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Orfield is praised for producing “stunning,” easily readable maps of suburban fiscal and economic disparities in the Chicago area. But he is faulted for failing to come up with map patterns consistent with his contention that fiscal disparities cause neighborhood and school decline. MacArthur Foundation comes up short because of excessive political correctness and timidity and reliance on consensus rather than confrontational politics in drawing policy implications from the report findings.
The inclusion of Chicago in the suburban comparisons is especially problematical. It places near the top quartile in school costs per pupil, but plunges to three places from the bottom in high school test scores among the school districts surveyed. As it is, Chicago places in three of the four classes of values indicative of fiscal distress plotted in the 19 maps.
Thus, Orfield can fall back on abundant evidence of studies linking fiscal distress and social pathology for drawing his conclusions about the severe social costs for all of the widening disparities in school and municipal tax base and reliance on the local property tax to fund education. As for policy implications, his and his sponsor’s reticence in advancing tax-sharing and progressive tax reforms for local and state government is understandable given the dismal record of such attempts in the recent past.
