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“Every year in February we are told to read the same old speech of Martin Luther King. We read it every year. ‘I have a dream….’ We have a school in East St. Louis named for Dr. King. The school is full of sewer water and the doors are locked with chains. Every student in that school is black. It’s like a terrible joke on history” (Kozol 34-35). Those are the words of a 14-year-old girl. The cruelty of her reality has taken something precious from her all too soon, something most of us take for granted, the innocence of childhood. When mentioning education the same topic is brought up more often than not, money. More money needs to be spent on education, teachers’ salaries, and technology. The problem with public education is not the lack of funding, but the lack of equity. The way public education is currently being funded is immoral. Currently in the United States there are vast differences in public schools. There are schools that would rival any other in the world with state of the art equipment, science labs, and even planetariums. There are also schools whose conditions are morally reprehensible, schools with holes in the floor, rotting ceilings, and moldy carpets. There are schools so overcrowded that they have to have classes in the bathrooms, or in closets, schools where they depend on their students to dropout and where they turn students away because there is no room for them in class (Kozol). The reason for these vast differences is not in the amount of money put towards education, the United States spends “a greater share of our national income on K- education than any other advanced industrial democracy, with the exceptions of Canada and Denmark” (Halstead). The differences stem from how schools get their money.
“Although most Americans are not aware of it, other advanced, industrial nations do not fund public schools with property taxes; instead, they provide equal-per-student funding from general tax revenues for all schools” (Berliner). Currently in the United States most schools receive approximately 48% of their funding from the state, while 44% is provided by the local district through property taxes. The remaining 7-10% comes from the federal government (Halstead). The average amount of money that each state spends per pupil varies greatly in the United States as well. The District of Columbia has the highest per pupil spending at $13,330, while Utah has the lowest amount of per pupil spending at $4,899 (State by State). These numbers can be deceiving though. Take New Jersey for example, it has been estimated that wealthy districts in New Jersey spend approximately $400 million more on education then poorer districts (Equity). However, New Jersey ranks third in per pupil spending at $11,436, but the Mountain Lakes District in New Jersey spends $14,900 per student, while the Oaklyn Boro District in the same state gets nearly $6, less per student at $8,415 (New Jersey). If the average class size is 25 students that is a $150,000 difference in just one class. That amount of money can make a huge difference, and the Oaklyn Boro District spends nearly twice as much per student as the average district in Utah. These kinds of disparities are not just found in New Jersey; they are everywhere. In Illinois, a school in the Northbrook School District spends an impressive $15,308 per student, while a school in the Bellwood School District doesn’t even get half that amount of funding at $6,828 per student (Illinois State). These two schools are not even twenty
measures such as cheap windows and heating systems end up costing poorer schools more to operate. “If no action is taken, children will continue to suffer in deteriorating school environments that impede effective teaching and learning” (Center for the Future of Children). The worst part of this situation though is summed up best by teacher from one of these schools: “what’s really sad is that so many kids come from places that look as bad as our schools and we have nothing better to offer them” (Kozol 100). The author does not want to give the false impression that inner-city schools are the only schools affected by the current way education is being funded. Inequity in funding affects schools all over this country. From the impoverished prairies of Texas, to the abandoned iron ranges of Minnesota, children are suffering from this immoral situation. However, children in inner-city schools have additional circumstances unique to their surroundings that need to be mentioned. First of all, schools in most cities are extremely polarized with high concentrations of wealth in one section and high concentrations of poverty in another. This leads to affluent schools being located minutes away from impoverished schools in New York, or just across a bridge in St. Louis and so on, so that the children in the poorer schools know exactly how good others have it, and have to face that everyday. Also, a lot of times wealthy parents in major cities will send their kids to private schools leaving behind a high concentration of poor students for public schools. To make matters worse these same parents with their kids now in private schools will vote down increases in property taxes to help improve funding for these impoverished schools. Another factor working against kids in inner-city schools is that they are surrounded by a lot of tax-
exempt buildings such as hospitals, colleges, and museums so there is less of a pool to get property taxes from. No matter how one looks at the situation, or where the schools are that are being compared, one cannot morally justify spending $15,000 on one student, and only $4, on another. The United States is currently telling children all over this great country though that they are worth half as much, or even a quarter as much as other children simply because they don’t live in as nice of a neighborhood. This type of cruelty cannot be justified; it can only be ignored. No longer though will hiding the plight of Americas underprivileged children be tolerated. Recently there have been numerous court cases brought against the property tax style of funding public education. All of the plaintiffs and many others agree that the current system does not promote equality. The trouble is that people do not agree on how to fix the problem. Some people have tried to close the funding gap between rich and poor districts on their own. In Wyoming for example, families in a poor district put 407 percent more of their, “taxable wealth” towards school financing than affluent districts and were still only able to make a dent in the funding gap (Johnson). Others believe that the United States should abolish the current system entirely and set up new state sales- taxes to pay for education, others think that education should be put in the hands of the federal government, or that the federal government should pay a larger portion of the costs of education. Setting up a state sales-tax system that could adequately pay for education would be extremely difficult to say the least. The problem with putting schools in the hands of
were something wrong with the way education is being funded states would do something to fix it, or so the logic goes. The problem with this way of thinking is that these people are not well informed. First of all, they are correct in the belief that for a lot of people the current system is working fine. If one lives in a rich or upscale community the current system works well. It is those who do not have this luxury the current system over looks. The poor inner city and rural families, those who need the most help are the ones this system neglects. Second, the way education is funded has changed drastically in recent years. With legislation such as the “No Child Left Behind Act” the federal government is taking a more active role in education. There have also been a lot of changes, or the call for changes in the way in which education is funded at the state level as current state funding laws are being challenged in court all over the country. In Michigan voters replaced their property-tax system of funding education with a combination of sales, cigarette and other taxes. This was done after they found a nearly $10,000 per pupil spending difference, and a school in Northern Michigan had to cut the school year short by three months in order to afford costs (Michigan). Other states such as California, Vermont, and New Hampshire have replaced their old property-tax funding systems with new statewide property-tax systems (Halstead). Another argument against equity in school funding comes from those who do not believe that equal funding will change anything. They think some kids are smart and others are not, and that money wont change that, or that most of these kids are beyond help. “The message that resources would be wasted on poor children trickles down.
