The Key to Education
For
my research project, I looked into the funding of our public school systems.
This topic has been very popular in the news with many initiatives trying to be
passed to benefit our school systems. For example, in our state Initiative 1351
will help decrease class sizes in our state, which ranks 47th for having large
class sizes among the other states (“Class Size Counts
for Washington Kids!”). The best way to save our school system is to
understand where we are failing and to start from the beginning. While many
believe that just throwing money at the problem will fix it they are mistaken,
taking accountability and funding our schools properly is the right start onto
a successful path. Sources for my project fall into the following categories
background information, support and what the future of our schools could look
like.
In order to understand the background issues
with the funding of schools, it is important to understand where funding comes
from and how it is provided to schools. To begin, schools are funded by the
state where they receive most of their funding and by the government. The one
issue with receiving funding from the government is that there is a different
expectation that comes from the government when funding is granted. The
government may employ different regulations on the schools compared to what the
state may deem as standard. For a school to be considered to receive government
assistance they must meet at least one of sixteen priorities (Rust). The
sixteen priorities are,
“(1) Improving Early Learning Outcomes, (2)
Internationally Benchmarked Academic Standards, (3) Improving the Effectiveness
and Distribution of Effective Teachers or Principals, (4) Turning Around
Persistently Lowest-Achieving Schools, (5) Improving School Engagement, School
Environment, and School Safety and Improving Family and Community Engagement (6)
Technology, (7) Core Reforms, (8) Increasing Postsecondary Success, (9) Improving
Achievement and High School Graduation Rates, (10) Promoting Science,
Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM). Education, (11) Promoting Diversity, (12) Support
for Military Families, (13) Enabling More Data-Based Decision-Making, (14) Building
Evidence of Effectiveness, (15) Supporting Programs, Practices, or Strategies
for Which There Is Strong or Moderate Evidence of Effectiveness, (16) Improving
Productivity” (Rust).
This
checklist allows the government to find schools that are truly in need of extra
funding. Now when a school receives money from the government because they have
met one of the guidelines, the expectation of the money they have received must
go towards solving their problem. This means the school doesn’t have a say for
where the money goes like they would if the money had come from the state.
Another way schools are funded is through the
state. Now this tends to be very unfair because our public schools are funded
through our taxes and more specifically our property taxes. For example, let’s
say we have two schools; one school is in a wealthy neighborhood while the
other is in a low-income neighborhood, both of these neighborhoods would pay
completely different property taxes. This plays into funding our public schools
because this is where they receive their money. The school that is located in
the wealthier neighborhood will receive more funding than the school in the
low-income neighborhood. As Joshua Arocho, a writer that did an article for Michigan Law Review said, “Yet our
commitment to education is not reflected in the structure of our public school
financing. Unlike many developed nations, the United States has a decentralized
primary and secondary education system that has led to fragmentation and
inequality within and among states” (Arocho). This is where problems began to
occur. These schools are placed onto two separate playing fields where one will
win while the other loses. Schools have tried to fix the problem; “States have
taken conflicting approaches in attempting to solve the issue of disparate
funding between school districts. Some state legislatures, like New Jersey’s,
have sought to enact laws aimed at creating parity between district funding—a
true attempt at equal education for all of their students” (Arocho). The problem with the funding of our public
schools is, “Other states, however, have declared that education is not a fundamental
right and continue to use the local property tax schemes that cause such great
inequalities. For example, in Lake County, Illinois, there remains an enormous
disparity in per-pupil funding: in 2010, Rondout Elementary spent $24,244 per
pupil, whereas Taft Elementary spent a mere $7,023” (Arocho). This example helps display how corrupt a
system can become and how the value of education can be destroyed and bring down
everything in its path. As Arocho quotes in his paper, “As Cohen and Moffitt
note, money alone cannot cure [the] weak schools, but a chief source of
academic weakness in these schools is the badly educated teachers and poor
working conditions that inadequate revenues . . . underwrite.” Money isn’t the
answer to all of our problems; it has to come from somewhere deeper where it
means something. The value of education needs to come through and speak for
itself.
Our education system is often placed into the
faith of a vote, where many initiatives either pass or fail which affect the
outlook of our schools. One act that was introduced when President Bush was in
office was the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), which became active in 2001.
