Every time I see a school fundraiser, I think the same thing. "There is another school, a school in a poorer district, that cannot raise money for that." That shouldn't be the case. Poor kids deserve art and music classes as much as rich kids. They deserve to go on field trips and international trips. The problem, however, is even deeper than those.
I don't know about where you live, but in Oregon, the funding breakdown is like this:
- 35% Local
- 57% State funding
- 6% Federal
- 2% Other
- 66% Local
- 26% State
- 6% Federal
- 2% Other
- 10% Local
- 20% State
- 70% Federal
My proposed solution is simple, and probably would never work. Average teacher salary, nation wide, is about $47k. With benefits, lets call it $60k. The ideal class size seems to be about 20. Therefore, the Federal government should be supplying $3000 per student to schools, pegged to inflation. In my system, this money could only be used to pay full time teachers, and no teacher could receive, in pay or benefits, the money from more than 20 students. With 81M kids aged 5-19, that is a total of one quarter trillion dollars, or about 5 times the Department of Educations discretionary funding and about half of the Department of Defense budget.
The benefits from this system are manifold. It encourages the hiring of full time teachers, and it encourages the reduction of class size to 20 students. It removes local and state funding problems from the picture, leveling the playing field for poorer districts and poorer states. It mandates that teachers get a decent wage and decent pay increases. It removes much of the federal wheedling about what needs funded and what does not. Lastly, it draws a bright line between what the Federal government needs to pay for and what the local governments need to pay for. The Feds pay for the teachers (plus or minus). The locals must pay for the books, the buildings, and the administrative staff.
But nobody ever asks me.
2 comments:
I have no idea what the breakdown is, but since Anakin's school is a charter school I know that they receive about $5k per student. They still have ridiculous fund raisers, but those tend to go towards extra field trips, playground improvements, and that sort of things.
I think that the bulk of funding should stay at the state level, but only because I think the federal level should be eliminated from most funding discussions -- they're supposed to regulate inter-state trade and provide defense.
My only problem with that is that it is in the best interest of the welthiest and best educated states that the poorer states be brought up to the same level. Additionally, an educated populace is a matter of national defence. How else are we going to teach people not to use IE?
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