Wall Street's excesses blew up the economy. Now the question is who pays to clean up the mess. Across the country, our children are already paying part of the bill -- as their schools are hit with deep budget cuts. A new report -- Starving America's Public Schools: How Budget Cuts and Policy Mandates are Hurting our Nation's Students -- released today by the Campaign for America's Future and the National Education Association, looks at five states to detail what this means to kids in our public elementary and secondary schools. (Full disclosure: I co-direct the Campaign.) The findings are sobering.
Every study shows the importance of early childhood education. Analysts at the Federal Reserve discovered that investments in childhood development have, in the words of Fed Chair Ben Bernanke, such "high public as well as private returns" that the Fed has championed such investments to noting they save states money by reducing costs of drop outs, special education, and crime prevention. Yet across the country, states are slashing funding for per-kindergarten and even rolling back all day kindergarten. Now pre-K programs serve only about one-fourth of 4-year-olds. Ten states have eliminated funding for pre-K altogether, including Arizona. Ohio eliminated funding for all day kindergarten.
Every parent and teacher knows the importance of smaller classes, particularly in the early years when individual attention is vital. Yet across the country, schools have cut some 270,000 jobs since 2007 and are facing layoffs of nearly 250,000 public school workers next year, many of them teachers. In Chester Upland, PA, 40% of the teachers were eliminated, with class sizes rising from 21 to 30 in elementary schools and to 35 in high schools, causing students to walk out.
Intelligence comes in many forms. Successful schools offer a well-rounded curriculum -- not just the basics, but art and music, social studies, extra-curricular activities, physical education. But now schools across the country are forced to terminate or charge extra for anything beyond the core curriculum. In York, Pa., art, music and physical education was eliminated in elementary schools. In Medina, Ohio, students returned to find courses in French, German, art, music and Advanced Placement Science and Math were eliminated.
And children, needless to say, are extremely diverse. They learn in different ways, at different rates, and face different challenges. Public schools educate the poor and the affluent, those with developmental challenges and those who are gifted. Yet across the country, schools are slashing funds for special learning instruction, for advanced placement courses. Increasingly parents face extra fees for programs. In Medina, Ohio for example, it costs $660 to play a high school sport, $200 to join the school choir, $50 to act in a student play.
Even as budgets are slashed for public schools, more and more state education money is getting siphoned off to private contractors to pay for elaborate tests, and to vouchers and corporate tax credits to subsidize private and charter schools. We're cutting billions out of educating kids while increasing spending on testing how they are doing.
The Center for Budget and Policy Priorities reports that school budgets have been cut in some 34 states and the District of Columbia. In Arizona, the cuts average about $530 per pupil. In Florida, $1 billion was cut in next year's budget, or about $542 per student. Not surprisingly, these cuts fall hardest on the poorest districts that can't afford to make up for them the way more affluent districts can. The kids who have the greatest need for public education are suffering the deepest cuts.
Americans sensibly value education. Every political candidate promises our children will have the best education in the world. Yet Washington seems largely oblivious to the carnage taking place in our schools. Part of the president's American Jobs Act was special funding to avoid more teacher layoffs. A filibuster by Republican Senators kept that from even coming up for debate, much less a vote.
Meanwhile a furious argument continues about what standard teachers and schools should be held accountable to. The administration, still touting its Race to the Top program, wants the reauthorization of No Child Left Behind to set the standard that all children should be "college ready" by the year 2020. Senator Harkin introduced a more sensible standard of requiring "continuous improvement" from all schools.
But schools are eliminating kindergarten, laying off teachers, cramming 35 kids in a class, cutting advanced placement classes, and levying steep fees for kids to be in the band or play on an athletic team. Continuous improvement? Race to the Top? The grim reality facing our kids mocks the rhetoric.
Jeff Bryant, author of the Starving America's Public Schools report, notes that there have been only two previous times since 1929 when this nation cut spending significantly on its children's education -- once in the midst of the Great Depression and once in the midst of World War II. With schools facing budget cutbacks while the largest generation of kids since the boomers flood the classrooms, this is likely to be the third. The bankers who caused the mess got bailed out. The military budget exceeds Cold War levels. The richest 1% of Americans, who make as much as the bottom 60% of Americans, pay the lowest tax rates since the Great Depression. But our kids and their schools are getting the bill for an economic mess they didn't create. No wonder Occupy Wall Street is spreading across the country.
Follow Robert L. Borosage on Twitter: www.twitter.com/borosage
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This is another attempt for a special interest to hold on to their benefits. Schools need to face competition. Parents need the ability to take their student and money to a school that performs better. Only competition will improve school performance year after year.
