We discuss a lot here at but the issue that is likely the most important this country will ever face doesn't get a lot of talk time.

ON SAVAGE INEQUALITIES(PDF)

For some it is an abstract far-away notion to have unsanitary, under-equipped, over-crowded publics schools touted as "educational opportunity" for thousands of young people.

For me it was an established fact of life. My parents were both college educated and they struggled, moved, and occasionally lied to make sure that I and my siblings received the best education they could offer us.

Not so for some of my less well-off compatriots. As I said years ago in a thread here in the early days of the site I know very well what it means to walk into a decrepit school building that smells vaguely of urine with students studying from torn books for whom the term "computer lab" may as well have been Greek.

The question is not is this happening, it is. If you don't believe find a school in a poor neighborhood, don't worry you'll be able to tell by looking.

Take a walk around, use one of the bathrooms, ask to see their computers.

Underfunded, over-crowded, and frankly dangerous schools are a daily reality for millions of American school children.

Everyday children are unsurprisingly failing to learn in these institutions and driving a violent crime and poverty crisis that shames this nation.

The question is what are we to do about it?

What can be done to improve the situation of under-resourced public schools in this country?

What is the relative importance of this issue?

Might an overhaul of the funding system improve the situation?

Could funds be taken from income rather than property taxes and allocated equally by the state rather than local officials?

Is busing a good stop-gap measure until more drastic changes are decided upon?

Where to start....how about here....


If you're so poor anyways you have nothing to lose--and if you have kids and you live somewhere just what type of person are you to inflict this upon them?
Pack your stuff and move. Personally even if single and alone i wouldn't live in such a place--common sense alone would dictate my response.



I pretty much stopped reading right about here. firstly I completely disagree with his notion of what democracy is--Sorry but Created Equal wasn't a guarantee about your quality of life.
Don't like where you are in life--work at it and you can get much better. If you are not in the financial state to adequately provide for children--DON"T HAVE THEM. What kind of person brings children into this world and cannot provide for them?
Kozol's clear implications that there should be no advantage allowed what so ever is at best silly, but I get the feeling if he had any power it would be enforced at gunpoint. Again at this point in the PDF I disliked Kozol very much.

Do we really need to go into the rest of his diatribe against people spending their OWN money? What evil horrible people they are to spend what they have made for themselves and not instantly sacrifice themselves to the masses.

As for the schools. I have no faith in public schools--and I went to some excellent ones where i grew up in CT. My mom also worked incredibly hard to make sure we went to good schools. I am by no means wealthy--in fact my debt burden just reached critical mass and everything in my life is suspended till that is fixed. After that however both of my kids will be getting nearer school age. We are currently researching several different types of private schools to find the best option for them we can find.

I in no way want my kids competing on a "fair" playing field Turnea--I want them as far up the food chain as I can get them and am perfectly willing to do whatever I need to to get them there. Its what my Mother did--and your parents as well. How could I do any less.

What I manage to earn in a week Turnea is done with as much hard work as I can put in. My slow promotion upwards comes through that hard work. The money I make is mine and no one else should be able to tell me what to do with it.
I would also say that culture and parental influence--or lack of have more to do with it.

Moving, of course, is free.

I mean after all they've secured some lousy job to keep paying rent in East St. Louis, why not leave it behind it's guaranteed they'll find a better job to pay the higher rent elsewhere right?

These people aren't stupid christopher.

Moving is not easy, I lived with my grandmother between homes long enough to figure that one out.


Normal human beings.

Most children are accidents. It's a running gag I play with friends sometimes.

"All accidents raise your hands!" Not a "planned parenthood" in the room.

Most people brave enough to ask honestly about their conception will find the same thing.

The fact is people of all economic backgrounds are going to keep having children, it's human nature.


He said their should be no advantage allowed in public schools because the current system has put is in the mess we're in now.

I agree, its stupid to burden already poor districts with a complete lack of adequate resources.

If you want advantages, pay for them out of your own money. That should not stop other kids from getting the very basics.


The public education system is not about me or you, it's about millions of children who all deserve the chance to learn.

Have you consider lying about where you live to get your kids in a rich public school?

My parents pulled that one more than once. How are the results turning out?


You'd be wrong.

I disagree Turnea--if they live in a place like that and stay there--yes they are stupid. If they do so with children knowing the danger of the air quality and everything then they are criminal.
The story of people uprooting and finding greener pastures is as old as mankind.
If you have a family you had better do what is need to take care of them. Staying in a hellhole and complaining no one is there to help doesn't come near acceptable.
Again since they have NOTHING just what is it they stand to lose?
Would YOU just sit there Turnea? i doubt it.



Great excuse Turnea--because everone else is doing it, its ok--did that ever work with your parents? People will have children--obviously.
However there is no excuse for having kids when you are not ready. Poor impulse control is no excuse--and to my way of thinking its inexcusable--there is birth control and several forms of sex that have no danger of pregnancy.
Quickest cure to abortion as well wouldn't you say?
Seems like simple logic to me.
Then again why bother with personel responsibility when you have the ability to take from everyone else to support your needs.


I'll agree there--but I don't support his conclusions or ideas. People who can pay their way and more shouldn't be penalized for doing so. If they can add to their options for their children why should they be denied? Should they be ashamed of being successful? Should they be bright eyed and willingly sacrifice for others and Give give give?



Influence of parents and the culture the children are immersed in have everythng to do with how they will turn out. Kids who are more interested in being cool will sacrifice opportunities to learn and kids with no supervision or structure will never achieve anything.

i realize you dislike armchair sociologists Turnea and feel yourself beyond them so if you be so kind as to enlighten me Just how does the surrounding culture and parental influence fail to have any effect? Where am I wrong on that?

