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Preservation. For penny-pinching public schools, with all their endless money problems, the real villain is the creaky machinery of state and local taxes. The wastefully uneven assessment ratios of the antiquated property tax range from 6% of market value in South Carolina to 59% in Rhode Island. And if all states boosted their present taxes by 10%, they could collect $4 billion more a year. If all 17 states without an income or sales tax imposed them at the average rate in other states, they could raise $8 billion yearly. "There seems to be only one alternative," concluded the Rockefeller Report on Education, "a thorough, painful, politically courageous overhaul of state and local tax systems."
The nation's public schools are worth it. With work, quality in quantity is possible. Volunteer Inspector General Conant has proved it. The individual citizen cannot change tax laws or curriculums. His part is electing a wise school board and supporting it, respecting good teachers and paying them. For in this curiously American process—education for all the children of all the people—there lies the promise of what James Bryant Conant calls "a continuing insurance for the preservation of the vitality of a society of free men."
*Private and parochial school enrollment is climbing even faster: from 3,400,000 to 5,800,000 in the last decade.