Poll Shows Support for Public Education
Citizens value schools over tax cuts but Republicans have done just the opposite.
Rufus King International High School. Photo from MPS.
Wisconsin voters would much rather increase spending on public schools than reduce property taxes, according to a recent poll. Yet Wisconsin lawmakers have taken the state in a different direction by choosing to cut taxes, particularly for the wealthy and well-connected, rather than restore budget cuts made to public schools. A new analysis by the Wisconsin Budget Project shows how lawmakers have siphoned billions of dollars away from school districts and redirected those resources towards tax cuts instead.
The results of the most recent Marquette University poll clearly show that Wisconsin residents believe that excellent public school are critical to supporting Wisconsin’s economy, and that lawmakers need to provide enough resources for public schools to educate the next generation of Wisconsin workers. When asked whether increasing spending on public schools or reducing property taxes is more important, nearly 6 out of 10 Wisconsin residents favored increasing school spending, and just 35 percent said reducing property taxes.
Residents all across the state place a high value on public schools, not just in particularly urban or liberal areas. In the city of Milwaukee, 70 percent said they favored increasing spending on public schools compared to reducing property taxes, but even in the rest of the Milwaukee area media market, an area known for its strong conservative tilt, a majority favored increasing resources for public schools rather than cutting taxes. The poll found that support for increasing school spending is also strong in the Green Bay/Appleton area, Madison, and the rest of the state.
Across the State, Wisconsin Residents Favor Increasing Public School Funding Rather than Reducing Property Taxes.
Wisconsin voters have clearly indicated they value increasing funding for public schools above continuing to cut taxes, but many Wisconsin lawmakers don’t seem to share that same set of priorities. State legislators have added dozens of new tax cuts since 2011, even as they have failed to fully restore budget cuts to public schools. The new tax cuts added up to a staggering $8.7 billion between 2012 and 2019. Meanwhile, state aid to school districts is still below 2011 amounts when inflation is taken into account.
Many of the tax cuts are channeled towards a small, wealthy, and politically powerful faction. This stands in contrast to the function of public schools, which benefit a diverse group of children from all income levels and who have no direct voice in the political process. Examples of new tax cuts narrowly focused on the rich include:
- A tax break on money earned from selling investments, which will cost $77 million in this fiscal year. Nationally, the wealthiest 0.1% of taxpayers, who have incomes over $2 million, received 49 percent of all income from selling investments.
- Nearly eliminating the requirement that manufacturers and some other businesses pay income tax, a tax cut that will cost $324 million this year. Companies do not need to create new jobs to be eligible for this tax cut, and even businesses that lay off workers, send jobs overseas, and close factories may receive the credit. This loophole is so tilted that 11 tax filers who each earned an average of $30 million received a tax cut of an estimated $2 million each from this tax change in 2017.
- A deduction for paying income taxes on private school tuition, a tax cut that will cost $30 million this year. More than half (53 percent) of the value of the tax cut will go to taxpayers making over $125,000 a year, even though that group makes up only eight percent of tax filers.
New tax cuts like these have drained money from public schools. If lawmakers had declined to pass new tax cuts and instead appropriated that money in the same proportion as other state tax money is spent, the result would have been an additional $649 million available for public school districts in 2019 – money that could have been spent to ensure that students have access to up-to-date technology and equipment, to repair dilapidated school buildings, and to draw teachers to work in remote areas of the state.
To ensure that Wisconsin is competitive in the future, Wisconsin schools must have the resources to offer students a high-quality education. Wisconsin voters recognize that, but right now many lawmakers are not aligned with their constituents’ priorities and are focusing instead on passing tax cuts for the rich.
Read more: Years After Historic Cuts, Wisconsin Still Hasn’t Fully Restored State Aid for Public Schools.
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I’m in favor of great schools filled with great educators paying more than 0-5% towards their health insurance.
Fortunately, Act 10 has done that, and we owe that to Scott Walker and the Republican Legislature.
Rather than increasing spending, solutions to making schools better should be developed. The answer to improving education is not as simple as adding money. Throwing more money into the same faulty system is close to the old definition of insanity.
We do not need more money, we need leadership. The billion dollars sent to education will flow into the pockets of the Educrats, not help kids one bit.
Two years from now, we will have all the same problems, will be there, scores still going down, and the Education lobby will be saying the same thing, in long WHINE?
How would this poll have come out if that had been stated.??
WE need more money, more teachers, more buildings, lower class sizes.
How long is it going to take for te leaders in Milwaukee, elsewhere, to figure out that if we increase spending tenfold since 1970 for far fewer kids, that that idea is not working. Things are worse.
We need leadership, and Milwaukee has none, they just sop up our money and laugh at us.
Looking at the first three comments I see the same old republican talking points. Its always someone else fault without anything positive to add. Someone else is a scapegoat. Walker vilified the teachers, blamed them, it was their fault. Politicians need a bogeyman and teachers were easy victims. Watch now, Walker moves to the middle with every election cycle until elected and then returns to the same WMC right wing puppet. Now he and his cronies say he is an “education” politician. Oh please, spare me the ridiculous talking points. I hope this time the people have learned to vote this hack out. That is if all the republican voter suppression has not also decimated all the voter rolls.