As is they story of impoverished families having nowhere to go.

Nothing is free and uprooting in modern America is very expensive. A lot of the people we are talking about are minimally skilled laborers.

Where is the money going to come from if they manage to move? They are in debt up to their eyeballs now, spending money moving isn't going to help.

East St. Louis is bad, but it isn't unique.

Notice it's only one of the worst for environmental hazards. The fact is people all over this nation are living similarly.


Whose talking about excuses?

You're looking to pin blame and I'm explaining how the real world works.

The children aren't going to stop coming. That line about "responsibility" is old as dirt and twice as cheap.

There has not been a responsible population of human beings, rich or poor, in our span of existence on this planet and there likely never will be.


That would be terrible...


Add options in their own system, not in the public schools. If people can afford to send their kids to a nice private school, let them.

Its simply wrong to have the public schools put already disadvantaged children further behind.


First the cultural differences between the rich and poor in this country are miniscule.

It is not more popular among the poor the be uneducated than it is among the rich.

Second, parental influence is itself a function of the educational opportunities available in a district.

It stupid to expect a parent who's working twelve-hours a day at the shipyard to come home at midnight and wake the kids for their algebra homework.

If he knew how to do algebra he wouldn't be in the shipyard.

Culture is the most irrelevant red herring in this entire debate. The rural(read white) poor are dropping out just as fast as the urban (black) poor.

I could almost puke every time I see that dead horse drug out for another beating

Can we please just once find factual information to back the rhetorical statements strewn on America's Debate??? Good Lord...
Most people brave enough...same thing.

Maybe it's an economic-strata issue, but in my economic echelon it seems that people have to try to have children. However, I'd never be so near-sighted to state that most children are planned....


But let's get back to the article. Turnea, you know darn well this is liberally slanted rhetoric... let's start here.


This completely negates the idea of CAPITALISM. It undermines the fact that public schools in better neighborhoods would be now available (under the voucher system) and efficiency/productivity would now be assessed as opposed to perpetual mediocrity. It also doesn't address the fact that in order to forego social pressure, many of private/parochial schools may increase enrollment to allow "voucher" children in (or simply to increase profitability!).

The use of two parochial schools as examples is absurd. To state that there aren't parochial schools across the nation that would gladly accept $2500 is a farce.

Let's move to another quote from the article...


I think the reality is that the majority of inner-city schools are working with very similar student funding, but the problem arises in cultural differences and need for alternative expenditures. If a school in a high crime area has to spend more money on security, I'm sure that the salary of said officer could've purchased multiple computers. What about teen-pregnancy programs? What about school-lunch programs? The article also inaccurately portrays public/inner-city schools are urine stained and falling over. How much bologna do you all expect us to eat?

Does anyone believe that it's just as easy for an inner city child to get a quality education? Probably not.

However, the point is that the schools have to begin to hold themselves accountable for the efficiency (or lack there of) of the system. Holding their hands out and believing that there will be some magical change is absurd. Public education has long been a mark of government inefficiency and ineptitude, and just like nearly all business, privitization would most likely bring an objectivity to the issue...

Ever read anything by the Manhattan Institute? (this is an article by a Democrat..)
Here

I'm even appalled that you'd use Kozol as a reference... from the City Journal:

referenced article

I think this quote from the same article sums it up...

What can be done to improve the situation of under-resourced public schools in this country?

I believe there are some things we can all agree on:

1. Public schools are not all equal.
2. Some public schools are woefully underfunded and overcrowded.
3. Poor education is highly correlated with low future income.

After this, the discussion becomes mired in ideologically motivated "solutions" to public education. Have there ever been any measurements done on any of these proposed solutions using mutually acceptable criteria to determine what works and what doesn't work? Ultimately, this is what matters. What we want is better education for our children, right? Can't we just for a little while drop the rhetoric and evaluate the proposed solutions on their own merits?

Personally, I think the problem with education is that people treat politics like they do a football team. Root for the team no matter what.... Bleh...

Might an overhaul of the funding system improve the situation? Could funds be taken from income rather than property taxes and allocated equally by the state rather than local officials?

I've long been an advocate of decoupling public education funds from property taxes. Still, this is a state issue and not a federal issue. I believe some states have explored this to varying degrees of success.

Is busing a good stop-gap measure until more drastic changes are decided upon?

Busing is wasteful; however, so is driving to another school district. I think busing and vouchers are similar solutions. They are derived from an unproven premise: moving to another school will "fix" the problem.

Privatize the educational system. All of it...Let people choose what school they're kids go to. If your poor then you pay for the best school you can afford. The Federal funding toward education is illegal, plain and simple. The government doesn't have the authority to school the country's children, so if states want to fund some public schools and privatize the rest, that's fine by me. But no federal funding should go to any school, period.


As Christopher said, if you're in a situation that is dangerous and desperate, and you don't move, you are acting stupidly.


I'd be willing to bet that there is a decent amount of anti-intellectualism in inner-city schools than there is in suburban private ones, wouldn't you think, Turnea?

So as I said, privatize it, allow people to put just as much as they want into their child's education.

CP

..and how would that improve the situation for America's children?

Good Lord, CP read over that last line again and realize where talking about children and their education not a choice of dish detergent.


If we do this we should immediately drop the lie of seeking "equal-opportunity" for America's children.

This doesn't say equal-opportunity it says that if your born into a poor family, be prepared to stay in your place, worm.

logophage hit the nail on the head as usual.

That's not what I'm reading from a lot of the responses.

Answering the question for debate as posed may well turn the conversation in a more constructive direction...


