kristy

The arguments surrounding the debate over centralized school funding are essentially the same as those surrounding the tax debates that can be heard between Republicans and Democrats. The primary argument in favor of centralized school funding is that by providing every school with the same amount of funding, we can level the playing field for students who are enrolled in schools in poorer areas of the country. Those who oppose centralized school funding feel that this method taxes the rich and rewards the poor by filtering those tax dollars towards increased services that the poor have not earned. Furthermore, they feel that these tax dollars would be put to the best use by giving them to the institutions and individuals that have been shown to use them to the highest advantage. In other words, those schools that currently are considered to be high achieving should have the right to continue to have more funding, and the schools that are currently failing their students should not be rewarded by being given additional funds. The crux of this issue seems to revolve around the notion of what is adequate funding for our schools, and whether or not all people deserve to go to public schools that are funded at the same level. Public education is not the marketplace. Compulsory education requirements in the United States have made sure that not just the well-to-do attend our schools, but that all of the children in the country, poor and rich alike will receive an education. It follows then, that the schools we send our children to should reflect the equality and fairness of the law itself. While the authors claim that “even recent experiments in increased school funding have not conclusively defined the relationship between money and student success,” it is clear that that there is a correlation between the two. While correlations do not imply causation, it is interesting that those schools that regularly outperform their counterparts tend to be those schools with adequate levels of per pupil funding. In an effort to provide a free and fair educational system to the people in this country, we must acknowledge the lunacy inherent in the idea that a failing school should be kept bereft of equal or adequate funding while it tries to improve.  The most valid concern of those who oppose centralized school funding is that local control of said funds, and the curriculum, may be wrested from the members of a community because of it. It is fair to worry about having control over what is being taught and how funds are allocated within one’s school district. However, schools already receiving federal funding are currently subject to federal standards in education. The only schools that are not subject to federal and state standards and accountability measures are those that are completely privately funded. It is easy to agree that local communities should be making the decisions about how their schools are run and where the money in them should be spent, however, this is not the current state of affairs in our schools. Whether or not the public agrees with it, both the state and federal government have already imposed many rules and regulations on the schools in this country. Since this has already come to fruition, it does not hold that this is a viable argument against equally funding all of our schools. Why should some schools be better funded than others when they all have to rise to the same level of expectations in the eyes of the government to whom they are ultimately responsible and by whom they will be ultimately judged as either adequate or failing? The answer to this question seems to be that it is reasonable for all schools to expect to have the same resources at their disposal so that they can be measured fairly on their ability to produce results.  While it seems only fair to allocate equal amounts of money to all schools if they are going to be judged using the same accountability measures, opponents of centralized school funding would claim that this is an injustice in the making. If loss of local decision-making control is the most legitimate concern of the opposition, clearly the most detrimental argument to their cause is that certain racial and economically advantaged classes in our society are inherently more intellectually gifted than others. Therefore, it would make sense to allocate most of our educational funding to these groups since they will put them to the best use and become our future leaders. The opponents argue that “it may simply be, as some scholars have suggested, that members of some racial and ethnic groups are, on average, less intellectually gifted than those of other groups” (86). This argument, while clearly racist, is also clearly absurd in its implications. The authors argued that since some children are innately less intellectually gifted than others, “it is not “justice” to spend large sums of other people’s money on their education when the return will be smaller than if we invested those same dollars on children who have a better chance of succeeding” (86). Even assuming that the authors were correct in their claim that some children are just innately more gifted than others are, their conclusion makes as much sense as the argument that less funding will not impede the progress of the gifted. If this group, which one can assume largely consists of wealthy white and Asian students, is so gifted, then the loss of funding will not alter this fact. They will be just as successful with or without the money since the authors also feel that there is no measurable relationship between achievement and funding.  Centralized school funding does not seem like a change that is likely to occur any time in the near future since it is such a partisan issue. While the onus of having to prove the equality and justice of such a funding system clearly lies with proponents of centralization, the arguments against it are, at least in this book, clearly inferior and fraught with racist and classist overtones. The current funding system in our public schools seems akin to the Jim Crow doctrine of separate but equal. It is a shame that by virtue of one’s birth to either wealthy or impoverished parents, one’s ability to go to an adequately funded, enriching, and safe school is nearly predetermined.  The school voucher proposal is a hotly debated topic in education based on the dissatisfaction of many people and groups with the public school system. The system first proposed by the oft-celebrated economist Milton Friedman calls for government funding to allow parents and students a choice in where they attend school in an attempt to negate the economic and class differences that are usually apparent in the schools both within and across districts (56). This would, according to its proponents, allow the market to decide which schools were best and which schools were no longer meeting the needs of their students. The democracy of where a person puts their dollars would help to fix an ailing public school system by forcing those that were deemed substandard by parents to either improve or continue to lose students who have the choice to go to a better school. The arguments surrounding both sides of this issue bring up the fact that more can be done to ensure the quality of education for America’s youth. However, the idea that we should let the free market take over our children’s futures and put more power into the hands of private organizations and schools is fundamentally flawed and has been proven to have a minimal effect on the performance of students. It also fails to deliver on many of the other promises of such things as lowered costs and less educational bureaucracy, which are trumpeted as the great benefits of voucher programs by its benefactors. Giving up on public schools and funneling money into private schooling does not even put a band-aid on our educational issues in this country and only exacerbates the funding, equality, tolerance, and academic achievement problems in our schools.  