Robert J. Gordon in yesterday’s New York Times underlines the “inequality inherent” in a (Jersey) system that funds public schools through local property taxes

How we pay for education shows, in the end, how much we value it. In Canada, each province manages and finances education at the elementary, secondary and college levels, thus avoiding the inequality inherent in America’s system of local property-tax financing for public schools. Tuition at the University of Toronto was a mere $5,695 for Canadian arts and science undergraduates last year, compared with $37,576 at Harvard. It should not be surprising that the Canadian college completion rate is about 15 percentage points above the American rate. As daunting as the problems are, we can overcome them. Our economic growth is at stake.

Here’s a possible corollary: how much we value the education of kids restricted to low-performing schools is measured by how much access we allow them to higher-performing schools. Right?