2. your post is lacking in documentation
3. schools are not businesses
4. the author does not represent any special interest group
5. any parent with a child in school knows that funding is a big issue
1&2)http://nces.ed.gov/fastfacts/display.asp?id=66
Spending in constant per student 1961 $2,800 2008-09 $10,441
(Correction to original post should have said tripled since the 60s and just doubled since the 70s)
You can look up student test scores in reading and math here on whichever international comparison you like.
3) Schools are businesses. They may be not for profit businesses but the still react to the same incentives of any normal business. They pay workers to distribute a service. The big difference from most businesses is that they don't get payed by their customers but by a third party.
4) SPE CIAL INTEREST?
"The Campaign for America’s Future is the strategy center for the progressive movement. Our goal is to forge the enduring progressive majority needed..."Â
Directly from their web site
5. An assertion without documentation. Also asserting common knowledge is not a valid refutation of reality. People often believe what they are told.
The exception is the UK, where "public school" oddly means private schools for the rich. It is generally recognized that UK true public education is inferior to rest of Europe, for exactly that reason.
"According to the IEA's research, the educational outcomes of children going to for-profit and not-for-profit schools were significantly better than those of children going to state schools. Not-for-profit schools did slightly better on average than for-profit schools - but among schools with pupils from lower socio-economic backgrounds, for-profit institutions performed better."
http://www.publicserviceeurope.com/article/369/for-profit-schools-are-the-future
For profit and voucher systems are the wave of the future if politicians and special interest groups would just get out of the way.
The last quote of the article was icing on the cake.
"This magic combination of market principles and social equity has become known as being particularly Swedish – applying also to reforms to pensions and healthcare. So, perhaps, it is not so surprising that the success story of educational choice should spring from the home of social democracy after all. The rest of Europe must now start taking notes."
Why is the crisis false? Because the borrower here (the government) can legally print an infinite amount of money. And before you get too concerned with Wiemar / Zimbabwe inflation, we're experiencing deflation now.
Doesn't it bother you that the Fed can create (out of nothing) $16 trillion to bail out the banksters, but when it comes to grandma's pension, or Junior's school, they're fresh out of money?
The big flawed argument of the left on taxes is they do not make any effort to reel in wasteful spending in govt. Why give them more money only to burn it?
Thanks Repubs and Dems. I'll be remembering this at the voting booth next November.
You guys are through.
Mark my words thrush6: YOU HAVE PLENTY OF COMPANY (including me). My landlord just informed me that he has no choice but to hike my rent $150/mo. because he just got a notice that his property taxes are GETTING HIKED 20%! This phenomenon has been going on since 1981. That is, for most working class Americans, taxes haven't really been cut -- THEY'VE BEEN SHIFTED -- from one level of government (i.e. federal) to another (i.e. state and local governments). Remember: unlike the federal government, state and local governments ARE REQUIRED BY THEIR LAWS to balance their budgets annually.
'Nuff said.
It comes from the government, which can create more without limit. And no, it's not causing inflation, we're in deflation now, hence the "Great Recession." Deflation also happens to be a transfer of wealth from debtors to creditors.
So all the cuts are "necessary" to schools, and social safety net programs, but the Fed had literally no compunction about creating (out of nothing) $16 trillion to bail out the banksters. Doesn't that little inconsistency bother you?
America's claim to economic fame came from its very large investments in infrastructure and human capital. It became an economic colossus because so many conveniences were freely available -- from good roads to public libraries. Meanwhile, 40% of Russian crops spoiled because of bad farm-to-market roads, and Meg Whitman couldn't bring ebay to Russia because the postal service was so bad.
The point of the "inconvenient" attack on those public goods and services is to privatize them, and start charging tolls for them. The wealthy rentiers receiving these tolls will do fine, but the rest of the population will suffer...and not because there's a shortage of dollars, or because the government is fresh out since it spent the trillions on banksters and unnecessary wars. That's baloney.
If everyone had your attitude about paying for everything as you go, nothing would pool together for greater buying power and the education system would suck. If so you likely wouldn't even have a job since I bet if you work for a company, the higher ups certainly benefited from their education. A great deal of technology sprung from publicly funded schools' research, kinda like the very internet you're on. So in a way education is the bedrock for the advancement and well being of a country. So like it or not you're still benefiting from this public good whether you use it directly or not so you can't just say I don't need to pay it cause I have no kids.
I received a fine public elementary education in the 1970s in an old school without air conditioning (in one of the hottest and most humid parts of the country) and 30+ students per teacher. 13 teachers (one providing remedial instruction), a principal, vice-principal, secretary, nurse/secretary and custodian made up the staff. Once per week one hour music, art and physical fitness classes provided by roving teachers.
A quite diverse student body due to a diverse elementary district was no impediment to teachers who insisted upon and maintained order. There were some "slow" students, some "hyper" students as well as a few with physical and mental disability. The teachers were able to assess the abilities of each student and hold them back a grade if necessary regardless of parental objection. No skipped grades but extra assignments were given to more advanced students who had to work harder to get a good grade.