The issue of school safety is definitely something that has been in the news recently surrounding the rhetoric of school shootings. The recent spike in mass school shootings has sparked conversations about American schools and whether or not schools do enough to promote the safety and well-being of students. Because school shootings have been largely talked about in recent years, there are other aspects of school safety that are not addressed as well; these include bullying, bus safety and even walking to school. For my final blog post, I am going to talk about some of the different issues that are present in our current school systems when it comes to school safety.

As I mentioned already, school shootings are perhaps the scariest, most well-known, and definitely the most talked about area of school safety. One of the tricky things about classifying school shootings, according to TRT World is that people struggle with agreeing on what exactly defines a school shooting. Some people believe that the mere presence of firearms in schools counts as a shooting while some people argue that there needs to be active gunfire or injuries to be classified as a “shooting”. I am not even touching on this debate today, but I am going to discuss the fact that 2018 had 93 school shootings, the most school shootings in United States history. Why after all this time are things getting worse? After these events occurring, you would think that measures would be taken to prevent mass shootings, but this does not seem like the case.

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So what are schools doing to prevent school shootings from happening? This is the difficult question. Preventative measures are often NOT taken in schools and this is part of the reason why these kinds of events occur. Many schools are beginning to put metal detectors in their building entrances and some schools are also starting to require students to use clear backpacks so that a weapon can be seen. Employing school security officers is perhaps the greatest effort that many schools around the nation are making to prevent these events. Another component to this particular solution is funding because many schools lack the funds to employ a full-time security officer. Something that my school district struggled with was the fact that there were three buildings (an elementary school, middle school, and high school) and it took around 10 minutes to actually get from one building to another. The district only had enough money in their budget to employ one full-time security officer. Often times students and faculty alike asked what would happen if there was in incident in the high school and the security officer was at the elementary school? By the time he would get into the building, who knows what kind of damage would already be done.

School Shootings are not the only thing that needs to be considered when talking about school safety. Bullying and other kinds of violence are often left out of this conversation, but these are also very real issues. Often times bullying and violence actually lead to school shootings because students feel upset or depressed. One of the things that teachers should have more training in is recognizing when a student is either being bullied or exhibiting violent behavior towards another student. In the Sandy Hook Promise, a situation like this is shown in a heartbreaking video, highlighting how easy it is to gloss over the signs of violence a student might exhibit. I encourage you to watch this video just to see it for yourself. If teachers received training, they could potentially help students receive the support they need and prevent a tragedy.

Another aspect of school safety rarely talked about is the idea of walking or driving to school safely as well as school bus safety. I still, after 18 years on this earth do not understand why school busses have no seatbelts, so I decided to do some research to enlighten myself (and all of you!). School buses are considered one of the safest vehicles today because the seats are packed tightly together and the passengers sit up much higher than in a regular car. During a crash, the tightly packed seats are supposed to act as a sort of airbag for a student to hit into and absorb the energy from impact. Due to this research, each individual state is allowed to decide whether or not they will require busses to have seatbelts. As of right now, only six states have implemented this regulation.

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Students that walk home and high school students that drive themselves to school also face a lot of dangers. Walking students have to deal with running into strangers and potential sexual harassment. There have also been students hit by cars while crossing the street on their way to school. Students that drive face the potential dangers that any driver faces when operating a vehicle. Young students are also inexperienced drivers which can also lead to problems.

No parent wants to hear that their child was hurt or killed while in school or on their way there. There is definitely more that the U.S. Education System can do to improve the safety of our current schools. Let me know in the comments if you have personal experience with preventative safety measures in your high school or elementary school.

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With the current Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos and the Trump administration, charter schools and voucher programs are becoming a hot topic of conversation in the American education system. People have varying feelings on these different types of schooling. Some people believe that the public schools are not providing a good enough education for students while others believe that charter schools are not credible institutions in which to send students. This week I will discuss the varying viewpoints on the Charter and Voucher School Programs in the US education system.

The overarching name for charter schools, home schools, voucher schools etc. is called school choice. The original premise of school choice is the belief that there are fundamental things wrong with the American Public Education system. One of the major flaws with the system is the allocation of schools based on residency. I’m sure you are all familiar with this idea and how school districts are mapped for certain residency areas. We all know that there are bad public schools out there, and if you live in one of these district’s areas, then you have to attend that public school… unless you choose to go to a charter school that you might think is better; this is the premise of charter schools and voucher schools.

Before I go any further, I want to point out that there is a difference between charter schools and voucher schools. Charter schools are publicly funded institutions. This means that if you go to a charter school, your public school must pay your tuition at the charter school. Charter schools are exempt from state and local education laws, but they do need to have certain standards in their charter. These standards are monitored and school districts must meet these standards or their charters can be revoked.

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Voucher schools on the other hand are private institutions that simply accept voucher dollars. These “dollars” also come from the student’s public school and it is a set amount of money that each student can receive from the district each year and spend at a different institution. Part of the issue that many people have with voucher programs is the idea that students are treated like objects. Essentially each student has a price tag attached and then they are viewed as retail and essentially bargained for between districts. Another issue with voucher programs stems from areas like Philadelphia and New York City where there are a lot of families of lower socioeconomic statuses in minority groups. Even with voucher programs, many of these students cannot afford to go to a better school because their parents cannot afford to pay the difference between the private school’s tuition and the voucher money; thus white students from wealthy families tend to populate the private schools and receive a better education than they might receive from the public schools.

