Making School Finance As Public As Possible w/ David I. Backer

We’re recording this episode the week the Iowa DOGE Task Force released their final 136 page report – you heard that right, that’s the state-level version of the Department of Government Efficiency convened by our governor back in February, tasked with maximizing return on investment of Iowa taxpayer dollars.

As you can imagine, among their recommendations are ideas from the Return on Taxpayer Investment Working Group about improving education results “aimed at delivering greater value for taxpayers.”

Fortunately for Iowans, this working group assembled a crack team of experienced education experts for the job, including the CEO of an ethanol plant, the former Chair of the Iowa Racing and Gaming Commission, and the chair of a civil engineering firm. Among their recommendations are to:

"Establish a merit-based compensation framework –including a bonus structure, teacher professional development and incentives for those in high-need schools in order to improve student outcomes and financially reward high-performing teachers.”

Merit-pay is of course a tried, tested, and failed idea. But teacher salaries are just one thread in the complex tapestry of how states pay for public education and the ideological tug of war in our public debates over school funding – how we pay for buildings, pensions, special education, Title 1, school food programs…every cost that goes into making schooling work…or not.

If the Iowa DOGE report and the policy agenda that will inevitably follow could be titled As Privatized as Possible – doubling down on outcome-based school funding and accountability measures and even recommending AI-based bus route optimization to “cut costs and improve service”...what’s the alternative?

My guest today asks, “What would it mean to democratize school resources? What would it mean to have truly public schools, down to the very means of resource creation and distribution that fuels them…what will it take to make school as public as possible.”

It’s also the title of his upcoming book, As Public as Possible: Radical Finance for America’s Public Schools out this December. You can preorder it now from The New Press.

David Backer is the author. He’s an associate professor of education policy at Seton Hall University whose research, teaching, and organizing focus on ideology and school finance. A former high school teacher, his research has appeared in a half dozen scholarly journals like the Harvard Education Review  as well as popular venues like The American Prospect and Jacobin. And you can find him on social media @schooldaves.