Utah stacks 'em deep, teaches 'em cheap

I was supposed to be listening to my kid's ninth-grade English teacher's back-to-school night spiel. Instead, I was counting the desks in her classroom. I lost track after 50.

How on Earth does an English teacher have time to grade 50-plus essays or short stories? And this was just one class.

The answer is simple. A teacher does nothing in his or her spare time but grade papers. Or, a teacher gives fewer writing assignments, to the detriment of students.

At times like that, I'm deeply troubled by the state of Utah's education funding, the lowest per-pupil spending nationwide. We've become accustomed to stacking them deep and educating them cheap. Some politicians even boast of our "efficient" education system. And who can argue with the outcomes? Utah has one of the highest high school graduation rates in the nation. Utah kids generally perform above the national average on standardized achievement tests and do very well on college placement tests.

That's not true of many poor and minority kids, though. They struggle throughout their school experience. Far too many drop out of school. Precious few attend college.

They're the kids I worry about most when it comes to tax reform. Lawmakers will soon consider Gov. Jon Huntsman Jr.'s plan to give Utahns a $70 million income-tax cut and eventually permit taxpayers to pay a flat tax rate, sans customary deductions. Huntsman also seeks a quarter-cent sales tax increase to fund more than $900 million in mass transit and road projects.

Without an income tax adjustment, Huntsman says, Utah simply cannot compete for economic development with surrounding states that have lower personal income tax rates.

According to Huntsman's advisers, a lower personal income tax rate will prime Utah's economic development engine. Even with a lower tax rate, the state's growth ensures that there will be more taxpayers, which will bode well for the state's public and higher education systems.

That makes sense on a theoretical basis, but frankly, this talk of tax cuts and reform makes me nervous. What if things don't go to plan? Personal income tax has to go to public and higher education. The state constitution says so. But what if the economy goes south?

As Huntsman's people explain it, there's less volatility under the proposed tax plan. That means there's less to lose in hard times, which must also mean the inverse is true, that there's less gained in good times. But again, there are more people to pay income tax so there is an offset. At the same time, 150,000 more public schoolkids are expected to enter the system over the coming decade.