I don’t know why it’s so hard to support adequate funding for all public schools, create common standards, and find ways to support underperforming students with extra help. This seems to work in other countries, I think.
What is “adequate funding for all public schools?”
Our little city in Northern Illinois has the dubious honor of having the 4th highest property taxes in the United States.
Around 65% of that “tax pie” (and yes, there is an actual “pie diagram” that looks like a pie, and shows the percentages of our property taxes that go to various areas) goes to funding public schools.
The next highest percentage goes to the Park District (which has the priority of maintaining and staffing neighborhood playgrounds, especially in the poorer neighborhoods in our city), and we do have great parks, and in the summer, they are staffed with trained recreational counselors who plan daily activities for the neighborhood kids.
The rest goes to all the usual stuff that property taxes pay for–not a lot is left after the schools and park district get their share.
You would think that all this funding would mean we have stellar schools.
We do not.
Oh, do we not!
Just for starters, 50% of our black male students drop out of high school.
And across the boards, our national achievement tests show that only 15% of our students, ALL of our public school students, achieve minimal grade level results.
15%.
How much more of the property tax pie needs to be fed to our public schools to fix this? ALL of it?
No money for parks, streets and roads (which are terrible–all kinds of stories of damage to cars; I lost a windshield wiper after my car hit a huge pothole-lucky I didn’t lose a tire), police and fire, etc.
The bulk of that public school funding goes to teacher salaries. The average salary for a public school teacher in our city is $57,503, and the range is $50,158-$66,382.
The teachers are not struggling financially.
And every year, a local television station does a “Fill The Bus” campaign in August to literally fill buses with school supplies for schools, so the teachers are not spending a large percentage of their salaries on supplies for their classrooms. If they need something, the public is quick to step up and pay for it.
Of course, it could be racism. In our city, after a certain number of years, a teacher is allowed to request a transfer to a school of their choice. Shh, don’t tell Black Lives Matter, but the majority of the teachers request transfers from schools that have a high black student body to a school with a high white student body. So much for the NEA anti-racism stands.
So I don’t buy it–better funding for public schools is NOT going to help kids in poor neighborhoods get a better education.
Better FAMILY LIFE is what will help kids in poor neighborhoods, and for that matter, ALL KIDS from ALL neighborhoods, to get a better education. And you don’t have to be financially well-off to have a good, strong, healthy, loving family life where TWO parents are engaged with their children and committed to helping them grow up well.
