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A Good Thing About Paying Taxes

Tax season has – thankfully – just ended. Soon, schools will let out for summer. Now is the time to consider the public’s relationship with public schools: those institutions we pay for through our taxes.

For over three decades, school reformers have successfully shifted the discussion from public education to individual education. “School choice” – charter schools and school vouchers – incentivizes the public to ignore a troubled school system in favor of individual student success. Tracking and ability grouping, research has shown, benefits those students with socioeconomic advantages, ultimately widening an already present achievement gap.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.

In the nineteenth century, school reformers pushed for a system of education that was open to (almost) all young people. These were termed common schools, and they were designed to remedy social inequalities, an antidote to European models of wealth and capital inheritance.

Today, we have retained some of the practices those reformers institutionalized, such as summers off (then used for agrarian purposes). Other practices have changed, notably religion’s relationship with schools.

Still, common schools have lessons to teach us, and not just those found in textbooks. Most importantly, what should be the common good in public education? If that question seems frustratingly broad, it is because the answer is not preordained.

Paying taxes often feels like a burden, but it allows the public a voice in how our schools operate.

I'm Jacob Hardesty, and that's my perspective.