No.

..and I would know.

No, not at all. Not at all. What it says is that a poor family should have the option to budget the money that it does have the way it wants to...What an anti-poor monster I am! I'm saying allow the poor family to make it's own decision about where it's child attends school. Allow them to, if they need to, sacrifice so that their child can go to a good school, get a good education and escape poverty...What a horrible, horrible person that makes me. Allowing people to decide for themselves what to do with their money is always a better option than having the government decide what to do with it for them...And did I mention the Federal government can't legally fund education...But hey, it's just the law and the law is free of emotion, which no offense, is what your argument largely consists of.


As opposed to our current, federally funded "equal-opportunity" system right?


I'm almost possitive that I did, in fact, answer the question...I would privatize the system and let competition run its course.


Of course I want a better education system...I just don't want the government to break the law in order to arrive at that better system.

CP

Perhaps, not.

Perhaps the meaning of the term poor has not been made clear. Children of poor families can pay for... poor schools.

Poor schools will cause those who attend them to remain.. poor.

Poor mean little to no money so talk of "investing that money wisely in education" is a moot point.


You misunderstand my point.

Emotion is, I hope, a given. Everyone should care about the success of children.

My argument is unburdened by knee-jerk ideology. "Competition" doesn't benefit the poor.

Competition works on factors that most influence the purchase decisions of their potential clientele.

For the rich this may mean quality of education, for the poor its more likely to be affordability.

That is to say we'll have thrift-store quality education for the poor, not better, worse.

It patently obvious that...

Means an end to all efforts at equal opportunity and the accessibility of the American dream.

It's why we started public education to begin with.

Before that the majority of poor children simply didn't go to school. The money was instead invested in trying to feed and house the family.


Federal funds form only a tiny percentage of public education spending, most of it some form property tax. Ironic since the families most in need of educational funding don't have valuable property.

I was extremely careful not to say completely eliminate the government from education...What I have said is eliminate the FEDERAL government from education. I also said, . For the families who truly cannot afford a decent education in the new system, states will be given the option of using their money to establish some public schools. This will A: give the poor the equal opportunity that they do not get in the illegal Federal-run education system now and B: improve the conditions of the few public schools that are left, having less public schools means that each one gets a bigger piece of the pie, if you will. I probably should have elaborated on this earlier...But again, I was careful not to say eliminate the "government" from education, just the Federal one.


That's a given, as I've said, I do...But I also am a strong believer in the law...Federally funded education is unconstiutional, plain and simple.

CP

Well then I must say you missed a spot.


Now that we have backed away from that ideological precipice it still leaves us the problem of how:


Will actually help anything.

There will be children in every district who need public schooling so we can't expect a majority of them to close.

This mean the same mantinence costs with less hands to contribute.

A mass exodus of the middle class from all public schools will cause them to work to withdraw their tax funds hence placing an even larger burden on the poor. The amount of money lost will be disproportional to the resources no longer needed due to students seeking private options. In short the pices of the pie will get smaller because the whole pool of funding will shrink.

The federal government is a tiny part of the education budget, removing them doesn't count as "privatization" and privatizing would only harm those without disposable income.


Find me a Supreme court case that rules thusly and I'll believe you.

I haven't backed away from everything. Quoting just: this:
without this:
is exactly what I tried to avoid when I wrote the paragraph that included both of them. My position in my first post was privatize the education system, and if states WANT to, they can have back-up public schools for the poor. My opinion hasn't changed.

This assumes that a large amount of people will opt out of public schools, and it also assumes that there will be a call for tax funds to be yanked from the public schools that are left. Unless you can prove that this would happen, it seems like a moot point to me.


I never said it's been found unconstitutional, I said it IS unconstitutional. All you have to do is read Article I of the Constitution to know that I'm right. No authority is given to Congress [or the Executive for that matter] to establish a national education system. That's a fact.

Also, as a sidenote. The Federal Department of Education has the third largest budget of any of the departments...Trailing only the Department of Defense and Transportation.

CP

It had already happened on a small scale. When you hear people speak of "white flight" and suburban sprawl this is in large part what they mean.

If the system is privatized and the public schools are save for "the poor" then of course large numbers of people will opt out of the public schools.

That's the whole point, right?

...and if they opt out I can guarantee they'll push to withdraw funding, people already gripe about taxes for education when their own kids are in public school. Remove the incentive and the money will follow.


...but that isn't what is being done. The schools are organized on the state level, the federal government is merely supplying supplementary funding.

Allowable under an expansive reading of the general welfare clause.

If it were unconstitutional someone would have made the case before the court.

If that were the case, then only the poor would go to public schools now. Plenty of people who CAN go to private school don't. Public schools would be a safety net for the poor, but that doesn't mean that they would be the only ones going there. It's not like there would be a sign outside the public schools saying "rich need not apply." Assuming that these public schools would be chartered by the states, then a "free" education might sound good to middle class families. There are some, who are in between rich and poor, Turnea. You're making it sound as if everyone is either able to buy their child the best education or they can't afford one at all. Public schools would probably be a good alternative for Middle to Lower-Middle class families who may not be able to afford a private school better than the public schools still remaining.

Funding that they are not given permission to give. Nowhere in the Constitution does it give the Federal government permission to fund schools.

That's one heck of an "expansive" reading. That particular clause reads:
So the Constitution was established to insure tranquility, establish justice, etc. etc. I still don't see where it says that the Federal government can fund education. Even if you can consider that part of the "general welfare", it's meaningless. All the Preamble does is explain why the Constitution was created, it delegates no powers.

CP

What can be done to improve the situation of under-resources public schools in this country?

