Twitter, school finance ideology, and racial capitalism
Twitter is an interesting place. There's a lot that toxic about it, but when it comes to intellectual debates and the life of ideas there's nothing like it.
A few weeks ago, a debate burst open on twitter about whether to keep schools open in the omicron surge. I commented on a few threads published by writers with big followings, pointing out the systematic for-profit underfunding of school infrastructure, specifically ventilation systems. (This led to me writing a thread spelling out the basics of the private credit system behind school facilities finance that got a little attention.)
One of my comments on a tweet by Helaine Olen inspired some responses. These responses used some common conservative ideology about school funding. Sometimes I get sucked in and try to gain ground on these ideologies by picking apart comments, pushing back and trying to convince people to change their minds. This mostly doesn't work, but I got close on Olen's thread. I ended up going back and forth with a person in suburban Wisconsin whom I've never met for quite awhile. Our dialogue shows some of the strengths of twitter dialogue on school funding, but also its limitations.
My interlocutor was called Platinum Burm, whose handle is @BURMESEMOM. I'll call them Platinum and refer to them as her given the word 'mom' in her handle. Here's how our public convo went down and the common school finance ideologies at play in it.
Taking aim at the 'money myth'
Olen was sharing a thread by New York Times writer David Leonhardt that was gaining traction. Leonhardt was arguing to keep schools open. Olen supported that. I said, "School building—ventilation systems in particular—are not up to the task. They’re unsafe. They’ve been structurally neglected through the municipal bond market’s rapaciousness, and now you call for kids and teachers to stay in them without any sense of the infrastructural danger."
Platinum asked me, "Why haven’t they been fixed??? Schools have been given hundreds of billions of dollars to make schools safe. What are they doing if not making schools safe!?"
This was a point many were making: hadn't schools been given billions of dollars in the American Rescue Plan? Why should we give them more? The question comes from pretty commonly held position that says money isn't the way to make schools better. Conservatives have used this point throughout educational history to avoid paying for public school, but its most recent iteration has been to say that calling for more revenue for schools perpetuates a 'money myth.' Money won't fix the problem, they say. Schools need accountability, consequences, and better-trained leadership, they say. School should be run more like a business, they say.
It's a very powerful premise that opens the door for all kinds of bad education reforms The chief intellectual power behind the 'money myth' argument is the ivy league economist Eric Hanushek. He has spent his decades-long career testifying as an expert witness, publishing research, writing reports, and authoring books arguing that schools don't need more money. Fortunately, there's been a recent turn against this ideology as other top economists like C. Kirabo Jackson find that, yes, money matters a lot (duh).
Public goods and local control
Anyway, back to Platinum. I wanted to talk about how school buildings are financed, since this is not common knowledge. I said, "Schools *nationally* have [been given funds]. But in PA, this has translated to about $325m for Philly, my city. We need $5 BILLION for our school buildings. It’s the financing system that’s the problem. Look into the municipal bond market and you’ll see."
Maybe Platinum wasn't sure what to do with the specificity of my response and reached for the closest ideological arrow in her quiver, bringing the dialogue to the role of the federal government: "Why do you think taxpayers in Kansas or Utah should pay to fix your schools?" Another commonly held conservative idea is that we shouldn't pay to fund schooling for people outside of our communities. A very 'local control', decentralizationist, and individualist ideology.
"Because we're all citizens of the same country and education is a public good that benefits everyone?" I countered. Even arch-neoliberal Milton Friedman admitted in the 1950s that education is a public good and must be financed by the state because it's impossible to calculate the individual benefits an educated populace provides.
Platinum reinforced her local-control position: "That’s not how this works. Schools are a local responsibility." I could've said that 'local responsibility' is, to use the words of Vermont Supreme Court Justice John Meeker, a cruel illusion since only some localities (those with high property values) can afford to be responsible for educating their students. Instead, I wanted to correct the record since what Platinum said is true, but only partly. That's how I got it back to school buildings finance:
"It's not that simple. Schools get a non-negligible (tho way too small) amount from the federal government and get a majority of their funding at the state level. Their infrastructure financing comes from (inter)national investors that front $ for capital programs in bonds." But things took a different direction.
