How about local control but state of federal funding. Actually, with NCLB we are seeing more federal control than ever.

Anyway, I think changing the funding system from property taxes to whatever is key to any reform.

To aaron: in the many countries in which funding is proportional to need, there is little evidence of it creating perverse incentives for parents. So this is a problem that is theoretical, but not practical.

Has anyone bothered to look at the list of signatories? I should have been less cryptic.

Sebastian is right that the proportionality is very rough, and sam, I promise I’ll get a good source for you soon.

cw—we’re looking it in funnily different ways. You say that local funding means local control which is good, and I say that local control means local funding which is bad!

But on principal, I totally support this idea. When you talk about our school system failing, you are essentially talking about poor kids. That is where it really fails. And the cure is resorces in proportion to need.

1. Have outcomes for all children be the same
2. Have each child achieve as much as his ability allows
3. Bring each child, regardless of ability, up to some basic level?

or ?

Option # 2, for instance, might suggest that bright kids receive additional funding. Options 1, and 3 suggest a switch of large proportions of money to the least likely to succeed.

Assuming , of course, that money is the issue.

Somehow it reminds me of one the less seemly outcomes of American medicine, Fierce competition among hospitals for patients likely to need extraordinary care with insurance to pay for it (one of the reasons why there sometines is substantial competition over “medflights”)

I would tend to suspect that it is very rough since the funding schemes vary dramatically by state. California, for instance, went from county-level funding (which tends to be more oriented to social advantage) to state-level funding a while ago. California represents more than 1/6 of the school-aged population of the US.

I can’t comment on the specific proposal yet, as I haven’t read it.

Mummy and Daddy have no legal authority or responsibility in any of those matters.

But you go to college, and suddenly their income is important.

Tax inheritances and use them for a general college fund. What better use could society make of the money left behind by dead people?

Can you provide some evidence for “funding … in the current American system [is] roughly proportional to social advantage.”

I see this claim frequently, but it isn’t true for the school districts I am familiar with—the per-student spending is higher in the cities than in the suburban districts.

(I am not wanting to argue—I just would like to see some data; I’ll happily accept any reasonable-looking data.)

As it turns out, however, urban districts (e.g., Boston) tend to spend exactly their foundation budget amount or just a bit more, while wealthy suburban school districts tend to spend quite a lot more. (For example, Brookline will spend about 140% of its foundation budget amount in FY07, and most wealthy suburbs will spend at least 120%.)

That inequity has been challenged in litigation but the Massachusetts courts (a bunch of incorrigible judicial activists, don’t you know) have determined that the foundation budget process satisifies the mandates of Massachusetts’ state constitution, and it is up to the legislature to make any further changes.