The last two decades have seen the courts take action on basic national issues in areas where the legislative and executive branches had not acted. The great progress we have witnessed in civil rights would not have been achieved without the impetus given by court decisions. Similarly, undemocratic forms of representation could not have been ended if not for the court decision on one-man-one-vote.

Now, at long last, there is hope that the courts will act to enforce equality of educational opportunity. The ideal of equality remains a basic one in our country. In the same sense in which inheritance (and other) taxes are designed to place limits on the economic advantage each citizen starts with, our free public schools are supposed to provide equal opportunity for the development of individual capacities.

But this can work only if the school themselves are "equal" -- which they are not. Most American public schools are supported largely by local property taxes. This dependence on the local property tax has great drawbacks:

  • The tax is regressive. It is paid by everyone who owns a dwelling, rich and poor alike. (The dwellings "owned" by the poor are usually heavily mortgaged, yet the school tax is based on the full assessed value.) Furthermore, since poorer families spend a much higher percentage of income on housing than richer families, the greater tax burden falls on the poorer. Since the tax represents a very small sum to the affluent, but can border on property confiscation for those at the lower economic levels, it generates considerable political resistance.
  • The local property tax is highly visible. In many communities it is paid in a single lump sum. A hardship for many, this, too, is widely resented.
  • Most states have constitutional limitations on the local property tax which cannot be exceeded without a local referendum. Thus, unlike every other public services in our society, in which elected officials have the power to tax in order to provide such services, the public schools alone must go to the voters annually for approval of new taxes. One wonders whether there would be a United States of America if each year the President and Congress had to submit the U.S. budget and tax program to a national referendum. As if the referendum requirement were not bad enough, some states require ratification by more than a majority. Missouri, for example, required the approval of two-thirds of the voters; thus, a minority in each community can block any school improvement. (The U.S. Supreme Court recently refused to strike down this provision.)
  • Financing public education through the local property tax must result in inequality of educational opportunity. Since in housing there is a tendency for income groups to segregate themselves, and since the amount of money available for schooling is based on the value of local real estate, the amount spent on schools will be a function of wealth. Furthermore, the poor must pay at a much higher tax rate than the rich in order to provide an inferior education. If town X has $20,000 in taxable property for each school child, while town Y has $60,000, a 4% tax in town X would produce an $800 per pupil expenditure while a 2% tax in town Y will mean a $1200 per pupil outlay. Also, the amount available for the education of each child is dependent upon the location (frequently accidental) of taxable industrial real estate. Thus, where there are two adjoining towns, each at about the same economic level, the location of an electrical power plant on one side of the border can mean tremendous educational advantages for the favored town's children.
  • State and federal efforts to supplement local funds, in order to provide equality, have fallen far short of the goal.

Last month the California State Supreme Court, in an historic decision, ruled that the use of the local property tax to finance education was unconstitutional. The court found that the local property tax makes "quality of a child's education a function of the wealth of his parents and neighbors ... " and that to "allot more educational dollars to the children of one district than to those of another merely because of the fortuitous presence of each property is to make the quality of education dependent on the location of private, commercial and industrial establishments. Surely this is to rely upon the most irrelevant factors as the basis of education ... Affluent districts can have their cake and eat it, too. They can provide a high quality education for their children while paying lower taxes. Poor district, by contrast, have no cake at all."

With this case, and dozens of others initiated in other states, rests the future of a public school system in which "equality" must become a reality rather than a mere slogan. California School Superintendent Wilson Riles merits applause for supporting the court decision and for his own decision not to appeal. It is to be hoped that Governor Reagan will do the same. 

But we still have a long way to go. The California decision merely calls for equality within the state. But, if inequality is unconstitutional within a state, need we wait much longer before the doctrine applies between states as well?