Getting personal
To this, Platinum doubled down on her local control advocacy. "And? Why do other places get the job done within the current system? The Fed Gov has never paid for these things. And why would you want them to? Then they can come in and tell you how to run your schools."
Since at least the 1890s, and much more so after the 1917 revolution in Russia, Americans have drawn on discourses about tyranny, totalitarianism, and even socialism (in the bad sense) to argue against any federal control of school systems. Platinum was drawing from this long tradition. But she was doing so with another bit of rightwing ideology that'd been subtext in her comments throughout the dialogue: that school districts are to blame for their problems. Places like cities or rural areas with dilapidated schools must be inefficient, corrupt, and wasteful.
While I was interested in talking about school building finance, I saw that the opening here might be try and show Platinum how this district-eat-district system is bad. Specifically, how the reliance on property values stacks the deck against districts with low property value (a key feature of US racial capitalism). While I agree that revenue should always come with accountability, I tend to think that blaming school districts for their problems is blaming a victim of racial capitalism. So I switched my interest to this aspect of school finance ideology.
I also saw it as an opportunity to find out more about a specific school district, which I like to do. I thought if I could get Platinum to tell me her school district's name, I could run down the details with data and push back on this deeply-entrenched ideology of 'local control'. Numbers are a powerful ideological tool and the super-expropriation of school resources is easy to see when you list them out.
I wrote: "You still haven't told me which district you're in. What's the avg property value there? What's your millage rate? What's your student population#? Your per pupil expenditure? SpEd, ELL, poverty rates? I bet what looks like local control to you is actually structural injustice," I asked.
She didn't want to get to the numbers and got testy. "That’s right. When every other argument fails, go for the racism. By the way, how does the federal government fund their debt? It wouldn’t be (inter) national bond investors, would it? Maybe your city has a poor credit rating? IDK."
Sometimes, there's so much in a comment that you don't know what to focus on when responding. I could've gone in any number of directions here: her reactionary rejection of racism talk (making it personal), the role of international investment in federal debt, and the racial capitalism of credit ratings. All juicy topics. I decided to acknowledge the comment on race but keep pushing for numbers.
"Racism is structural. It's telling that you haven't told me which school district you're in," I said. I hoped that saying racism is structural defused the immediate pressure created when someone thinks you're calling them racist. That whole game relies on an individualist idea of racism. It makes people in the US extremely defensive (even on the left!) if they sense the possibility that they're being called racist. Saying that it's structural--that racism exists in contingently in practices, not personally in people--can turn the pressure down.
This seemed to work with Platinum, who then did something strange: she asked me a question. "Why would [my school district] be important?" Dialogically, I liked this response. She didn't shut down or issue a closed proclamation (which is normal on twitter). Instead, she asked me a question and seemed genuinely interested in my response. Maybe that's why I kept talking to her? I don't know. But I kept going.
District profiles in racial capitalism
I replied: "Because without knowing the details of your district it's hard to have this conversation in any informed way. It'll just confirm whatever it is we already think." This got me closer to finding out Platinum's district, but she got coy.
"I live just outside of the City of Milwaukee."
I kept pushing. "Which district?"
Then she said it: "Greenfield."
I realized afterwards that asking for a school district is identifying information, but I didn't think it was doxxy enough to be sensitive. With her district, I could lay out some numbers and try to show her that local control is cruel illusion in racial capitalism. Once I knew she was in the Greenfield School District I could go to the NCES data map and EdBuild, get some numbers, and see what she thought. Finding millage rates isn't the easiest but I was able to get it through Wisconsin's state reporting.
"Cool, I like looking up specific districts. Here's some stuff. Looks like your mill rate is 8.8 with an avg property value of ~$163k. 11% of students are in poverty, most are native Eng speakers. 40% of your funding is from the state. 76% white."
These numbers don't mean much until you compare with a nearby district, usually an urban one. So I did a comparison with nearby Milwaukee. (She actually asked me to do that as I was doing it: "Now look up Milwaukee.")
"You've got 6 schools and 3,552 students [in Greenfield]. Compare this with Milwaukee's 158 schools & 75k students. Mill rate = 10.5 on avg property value of $118k. Pretty unequal situation. You pay less taxes, get more than Milwuakee w/31.6% students in poverty, fewer native Engl speakers."
