Sheriffs of Nottingham

Most New Yorkers would prefer to use the “Robin Hood” approach to funding education — redistributing money from wealthy school districts — rather than paying higher taxes. That is how our Wm. Hammond reported the findings of the latest Quinnipiac University poll, which found that only 24% of respondents favored raising state taxes (and only 9% favored raising local taxes) to pay for the enormous new outlays of taxpayers’ earnings the politicians want to spend to satisfy the lawsuit known as Campaign for Fiscal Equity.This finding is annoying Governor Pataki, Mayor Bloomberg, and the other politicians who are, in effect, the Sheriffs of Nottingham of this Robin Hood tale. The only way they can see to provide the sound basic education required by the State constitution is to identify the highest-cost option to educate our children and tax and spend to meet the payments. They have made it clear they don’t want to have anything to do with lower-cost options.The sentiments illuminated by Quinnipiac suggest, however, that the ground is shifting under the politicians. Consider, after all, that New Yorkers have already increased their involuntary contributions to the public school monopoly, through state and local taxes, by about one-third, or $7.8 billion, over the past decade, with no obvious return on that investment. Collectively, New York’s government-run schools spend more than $11,500 on each student, the highest of any state. How much less willing would New Yorkers be to support higher school taxes if reminded of these facts?We recognize that Mr. Bloomberg and his schools chancellor, Joel Klein, must run the nation’s largest public school system on somewhat less than the statewide average, or about $11,400 a student, even though the costs of doing business in this city are much higher and the social handicaps of its children much worse. Certainly it is hard recruiting qualified teachers to the city schools when they can make better salaries under easier working conditions in the neighboring suburbs. Still, the city schools’ per-student allotment is comparable to those in neighboring states, and far exceeds the national aver age of $7,800. Charter schools and parochial schools do a better job on tighter budgets every day.The real shortage in our city schools — the decision of the state’s highest court notwithstanding — is not one of money, but of management. Think how much more students could learn if they attended school eight hours a day instead of six, and took six weeks of summer vacation instead of 10. Consider how much harder teachers would work if principals could reward the good ones with higher pay and credibly threaten the bad ones with dismissal.These obstacles to good education derive from bloated labor contracts negotiated under union-friendly laws with the complacent understanding that parents, especially low-income parents, have no choice about where they send their children to school. They would melt away quickly if the public school monopoly were exposed to the heat of competition, in the form of tuition vouchers and an abundance of charter schools.The pollsters at Quinnipiac could be faulted for giving respondents only three choices: taking from state taxpayers, taking from local taxpayers, or taking from the rich districts to give to the poor. They neglected to say that total state aid allotted to the wealthier districts probably will not be anywhere near enough to satisfy the demands of the education lobby, which have now soared north of $20 billion over the next few years. They also left out Governor Pataki’s preferred option of authorizing more video slot machines under auspices of the state lottery — which would effectively raise money for education with a tax on ignorance.Even if presented with all of these choices, we would have looked for the box marked “none of the above.” The only best option in response to the Campaign for Fiscal Equity case is the one no one at City Hall or the state Capitol seems to have in mind — policies designed to give parents the ability to purchase education for their children on the open market and get tax credits or vouchers for the money they are forced to lay out. This program could be funded by charging a nickel from every politician and policy pundit who insists it just will never happen in New York State.

Sheriffs of Nottingham

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