Every once in a while, I come up with an idea to solve a problem that I’m often not an expert in, but that seems to make sense. I like to run these ideas by others to get their input and hopefully come up with an even better idea. I recently started re-reading Jonathan Kozol’s Savage Inequalities. I first read this excellent book on the inequalities in the American education system when I was a sophomore in college eight years ago. At that point, I was too overwhelmed byKozol’s description of the state of schools in East St. Louis and Chicago to respond with ideas on how to change the situation. This time I approached the text with the eye of a policy analyst and I had an idea…

I have always lamented the inequalities that arise from an education system funded primarily by local property taxes. This seems to ensure that policies are never determined by Rawls’ “veil of ignorance” and instead schools become catalysts for the cycle of poverty. Children of wealthy parents in wealthy neighborhoods receive the best education, which when coupled with their class advantage nearly ensures that they will also end up monetarily successful. Low-income children in poor neighborhoods get an education that is nearly worthless in 21st century America, which when coupled with the other effects of child poverty nearly ensures that they will remain in poverty for their adult lives.

So how do we change the system of funding the US education system within the bounds of federalism proscribed by our Constitution?

While I believe that state lotteries are never the best system for funding anything, I believe they could in some ways counteract the affects of locally funded education. Currently, many state lotteries are advertised as funding education, but often the revenues go into the general fund. It is also true that lotteries often represent a regressive tax levied on the poorest members of society and feed addictive behavior. However, I believe that it is increasingly unlikely that state lotteries will ever go away. So what if the regressiveness of the lottery system was addressed by creating a system, in which, the funds were distributed proportionally based on where they were purchased. If funds were instead distributed to the school districts where the most lottery tickets were purchased, which would also coincidentally be those school districts receiving proportionally little in local property taxes, i.e. the most impoverished districts; some of the inequalities in funding might be alleviated.  Certainly, this would not solve all the inequalities in the American system, but equalizing funding might be an important start.