Define under-resources. Is that underfunded?

I've previously disclosed that I am the partial product of the Cleveland public schools. I spent the 6th through 9th grade in them. Had I finished high school there I'd probably be working at a much different job today.

I understand that there is a culture of failure in public schools. I think you are mistaken, turnea, when you say that everyone wants their kids to succeed in school and that education is stressed equally in all households.

I came from a (white) lower middle class household. My father dropped out in the 9th grade. My mother is a high school graduate. Neither stressed education to me. Neither pressed me where I was going to college or even if I was thinking about college.

Cleveland's high school graduation rate was an appalling, absurd 28% in 2002. Which begs the question: if you provide a school, is it too much of a burden for kids to show up and finish?

When I was at school in Cleveland, there was absolutely no expectation that you show up. The teachers for the most part did a decent job for those students who were there. But those that were not there fell through the cracks.

And what about funding? For the most part, the funding is there. Cleveland schools spend more per pupil (more than double actually) than my kids' Catholic school does. Pupil/Teacher ratios have been dropping for all kids (link). We spend 7.9% of our GDP on education, up from 7.2% in 1993/94. (link)

In 2003, the average school had 136 instructional computers in it. Over 10 million school computers (93%) had internet access. There is a computer (with internet access) for every 4.4 kids. (link)

So, we are spending more. We have more teachers. We have computers and the internet.

What's missing? I have no answer. It isn't money. One thing is that only half of public school employees are teachers. Shouldn't that be a bit higher, since the school's objective is to teach?

The problem isn't teacher pay. The average teacher salary is over $46,000 for public school teachers. In private schools (who are much more successful at actually educating kids) significantly lower. Source

I don't think the problem is with the funding of public schools or the teacher pay. In fact, I don't think it is money related in any way.

What is the relative importance of this issue?

Top importance. Unfortunately, we are looking at a symptom and not a cause. Why aren't kids going to and finishing school? I don't have the answers.


Might an overhaul of the funding system improve the situation?
Could funds be taken from income rather than property taxes and allocated equally by the state rather than local officials?

I'm not sure the method of funding is important here. Isn't the important figure the amount of funding?

With current methodology, citizens can decide if schools are a priority that deserves more funding (via school levies). Should we take that decision out of the hands of the citizens and put it in the hands of the government?

Is busing a good stop-gap measure until more drastic changes are decided upon?

No. Busing destroyed the Cleveland schools. The cost of busing 50,000+ students everyday for over a decade bankrupted the Cleveland schools.

..and I counter that if your proposed solution is so similar in this way to the system we have now then how will it imrpove anything. You seem to be arguing in circles.

Only those who live in districts rich enough in property to provide decent schooling, not the people who need help.

If we are to cut down to saftey net schools for the poor then those able to leave the public system will do so. You can't advocate drastically shriking the public school system and then aruge people won't leave. It makes no sense.

You are stuck CP. Massive privatization means large numbers of students leave the public schools. Students leaving the public schools mean less funding, less funding means less for students who are stuck in the public schools.
Worsening instead of improving the situation.

I can not at all see how what you propose will help anything.


I was not reffering to the Preamble, the General Wlfar Clause is located in Article I Section 8.

It won't be very similar to the current system. Okay, most schools are privatized, allowing them to compete with each other in both pricing and quality. Some public schools, funded and run by the States' government will allow those who would either prefer a public school education for their children or cannot afford a private school to have a fall-back option. There would be less funding but there would also be less public schools, so it's extremely possible that each public school would have more money speaking in terms of money per student. Saying that this would result in the completely flight of pretty much everyone but the poor from these public schools ignores the fact that if so many people would go to private schools simply because they have the money is not true. People have the money to send their kids to private schools NOW and yet there are plenty of rich kids in public high schools.

Shrinking it doesn't necessarily meaning starving it of resources. As I said, yes, less money will be coming in, but this less money will be used for a significantly fewer amount of public schools. So it's impossible to know that public schools would wind up with less money. In addition, what may also be a possibility, is the federal government giving tax incentives to businesses to help sponsor and help fund schools so the burden is not completely on the taxpayers.

This, again assumes that people would fight to pull their tax funding from public education. Just because people don't use public accomodations doesn't mean that their funding will be pulled from it. A huge majority of Americans don't make a dime from the welfare system, yet they're still funding it. So again, you're basing this on the worst case scenario that has no evidence behind it.

Yeah, lol , not sure what was going through my head when I wrote that last paragraph. But, if you are going to pull "the federal government can fund public education" from that, then we'll have to agree to disagree, and I'll drop the Constitutional issue.

CP

What can be done to improve the situation of under-resourced public schools in this country?

I can tell you what is not the solution—that is, taking money from already strapped public schools and providing vouchers for parents who want to send their children to private or parochial schools.

No Child Left Behind should be fully funded and the emphasis changed from punishment to helping schools improve. If this cannot be the case then NCLC should be repealed.

What is the relative importance of this issue?

Given that students will be future voters and wage earners, education is perhaps the most important issue of the day.

Might an overhaul of the funding system improve the situation?

The problem is that there are variances among the states in the matter of school financing.

The Texas Supreme Court held in November, that the property tax, upon which Texas school funding is based, is unconstitutional.

http://www.boston.com/news/local/new_hamps...constitutional/

To date, Texas Governor Rick Perry has called three special sessions of the legislature to revise school financing.



http://www.kvue.com/news/local/stories/011...b.64935241.html

Because of the court order, Perry must call a fourth special session soon. There is no guarantee that anything positive will come out of that session.

