THis STUDY
Research Questions, Aims, and Methods
Critics often note that the United States' public school finance system is vastly inequitable. As the federal government dispenses less educational aid, municipalities increasingly rely on local property taxes to generate educational funds. This leaves poor, often-minoritized and urban districts struggling to fund their schools. Despite great concern over how the inequitable distribution of property wealth (or "tax base") ensures school finance inequities, there is little inquiry into how that inequitable distribution of property value is actually constructed. While municipal property valuations are technically established by state assessors, these valuations are heavily dependent upon prior sale-prices and upon speculation regarding what “average buyers” will find “desirable.” Citizens, therefore, play a critical role in shaping the distribution of property value at the heart of decentralized school finance, and while many citizens lament issues of segregation and educational inequality, some suggest this liberal multiculturalism can conceal a disavowal of civic responsibility that fuels socio-economic reproduction (Povinelli 2011). These dynamics are particularly contentious in Connecticut’s central metropolitan region, Greater Hartford.
Through 18 months of fieldwork (participant observation, interviewing, cultural elicitations, audio-visual mapping, media analysis, etc.) in Greater Hartford, CT, this ethnography explores the everyday mechanics of the decentralized public school finance system, and also interrogates the implications of those mechanics for how social inequities are experienced, reproduced, and resisted. The study can be broken down into 3 parts (detailed below):
(1) If the "private" real estate market is so key to public school finance, how does that market actually work? How do residents (including realtors and home-buyers) go about the everyday work of property valuation?
(2) How, exactly, do interactions in the "private" real estate market shape the domain of "public" school finance? With what implications?
(3) How do residents experience and narrate school finance inequality? If residents’ participation in the real estate market influences school finance, how does this shape the attribution of civic responsibility for school finance inequalities?
Drawing on historical materialism and material semiotics, these inquiries speak to processes of social differentiation, socioeconomic reproduction, and social ethics in the late liberal era. Ultimately, this project seeks to help better understand--and transgress--the ways we continually reproduce our social inequities, both in public school finance and beyond.
PART 1: The "private" real estate market
Most realtors explain that property value is about location, but what makes some neighborhoods “desirable”? Many emphasize how poor, “urban,” minoritized spaces are devalued (e.g. Connolly 2014), but how do spaces get attached to racial and spatial categories? Since value, place and race are habitually naturalized (Agha 2011, M’Charek 2013), few examine the processes of value-, place-, and race-making through which residents produce the distribution of property value. These valuations involve differentiation and ranking (Ferry 2013). Rather than treating property value as if it is self-evident, Part 1 of this study examines the everyday work of property valuation, asking:
If the "private" real estate market is so key to public school finance, how does that market actually work? How do residents (including realtors and home-buyers) go about the everyday work of property valuation? How do they valuate-- or differentiate and rank (Ferry 2014)-- one property from another?
To explore these processes, I will conduct participant observation with home-buyers and realtors. I will also interview these actors and analyze real estate listings.
Part 2: From "private" real estate to "public" school finance
By engaging in the "private" real estate market, citizens seem to play a critical role in shaping "public" school finance. But this connection is not immediately evident. Instead, it is concealed underneath an extraordinarily complex assemblage of institutional processes and procedures. Examining this intersection of the "public" and "private" --or "state" and "market"-- domains, Part 2 of this study asks:
How, exactly, do interactions in the "private" real estate market shape the domain of "public" school finance? With what implications?
Through institutional mapping and process-tracing, I sketched the outlines of this decentralized assemblage (see diagram below). Through participant observation and informal interviews in the residential real estate market and in public finance meetings, I will continue to fine-tune this institutional assemblage and to examine the everyday interactions that sustain it.
Part 3: Civic debates about "public" school finance inequality
Across the country, issues of school finance inequality and real estate are quite contentious. This is particularly true in Connecticut’s central metropolitan region, Greater Hartford, where the region's inequalities stand in seeming opposition to residents' commitments to the ideals of liberal multiculturalism (e.g., diversity, equality, inclusion). Thus, one might expect widespread support for redistributive policies that help reduce school finance inequities. However, such redistributive measures typically involve an increased property tax liability for property-wealthy municipalities, and this prospect is incendiary in a state with some of the nation's highest property taxes. These competing pressures forge a heated moral terrain wherein ideologies of liberal multiculturalism and anti-tax conservatism routinely collide. In efforts to secure the state's limited education aid (and offset municipal property taxes), many residents suggest that they should not be held responsible for remediating school finance inequities. Residents of Greater Hartford’s property-wealthy suburbs, for instance, often challenge redistributive proposals that would increase their property taxes, claiming that since they are not to blame for inner-city poverty, it is “unfair” to hold them responsible for its remediation. Investigating these arguments and ideas, Part 3 asks:
How do residents experience and narrate school finance inequality? If residents’ participation in the real estate market influences school finance, does this shape the attribution of civic responsibility for school finance inequalities?
To examine these dynamics, I will follow debates in traditional and social media; conduct participant observation in municipal meetings, public hearings, public events, and more; and conduct informal interviews with residents involved in maintaining/challenging CT's school finance system.
