U.S. supreme court finds a way in “Milliken” (1974) — school desegregation between suburb and city.

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Would a way for states to abide by Milliken be to ban municipalities from using property tax to fund education and instead do it through a state income tax, with the money being divvied up based on enrollment per district?
sounds like a big improvement to me, especially since the state already licenses qualified teachers.

You could even have a coefficient such as .973 or 1.028 for cost of living for school district. Not to vary by more than 5% either way.
 
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When I first joined AH, this is rather what I expected. The big sprawling questions such as what if we humans met aliens at different stages of our development.

And I find, we can’t even figure how to do approx. equal school spending per student ? ?

Well . . . Okay, and I’ll try to do a little bit of both detail and big sprawling.
 
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I suspect you'd see the response to this being a faster and harder shift right in the GOP, both in dixie and nationally. You'd get current polarizations happening early imo.
But the fact that this was BEFORE four plus decades of decline of the American middle class makes a HUGE difference. At least it does in my universe, and I suspect in your universe as well! ;)
 
But the fact that this was BEFORE four plus decades of decline of the American middle class makes a HUGE difference. At least it does in my universe, and I suspect in your universe as well! ;)
Nah, you'd see OTL late 2010s level of polarization by the late 90s in this ATL. My guess is ttl's late 2010s would have regular northern ireland-type Troubles plus emerging dutch-type pillarization on liberal/conservative lines.
 

bguy

Donor
As part of finding a way, I’d hope at least 2 of 4 Nixon appointees vote for artful, positive resolution of Milliken.

Even IOTL the Senate came within one vote of stripping the federal courts of jurisdiction over busing cases (the 1972 Griffin Amendment). If Milliken goes the other way then the resulting backlash pretty much guarantees that a court jurisdiction stripping bill will get passed.

Arguably, SC found way in Bakke (1978).

What does Bakke have to do with busing?
 
Is anyone else as intrigued as I am by the parallels between Busing and Prohibition?

Both were well-intentioned attempts to deal with a genuine problem. Contrary to legend the Prohibitionists weren't just a bunch of killjoys. Alcoholism was a huge problem then [1]. Both, however, involved intrusions on people's personal lives going way beyond what they would tolerate for any length of time.

Ironically, the point was best made in a letter supporting Prohibition, written in 1925 by journalist William Allen White. In it, White acknowledged that most people did not need such a drastic measure to keep their drinking under control, but argued that it was their duty to accept this infringement on their liberty for the sake of those weaker brethren who could not control themselves. Though meaning to defend Prohibition, White had inadvertently put his finger on the reason that it ultimately failed - it called on the majority to make sacrifices for the sake of a minority, as busing would do later. In both cases, of course, the answer was the same, ie "In your dreams, mate."


[1] Could I put in a plug for the excellent Ken Burns documentary on Prohibition, which I find absolutely fascinating. If it were an Alternate History, written on a TL where Prohibition never happened, it would surely be dismissed as ASB.
 
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(1) No doubt many opponents of busing were motivated by racism but the fact remains that busing was an unpopular policy. "Even blacks were sharply divided." https://books.google.com/books?id=CwPrAwAAQBAJ&pg=PT26 . . .
The source says "forced busing." Big difference. If we put together a pro-education legislative package that includes voluntary busing that might make all the difference in the world.

Let's say I'm a moderate Democrat in the Michigan House. My fellow moderate Democrats and I rather think we are the leadership, thank you very much. Because even though the Speaker is a liberal Democrat, and a good man mind you, when we moderates put together a package, we're often able to reach across to liberals within our own party and also liberal Republicans, and get some pretty good stuff done.

We're going to avoid the obvious mistake of cutting some schools to build up others, as I trust almost all of us here at AH are savvy enough to avoid. Instead, we're going to increase overall education spending.
 
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The Normandy School District in suburban St. Louis lost accreditation, and in school year 2013-14 approximately one quarter of its students -- 1,000 total students -- chose to ride 30 miles each way and go to the Francis Howell School District.


https://www.stltoday.com/news/local...cle_5484b0a1-a1df-5223-b067-59ad8843d6df.html

This article says "more than 20 miles."

The excellent show This American Life says "30 miles."
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with-part-one

Please see 10:35 into the radio show where it starts the story of the Normandy kids going to Francis Howell. The show primarily focuses on one African-American 8th grade girl who benefited from going to a better school. At a school board meeting, the Francis Howell parents had all kinds of valid concerns about an influx of poorly prepared kids who, frankly, just were from different circumstances. I'm sure there had to be some human problems, but per the show, none of the fears came true.
 
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. . . My guess is ttl's late 2010s would have regular northern ireland-type Troubles plus emerging dutch-type pillarization on liberal/conservative lines.
We can do dystopia. I like it as well as the next person.

