The Silver Bullet

By D.T. Holt

“Mallory, education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes. We need gigantic monumental changes. Schools should be palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be making six-figure salaries. School should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense. That’s my position. I just haven't figured out how to do it yet.”

Actor Rob Lowe as Sam Seaborn in the West Wing episode “Six Meetings Before Lunch,” written by Aaron Sorkin.

It feels a little odd to start off a piece on education with a quote from a television show, but I’ve never run across a statement that comes closer to my own beliefs. For as long as I can remember, politicians, education professionals and ordinary citizens have talked of the dreadful state of our education system but we have never made it a national priority to improve the sad state of our schools. Politicians from the local level to the Presidency regularly give lip service to the idea of improving our schools but I have never seen a concerted effort to address the problem of a “separate but equal” system for funding education which insures that the schools that are in trouble will have little or no chance to improve.

I use the phrase “separate but equal” in reference to the landmark civil rights decision Brown v. Board of Education, in which the Supreme Court ruled that segregated schools were, in fact, not equal and that the black students in racially segregated schools were not being given the same opportunity as their counterparts in the white schools. While our schools are no longer segregated along racial lines, the common practice of funding education through local property taxes has effectively created a scenario in which a child born in a lower income community does not have the same opportunities as one born in a more affluent district. Although the two school systems are required to adhere to the same standards and are therefore, in theory, “equal,” the difficulty in improving schools which are perpetually under funded due to low property values and a community unable to afford even the smallest of increases on their property taxes creates an educational experience which is far from apples to apples.

Some would say that this problem is best addressed with a voucher system, which gives parents the opportunity to send their children to the best of the available schools in their community, and in same cases even private or parochial schools. While this system is probably a good option for the parent of the child going to the better school, it does nothing to address the problem of the failing school. It sets up what is basically a competition, funds are awarded to the school that is performing better which punishes the children still attending the poorly performing school by withholding necessary funds that could help to turn the tide of a worsening situation. The No Child Left Behind act of 2001 sets up a similar situation by awarding federal funds to the schools with the best test scores while leaving the underachieving schools and more importantly the students who attend them to continue to fall behind.

I am not suggesting that there is no place for accountability in our schools or that we should withhold money from those that are performing successfully. However, funding that is based on this accountability gives students who are lucky enough to be born in a community with strong schools access to the greater level of opportunity that a good education provides while doing nothing to help the child who is unlucky enough to be born in a lower income, chronically under funded inner city school district.

The only way to insure that all of our children have access the same opportunities is to insure that all schools have an equal access to funds. Obviously, this is far easier said than done and, much like the Sam Seaborn character in the West Wing, I am not sure exactly how to do it. I believe that the answer may lie in education that is funded on a national level and be paid for by a progressive income tax. We are currently paying for schools based on the property values in our communities which is in effect a progressive tax system - those who’s home are of higher value are paying more for education. Collecting funds on a national level instead of locally, gives greater opportunity to disperse the funds proportional to all school systems based on the number of students in a given community.

Am I certain that this idea will work? Absolutely not. However, I am certain that good schools equal strong communities, lower unemployment, lower crime rates and greater opportunities all of which make solving this problem of equal importance to all of us. Only a willingness to make education a national priority on the level of national defense will give us the chance to achieve the “silver bullet” of a well educated populace.
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Check back on Monday February 9 for John Bertosa's rebuttal to "The Silver Bullet."