Property Tax Funding For Public Schools Research Paper

Property Tax Funding For Public Schools - Research Paper Example Instead of doing that, they make equal per-student funding available from their â€Å"General Tax Revenues† for all schools statewide. Most of the Americans declare that they are the supporters of the â€Å"Equal Funding† for the public schools, but the wealthy and the influential citizens often resist the attempts to remove the funding discriminations. This disagreement may be a sign of unawareness about the funding disparities, thoughtless approval of the conventional & long established methods for funding of education, and egotistical yearning to maintain the â€Å"Personal Taxes† at a low rate. The â€Å"Legal and Political† attempts to modify and remove the inequalities have been feeble at the â€Å"Federal Level†. But significant commotion has started to take place in the state courts and governing bodies. This paper ends with suggestions and policy propositions for struggling â€Å"Political and Cultural† conflict to reform. Introducti on: Property taxation and school funding are inter-linked with each other in United States. It has been known that almost half of the property tax revenue is used for funding public, elementary and secondary schools. It has become a hot topic to debate, across the United States as to which extent the public schools should be supported by the funds collected from property taxes. School funding is a controversial topic and it has become a matter to be resolved for almost every state.   It has been estimated  that independent school districts receive 96% of their tax revenues from property taxes. This makes it clear that public school funding rely more on property taxation as compare to grants collected from local government (Fisher, 2007). Whereas on the other hand, almost half of the total property tax revenue collected are also in financing public elementary and secondary schools in the United States. According to the statistics of 2004-2005, United States spent total of $488.5 billion on public elementary and secondary education, with nearly 47 percent of the funds received from state sources, 44 percent funds obtained by local sources with just 9 percent of the contributions derived from federal sources. However, it is a known fact that local funds are mainly received from taxes, primarily the property tax. Since 1952, local governments’ dependence on property taxes has dropped, whether measured as a percentage of local tax revenue, own source general revenue, or total general revenue. There have been quite many strong views on both property taxation and school finance. The strongest statements typically in general disapprove of local property taxes or their use for funding education. A latest assessment of policies in the New England states, a region that rely more greatly on property taxes than the rest of the country, faces strong criticism for this dependence, as stated by Pierce and Johnson (2006) that high property taxes along with the weigh t and perverse incentives they generate, the frenzy they create, the overall town to town school funding inequities they grow typically symbolizes a never-ending series of nightmares for New England. Thus as recommended by the authors, its has been noticed  that New England states need to restructure their  tax systems by lowering their dependency on