To slow down a little, mill rates are the rates at which a district taxes property. Usually it's calculated in tax dollars per $1,000 of assessed property value. I find they're the best way to argue against tax-revolters who say they're paying so much in taxes for schools. If you look at tax rates and property values, this is usually false: suburbs have more property value that they tax less overall.
Consider these two districts, Greenfield and Milwaukee. In Greenfield's case, they take $9 for every $1,000 of value. In that district, the median property is $163,000. In Milwaukee, they tax $10.5 and the median property value is $118,000. Let's make a ratio to show exactly how much these districts are paying relative to their property value. It's like an old SAT analogy question, but with numbers: what's the relationship if we ask 9 is to 163K as 10.5 is to 118k?
To taxpayers like Platinum in Greenfield, it feels like they pay a lot of taxes because the bill they get is higher than someone in Milwaukee. You'd expect their tax ratio to be higher. But it's not.
If we divide the mill rate by the median property value, the truth comes out. Greenfield's tax ratio is .000055. Milwaukee's is .000088. It's higher! Actually, Milwaukeeans pay almost a third more in taxes than Greenfield! Combine this with the increased racial and linguistic inequality between Greenfield and Milwaukee and you see the evil magic of racial capitalism in school finance. The calculations show that we have a super-regressive taxation system that charges residents in racially diverse, lower property value districts more. They need more but they have to pay more to get less in educational services. The whole system is set up for working class districts of color to fail.
Sigh
I thought Platinum would consider my ideology, which says there is structural racism in how schools are funded and local control is a cruel illusion which justifies federal and state action. She almost did, but went right back into her local-control ideology.
"[T]here’s no doubt there are differences. [T]he question is, are those schools doing a hood job with the money they get? I beiieve MPS provides pensions and full benefits for part time lunch ladies. They also have buildings that are not used that they refuse to sell."
Presented with the data, she recognized differences. But that difference didn't convince her that the district is responsible. I got mad and fired off a response:
"You're blaming lunch ladies? This is a structural inequity. The city has less to work with, has to tax more to then spend less than they need to deal with more issues. You can't ask a district to do something, give it less than it needs, and blame it for not doing it well."
I just couldn't understand. I think my anger came out in her pointing to pensions for lunch ladies (who deserve them dammit!) as a problem rather than a hard fought victory for working class women. She got the sense of my reaction, drew from her conservative position, and shut down the dialogue--taking a parting shot at Philadelphia:
"They waste money, just like your Philly district wastes money. Nobody targets the waste. Ever. Well, it sounds like you might have tried. Hood luck!"
After engaging in this whole conversation, I wondered what the point even was. I tried to change Platinum's mind, but it didn't work. Along the way I got to learn about Greenfield School District, but also a couple things about battles over school finance ideology in racial capitalism. Two things stood out.
Two lessons
Twitter provided an opportunity to talk with someone I've never met (and probably never will) about school finance politics. It was pretty neat. But ultimately, I couldn't change her mind. Bracketing the implications for twitter as a medium of communication, I took two organizing lessons from the exchange.
First, saying that racism is structural took some pressure off the dialogue and opened it up a little. I didn't say that racism isn't a thing, but I tried to say that it's not necessarily a personal or individual thing. It's not that Platinum is a racist in her heart or soul or whatever (which I think are essentializing concepts themselves), even if she says and does racist things. As a materialist, I think it's the opposite: saying and doing racist things is racist. Platinum has a changeable subjectivity that could stop doing and saying racist things at any time. That's a structural take on racism. Emphasizing this maybe kept the dialogue going and maybe convinced her to provide the name of her district.
Second, the idea of accountability resonated with Platinum. There was an interesting aside where she tweeted that she'd looked at my profile and liked the stuff I'd written about how problematic the School District of Philadelphia is. She liked that I focused on accountability and revenue. She may have rejected everything I said about revenue, but had sympathy for my critiques of the district. I think this shows the power of combining revenue demands with accountability demands. I've argued that socialists should demand both. It could be that this message opens a door in organizing conversations and messaging to convince others.