Or . . . we can do high trajectory, and then the unexpected bigger problem. (which we end up realizing almost, almost too late is built into our better-functioning system, and at that late stage, we might be able to make it, and we might not)
 
That was my interpretation of how it'd turn out realistically. Dystopia would have been me saying "It'd lead to a low-level civil war by now".
 
What does Bakke have to do with busing?
Basically that Milliken (1974) was the easy case, and Bakke (1978) the hard case.

I mean, hardly anyone's going to argue against equal funding per student. The only place you might run into trouble is if you come across as a goody two-shoes and/or by-the-book type of person. But if newspaper article shows that some students are getting 20% less, how's anyone going to justify that?

Now, Bakke was about affirmative action and admission to medical school which was part of state-funded University of California system. Affirmative action can really cut across some people's idea of meritocracy. Even if we point out, hey, there's a social value in having doctors better represent the population which they serve. Eeven if we point out, hey, someone who comes from a crappy high school and gets B's their first two years of college science but then nails down A's their last two years, might have plenty of science aptitude to become a doctor. [even today, I think medical schools weirdly do not draw a difference between early college and late college]

And yet, the Supreme court made a liberal choice in Bakke, ruling that, whereas you couldn't have a quota, you could use race as a plus factor. And I think Bakke was generally well received. One might even argue that it was sensible and middle-of-the-road.
 
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DougM

Donor
I can’t say how other states work but in Michigan school districts are local. Not county or state. And in many cases only roughly align with government boundaries like cities or townships our out in the rural areas counties.
These districts own the buildings and such not some higher government, As such they have to budget for maintenance and additions and building new buildings.
Usually this is done with a local tax on all property in the school district. For a set number of years to pay off the bond issued to pay for the capital improvements.
In addition to this the local school district sometimes passes a tax to increase the money available for operating expenses.
All of this is on top of a set amount of money the local school gets from the state, this amount is based on a per student basis. And is in general equally distributed (depending on how many students a district has). Some districts that are in very bad shape get a bit more money or get money that is more rigidly controlled by the state but that is for districts that are on the verge of bankruptcy. Case in point Detroit was under outside control for a while and state money is going to pay off the debt the school district ran up so that the current district does not have to pay off the debt the old management ran up.

In this state the money is distributed equally but the local citizens can decide to pay more for extras. If a school district chooses not. To pay extra in the form of increased taxes then why on this green earth should they expect to get as much as the next district over that pays higher taxes? It is bad enough that much of the money the state distributes comes from these higher valued areas to start with.

Now the idea that the state can somehow force a school district to send some of its students to another district while taking In students from a district that pays substantially less is crazy. And probably will run afoul of all sorts of laws. So the state would most likely have to “buy” the structures and other physical plant of all the local districts for a fair market value. Otherwise they are taking property without compensation. For instance my local school district has built a new high school as well as a middle school and an elementary school in the time I have lived her and it was paid for with a tax on my house. If the state wants those buildings then they can pay a fair value for them and distribute the money back to those of us that paid for it.
And good luck getting THAT tax increase passed. Being as the poor districts are poor because they vote down tax increases and the districts that vote in higher taxes are the districts that you are basically taking the buildings FROM so they are not going to pay.
So where you getting this money from?
Or are you suggesting that we not allow local districts to pay higher taxes? Personally I am all for that. I don’t have kids or grand kids so if the schools suck but I save some money... that is fine by me. But allthat is going to do is cause all districts to become poor or force the poor districts to pay more. As the ability to tax the high rent districts more then poor districts will mostly go away under a unified school system.

So frankly we are back where we started and that is that even if the original law was not shot down by the Supreme Court for the reasons it was then you are going to see a bunch more law suits arguing many other reasons for this not to be allowed to happen
 
Please see 10:35 into the radio show where it starts the story of the Normandy kids going to Francis Howell. The show primarily focuses on one African-American 8th grade girl who benefited from going to a better school. At a school board meeting, the Francis Howell parents had all kinds of valid concerns about an influx of poorly prepared kids who, frankly, just were from different circumstances. I'm sure there had to be some human problems, but per the show, none of the fears came true.

Were any Francis Howard students bused to Normandy?

From your post, this sounds like "one way busing", which iirc produced only muted objections. Wasn't it he two-way kind that caused the real fireworks? Most parents, iirc, could live with the idea of students from other districts being bused into theirs, just so long as their own kids didn't have to be bused the other way.
 
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Is anyone else as intrigued as I am by the parallels between Busing and Prohibition?

Both were well-intentioned attempts to deal with a genuine problem. Contrary to legend the Prohibitionists weren't just a bunch of killjoys. Alcoholism was a huge problem then [1]. Both, however, involved intrusions on people's personal lives going way beyond what they would tolerate for any length of time.