The purpose of the NCLB was to make sure students didn’t get looked over and
they were given equal opportunities. According to Charles Ellis’s paper, “For a
local school system to receive a portion of these funds it must submit a plan
to the state education agency. The local plans must detail assessment plans,
identify at risk students, include coordination with other agencies and
programs, and define parental involvement strategies to name a few of the
required elements.” This is important because these plans hold schools accountable
and the funding they are provided with is similar to a reward system. Providing
a plan allows the schools to stay on track of where they need to be and
provides them with a way to achieve their goals. Here in the state of
Washington we had Initiative 1351 on our ballot this fall. This initiative was
to benefit our schools in reducing class sizes. For this initiative to work
funding would have to be increased to account for increased staff that would
make smaller classes feasible (Finne). The
way this initiative is funded is by, “I-1351 would let school districts
increase local property taxes by $1.9 billion through 2019” (Finne). As I mentioned in my introduction, Washington
State schools rank 47th out of 50 in highest-class sizes (“Class Size Counts for Washington Kids!”). This initiatives purpose is to decrease our
class sizes, which results from an increase in the budget. In California, they
passed Proposition 30 that resulted in a tax hike that helped fund
education. This is being achieved by, “The
measure increases personal income taxes on high-income taxpayers for seven
years, and sales taxes for four years, to be used for education” (O'Donovan). With the extra funding these California
schools are receiving it is giving them the opportunity to restore many things
that had to be cut, for example fine arts and sports, restoring the school days
before the budget blow and improving schools. Without the increase in taxes
this wouldn’t have been possible and the schools would have continued to
disintegrate. The one thing that links all of these together is money. To
improve our school systems we must provide a plan for increasing the budget and
allow it to be attainable while being realistic.
Understanding the support of
increasing funding will allow the positive aspects of funding come to the
surface, while also paying attention to some of the short term benefits that
can be gained from decreased funding but also paying attention to why these are
only short term benefits. The first thing to understand is why increased funding
is so important and what our schools can gain. For example, a district in New
Jersey’s Abbott District is a perfect example of what increased funding can do
for a school district. The school district felt a blow, “The downturn in
housing prices, employment, income, and business activity contributed to
smaller tax revenues and larger budget gaps. As a result, state and local
governments were unable to maintain the same level of support for New Jersey’s
schools as in the past” (Chakrabarti and Sutherland). This was a problem nationwide and budgets
were cut resulting in schools failing at their job. The one incredible thing
that did occur in New Jersey is that with failing schools and with a low budget
they were able to bounce back when the budget was increased. When the recession
hit the schools in this district had to accommodate for decreased funding that
was being provided by the government, which was responsible for nearly half of
their funding. The recession allowed these schools to work with the budget they
were given and provide for themselves rather than relying on the government. Another
issue we see is with schools receiving a lower budgets result in schools being
closed. This has been experienced nationwide and even in our own community.
This is brought up as support to better funding of our schools because school
closures have a huge impact on students and we need to understand the problem
before we continue to make the same mistakes. The problem many of our schools
are facing is, “Districts across the country are struggling to balance their
budgets in the face of decreased local revenue, cuts to state funding, and the
disappearance of federal stimulus packages” (Lytton). With the lack of funding we face the very few
solutions to stay afloat, one of those solutions many schools see is shutting
down schools. Closing schools has its affects on students, “Neighbourhood
schools play multiple roles, not only providing facilities for teaching and
learning, but offering resources to help meet the social, recreational, health
and personal needs of the community” (Lytton).
Many of the schools that are targeted to be closed are schools that have
specialized programs that the budget can no longer account for. For example, in
our community, the alternative high school Spectrum was shut down because the
budget couldn’t afford the extra expense. Another factor that plays into
shutting down schools is when students leave the area, “California for example,
one school district predicted savings of USD 700 000 through consolidation, but
ended up losing some USD 2.4 million in funding as hundreds of students pulled
out of the public system within months” (Lytton). Students play a huge role in maintaining and
keeping their local schools around. When schools lack funding they tend to have
to cut programs that aren’t seen to be as important, such as clubs and sports
teams. There has been an idea that has been introduced called “Pay to Play”
which helps support extracurricular activities. The whole idea behind “Pay to Play”
is to allow these extracurricular activities to be continued without being cut
due to budget cuts. Instead of the school providing the funding to support
these activities the students pay to participate and provide the funding
themselves. This is seen a better alternative than completely cutting the
programs (Roth). These small changes are what can help support our schools and
make the necessary changes that are needed.
