Public School Funding
How Choice Taxation will allow us to fix America’s rigged system of public school funding
Long ago, America’s ruling class figured out that one of the most effective ways to rig a system against the working class was to use property taxes to fund public schools. Recently, they’ve discovered they can rig the system even further using school choice vouchers. On paper, it all looks local, democratic, and fair. In practice, it gives an unfair and unearned advantage to the children of wealth. Funding by property taxes guarantees the rich get gleaming, resource-packed schools with all the latest technology and the best teachers money can buy, while working-class and poor kids just get screwed. Universal school vouchers (vouchers made available to everyone regardless of wealth) have forced working- and middle-class taxpayers to subsidize the private school tuition of affluent families who don’t need the help. It’s an inherently unfair system, so of course, it’s one Republicans are determined to uphold.
In Pennsylvania, like in many states, the disparities between public schools in low-income areas versus public schools in high-income areas was stark. In wealthy zip codes, the public schools looked and felt like private schools, with state-of-the-art facilities, robust extracurriculars, and manageable class sizes. Meanwhile, just a few miles away, schools in lower-income communities had leaky ceilings, outdated textbooks, and overworked teachers juggling 35 students per class. It wasn’t coincidental—it was the inevitable outcome of tying school funding to local property taxes. The richer the neighborhood, the better the school. The poorer the neighborhood, the more “resilience” we expect from the kids.
Ultimately, the glaring disparities led the William Penn School District and others to file a lawsuit challenging the state’s funding methods. The case led Commonwealth Court Judge Renée Cohn Jubelirer—a Republican!—to finally say the quiet part out loud: funding by property taxes produced “manifest deficiencies” between school districts, creating unconstitutional disparities that deny low-income children a basic quality education. That’s legalese for: “This is messed up.”
The state’s Republican lawmakers immediately filed a motion for post-trial relief. Judge Jubelirer subsequently denied the motion, rendering her verdict final. In the two years since, additional aid from the state meant to make up for the gap has been slow to arrive, leaving the William Penn district facing budgets cuts. When a system is this thoroughly rigged, even when the wealthy lose, they still keep winning.
As it turns out, having the best schools still isn’t enough to satisfy the filthy rich—they also want to use our money to fund their schools. So they got on the phone to whichever Republican lawmakers they own and told them to create universal school voucher programs. Lawmakers sold the idea of universal vouchers by claiming they would save taxpayers money and provide an opportunity for low-income students to attend one of those fancy rich schools and get themselves a high-class education. But, unsurprisingly, that turned out to be a load of crap. In state after state, the lion’s share of school voucher benefits has gone to the wealthy, and students from low-income households can rarely take advantage of the program. As their parents explain, “the location of private schools and additional costs for things like transportation, tuition, and meals keep them from using vouchers.”
It wasn’t just the promise of low-income students getting a high-class education that was broken—taxpayers still haven’t seen any of those promised savings. In Arizona, voters were initially told Republicans’ proposed universal school voucher program would cost $33 million. Two years later, taxpayers were out $800 million, and the state had a budget shortfall of $1.4 billion—fueled primarily by the voucher program.
Beyond the obvious rich-getting-richer problem, vouchers also force those on the Left to fund private schools that were never meant to serve the public. North Carolina and other states have handed millions of dollars to so-called “segregation academies”—schools that were literally created to evade court-ordered desegregation in the 1960s and ’70s. Many of those schools still enroll overwhelmingly white and affluent student bodies. So yes, in 2025, we’re still using public money to fund private schools that exist to avoid racial integration.
Plus, there’s the rapid erosion of the wall between church and state. With the expansion of school vouchers and so-called “education savings accounts,” public dollars are now routinely funding religious schools that don’t have to adhere to the mandates placed on public schools. Unlike those schools, private religious schools don’t have to admit all students, provide special education services, or meet academic standards. They’re also free to indoctrinate students into Republicans’ anti-science, anti-LGBTQ+, and anti-democratic version of Christianity. Taxpayers, regardless of their faith (or lack thereof), are being conscripted to fund religious dogma while neighborhood public schools can’t even afford a new roof. That’s not school choice. That’s forced tithing.
All of this is the logical endpoint of a system designed to let the wealthy have their cake, eat it, and send the bill to everyone else. And the people footing that bill—working families, renters, low-income communities—are being asked to sacrifice again and again for a system that doesn't serve them, doesn’t value them, and doesn’t even pretend to offer their children a fair shot. Clearly, we need a better system. And that’s where Choice Taxation comes in.
The Choice Taxation Solution
If you’re not familiar with Choice Taxation, you’ll find a guide to it here. But as for how it will fix our school funding problem, here’s all you need to know:
Under the plan, taxpayers’ education tax dollars would no longer be pooled together in a one-size-fits-all tax system controlled by our government which is itself controlled by centimillionaires, billionaires, and corporate America. Instead, Americans would be free to join one of the following new partisan tax systems: the Progressive Tax System, the Democrat Tax System, the Republican Tax System, and the MAGA Tax System.
Once we’ve joined the system of our choice, it will be that system—instead of our government—that will collect our education tax dollars. All government involvement in education would then end, and each system would be free to design its own education system rooted in its members' values, beliefs, and policy goals. Public schools would then be divided up proportionately among the tax systems, leaving each system free to decide for itself how it will fund its schools.
With the tax systems in charge, Progressive and Democrat Tax Systems will be free to ditch this inherently unfair method for funding schools and adopt a more equitable one. They can ensure all their schools provide the same high-quality education by funding them initially by need and then, once the schools have achieved parity, providing them with equal funding. With every school offering the same first-class education, there’ll be no plausible need for a school voucher program. And since Republicans won’t have any say in what the Progressive and Democrat Tax Systems do, the systems will be free to treat Jefferson’s call for the separation of church and state as the mandate it was meant to be instead of the goof Republicans insist it was.
Speaking of Republicans—because Choice Taxation doesn’t play favorites and lets both sides get what they want, both the MAGA and Republican Tax Systems will also be free to fund their schools however they want. This means they continue funding them with property taxes and vouchers to ensure the forced subsidization of the wealthy goes on unabated. Which must be what their right-wing members want, because year after year they continue to vote the same billionaire-owned-and-operated Republicans into office.
Two Choices
When it comes to public school funding, we’ve got two choices: we can keep begging billionaires (and the politicians they own) to toss a few more crumbs to our public schools, or we can enact Choice Taxation. With this bold and revolutionary plan, we’ll have the freedom and the power to fund schools our way—fairly and equitably. Additionally, we’ll have schools that are grounded in our values and beliefs, and we’ll never again be forced to fund the schools of the rich, the racist, or the religiously intolerant. We’ve dealt with the ruling class’s rigged system for far too long. It’s time we had a system of our own. It’s time we had Choice Taxation.
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