Funding Elementary and Secondary Education...

When I was a freshman in high school, I discovered a deep love of history and a desire to share that with others through teaching. In hindsight, I am able to recognize that my World History teacher that year reached me in a way that few others had. At the time I did not realize how lucky I was to be in her class. She was able to find ways to make world history engaging for all the students, especially those that often found little or no reason to find any use in their own education. She was no longer teaching when I graduated from high school.

The exodus of the best teachers is a frightening problem that needs to be addressed, and needs to be addressed now. The stresses on those responsible for educating our youth have multiplied and magnified over the years as close-knit communities and involved parents fade away. (When one is struggling to earn an income suitable for feeding, clothing and sheltering a family, it is near impossible to be active in the community, or even in the home). As our educational system falters, the easiest problem to address is a lack of qualified and dedicated teachers. We demand our teachers be educators, mentors, parents, police, friends, coaches, and pillars of our community. Yet, other than in the richest of districts, they are paid an income making it near impossible to raise a family on. This is lunacy. Dedicating one's life to educating future generations is one of the most noble tasks an individual can undertake. They should be compensated accordingly.

This is especially trouble in the areas of math and science, two crucial subjects when it comes to innovation and ingenuity at the heart of American economic growth. Can we blame the teacher who decides the long hours, low pay, constant fighting, and dealing with inept management is no longer worth it when the private sector offers an immediate fivefold or higher increase in wages? Congress gives themselves an extra $3,000 yearly, yet teachers fail to receive a raise to cover the cost of inflation. This is unacceptable.

The system of funding education in this country is seriously flawed. The localized scheme results in embarrassing inequalities that could easily be addressed by intelligent oversight and a proper distribution of resources to those that need it the most. Affluent neighborhoods inevitably have the highest property tax revenues, and thus the most available funds for their schools. Thus, the children of affluent parents, the same parents who have the time and resources to be involved in the community and in the lives of their children thereby alleviating the need for schools to play such a large role in the child's development, are the only ones to receive a school from an institution properly equipped to play that large role, even if it is unnecessary.

Go to the other corner of town and you will find children of parents working two full-time jobs to simply put food on the table and a roof over their heads. You will find classrooms that are severely overcrowded due to the lack of funds to hire the necessary number of teachers. You will find less qualified teachers with more responsibility because the pay is not suitable for the best and the brightest, even though they are needed there the most. You will find students without supplies, outdated books in insufficient numbers, and dilapidated buildings. Worst of all, you will find a population of students with dwindling hope, stuck in a cycle of poverty. I, for one, refuse to accept that these children are not entitled to all the benefits that I received simply because they were not born into an affluent family. In fact, I believe the head start that my middle class birth provided to me over them provides a greater justification for any inequality of resources to favor those that could gain the largest benefit from it, the children of poverty we too often hide on the other side of the tracks.

I propose not just equal funding of education, but adequate funding of education given the situation within which a particular community finds itself. A distribution of resources in education that realizes the best use of those resources necessarily includes a greater share of them going to those that need them the most, rather than those that never once doubted they would attend college. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link. So why is it that in education we strengthen the strongest links, and do nothing to strengthen those already straining to hold together?

This is exactly why school vouchers are a misguided approach to helping students in struggling schools. They will lead to yet another drain of much needed resources from the schools that need it the most. Furthermore, the children that would end up leaving these schools will be those with parents that have the time and resources to devote to shuttling their children across town to a different school. These will inevitably be the best students within that school. Thus, not only will there be a drain on resources, but the school will be drained of it's best students, and the remainder of the students will be deprived of the vast benefits accrued through interaction between higher level and lower level students, benefits which have been shown to go both ways, uplifting the educational experience and value of both student groups. I fail to see the logic in saving a struggling school by destroying it.

Thus, my proposal involves a system put into place to ensure resources are distributed in such a way as to create what our founding fathers dreamed of, a well-educated and informed populous, not just a well-educated and informed elite. Each state will be required to collect an amount of funds for educating it's children. These funds need not necessarily be collected through property taxes, thereby alleviating the need for a state like Nevada to implement one. Furthermore, in a state like New Mexico, the federal government will still be required to provide funding based on the amount of federal land within the state as they are now.

From there, a committee which will include members of each district will determine which schools have the greatest need for resources, given the opportunities outside of school for children in the community, the lack or abundance of qualified teaching at that school, the economic circumstances of the area that feeds into that school, etc. With this determination, the funds, collected and supplemented by the federal government, will be distributed to ensure that each school at least meets a base level, and from there, those that are struggling are provided with the resources to turn things around rather than depriving them further. Teacher salaries can be boosted in areas desperately needing the best teachers. Crumbling schools can be provided with the means to provide a welcoming place for children to congregate. After school programs can be financed in those areas where they community is unable to offer them and where it is especially crucial to give students an alternative to the street. Schools filled with children who's families cannot afford textbooks and to supplement those text books with other tools will be provided with the means to purchase those books. Some will tell me such a system of equality of opportunity is an impossibility. If that is the case, I challenge this nation to embrace the impossible and give each and every one of our children the hope of a better future.

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