So far the Republican Governor, Republican Speaker of the Texas, Tom Craddick House and Republican Lt. Governor, David Dewhurst have been unable to agree on a plan. At the expense of sounding partisan, maybe we need a true two party system in Texas to balances the excesses or inactions of the current Republican regime. It seems the elephants have stampeded in Texas government and I don’t know if it is possible to get them lined up and marching trunk to tail again. If school finance were not such an important, it would be like casting the Perry, Dewhurst and Craddock as characters in a remake of The Three Stooges.

Could funds be taken from income rather than property taxes and allocated equally by the state rather than local officials?

In Texas, the voters would have to approve a state income tax. That might be a good idea, but I don’t think it is going to happen.

Is busing a good stop-gap measure until more drastic changes are decided upon?

I live in a mixed neighborhood. I don’t know if there is an alternative to busing until and if we have a radical change in housing patterns. Busing was ended in Fort Worth some years by the recently deceased federal Judge Eldon Mahon. we still have schools that are upwards of 90% minority.

Well, CP, there's just a little problem with what you propose, that I see.

Let's say that tomorrow, all federal funding for public schools ends, and you get your wish of privately funded and run schools. How much extra money is this "poor family" going to be getting back in refunded tax dollars to be able to apply to sending their kid to a privatized school?

Oh, that's right! Exactly none!

According to you and others on this forum, and I'm most certainly not disputing the assertion, poor folks get back "all", or "nearly all", or even "more than all" of what they pay into the federal tax system already, come tax filing time. So, exactly how much extra money each year are they going to have, to be able to shop for a school for their child, if they already are getting back everything they put into it?

Take that refund they already get, and apply it to the school of their choice? Sure, they could probably do that, except that to keep any semblance of a public school system for those who can't afford the private schools in place, local property taxes or state income taxes are going to have to go up. A lot. That'll eat up most of that refund, so there goes that idea. Face it, the "choice" you are offering, is really no choice at all, at least for those in poverty. And maybe even for the lower middle class, who depend on public education, because the simply cannot afford tuition at a private school.

1. What can be done to improve the situation of under-resourced public schools in this country?

As you suggest in question 2, turnea, a funding overhaul is needed. But, I'm sure the conservatives here aren't going to like it.

2. Might an overhaul of the funding system improve the situation? Could funds be taken from income rather than property taxes and allocated equally by the state rather than local officials?

Actually, we could do this now, without having to resort to moving to state income taxes for funding education. Simply re-allocate the property tax funds already collected. In most places, the county is broken up into school "districts" artificially designed by the local government, based on boundaries of towns and in some cases, more separate districts within a larger town or city, usually set up because of sprawl, or because of the relative wealth of the area.

For example, the county I live in contains no less than 12 separate school disctricts, many which are just a single town, or a couple of small villages lumped together. Now, as the county property tax collected for education in a given district, is returned strictly to that district, impoverished or rural areas will obviously get back less than the more affluent areas.

So, why not just take all of the funds set aside for education out of the county property taxes, and distribute them evenly across the 12 school districts? Or even just split it up evenly by the number of schools in the county? Yes, the more affluent areas would get somewhat less per school, but it should certainly raise the poorer schools up somewhat, as well.

3. Is busing a good stop-gap measure until more drastic changes are decided
upon?

No. Busing would just be another added expense to the district, with no guarantee that it would significantly improve the poorer schools.

This isn't exactly true, NG. The argument is that without a Department of Education the federal government would be smaller. Thus, the total tax burden could be lessened. Tax rates could be lessened because there's a smaller government.

The problem that I see is two-fold. Firstly, there's no guarantee that the government would reduce taxes to compensate for its non-existent Dept. of Education.

Secondly and more importantly, public schools are funded by everyone (directly for property owners and indirectly for renters) whether or not they have children. If schools were privatized, then only those with children would be paying for education. For the poor, I would fully expect the cost to be too high; thus, there would be an economic disincentive to get even a basic education for their children.

I suppose one could offer tax credits. But, where is the money coming from? We just privatized schools; presumably the motivation was to decrease costs.

Anyway, the way I see it is this: privatization is good for some things and not for others. If we are willing to privatize schools, then why not explore privatizing the fire department or police department? Why not privatize the roads or water/sewage treatment? Why not privatize the military? Why not privatize our nuclear stockpile? Afterall, if privatizing education is so beneficial, surely it would offer those same benefits to other government programs of similar breadth. What are the salient differences?

What can be done to improve the situation of under-resourced public schools in this country? Resource shortfalls are not the key problem in the vast majority of dysfunctional public schools. The DC school system has one of the highest per student funding levels, and worst performance.

What is the relative importance of this issue? Fairly important, but it isn't, contrary to your assertion that "Everyone should care about the success of children", a universal moral imperative. (Of course, if you're advocating imposing your morality on me, then I suppose your assertion is understandable.)

Might an overhaul of the funding system improve the situation? No.

Could funds be taken from income rather than property taxes and allocated equally by the state rather than local officials? Already done in some states, although the funding source in the state I'm aware of that does this isn't property taxes. State funding makes up approximately 50% of the K-12 education in Nevada.

Is busing a good stop-gap measure until more drastic changes are decided upon? If it were a 'good stop-gap', then there should be plenty of proof by now of its success. Given that school districts with busing do no better than those without, I consider it to be a massive waste of money, in addition to being a violation of the First Amendment. Note that in some instances, busing was implemented purely in order to "redress racial population distribution inequities", not funding inequities. When students are bused within a school district and here are funding disparities between schools, it is an administrative issue.

It's not that simple. Let's face it there are some good schools in the DC area and many bad ones.

