Throughout the nation, states are cutting education funding at the very time that we need education the most. We need 11 million new jobs, and most of the old jobs have moved outside the country. The only way to create new jobs is through research, development, and innovation, in new high tech areas, and we need to re-educate and re-train the unemployed to fill those new positions.
Education is really hurting right now because 80% of school funding is from property taxes. When businesses and industries close down, the local schools are devastated because they loose their tax base. Foreclosures are epidemic and many homeowners who owe more on their mortgages, than their homes are worth, are getting ready to abandon their homes. This and falling property values mean less revenue from property taxes.
States are forced to balance their budgets, and education is the largest expense, so it is often the first to be cut. Prisons and Health Care are also big budget items, but both of these are inversely related to education. The more you spend for education, the fewer criminals, resulting in lower prison costs. Likewise, when people are educated about how to take responsibility for their own health, Health Care costs go down. We have an epidemic of obesity among the young in the country, which will result in diabetes, heart problems, and other health related problems. Yet when school budgets are cut, Physical Education and Nutrition classes are the first to be cut because they are considered "frills".
There is a crisis in education today. The United States is slipping in education rankings (http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2008/11/19/US-slipping-in-education-rankings/UPI-90221227104776/ to 18th of 36 nations with only 75% graduating from high school.
Education Inequality (http://cte.rockhurst.edu/s/945/images/editor_documents/content/PROJECT%20INEQUALITY%20STUDENT%20PAPERS(Listed%20Alphabetically%20by%20P/cordes.pdf ) becomes even worse when the economy suffers. This means that the minority and low income areas, where unemployment is highest, also suffer from the worst education, at the very time when these unemployed people have the greatest need for education. Minority enrolment in colleges is going down as tuition increases and as colleges are forced to cut enrolment.
Here are 11 facts about education inequality:
1. A high school dropout earns about $260,000 less over a lifetime than a high school graduate.
2. High school dropouts have a life expectancy 9.2 years shorter than high school graduates.
3. A one-year increase in average years of schooling for dropouts would reduce murder and assault rates by almost 30%, motor vehicle theft by 20%, arson by 13%, and burglary and larceny by about 6%.
4. There will be a shortfall of seven million college-educated workers in America by 2012.
5. College graduates are three times more likely to vote than high school dropouts, and those who earn more are far more likely to be affiliated with a political organization.
6. During the 1995-2004 period, the combined expenditures for K-12 school building improvements—including new construction, renovation, major maintenance and repairs, land, and equipment— were approximately $504 billion. However, even after, public school facilities, particularly in low-wealth communities, still have significant deficiencies.
7. In fall 2007, approximately 49 million students were enrolled in about 97,000 public schools.
8. About a quarter of public schools report at least one type of onsite building in less than adequate condition, and four out of ten reported at least one unsatisfactory environmental condition.
9. Approximately one-fifth of schools have less than adequate conditions for life safety features, roofs and electrical power.
10. Three-quarters of the nation's schools, or 59,400, report needing repairs, renovations or modernization in order to reach good condition.
11. The average amount of repair or modernization needed per school is $2.2 million, or $3,800 per student.
12.
These facts are from 2007 and in some ways things have gotten better. Bush's No Child Left Behind Program (http://www.fairtest.org/NCLB-After-Six-Years ), and Obama's Cradle to Career (
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/03/10/o... )programs have increased school funding considerably, but there are still many problems. One of the largest problems is that education is treated as a business, with Market Based Financing, and "Good Schools" whose students perform well on tests, are rewarded with more funding and "Bad Schools" whose students do not test well, have their funding cut.
This is about the worst thing that could be done. Schools in poor neighborhoods without much of a tax base, have crumbling buildings, a lack of teaching supplies, and teaching aids like computers, and since they are probably in troubled areas of the city, have the worst teachers who can't get a job in the better schools, and there is less parental involvement, and more social problems like broken families and drug and alcohol addiction. These schools need more funding to repair their facilities and to attract better teachers, not less.
Programs like "Teach for America" attempt to address teacher shortages, but they actually make things worse because young inexperienced people with only a few weeks of education training are thrown into the worst educational environment imaginable, and the students suffer from their inexperience.
In many ways we are going backward. Schools are becoming segregated again because of poverty and high unemployment in minority neighborhoods. These high poverty schools consistently have the lowest achievement, partly because of sociological reasons, but also because they can't afford to improve their schools or their teachers.
State and local governments have traditionally set standards and controlled funding for education, but it is becoming clear that they can not do the job. They don't have the needed funds, especially in poor states, and the educational standards in these states are woefully low.
Obama is asking states to set higher national standards (
http://www.wnem.com/education/22629225/d... ) so we can compete with other nations, and so children moving from one state to the next can be assured of a quality education, but his proposal would cut funds to those states not willing to raise their standards. There needs to be a constant educational revenue source that state and local officials and local principles can count on.
A federal education fund that allocates a certain amount of money for each student, perhaps with some regional adjustment to account for different regional cost of living and construction, would do that. Local parental control of how the kids are educated would be retained, only they wouldn't have to have bake sales to buy textbooks.
So where is a cash strapped federal government going to get all that money? One simple way would be to take all of the existing revenue sources for education and put that all into a pot to be disbursed more equitably. A better way would be to ask those who have benefited from our education system and become rich and successful to repay their debt to society with higher taxes. Another untapped revenue source would be a small transaction tax that would tax all of the derivative, currency, and hedge fund trading that is going on. This risky behavior helped cause the economic collapse and the bankers using cheap government money to make these trades and to get rich, should pay a bit of that back.