Sunday, October 22, 2017

A rabbit hole I fell down today on Massachusetts property taxes and school funding

In order:
  • 1620: Mayflower passengers arrive in Plymouth (start of the Plymouth Colony)
  • 1630: Massachusetts Bay Company starts in Boston
  • 1634: Taxation of every man's assets and products of his abilities passed by Mass Bay Colony
  • 1635: Boston Latin School founded
  • 1636: Harvard founded
  • 1646: Taxation of "visible estate" (a property tax) 
  • 1647: "Old Deluder Satan" law requires a school for every settlement of fifty families and a grammar school of every settlement of a hundred paid either by parents and masters OR by the settlement as a whole
This of course both leaves a lot out and oversimplifies, BUT I thought the interaction of taxation and education in Massachusetts interesting.

If you're coming to the MASS/MASC Conference next week, this is background research I was doing for the "70 on 70" session at 12:30 on Wednesday. 

No comments: