Kenneth Ng has argued, in his article published as
issue 17 of volume 9 of Education Policy Analysis Archives,
that Bullock, Fishlow,
Harris, Kousser, and Margo have incorrectly assumed that segregation
allowed whites to draw off Southern Black tax contributions to support
public education. This argument, like many in social history, is as
much about current conditions as the past. As Ng wrote just before the
conclusion,
It is difficult if not impossible to argue the level of subsidy implied
by equal expenditures on Black and white children, given the relative
reliance on the poll and property tax, the voter participation rates of
Blacks and whites, and the level of Black and white taxable property is
superior to another level of subsidy implied by different levels of
expenditure. In fact, if variation in taxable property and voter
participation across states and time are considered, equalizing
expenditures across race would lead to different levels of net subsidy
across states and over time. It is difficult to see how the particular
pattern of subsidy implied by equal expenditures is "best."
In other words, Ng is arguing that, if the history of segregation did
not lead to a net subsidy of white children's education by Black
children's, the whole notion of equalizing fuding per child is
irrational. Ng's claim acquires particular salience because the
historical arguments over school funding in the South often
did focus on whether school funding was in proportion to taxes
paid. This argument requires examination of the historical evidence
used, Ng's interpretation of public funding in the context of Southern
education in the pre-Brown years, the consequences of segregation for
public education more broadly, and the broader question of fairness in
funding.
Use of Evidence
Ng is injudicious in presenting both spending and revenue data
for schools. Table 2, which is the basis for Ng's analysis, captures
only teachers' salaries. Today, when direct instruction only occupies
about half of full-time-equivalent staffing in public schools, no one
would imagine using classroom salaries as a proxy for total spending.
In the pre-Brown era, public schools spent disproportionately on white
schools not only for teachers but also for supplies, supervision, and
capital construction. Southern schools forced Black schools to use
second-hand books (commonly passed on from white schools), had less
publicly-funded supervision of Black teachers (for the most visible
supervisors of Southern Black schools were the privately-funded Jeanes
teachers), and scrimped on construction of schools (Anderson, 1988).
Ironically enough, in one of the sources Ng uses (Kousser's 1980 article
on the Cumming v. Richmond case in Augusta, Georgia),
Kousser makes clear that the data used for comparative purposes, teacher
salaries, underestimates the disproportionate funding for white schools
and that, if all costs (including the value of schools) were available,
any net subsidy for Black schools would certainly be reversed (Kousser,
"Separate but not Equal," pp. 24-26).
Ng's use of revenue data is similarly incomplete. He uses voter
participation as a proportional proxy for poll tax revenues from
Southerners. Many tax collectors were inconsistent before
disfranchisement, and many after disfranchisement laws collected the
poll tax from Black residents, secure that other barriers would prevent
them from voting. In addition, Ng ignores other potential sources of
financial support for schools. Educational funding was idiosyncratic in
the segregationist South. Some jurisdictions relied on the poll and
property taxes, but in other areas, indirect taxes on utility and
landlord property—some part of which certianly was passed on to
renters—also contributed to schools (which Kousser estimates as 12
percent in North Carolina, in one of the articles cited by Ng). Some
schools charged tuition. Many communities raised funds voluntarily.
Absent a careful analysis of support state-by-state, the conclusions Ng
can draw from the data presented here are merely speculative. (The fact
that Kousser, adding in estimates of indirect taxation, concludes that
any net subsidy of Black schools in North Carolina shrank dramatically
in the same time period Ng covers should make readers extremely cautious
about any statement about subsidies.)
Historical Context of Segregation and School Expenditures
Ng's statistical analysis is removed from the context of
historical school politics in the South. Two facets of that history are
important to understanding the consequences of segregation for
educational opportunities in the South. First, segregation made public
education safe for white politicians. Many white politicians, including
John Harlan before he became Justice Harlan (the dissenter in
Plessy and the author of the Cumming v.
Richmond decision leaving demonstrably unequal education alone in
Augusta), struggled with how to frame the educational debates after
Reconstruction. In some cases, equal funding (often framed as
"proportionate" funding) was explicitly debated. After the
disfranchisement of most African-American and many white voters, as well
as the codification of segregation, white politicians could expand
schooling for whites without incurring any political cost. Unlike the
immediate post-Civil War era, when public schooling was politically
radical, the expansion of schooling, especially high schools, was tame
and fit within the caste system of the South because of the
newly-confirmed capacity to provide unequal opportunities. In other
areas of the country, and in the South at other times, I would suspect
that any "school subsidy" analyzed in the same way would be
far greater than what Ng describes here. By failing to make such
comparisons, Ng is suggesting that any subsidy is fair in the context of
the political environment of the time.
The second key context is the crucial use of the high school,
which used relatively little funding compared to elementary schools at
the time, in creating unequal educational opportunities. The Southern
high school was largely for "whites only" in the first third
of the twentieth century and still unavailable to African-Americans in
many parts of the rural South as late as 1960 (Anderson, 1980).
Aggregating all expenditure hides the effect of different funding on
secondary schooling. By analyzing all educational expenditures, Ng has
effectively ignored how white students had demonstrably unequal access
to secondary education.
Public Programs without Net Subsidies?
Ng suggests that a funding scheme that is dramatically unequal in
direct spending can still be fair. His measure of fairness, net
subsidy, flies in the face of all government public-good spending
practices. Spending on any service or good accessible to the general
population (or a segment of it, such as schoolchildren) is necessarily
redistributive on some basis, since the elimination of subsidies would
require an accounting scheme that limits spending to individual
disbursements. The purpose of spending for fire, police, health, and
schooling is to provide services judged necessary for the whole
population. Police and fire services subsidize some geographic areas at
the expense of others. Public health programs subsidize the unhealthy.
Schooling subsidizes the young.
Ng's argument is not unique, though it has appeared more commonly
in the philosophical arguments about intergenerational transfers of
wealth involved in Social Security's "pay as you go" system.
Ng is raising the ghost of the net subsidy argument, which Southern
white politicians used and rejected more than a century ago.
What is notable is why white politicans rejected the argument. They
certainly were both comfortable with and had reasons to encourage
unequal funding. However, shrewd politicians like North Carolina
Governor Charles Brantley Aycock knew that white school boards had
sufficient legal discretion at their disposal, after disfranchisement,
to spend school funds as they wished. Adding a legal mandate for
unequal spending would merely draw attention to a fact that they wished
would remain undiscussed (Kousser, "Progressivism"). So, too,
politicians today are trying mightily to avoid the issue of unequal
funding. They should not take any comfort from the history of school
spending in the segregationist South.
References
Anderson, J. (1988). The Education of Blacks in the
South, 1865-1935. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press.
Kousser, J. M. (1980). Progressivism—For Middle-Class
Whites Only: North Carolina Education, 1880-1910. Journal of
Southern History, 46, 169-94.
Kousser, J. M. (1980). Separate but not Equal: The Supreme
Court's First Decision on Racial Discrimination in Schools.
Journal of Southern History, 46, 17-44.
About the Author
Sherman Dorn
University of South Florida
Email: dorn@typhoon.coedu.usf.edu
Sherman Dorn is Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychological and
Social Foundations at the University of South Florida. He received his Ph.D.
in history at the University of Pennsylvania in 1992 based on his work on
the history of dropout policies. He is currently looking at the history of
special education in Nashville, Tennessee, from 1940 to 1990.
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