When John N. Goodwin, the first governor of Arizona Territory, gave his inaugural 1864 speech to the Territorial Legislature, he made his priorities clear: “The first duty of the legislators of a free state is to make, as far as lies in their power, education as free to all its citizens as the air they breathe. A system of common schools is the grand foundation upon which the whole superstructure should rest.”
Goodwin’s veneration of public education echoed across the West’s new states and territories. In January 1868, for instance, the residents of Cheyenne, Wyoming, held public schooling in such high regard that nearly everyone was present the day the first “free” school building was dedicated — even though the temperature was 23 degrees below zero.
The concept of free education was never enshrined in the U.S. Constitution. So, when the seeds of public schools began to germinate in the 1830s, it was on a state, not federal, level. In the following decades, education would become one of the most important state rights and fiduciary duties. Young Western territories and states took great pride in their educational systems and generously funded them.
It’s safe to say that enthusiasm for public education has cooled over the years, at least when it comes to the West still putting its money where its mouth is. State and local governments provide about 90% of school funding, resulting in wide variations in educational funding and outcomes between states. Arizona spends less per pupil on public education than any other state, while Idaho and Utah are similarly stingy. Alaska and Wyoming are relatively big spenders, but as their fossil fuel-based economies decline, so does funding for public education and teachers’ salaries.
Since a good portion of school funding comes from local property taxes, districts in wealthier areas tend to have more cash on hand to pay teachers or spruce up facilities — assuming, of course, that the citizenry still values education.
1,559
Number of teaching, counselor and other certified staff positions that went unfilled throughout the 2022-’23 school year at Colorado public schools.
59%
Public schools in the West that reported being understaffed going into the 2022-’23 school year, making it the most short-staffed region in the nation.
Drilling down by district
Wide funding disparities exist from district to district within each state. To get a sense of how this plays out, we looked into teacher pay and per-student spending at a demographically diverse sampling of Western districts. Across-the-board patterns are hard to come by: Some wealthy districts pay substantially more than lower-income areas, but upper-income regions with a high proportion of retirees or second-home owners tend to be stingier with salaries. But everywhere we looked, teachers are grossly underpaid and housing prices are generally far out of educators’ reach.
SOURCES: National Center for Educational Statistics; U.S. Department of Education; Colorado Department of Education; Rural School and Community Trust; Harvard Kennedy School; Institute of Education Sciences; U.S. Department of the Interior; History of Wyoming; Education Law Center; U.S. Census Bureau; individual school districts; Redfin; Zillow; Realtor.com.
Jonathan Thompson is a contributing editor at High Country News. He is the author of Sagebrush Empire: How a Remote Utah County Became the Battlefront of American Public Lands.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Is the ‘grand foundation’ crumbling?.
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
