When looking at the public education system, there are several negatives to point out. There is the staggering statistics that show students struggling to meet the states standardized test requirements or the jaw dropping dropout rate. Many Americans fail to see that the root of this problem is the lack of funding or better put, lack of equal funding. Although landmark Supreme Court rulings have prohibited segregation in schools, segregation still exists. The segregation prohibited by the Supreme Court is based on race, not by income and this is unfortunate because that is how the public school system is structured now. A reform that is much needed and past due is school funding because the average student receives a below average education that does not prepare them for college and more importantly, the challenges of the real world.
One problem with school funding is the basis of how schools are funded. The majority of funding comes from property taxes, which clearly will be higher in more affluent neighborhoods because the property value is much higher than a lower-income neighborhood. One might think the solution to this problem is to mix up the neighborhoods to have similar property values but this move is complicated. When doing this, you are displacing people who are accustomed to a certain lifestyle based on income, particularly the less-privileged population. They simply may not be able to afford living in a neighborhood where there is a higher property value. Because of the lack of funding problem, schools suffer dearly. Schools aren’t able to have a performing arts department and may lack the proper funding for sports and other traditional extra-curricular activities. In addition, the material taught by disgruntled teachers is not tailored to meet state standards that continue to become harder to achieve although students actual achievements continue to fall. As students achievements fall, these add on to the building pressures they already have living in low-income neighborhoods and dealing with other issues.
Ultimately, the purpose of education is to help students make a better life for themselves, so if we are unable to properly prepare our students to meet educational needs and more importantly life’s needs, then the education system is not working and quite frankly it isn’t. The educational gap between the affluent neighborhoods and the low-income neighborhoods is alarming. Essentially, schools are still segregated because the make-up of the more affluent schools is white students while the make-up of the lower income schools is blacks and Latinos. In order for the United States to tackle this problem, we can’t simply cut funds from one department and move them to education. We must go to the root of the funding problem and fix the residential problem.
RELATED ARTICLES
1) Ensuring Equal Opportunity in Public Education
2)Not Separate but Not Equal: Education in the United States
3) The equality of public school district funding in the United States: a national status report
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