Accumulating Through Dispossession: The Case of Tax Increment Financing
A student recently asked me something interesting. Did tax increment financing impact her school in northwest Philadelphia? We did some sleuthing and learned...
A Value-Added Tax for Schools
There was a brief moment when school funding in the US could've gotten better. It was the early 1970s. After decades of court cases challenging Brown v....
Notes on CRT and Antiracist Socialism: The Terrain
What’s a socialist to do about the rightwing craziness around critical race theory? One thing to consider is the terrain of this situation. Antonio Gramsci...
The Thing About 'STEM'
When I was young, I got the impression very early that I should go into science and be good at math. It's actually one of my earlier memories: if I could be...
Peru's New President is a Socialist Teacher
You might have seen huge pencils in your feed recently. Or heard about the big hats. They're symbols of Peru's president-elect Pedro Castillo, a left...
A New Principle?
I’m no economist. I don’t have formal training. What I know about economics is from studying with groups and on my own (going through CORE-ECON for instance,...
Scrots, Mortgages, and Personal Finance Praxis
After two hours on the phone with three different customer service representatives, we finally figured it out. My heart was beating hard. I was sweating...
The Ideology of Education News
Lying in bed one rainy morning, I went down a rabbit hole. I had some time off from childcare and saw a tweet by Chad Aldeman critiquing an Economic Policy...
The Fifth Formula
A couple weeks ago the Biden adminitration released a 60-page proposal for funding "Education for the Disadvantaged," or Title 1A of the Elementary and...
School Lunch Debt and the Ruling Class
Parents in Wyoming Valley School District in Pennsylvania were terrified and angry. The district sent a letter threatening to send their children to foster...
The socialist way to talk about school funding 'inequality'
I can’t stop talking about Ester Cyna’s award-winning essay on school finance in North Carolina over the long 20th century. The history is rigorous and the...
Fear and Loathing in School Infrastructure Reimbursement
A comrade asked me a question recently about school infrastructure reimbursements. He’s interested in knowing whether there are models elsewhere in the US...
Title 1 Funding: An MMT approach
I spent a good chunk of time the last few days sitting at my desk and twirling my pen, staring out the window. I was trying to figure out how I would propose...
Teaching History During the Chauvin Verdict Announcement
I taught a history class the day the Chauvin verdict was announced. The class started at 4:30pm, which was the exact time the verdict was supposed to be...
A little fiscal mutualism, as a treat?
Michael Glass and Sean Vanatta, in their history of 1940s municipal finance in the New York suburbs, coined the term fiscal mutualism. This is a cool idea so...
What happened in Vermont
Carol Brigham’s family stopped talking to her. The superintendent of her school district got his tires slashed. A father, reporting on what was happening,...
How did I get here?
In my history of school funding seminar last week, students asked me something personal. We were talking about how hard and wonky school finance is, and they...
Cooperation Analysis of the Twin Cities Region
So much focus has been on Minneapolis in the wake of the Derek Chauvin trial. The city's been on all of our minds. Coincidentally, the Twin Cities is also...
Making Schools Safe: A Different Angle
So much of the literature and organizing on school finance comes down to a two-word demand: more money. If we get the revenue, we can provide better...
Rescue me
The American Rescue Plan is coming to your town soon if it hasn't already. The dollars are flowing. This includes $122 billion for school districts. How does...