Saturday, September 10, 2005

I am being (semi)productive!

Nothing else on my list for today has been accomplished, but I am getting some reading done.

And I wanted to share this quote, as a shout out to all of y'all with whom I've discussed school finance. It's nothing profound or insightful. But, it's true:

Several Alamo Hightesters I talked to said, "Equalization is a good idea, but not if it involves taking money away from rich districts and giving it to poor ones." Guess what. There's no other way to accomplish equalization. If you want equal opportunity for children, you have to pay for it.

--Nancy Folbre, The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family Values, p. 146

edited two minutes later to add another quote. Here (p. 148), Folbre quotes Judge Scott McCown:

The other thing that I have hear people say is "our taxes"--why do we have to send "our taxes" to educate other people's children? Well, there are two problems with that. First, it's not "our taxes." We expect people who have no children to pay taxes, and businesses their taxes. I guess the thing that upsets me the most is to hear people talk about "our children"--they miss the whole point of the Constitution. They are all our children.

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