246 THE FISCAL PROBLEM IN MISSOURI 
eight-months term.! Many school districts maintain a much 
shorter term and are therefore ineligible for rural school aid. 
In a recent school year 1,008 districts had school terms of 
less than eight months.? 
Assessed valuation 1s also the basis for the distribution of 
aid granted to consolidated districts, to high schools, and for 
the purpose of maintaining ninth and tenth grades. In each 
case it is possible for school districts to secure more money 
from the state if the assessed valuations are kept relatively 
low. In the case of high school aid, for example, there can be 
little incentive for a county to increase its assessed valuation 
to a higher level when it may mean that the high schools 
within the county will receive smaller apportionments from 
the state. It may be argued that the equalization procedure 
by the county and state boards will prevent a district from 
keeping its assessed valuation at a low level in order to 
obtain a larger amount of state aid than it could obtain if the 
valuations were increased. There may be some tendency 
toward such a result, but the equalization procedure is 
probably not sufficiently effective to prevent a tendency 
toward undervaluation for the purpose of obtaining state 
aid funds. 
The theory underlying the equalization grants is that there 
is a uniformity in valuations throughout the state and that 
school opportunities will be more or less equalized when the 
state distributesits grants foreducational purposes on the basis 
of assessed valuations. It is evident that the assumed uni- 
formity in assessed valuations cannot be achieved under the 
present system. The equalizations, which are often made 
on a flat percentage basis, can hardly result in establishing a 
basis so uniform that no school district will receive more or 
less than it should in the form of state aid. Property escap- 
ing taxation and different levels of assessed valuation affect so 
fundamentally the distribution of the four equalization grants 
that many injustices must result. Unquestionably these 
grants aid in maintaining a higher grade of educational work 
than would otherwise be possible. The question may well be 
raised. however, whether the fact that one district may 
1 Revised School Laws, 1929, p. 237. 
! Eightieth Report of the Public Schools of the State of Missouri, 1929, p. 322.