Key points
- Nearly half of American school spending comes from local property taxes.
- Exclusionary zoning keeps land expensive and, with it, the school district rich.
- In Rodriguez the Supreme Court denied any constitutional right to equal school funding.
School Apartheid. How the border of your street secretly decides which university you'll go to.
In the United States, nearly half of school money comes from local property taxes, so district borders become walls of class. We explore exclusionary zoning, redlining, opportunity hoarding and the court rulings that sealed the inequality, with Kozol, Rothstein, Massey, Denton and Tilly. We walk through Charles Tilly's opportunity hoarding, the segregation built by public policy that Richard Rothstein documented, and the Supreme Court rulings that declared it legal to fund schools with unequal taxes. With the years Jonathan Kozol spent inside those classrooms: forty children in a room with no heating, a few blocks from a football stadium.
Frequently asked questions
Why are rich and poor schools so close together?
Because American school spending depends on district property taxes. Two neighbourhoods separated by a single street belong to different districts, with very unequal tax bases behind them.
What did the Supreme Court decide in Rodriguez?
That the Constitution grants no right to equal school funding. After that ruling, gaps between districts stopped being a federal problem and were left to each state to address.