The primary argument of voucher supporters is the supposed increased academic performance that will naturally come with taking children out of failing public schools and putting them in to private schools. The statistics that have been calculated to compare private and public schools’ relative achievement levels, however, are not in their favor. The averages for both private and public school achievement are very close with private schools holding a small edge (69). In fact, once one factors out the points that private schools have in their advantage, such as the ability to pick and choose which students attend, having smaller class sizes and a greater teacher to student ratio, and the ability to adopt any curriculum they choose, this slight statistical advantage disappears (69). One would think that for such an advantage to be so widely proclaimed by those in favor of voucher systems they would have to prove a much greater achievement level would be produced by enacting such a system. It can easily be argued that if, instead of providing vouchers to students, federal funding would be allocated to public schools to reduce class sizes and increase the teacher to student ratio we would see an improvement in public schools that would equal that of private schools. Allowing the market place to decide the fate of a school district’s enrollment is troubling for a few reasons. The foremost concern raised by such a system is that, since school performance is largely decided based on national test scores, the climate of schools would be one in which the ethics and morals of those in charge could be compromised due to the high stakes. Schools in Texas and Georgia, among others, have already been caught cheating on the standardized tests that are used to determine a school’s ranking as well as its funding. This has the potential to become a common practice if schools are subject to the market place. Furthermore, placing too much faith in the morals and ethics of people operating for private gains along with the gains of the public, which they serve, as recent history has shown, is not always the best idea. In addition to the ethical and moral issues involved in a market based educational system, the stated benefit to teachers’ salaries in such a system would become a nightmare for all. The proponents of vouchers argue that teachers would stand to benefit financially from a voucher system since good teachers would become a much more valuable commodity if schools were forced to compete for their enrollment dollars, and, as a result, teachers could ask for higher salaries. This logic is tragically flawed. Since some of these schools would be run by private organizations, one could reason that the competition could instead be to provide education at the lowest costs possible in order to generate more profit. Teachers’ salaries could plummet as a result. Even if the proponents of this argument are correct about the positive competition this program would create for good teachers, there is still no way to afford a large increase in teachers’ salaries. Either education would cost more because of the increase in salaries, or the salaries of teachers would be negatively impacted by the market economy of education. This is the epitome of a lose-lose situation.  The voucher system promotes giving parents choices in the form of a government grant to allow children to attend a private school of their choice assuming they are unhappy with their local public school. This handout comes with the illusion that, in doing so, poorer students would see increased academic performance and we would have lowered costs for public school. In essence, citizens would supposedly end up paying less for more. The Milwaukee example, however, shows just how wrong this sort of thinking can be. The residents of Milwaukee have paid more taxes due to the funds public schools lost as a result of the voucher system they enacted. The tax increase was necessary because public schools needed to be recompensed due to the loss of funding from the state for these students (65). Whether a full or partial voucher system is enacted, the result is the reduction of funds from public schools. . The issue of school funding is always divisive and will likely be an eternal problem when it comes to any school system. Voucher proponents would claim that a loss of funding in public schools is not a problem since schools should be funded based on merit rather than on the basis of their mere existence. This thinking, and the voucher program as a whole, can be seen as an overt attempt to do away with public schooling in America. Instead of doing away with public schools, we should all embrace the following idea that was articulated by the character Sam Seaborn on // The West Wing //: “Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes, we need gigantic, monumental changes. Schools should be palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be making six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense.” Once we agree on this sentiment, then we can all start spending our valuable time and money on the realization of this lofty and admirable goal.

It has long been understood by educators that they are slaves to many masters when they are at work. Teachers feel responsible for the individual growth of each student in their charge. They feel responsible for ensuring that each of their classes as a whole succeeds as the year progresses. They are responsible to their department heads, school and district administrators, each child’s parents, the state and federal departments of education, the taxpayers in their communities, the country as a whole, and lastly to themselves. It is overwhelming to consider that an educator’s list of employers could contain the name of every taxpayer in the country. It is overwhelming to feel responsible for the individual growth of even one-year’s worth of students. The question of whose interests a school should serve is one that can only be answered democratically. The schools in a country should serve the interests of the country, the state, the community, and the individual families that it serves. Considering the bickering heard on any news program at any hour of any day in this country, it is impossible to see how a school could ever serve the purposes of all of the people in the country. In a country that houses as many disparate political views as it does citizens, a consensus of what would best fit the needs of the country must be agreed upon by all those who are concerned. This is how laws are enacted in the country, and it is how our schools find a way to serve all of the masters to whom they are beholden.  When compulsory education was first enacted as a law in Massachusetts in 1852, and later in the rest of the country, it was done with the belief that a more literate citizenry was to the economic benefit of the country at large. This belief was certainly not shared by each individual in the country. However, in order to ensure the prosperity of the union, it was mandated by the government. Education regularly tops the polls in terms of issues that citizens are the most concerned about in this country. It follows that people are very divided and very eager to voice their opinions about the education that is being provided to children. The federal government regularly decides to give grant money to schools that begin programs that focus on areas of education that they deem to be the most financially important for our future. For instance, the science and math initiatives that have taken hold in the past five years are a direct result of the government’s belief that these are the areas that will be of the most use in the technology driven economy of the present and foreseeable future. Businesses have long held a large sway on the curriculums in our schools. When we were a more agrarian society, classes in farm management and animal husbandry could be found at nearly every school in the land. As technology has shifted, so too have the priorities in our schools. Arts and music education have fallen to the wayside since they are not deemed important to the economic situation of our students or our country.  The opponents and proponents of arts education will argue endlessly about the necessity or lack thereof of such training in the current economy. However, the fact remains that our schools are the places where the workers and leaders of the future are produced. This is the reason that schools will never be without controversy in the public discourse. This is also why schools must remain democratic in their adoption of curriculums. It would be wrong for our schools to serve the interests of any particular interest group. Rather, they must remain embroiled in controversy to ensure that the voices of all are heard, and that the decisions of what is taught and how it is taught are made by all those concerned. 