Futhermore it's easy to tell the difference when one looks at the resources they have to deal with.

Overall the DC system spends a lot, but the funding like so many other schools districts is far better for suburban schools serving well off communities than the inner city.

The higher funding for the suburbs inflates the picture of the whole district.

No...

The suburbs have teachers, computers and the internet. They have lab equipment and textbooks.

Averages mask the differences within the school districts.

System takes from poor schools and gives to the rich, study shows
The full study is available below.
How Within-District Spending Inequities Help Some Schools to Fail





I could go on but to say spending doesn't matter is inherently ludicrous even without all the data proving the opposite.

When inner city public facilities are on par with the suburbs, then we can saying spending doesn't matter.

turnea,

What you have just demonstrated is that the problem is administrative.

If schools in the same district have imbalances, then it is the central administration's fault, it isn't lack of funding.

In the Cleveland area, the suburb of Strongsville is one of the better school districts. Strongsville schools It spends about $7600 per pupil. Cleveland schools spend a whopping $11,121 per pupil.

I firmly believe that failed students are the product of failed parents. Kids only rarely motivate themselves. They need outside impetus. Sadly, my parents never provided that push for me, but luckily I found someone who did. That one man turned my life around almost 20 years ago.

Education is not a money issue. Parents teach their kids at home for nothing. Thomas Edison and Abraham Lincoln were home schooled. The finalists in the National Spelling Bee are almost all home schooled. Education is not about money, it is about motivation. If parents cannot provide that for their kids, then God help those children.

No, it is the central administration's decisions to unevenly distribute funding that is causing shortfalls.

That is why I propose taking it out of their hands entirely.

One of the links I posted deals directly with Cincinnati so you should be interested in this.

The study shows that Cincinnati, in averaging per pupil spending, grossly overestimates the spending in its poorer schools by averaging in the values spent on the richer schools.

Teachers in urban schools are paid less to do more difficult jobs, student in urban school receive far less funding per student.

I'll post the link again, since I can't copy and paste the specific text I referenced.
How Within-District Spending Inequities Help Some Schools to Fail(PDF)


This is a very convenient belief, it places the burden on the one thing no one can do anything to change.

The fact is that is urban schools were allowed to have the same incentives to attract talented teachers and counselors as the richer schools they would be there to motivate students even when the parents are not.

Furthermore it is silly to believe that unmotivated parents just happen to congregate in urban areas.

City districts often have far higher property taxes in the district because urban parents want more funding for their kids education.

..but when the property isn't worth as much, the results are meager.


How about we do something instead?

Anecdotes aren't telling the whole story, the statistics clearly show the inequities in schools funding and the direct correlation to student performance.

We ought to have basic standards for every public school facility, if the facility doesn't reach these standards we need to provide the resources they need to do so.

I might agree with this philosophy, but add a twist. I would advocate providing the funding to bridge the gaps that may occur, but then hold the schools accountable for basic standards in academic achievement.

I believe that if we were to hold the teachers and principals financially accountable (via bonus structures) for their performance, they'd take a more active interest in the success of their students. THEN couple that by adding incentive for the parents to become involved by holding the parents financially responsible. Simply put, if your child goes to a school that has had a $1M funding increase, to include better classrooms/teachers/resources, and your child consistently fails, the parents should have to repay a portion of the increase in funding.

I believe that in an antiquated and inadequate environment some students may have a more difficult time. However, I don't believe that without accountablity that any increase in funding is going to cure the social woes of inner city/poor students.

If a single mother earning $25,000 isn't concerned with her child's Algebra grade at the present time, I'm confident that if she was forced to pay $1000 for her child being held back there would be a sincere shift in attitude.

This assumes that the parent is a major cause of the childs algebra grade. The fact is many working moms do not have the time or the education to help kids out with things like algebra.

Advocating charging poor parents money because their children are failing in schools is really... silly.

I don't agree with charging anyone, scaring decent employees away form the public system to cushier jobs in the private sector really won't help the situation.

It will only put the child in further jeopardy.

Parents want their kids to learn, the problem is that without a textbook or a decent teacher they aren't about to learn.

Antiquated facilities is an understatement, some of these places are just plain unsafe. Plaster falling form the walls, no air conditioning, malfunctioning heat.

From kindergarten to the time when most of them drop out of school, poor students get vastly inferior education in this country and that is simply wrong.

If we can fix that and the children still fail (not likely), then sure let's talk about other causes.

..but nothing justifies the current inequities. No matter what the other issues, this has to stop.

So what you're saying is that running schools like businesses is a bad idea?? Spoken like a true academic!
If you were to poll 100 employees in America on why they come to work, I'd bet that 99 say that they go because they pay. (I'd be one of them!)

Adding financial incentives to the school system's compensation structure would only HELP to encourage motivated and hard working people to become teachers... which as many wonderful teachers as there are, I believe that at times the best and the brightest aren't running towards the ED dept at the local University because the it's more lucrative to seek alternate employment. It's not a tough strategy to grasp. If tax payers saw graduation rates, SAT scores, and college enrollment skyrocket, it wouldn't be hard to cough up some more change. However, when the gov't asks for more dinero to be flushed right down the toilet... we make it into a thread on AD!!

Holding the parents' accountable (and yes, I'm sure you knew that Algebra was just an example.. that could be applied to any subject) wouldn't require that they teach their subject matter, but moreover that they either find the help or the discipline to get their children through a quality education. What's that saying about when there's a will...???......

I am confident that as soon as we put down the victim flag, and fess up to the fact that all social woes can't be solved with a checkbook that this issue may begin to resolve itself. Sure, some schools need work and money would be required to do so. However, if I were the person writing the checks, I'd expect some return on my investment.