After
looking at the positives that can be gained by increasing the budget let’s look
at the positives that decreased funding could have. Now there aren’t very many
positives to be had when a budget is lowered, but according to Alan Haskvitz he
believes that there are positives to be gained from a lowered budget. Many
believe that only negative things can come from a reduce school budget but,
looking at it optimistically you can find what you may believe to be some
positives. Some of the claims Haskvitz makes can be justifiable at first glance
but they do not hold a strong case. For starters, according to Haskvitz we will
gain more educated teachers from budget cuts, “Districts are looking for
teachers with a variety of certifications. The benefits to those who stay in
school longer include becoming educators who use their additional training to
integrate lessons more easily and provide more learning experiences to students”
(Haskvitz). Now this may stand true, but
the one problem with this is that many people who see how bad the job market is
for teachers won’t spend their money to be educated in that field of work. A
variety of certificates for one teacher would be wonderful. But if the job
market isn’t hiring then those teachers won’t be hired due to the lack of
funding that can’t pay and obtain new and bettered teachers. Instead the teachers
that have gone and received extra certificates will be looked over because the
work place isn’t hiring due to so many other teachers being laid-off. Schools
don’t lay off teachers just to go and hire new ones, that’s not how the system
works. Another claim Haskvitz makes is
that, “Extracurricular programs may also be cut due to the recession. Coaches,
art and music teachers, and even foreign language courses may be eliminated. This opens up opportunities
for teachers to form alternative classes—and to earn extra money” (Haskvitz). This is highly possible to happen, but the
likelihood of teachers that have been cut and opening up there own side
business to form these alternative classes is very unlikely. Teachers will go
where there is a job for them. Another thing that counters this is that when
the schools have to make budget cuts it tends to also reflect the community
that the school is in. Like we discussed earlier, schools are funded through
property taxes, which reflects the type of community the school is in. If
budget cuts occurred, it most likely would mean that parents wouldn’t be able
to afford these alternative classes outside of school resulting in no money and
these alternative classes being shut down. The last claim I will be discussing
is his claim that there would be a lower drop out rate, “In this bad economy
that holds little hope for obtaining a job—especially for those without a high
school diploma—students may stay in school longer. As unemployment figures
remain high, staying in school may look more attractive to potential dropouts”
(Haskvitz). This is a logical
assumption, but unfortunately it doesn’t mean it rings true. Staying in school
may seem more attractive than dropping out. But when a student is in a
classroom with 40 other students and isn’t receiving the proper education and
one-on-one time they deserve they will find a place that will, providing them
with what they need for the time being. With many of Haskvitz points being
valid at first glance they don’t really provide justice on why lower budget
really holds that many benefits.
Our schools can go into one of two
directions. The choices we make now will dictate where the future of our
schools will go. If we choose to go down a positive path we will have to learn
that the way we are going about things isn’t working. We need to observe and
see what is working for other countries and their school systems. Using England
as an example, we could introduce sponsored schools called “academies” to our
school system and find features that would realistically suit our needs and
work in our schools. The way these schools work is, “Sponsored academies are
created by the sponsor. Sponsorship is a ‘key element of the academies model
for school improvement’ and sponsors have ‘the legal right to determine the vision
and ethos of the academy’” (Gibson and Bisschoff). These are similar to charter schools, but the
difference is that charter schools are funded by the state where instead a
sponsor funds these “academies”. As Gibson and Bisschoff write, “Forging a new
link between private and state education is one of two big challenges facing
education today,” these academies give off the feeling of more of a private
school feeling, but they are available to the public at no cost. One thing that
should be taken away from this is that education is a fundamental right.
Everyone deserves a chance to receive a well-rounded education, taking some of these
ideas of having private sponsors and bringing them into the education world
could be changing. It would take off the pressure from the state and government
to do all the funding. Another important
thing to understand is that funding isn’t the only thing that will fix our
school system. Communication is key to fix reoccurring problems. In an article
by Eamonn O’Donovan he says, “Management
and unions must work together in the face of an unprecedented funding crisis
for public schools” (O’Donovan). For
funding to fix the problems the school’s management and unions must work
together and make a solid working unit. Funding can only fix so much and unless
there is communication occurring the problems will just keep appearing. Schools
are facing pressures; “there is severe pressure on school districts to rein in
costs, given that there is little hope of increased funding from states, which
are facing severe budget cuts to all services. School districts will have to
enter another round of belt-tightening to balance budgets” (O’Donovan). If we don’t learn from our mistakes will
continue down a slippery slope where the future of public education doesn’t
look so bright. If cuts keep occurring our schools will fall farther behind. We
will see more layoffs, shorter school days, larger classes and more
extracurricular activities being cut. A lower budget doesn’t allow schools
provide their students for what they need, “Education is on the chopping block,
and both the Republican governor and Democrats in the state legislature have
proposed scaling back the budget for K-12 schools by $2.5 billion. The
Democrats want the cuts targeted to specific programs to try to allay the effects
on classroom instruction” (“Budget Woes Could Mean School Cutbacks.”). These
shortfalls our schools are facing will continue to get worse and the cuts will occur
more often.
Our
education system is falling apart. Our education system is failing our
students. Instead of working to better our schools we are going backwards.
School funding isn’t the only problem our schools are facing. Increasing
funding won’t solve all of our problems and make everything okay. It is going
to take work and we are going to have to understand where we went wrong. An
increase funding won’t make all the problems with our education system
disappear, but it will make those problems more prominent and easier to solve.
Taking this step will allow the education system to build and create new
opportunities we once were unable to do.
