Still Separate, Shamefully Unequal

Brown v. Board was decided in 1954. A decade later, President Lyndon B. Johnson began implementation of his Great Society program to mitigate socioeconomic injustice. Part of that program was the 1965 Elementary and Secondary Education Act, which started a half-century movement for equal access to quality education. Sixty years later, “separate but equal” may no longer be the law of the land—but at least in education, “separate and unequal” remains the reality. That cannot change until we’ve amended the practice of tying education to property taxes, a practice we can call total local control.

Broadly defined, “local control” is the doctrine that local governments should have maximum control over the education of students in their municipalities. Basically, Boston kids get educated in Boston, Brookline kids in Brookline, and never the twain shall meet. Furthermore, decisions about finances, staffing, and curriculum are made at the local level, with minimal input from state or federal governments. This system is popular in the United States—including Massachusetts, where municipalities have traditionally held high levels of power. There may be compelling arguments behind the idea, not least the contention that “neighborhood schools” make excellent community-building sites.

The problem with total local control is that it amplifies socioeconomic disparities across zip codes and municipalities. In 2005 Boston.com reported that median income varies widely by zip code in Massachusetts, and a November 2013 Washington Post feature reveals that some of the Commonwealth’s richer towns, like Brookline, border some of the poorest, like Boston. Educating Boston kids and Brookline kids separately effectively means segregating students based on class. As socioeconomic patterns of racial injustice are still alarmingly prevalent in America’s urban areas, class-based school segregation also means racial segregation.

Not surprisingly, the schools in Massachusetts’ high-income municipalities are overwhelmingly the Commonwealth’s top performers. In fact, according to Boston Magazine’s 2013 Mass. school rankings, graduation rates and standardized test scores are better correlated with a municipality’s average income than with per-pupil expenditures or even teacher pay.

As Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., points out in “The Two-Income Trap,” total local control causes a system of exclusionary schools, far from truly “public.”

Essentially, towns with good schools become desirable, and therefore can charge higher property taxes. Good schools draw an increasingly affluent population, meaning that municipalities have more resources available with which to educate a lower-need population. The schools that benefit from this system operate in high-tax districts inaccessible to low-income families—who are consigned to lower-performing schools that are under-resourced given their high-need populations.

In a system of total local control, there are no tuition-free public schools that do not limit admission based on zip code. Families in lower-performing districts are left with three choices: Enroll in private education, move to a town with better schools (and therefore higher taxes), or stick it out where they are. For those without means, only the last is feasible. Our high-performing, supposedly public schools are essentially private. They may not charge nominal tuition, but property taxes keep out poorer students—which has the same effect.

Solutions to this problem are not entirely clear. Back in the 1970s, Massachusetts’ attempts at court-enforced busing led to mixed results and outright public outrage, as J. Anthony Lukas’s “Common Ground” makes clear. An effective busing program—one that integrates based on class, rather than race alone—would be highly costly in most cases. True reform becomes especially difficult when busing is legally confined to single municipalities, as happened in Boston.

If we’re serious about mitigating opportunity gaps and increasing equity in public education, we have to think of ways to reduce the link between income level and educational quality. Any real effort to do so must divorce school assignment from property taxes.

And that probably means some reduction in local control—hard as that truth may be.

John A. Griffin ’16, a Crimson editorial executive, is a history and literature concentrator in Lowell House.