Who has the ability to homeschool their kids? The parents have a substandard high school education, who have to work three and a half jobs between them to support their kids and pay for rent & groceries jobs, or the parents who are both college educated and make enough to live off a single income, freeing one parent up to stay home with the kids?

How is education not a money issue?

What can be done to improve the situation of under-resourced public schools in this country?

First off, I'd like to make the comment that this question is a little ambiguous.

Is the contention that all schools are under-resourced and the question about how to increase the overall level of funding ? (The tone of debate so far indicates that most posters have assumed this is the contention & the question.)

Because I looked at OECD figures released last year on education funding at primary (roughly, grade school), secondary (roughly, high school) and tertiary (univerisites and colleges of higher & further education) levels, and at all levels, US spending is higher than most competitor countries in both % of GDP and absolute dollar equivalents. (It's certainly a lot higher than Britain, which came as a surprise to me.)

US education spending taken as a whole is among the top levels as a % of GDP, but more or less mid-table, and still above the OECD average, when only public sector education is taken into account. (Interestingly, private sector education spending at secondary level is second only to S Korea in this table.)

(I used the Excel spreadsheet linked to on this page here under the heading "OECD in figures 2005 - Education expenditure")

But, depending on what parameters you use to measure performance, US secondary education taken as a whole is about average, or even slightly behind, OECD averages for performance.

If this is indeed the case, then the USA should be taking some lessons from countries that spend less but do better, since clearly, where there are failings, it isn't necessarily because of lower funding (because the US spends more than the average anyway). It isn't how much you spend on public education, but how you're spending it that might be the problem.

However, I read the thread opener to be establishing that some schools in poorer areas are under resourced, and under-performing, and the question to be about how to reorganise resources to bring these schools up to the same basic standard as better-performing schools elsewhere.

In this reading of the question, I'd say that busing (is that how it's spelled? Maybe it's a Brit thing , but I'd have used two 's's) kids around probably does have some part to play. I'll expand on this below.

What is the relative importance of this issue?

Critical, and not just in terms of domestic politics. Internationally, education is ultimatley what industry competitiveness rests on, and if the US wants to continue down the hi-tech route with little or no heavy industry it has set out on, better quality education will be the only chance you have of maintaining that for more than a decade or two.

For this reason alone I think privatisation on a large scale is not only foolish (chances are you'd end up with a similar situation to health care, where the best education would continue to be world-leading, but very expensive, price inflation makes it increasingly out of reach of the middle classes without outside help, and vast swathes at the bottom would be lucky if they could learn to read and count) but counter-productive; the economic competitivness of USA Inc would begin to fall behind, meaning you'd have less money to spend on education, meaning that once you realised what a bad idea privatisation was you wouldn't have enough public money available to renationalise it.

Privatise in haste, repent at leisure.

Might an overhaul of the funding system improve the situation?

Overall, maybe a one-off big investment in infrastructure (to fix leaking rooves, broken lockers, dirty kitchens, etc) might help, with allocated spending for maintenance to keep things that way.

But, while an overhaul sounds necessary, it feels to me (from the outside) like it needs to focus more on how the money is spent than on how much is spent in total. The State's Rights argument is all very well, but is there a nationally standardised curriculum? Waiting until SAT results come out is a bit too late, isn't it? How are teachers assessed and graded? Can poor teachers be sacked, and good ones promoted quickly (with more money of managerial responsibility, depending on their talents) or is it effectively a job for life where advancement relies on the dead man's shoes principle?

Could funds be taken from income rather than property taxes and allocated equally by the state rather than local officials?

I think education is too important to get caught up in State's Rights arguments. I think funding should be collected and allocated nationally, and administered locally to meet local needs.

For example, (and I don't want to get side-tracked here) while it makes local people feel good, is the decision of some local and state education authorities to teach ID good for American education as a whole? What economic benefits does it bring? What value does it add?

As long as federal taxpayer's money goes on it, this HAS to be the primary consideration.

What economic value does xyz education policy have? If you don't think this should be a consideration, or you don't think secondary education has economic importance, by all means privatise the whole thing, but don't blame me if your economy goes to hell in a handbasket soon afterwards.

Is busing a good stop-gap measure until more drastic changes are decided upon?

However, I wouldn't bus kids from the poor schools to the better ones - they're most likely full anyway, and if overcrowding and worn out facilities are the problem, pushing more kids through than the schools can cope with will wear them out more quickly too, and you end up with two tatty overcrowded schools after a decade or two.

And again, here I'd take the national interest over those of individual parents, and I'd bus the kids from smarter, more well-to-do areas into the poorer ones. Noses would be put out of joint, it's true.

But I honestly think that having mixed ability classes doesn't significantly hold the bright kids back (if they the teachers are talented), but it does begin to put some peer pressure on the inner city kids who haven't had any before, or maybe don't get much encouragement at home. Put some competition in place - put everyone's marks up for this test or that exam, so the kids can see where they stand (the PC idea that kids shouldn't be allowed to compete is a bad thing IMO).

Not only that, but I think this would enliven the teachers in such schools, too. My experience of education in the last ten years or so has been vicarious, not through kids, but through freinds I know that are teachers. Some teach in selective entry private schools (we call them "public" schools here, for some obscure historical reasons), and others in low-rent state schools. All of them say that when they have some kids that are engaged, or that can become engaged, they find it more fun to teach the whole class, and put more energy into it. I'm sure they don't intentionally slack off when they're faced with a classful of deliquents or otherwise disengaged kids, but it would be human nature if that was the end result.

