Editor’s Note: Although Minding the Campus focuses primarily on higher education, we occasionally publish essays on K–12 issues that illuminate broader issues in American education. Claire Harrington’s essay, “Teachers’ Unions Have an Out-of-Control Anti-Semitism Problem,” is one such example. The essay below also discusses teachers’ unions, noting their advocacy for ever-higher property taxes. Yet, as property taxes continue to rise for American homeowners, the return on investment in public education remains disappointing.

Owning a home has long been central to the American dream. But buying a house is only the beginning. Once homeowners receive the keys, they also inherit an annual property tax bill that, for many families, amounts to thousands of dollars. Most of that money goes to fund K–12 public schools.

That arrangement might be easier to defend if America’s schools were improving. Instead, educational outcomes continue to decline despite decades of rising spending. Reading and math scores have fallen, enrollment is shrinking, and taxpayers continue to be asked for more. Yet, whenever lawmakers propose meaningful property tax reform, teachers unions are often among its fiercest opponents.

Nationwide, teachers unions donated roughly $1 billion to political causes between 2015 and 2026. Nearly all of those donations went to Democratic candidates, a party whose platform has consistently favored higher taxes and greater public spending.

California’s Proposition 13, the state’s 1978 law protecting homeowners from skyrocketing property taxes, has been a target of teachers’ unions for decades. In 2020, the California Teachers Association promoted Proposition 15 and a $140 million ballot fight to raise taxes on commercial property at market value. Teachers argued it was a needed source of revenue for schools struck by the COVID-19 pandemic. Higher taxes on commercial properties are ultimately passed on to business tenants and, ultimately, to consumers. Businesses that move because of higher taxes take their job creation with them. When Florida moved to slash property taxes, it was the teachers who immediately mobilized to oppose it.

Teachers’ unions demand ever more property tax revenue despite providing an increasingly questionable service. California schools produce low-quality student outcomes. California teachers make an average of $103,552 per year. This is higher than the national average for teachers, which is $74,495. Nationally, California ranks a lower-than-average 31st out of all states for teaching quality.  

The trend extends well beyond California.

Looking at the past decade, the amount spent on schools has increased while performance has fallen. From a decade prior, reading scores declined in 83 percent of districts, while math fell in 70 percent of districts. Those who defend America’s teachers as benevolent educators will likely point to the COVID-19 pandemic as the cause of the decline. But the decline began years before school lockdowns; reading and math scores began their decline in 2013. 

Property taxes have continued to rise even as the quality of the service they fund has deteriorated. In 2025, the average property tax bill for a single-family home reached $4,427, a three percent increase from the previous year. In most states, those taxes rise alongside property values, yet the schools they support continue to produce weaker academic outcomes.

One potential explanation could be that teachers are simply overburdened with the number of students in the classroom. This would explain the need for rising costs and lowering outcomes. The problem with this explanation is that enrollment is falling nationwide. It is not increasing. 

Some of the numbers are striking.

Wisconsin’s enrollment rate fell by six percent over a one-year period from the past school year. Chicago Public Schools now have one out of every three classroom desks vacant due to falling enrollment that began in 2010. California schools fell by only 1.3 percent; however, the decrease was still seven times greater than the state expected. The fall in enrollment has been attributed to lower birth rates, a trend that relates directly to homeownership, property taxes, and affordability. Of course, declining birth rates have also affected higher education. Fewer students, combined with declining academic performance, raise an obvious question: why should taxpayers continue paying more for less? 

It helps to put property taxes in perspective.

If a household invested the $4,427 that the average homeowner paid in property taxes each year, earned the average market rate of return over the past decade, and continued doing so for twenty-five years, that household could accumulate roughly $1 million.

That is not simply a tax bill. It represents a tremendous transfer of wealth from homeowners to a public education system that is serving fewer students while steadily producing worse outcomes. Yet, the organizations most responsible for representing that system remain among the loudest opponents of meaningful property tax reform.

Taxpayers deserve to ask: if they are paying more every year for public schools, why are they consistently receiving less in return?