Public School Funding
With reports on the lower standardized test scores among the nation's students, policy makers are once again turning their attention to the issue of education reform. For many educators, one of the culprits behind this is not only the dearth of money spent on public education. Rather, the available funding is disbursed unequally, benefiting the already more affluent school districts.
This paper examines the inequity that exists in funding public school education.
The first part of this paper looks at examples of this unequal funding throughout the country. The next part of the paper then looks at the various reasons for these disparities, from the government level to the lack of public support.
In the conclusion, this paper argues that there remains a strong need to increase public support for education funding, and to re-work the current formula used by states to determine how school funds are disbursed. After all, whether one is wealthy or poor, it is in everyone's interests to ensure that the succeeding generation of Americans is both skilled and educated.
Background
In 2001, Congress agreed to re-write the long-standing Elementary and Secondary Education Act. This alone was a contentious step, since agreeing to the re-write opened the doors for controversial programs such as the school voucher program. Critics of the law also charge that President Bush is ignoring his campaign promise to provide sufficient funding for all school districts, to ensure that low-income students can catch up to the test scores of their more affluent peers (Swindell 2003).
In a study conducted in 2000, the Educational Trust found that across the nation, school districts that serve a higher concentration of low-income students receive far less state and local funding. This holds true in 30 out of 37 states included in the study, where districts with the fewest concentration of low-income...
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