Children hear and understand this theme – they are poor investments – and behave accordingly. If societies resources would be wasted on their destinies, perhaps their own determination would be wasted too” (Kozol 99). Another common argument in this same tone is that money is not going to make kids any smarter. Statistics however, tell another story. “After eight years of testing and emphasizing the importance of student achievement in all schools, the education gap between rich and poor has widened”(Carman). With students at affluent schools in Colorado testing at an average of above 71 percent proficiency, and students in poorer schools testing at an average of only 30 percent proficiency money must play an important role in education. These numbers are even more alarming because this achievement continues to grow (Carman). More evidence can be found by looking at school districts in Milwaukee, Houston, and Cincinnati. Districts in each of these cities noticed huge disparities in performance between intra-district schools depending on the amount of funding received. By simply providing equity in funding they were able to see drastic improvements by the lower performing schools in just two years (Ucelli). These findings help illustrate that equity can help improve school performance. They also show how funding varies between schools within a district and not just between districts and other states. Recent research by the Center on Reinventing Public Education has shown that, “district budgeting practices systematically favor schools with the fewest educational challenges, to the detriment of those with the most” (Roza). In Austin for example, “the schools with the highest need received just 85% of the district average, while those with
There are also those who do not know about the immoral conditions of public schools in the United States. These people may not necessarily be opposed to equity in funding for education, but they are oblivious to the concept and how to achieve it. There are also other cases where initiatives for change actually make it to the ballot, and “the community might not be incredibly concerned with the minimal tax increase that would be incurred with the passing of the propositions, [but] there is still poor turnout – and the only people voting are those who strongly disapprove of the tax increase” (Morton). This of course is not to imply that tax increases and higher voter turnout is the way to solve the issue. The answer to the problem of how to fund education morally is beautiful in its simplicity, and only radical in the fact that it has yet to be done, equal funding. The federal government after adjusting for inflation should give the same amount of money to every school. This is not that different from how things are being done currently. Each state and its constituency can decide how much it wants to spend on education and give an equal amount to every school. All of the money that each state collects from property tax for education should be divided equally among its schools. A 1999 survey by National Public Radio, the Kaiser Family Foundation, and the Kennedy School of Government even proved that the vast majority of Americans back this idea in finding that, “83 percent of Americans favor equalizing school funding even at the price of transferring resources from wealthy districts to poor ones” (Halstead). Schools have always received a great deal of help from their community. If well- off parents want to provide their children with “better than average” schools than they are
more than welcome to donate or raise money for their children’s schools, but government should not perpetuate inequality. This is not only the morally correct way of funding education, but it also levels the playing field, and will be beneficial in other ways as well. For example, accountability is a major issue in education today, but one cannot morally hold people to the same standards with out providing them with the same resources. By leveling the playing field it will be easier to see where are short comings are in education and also make it easier to address these areas. Bringing equity to public education is neither as radical or hard as it seems. The impact that it would have on the lives of millions of children every day from the moment it is achieved to the end of time will prove to be one of the greatest triumphs for the people of this country. No where is inequality more repulsive than when it faces children. Young, trusting, and innocent they never question that society has anything but their best interests in mind. Their quickly fleeting innocence is often lost too soon to a “dream deferred”. There will come a February though when there will no longer be sewage or chains on the doors at Martin Luther King High School, and when girls and boys of all races read that “same old speech” they will no longer have to do so with the bitter sting of irony.
Morton, Emily. “Re: School funding questions.” E-mail to the author. 22 Nov. 2005. New Jersey. Department of Education. Comparative Spending Guide March 2005. 16 Oct. 2005 http://www.state.nj.us/njded/guide/2005/. Northbrook Chamber of Commerce. Property Tax Information. 10 Nov. 2005 http://www.northbrookchamber.org. Roza, Marguerite, Larry Miller, and Paul Hill. “Strengthening Title I To Help High- Poverty Schools.” 18 Aug 2005 First Search. Front Range Community College. Longmont, CO. 29 Nov. 2005 http://newfirstsearch.oclc.org. “State by State Expenditure Per Pupil.” The World Almanac and Book of Facts. 2005 Ucelli, Marla, Ellen Foley, and Thandi Emdon. “First Steps to a Level Playing Field.” (2002) First Search. Front Range Community College. Longmont, CO. 28 Nov. 2005 http://newfirstsearch.oclc.org.
