Читать книгу Introduction to the scientific study of education - Charles Hubbard Judd - Страница 49

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Returning to the detailed study of school finance, it may be laid down as a fundamental principle that in general school expenditures are related to the ability of a community to pay taxes. Taking for purposes of illustration the three largest cities, we find that they have different degrees of wealth. New York City has an average wealth of $1765.28 per inhabitant; Chicago has only $1604.20; Philadelphia, $953.65. Evidently the capacity of these cities for supporting schools is very different. The differences in wealth correspond roughly to the varying scale of expenditures for elementary schools in these three cities. New York expends $45.67 per pupil; Chicago, $37.58; and Philadelphia, $32.22. The less wealthy cities commonly spend less on schools.

There is a certain equity in the variation in expenditures above noted. But there are conditions under which the variations in wealth are so great that if expenditure depended on the ability of a community to pay for schools, the children would suffer. In such cases the state must take a share of the costs and must, in the interests of the general community, pay for better schools than the city or district can itself afford.

If one thinks of a mining town, for example, where the population is made up entirely of laborers with large families and where the homes are crowded together in a small area, it will be recognized at once that the ability to support schools is very different from that of a well-to-do manufacturing city or of a sparsely settled, fertile farming region where the children are few and the taxable wealth is comparatively great. In the case of the mining town the state must step in to equalize in some degree the educational opportunities of the children. It is not to the advantage of the state as a whole that the many children of that town should be seriously limited in their schooling, because they will in due time scatter to other communities, and the safety and progress of these other communities require that there shall be adequate educational opportunities in the mining town.

This one example is enough to suggest the problems which arise in the study of support for schools. The sources of these funds and the equitable distribution of state school taxes constitute one of the large problems of public finance and call for careful scientific study. Such questions as the following arise and must be answered: Shall state grants be determined by the pupil enrollment, by the average attendance, by the aggregate attendance, or by the number of teachers employed?