Ironically, the point was best made in a letter supporting Prohibition, written in 1925 by journalist William Allen White. In it, White acknowledged that most people did not need such a drastic measure to keep their drinking under control, but argued that it was their duty to accept this infringement on their liberty for the sake of those weaker brethren who could not control themselves. Though meaning to defend Prohibition, White had inadvertently put his finger on the reason that it ultimately failed - it called on the majority to make sacrifices for the sake of a minority, as busing would do later. In both cases, of course, the answer was the same, ie "In your dreams, mate."


[1] Could I put in a plug for the excellent Ken Burns documentary on Prohibition, which I find absolutely fascinating. If it were an Alternate History, written on a TL where Prohibition never happened, it would surely be dismissed as ASB.

I think it’s pretty good example of why Americans can’t do progressive social engineering, in Scandinavia we also had prohibition, in Sweden they still had, but the goal wasn’t to ban alcohol, but to lower consumption, and in Denmark as example alcohol consumption fell with 50% over 50 years.
 
I think it’s pretty good example of why Americans can’t do progressive social engineering, in Scandinavia we also had prohibition, in Sweden they still had, but the goal wasn’t to ban alcohol, but to lower consumption, and in Denmark as example alcohol consumption fell with 50% over 50 years.

Agreed. If the Volstead Act had been so drawn as to allow beers and wines up to a certain strength, then the 18A would have stood a far better chance of indefinite survival - as would Busing had its promoters limited it to the one-way kind. But many American reformers seem to have a "puritan" streak which makes them incapable of settling for half a a loaf.
 
. . . If a school district chooses not. . .
And this might be where we look at things just really differently.

If it’s a poorer area with lower property values, you’re going to have to set significantly higher tax rates to get the same money. Property tax is simply an illogical tax in that it’s not closely linked to ability to pay. Meaning you pretty much have to make exceptions for (some) seniors and disabled persons and others who, yeah, they may own the property but they’re living on a pretty modest income.

I’m sure that most of us here at AH have heard that a sales tax is a regressive tax. But it’s nothing compared to a flat or head tax. For example, $50 for a driver’s license is very little for a wealthy person, but it really is something for a person on a limited income. And if a school district has mostly the same value homes, a property tax ends up having major elements of a flat tax.

So, Doug, you may see primarily choosing not to pay, whereas I see primarily inability to pay (within any kind of range of what’s reasonable for a family budget).

And then, we have to add in the overlay of discrimination and segregation, which is one of the reasons many but not all of the persons in a predominantly African-American neighborhood are modest income. Of course, we’re still not past this in 2019, and it was even more of an issue back in ‘74. I mean, ‘74 was less than a generation removed from on-the-books discrimination.
 
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Were any Francis Howard students bused to Normandy?

From your post, this sounds like "one way busing", which iirc produced only muted objections. . .
Yes, one way busing and on voluntary basis, but nothing really muted about the objections. One mother asked if they're going to be installing metal detectors. At least one person said the quality of the school very much affected property values.

------------

Please see 23:00 into the radio show
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with-part-one

Yes, it was heartfelt objections, but it got pretty intense.
 
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In cases of desegregation in the greater St. Louis area, apparently the poorer school district pays the richer one, presumably per pupil. Back in the 1980s, this was called black gold!
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/562/transcript

Nikole Hannah Jones [reporter]:

It didn't take long before the transfer law was bankrupting Normandy. By the fall of 2013, the impoverished Normandy District was sending more than a $1 million a month to whiter, wealthier ones. Back at the height of the St. Louis desegregation program in the 1980s, they had a term for this-- black gold.

While wealthier districts were getting an influx of cash, Normandy was careening towards financial insolvency. It shut down a school. The district had to cut staff. That's when the state made a desperation move.

Please see 42:00 into radio show.
https://www.thisamericanlife.org/562/the-problem-we-all-live-with-part-one
 
Is anyone else as intrigued as I am by the parallels between Busing and Prohibition?

One difference is that Prohibition seems at first to have been popular; it's hard to see so many members of Congress voting for the Eighteenth Amendment and so many states ratifying it otherwise. Whatever its merits, I don't think that busing for racial integration was ever popular.

Anti-Prohibitionists liked to claim that Prohibition was "put over" an America that did not really want it by the WCTU and evangelical Protestant lobbyists; and the Prohibitionista similarly claimed that Repeal was put over by a group of selfish plutocrats whose real interest was not "personal freedom" but simply getting a revenue source that would free them from having to pay income taxes. IMO both claims are wrong: both Prohibition and Repeal were genuinely popular movements.
 
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