What money can’t buy

The endorsement by some school board members of a 2.6% tax hike for Pittsburgh public schools is questionable on several levels, but the most important one is that of assumptions.

First, the schools just got a tax increase — a small one, of 1.1% — last year.

Second, people are hurting right now because of COVID-19 and its economic repercussions. There is great uncertainty. No one knows what the future holds. Any tax hike seems ill-timed at best and insensitive at worst.

Third, at least two school board members questioned whether goodfaith attempts at economizing and at other forms of fundraising have even been tried.

But, fourth, and perhaps most important, the tax hike is proposed under the blithe and unquestioned assumption that the more we spend on public schools the better teaching and learning will be. The local and the national experience of the last 50 years, especially in our cities, is to the contrary: We keep spending more on schools and public education keeps getting worse.

That may be, in large part, because of the disintegration of the family. ( In some systems and schools, it also has to do with leadership.) But gouging the taxpayer a bit more will not repair family structure in our society.

The corollary assumptions — that of course you care more about “the kids” if you want to tax more, and you are hard-hearted if you question a given tax hike — are equally specious. Spending does not equal excellence in education.

What Pittsburgh schools really need is some imagination, some tough self-examination, and some old-fashioned standards and high expectations — of teachers, of students, and of administrators and school leaders.