Solution To School Inequality - Forbes

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Who knows better than parents and teachers what their school community needs to thrive?

Boston Globe via Getty Images

Rising income inequality is old news. America has experienced an uninterrupted increase in inequality since 1980 that is higher than in any other advanced economy. Disparities in school funding rarely make headlines anymore, but they should: before the pandemic, there was a $23 billion gap between white and nonwhite school districts, even though they serve the same number of children; that number has only grown. 

These two forces collide in PTA fundraising, and therein lies an elegant and available solution. Each year, according to the Center for American Progress, PTAs raise roughly $425 million to support extra projects beyond the school’s official, publicly-funded budget. Those funds fuel coaches, music teachers, trips to Washington, DC, maker spaces, labs, sports uniforms, pizza parties, teacher appreciations, and myriad other things, limited only on what a school community can raise and what a school community desires. What to do with the contributions, which are tax deductible, doesn’t require district approval or have to conform with any governmental competitive priorities. It can reflect, plain and simple, the values and priorities of each school community. But only if there is money. And that money depends on the wealth and connections of the school’s parent body. Most schools raise almost nothing from their PTAs, but some wealthy schools, like Robert S. Hyer Elementary in Dallas, raise almost $2,000 per student.

Here’s a solve:

The new Biden-Harris administration can give PTAs in lower-income communities federal dollars, so they can bring their own priorities to life. The key is that those funds should be left to the discretion of the school community in the same way that PTA funds in wealthier schools already is. No strings, no limits.

If we imagine all schools spread out on a line from most funds raised by the PTA to least, federal dollars could bring everyone below the line up to the median. So if the average school PTA raised $25,000, federal funds would flow to all schools whose PTAs raised less. In some cases, that might be a couple hundred dollars; in others, it would be the whole $25,000.

A school community wants to invest in more teacher assistants: great. A school community wants to fund a part-time social worker: also great. A school community wants new bleachers in its gym: sounds good to me. This isn’t about a particular policy or vision for how education can be improved. This is about evening the playing field: trusting parents and teachers to know what is best for their kids, the same way that wealthy parents are trusted, and giving them the money to do it.

This solution isn’t perfect, so please comment or ping me with suggestions to strengthen it. Here are some challenges I see: First of all, it doesn’t address the systemic and underlying reasons that income inequality has grown over the past decades. Second, these relatively small funds do little to address disparities in baseline funding between districts or states. The wealthiest school districts spend upwards of $23,000 per student (in 2015, Scarsdale, NY, spent $27k per student, and New Trier, IL, spent $28k, whereas Philadelphia spent around $11k and several districts in Utah spent between $6-7k). Third, there is the potential for some gaming at the margins. Schools that were just over the threshold might find their fundraising dip, as parents decline to donate if they think their school will get federal funding instead. And finally, this proposal reduces but doesn’t eliminate PTA funding disparities between school communities. Bringing all schools up to the median in these discretionary dollars still means there is a gap between what was the median (and is now the bottom) and the 50% of schools that were above the median.

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But this simple idea does shrink the disparities to a fraction of what they were. It has the potential for broad, bipartisan support: it empowers local communities to determine their own education priorities while using federal funds to address wealth disparities and improve public schools. And perhaps by giving school communities more funds to directly finance what they see as their children’s most pressing priorities, it will strengthen community-school relationships, be a tangible reminder – with new examples each year — of how federal taxes improve people’s day-to-day lives, and lead to better school experiences and more thriving schools. There is ample evidence that more engaged parent bodies and communities lead to higher educational attainment, which leads to increased earnings and greater income equality.

So perhaps this small and elegant investment in addressing the wealth gap in PTA fundraising can be a chink in the armor of the underlying wealth disparities that created that gap in the first place. And in the meantime, kids will have new labs and uniforms and teaching assistants and language classes and school trips that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise. And that’s not a bad way to start the new year.

The Link Lonk


December 22, 2020 at 07:04AM
https://www.forbes.com/sites/taliamilgromelcott/2020/12/21/trust-parents-and-teachers-an-easy-and-elegant-solution-to-school-inequality/

Trust Parents And Teachers: An Easy And Elegant Solution To School Inequality - Forbes

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