Even the guys in the private schools say the same thing. They still have lazy, uninterested or just not very bright kids there too, despite the selective entrance tests. There, "thick" kids (meaning not very bright, rather than not very slim - another transatlantic translation requirement?) can go to special prep schools that spoonfeed them so they can pass the entry tests. The private schools then spoonfeed them so they can go to university. Generally, that's where they get found out, since you can't really get the teaching staff at university to do the intellectual heavy lifting for you, though some still slip through the net and get flashy well-paid jobs despite still being "thick". Education as bought product - this isn't going to go away, but institutionalising it by privatising the whole of education is not necessarily a great idea.

Well-educated thickies are not known to be leading entrepreneurs, wealth creators or role models.

(Except in politics - heh - sorry, I couldn't resist)

You may want to edit this, because its a bit confusing. Amlord said "If schools in the same district have imbalances, then it is the central administration's fault, it isn't lack of funding."


So you're a proponent of school vouchers? Or do you propose further centralization? Because if you take it out of the district's "central administration", you're either moving it up to a higher level, or pushing it down to the education consumer.

As for the dynamics of intra-district teacher assignment, as a practical matter, you give preference to the choices of the best teachers. If they want to teach at a school in a nice neighborhood, you either give them sufficient inducements to teach at a bad school, post them to the nice neighborhood, or find a replacement as they go down the road.

Grace and peace, BD

to rephrase I was pointing out that the fact that the blame lier within the District administration does not preclude the fact that the actual problem in a lack of funding for inner-city schools.

Indeed is is partially because district administrators do not choose to apply state grants to poorer schools in enough volume to bridge the gap in funding when compared to the richer schools that the lack of funding exists.

The money is key and you just explained why.


The fact is the inducements to teach at failing schools, cost... you guessed it: money.

Teachers site money issues at the number one reason for turnover in urban teachers.

The result is that students who need the best, most experienced teachers are instead receiving the one straight out of college looking to make bigger bucks in the suburbs.

The only way to draw them into the schools they are needed is to correct this [u]funding[/i] issue.

Teachers are just one important aspect of the funding imbalance. Good education costs money, there's no way around that basic fact.

From that article:


If this is indeed true than those administrations are deliberately failing certain schools. Indeed this would amount to financial finger wiggling that would be criminal if proven to be deliberate.



Oh really? Call me silly then because my parents (urban dwellers) never motivated me and from what I saw first-hand my parents were not alone. Of course, I will be the first to dismiss anecdotal evidence. I will leave it as an unknown why urban school districts cannot keep their children in school long enough to graduate.

Perhaps there is a bell curve of motivated parents and the motivated ones fled. I could accept that explanation. The solution would become instituting "rah rah" class which would provide that motivation. Of course, human motivation is often outside of the understanding of science and so accomplishing such a goal would be difficult at best.




I'd like to see that correlation.

Urban districts spend more per pupil than other districts that succeed (of course, you can always point to some aberrant district which spends $20k per student because property values are so high--see Dublin, a suburb of Columbus Ohio). On a whole, it is true.

What is also true is that public schools spend far more than private schools per pupil. Public school pay their teachers better. Public schools have more access to computers than many private schools (including the one my kids attend, which has about 25 computers for the entire school of 250 kids--or 10 kids per computer).

EDIT to add:

How can teachers be offered more to teach in the inner city if they are bound by rigid collective bargaining argreement which dictate how much a teacher with a set amount of experience makes? I agree this would be a good idea if it is true that experienced teachers transfer out of the worst schools.

In addition, there is no way to weed out the bad teachers early and thus they become the tenured bad teachers later. Surely some of those make it to the "advantaged" schools in the district.

This seems to be a central administration problem / union problem to me.

Arrrrghghghgghg. I think we're talking past each other. The money is not the key in the same district rich school/poor school situation. The district has enough money to do its job, the problem is in how that specific school district chooses to allocate the money. Giving the district more money will not address the problem! Throwing every penny of our Gross National Product at education will not eliminate the situation of some schools, some districts, and even some states providing better educations than other schools, districts, and states. Some schools will still fail.

Sounds like a teacher's union flack. Some inducements cost money, others don't. Allowing good teachers to actually teach rather than babysit can be a heck of an inducement. Challenging the teachers, cutting back bureaucracy, etc, in short, addressing many of the other shortcomings besetting the inner city teacher can be powerful inducements.

Unfortunately, bad education costs money as well, and given the lack of firm causation between education quality and money, there are more effective means of improving public education than simply throwing more money at schools and teachers. Some schools might benefit, but given the ever rising school funding and continuing decline of school quality, most won't.

That is certainly true. In Texas we have relied on the property tax to fund schools. We have property rich districts and property poor districts. The famous or infamous Robin Hood plan took money from wealthy districts and sent it to poor districts.

With Robin Hood under fire, we don't at this point know how equalization will be accomplished.

The problem with your statement Amlord is that a poor district can equalize funding among schools, but still not have enough funding to operate efficiently. It's in vogue to say that you can't solve problems, including eduction, by "throwing money at them." By the same token you can't achieve much in an underfunded district.

I worked in a relatively poor district at the beginning of my career. In those days we had memograph or duplicating machines. One way the district attempted to make ends meet was to require teachers to purchase their own paper. I would submit that it is not the teacher's job to supply materials.

I think we can all agree that there is a minimum level of funding required.

The districts I am referring to (and I think turnea is as well) are those inner city districts that churn out thousands of undereducated kids per year--Cleveland, DC, Milwaukee are the most famous (infamous) examples.

Turnea makes an excellent point about teacher allocation. Look at this article: Best teachers aren’t going to worst schools