No Child Left Behind?
摘要
Education is commonly assumed to be an engine of social mobility in the United States. This assumption is undermined by the decades-long decrease in state funding of public higher education in the United States (Mitchell et al. 2019). As generally older generations make decisions about education funding for younger and future generations, it is clearly an issue of intergenerational justice. Similar dynamics are at play in the funding of K-12 education. Students do not pay tuition to attend public schools, with funding provided primarily by local property taxes. Control over these taxes is often exercised by voters, who are mostly removed from having a direct stake in primary and secondary education. Issues of local school funding thus often pit the interests of existing generations against each other. In this chapter we apply our theory to issues concerning educational access and funding in accordance with the requirements of intergenerational justice.