The belief that charter schools and voucher programs offer a more quality education than the public schools is not always accurate. Because these schools essentially make up their own standards and rules, the education is not always superior to the public system. Often times voucher programs are used for schools that specialize in something specific; this can be a good thing especially if your student knows that they want to do something in music or the arts or even science. These schools are also called “magnet schools” because they attract students based on these specialized programs and often accept voucher money.

On the other hand, charter schools and voucher programs often hurt the public schools in the area because a lot of funding is being taken away from that district. Because public schools have the obligation to pay charter schools or give students voucher money, many public schools are losing resources and thus providing a lesser education because of school choice. In charter and voucher schools, teachers do not even need to be licensed to be teaching. If we really want students to receive a “better” education, is sending them to a school with unqualified teachers and no standards really the best option? I’ll let you decide for yourself.

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Betsy DeVos and President Trump are pro-school choice. The current administration wants to expand charter and voucher programs to make better education available to all students. Using this language has increased the public support for school choice supporters, but there are key things missing from this argument. As I mentioned earlier, some families still cannot afford a better education for their children even with the voucher money. Also, voucher money and charter school tuition is paid for with tax dollars, which a lot of citizens fail to realize. I guess we will see where this debate takes us in the upcoming years in the public education system! There are certainly many benefits and drawbacks to school choice in the United States.  Let me know in the comments if you have any ideas about charter schools or voucher programs.

Technology in the classroom, at all grade levels, is a fairly new issue that the United States education system is currently dealing with. Some people believe that technology can be used to enhance educational experience,  while others believe that it wastes time and causes too many distractions. This struggle between the use of technology can even be seen throughout classrooms on campus here at Penn State University. This week I am going to take a look at the benefits and drawbacks of using technology in the classroom setting.

One of the reasons why educators and administrators think technology should be used in classrooms is simply because of its newfound availability. Because technology is so common today, it is easy for students to get access to technology and it is also easy for schools to get access to a large amount of technology for the district. Building off of this idea of availability, something called “Digital Citizenship” is becoming a common term among many students and schools today. Due to the fact that so many students have technology and social media accounts, they need to learn how to use these platforms responsibly. Having technology available in the classroom is one way to teach students these essential skills that they will need for the rest of their lives, as technology continues to advance. There are ways to teach digital citizenship without allowing students to bring their own technology devices, though. My home school in Saint Clair, Pennsylvania recently created a class entitled, “Digital Citizenship” where students are taught about the responsibility that comes along with using technology. The classroom where this is taught is equipped with desktop computers and ipads that are owned by the district and no personal devices are allowed. 

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With that being said, there is a big difference between allowing students to use their own technology devices or  devices that the school provides. When the school provides a device and a login account, they can monitor what goes in through those devices; when a student uses their own devices, there is no monitoring. On the other hand, students might not be able to get access to the internet on their own devices if the wifi is locked and needs a password. Of the two options, I think that having school-provided technology is the best option because it can be monitored and it can hold students accountable for their actions.

Sometimes, having technology readily available is also just easier. If students need to type a report or do research on something or even access a textbook online, allowing students to have and use technology is easier, from the perspective of an educator and a student.

Along with using technology individually comes great responsibility from the students. This is not a bad thing, though. Students need to learn how to be responsible and autonomous for their actions. A component of education that is very important is autonomy because it makes students feel as though they have more control over their education and their experiences, thus becoming more engaged in their work. Using technology in the classroom can teach students self-regulation from a young age which will ultimately make their lives easier as they get older and move further in their education.

Despite its many benefits, there are also many drawbacks to using technology in the classroom. Perhaps the biggest issue comes from students being distracted, especially as they get further on into their educational careers. It is so easy and accessible for students to just hop on Facebook or instagram. It is so easy and accessible for students to shop or listen to music when they are supposed to be independently working on an assignment. It is also easy for students who are distracted to distract their other classmates as well. Some might think that in reality, this only hurts the student that is choosing not to be engaged in the lesson, but it does hurt other students’ academic successes as well.

A very important part of being an educator is using classroom time to its absolute fullest and not wasting a second. Technology makes this aspect of being an educator very difficult. When you are dealing with 25-30 students who are all trying to get onto the same website at one time, there are inevitable issues that will arise – the internet will slow down, someone’s device won’t be charged, someone will be unable to login and countless other problems. This can really hurt the time allotted for instruction and it can also hurt the way the classroom is managed. Especially in elementary school level classrooms, when the teacher is busy with one student, other students see that as an opportunity to goof off and ultimately get themselves into trouble.

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Schools have the capability of making technology available to all students in today’s day and age. Before measures are taken to equip students with technology, educators and administrators need to research the advantages and disadvantages of technology in an educational setting to see if their students will truly benefit.

Funding the arts has been a controversial topic of conversation in the United States and in other countries around the world for many years.  People do not know if the arts should be funded. Some people believe that funding the arts takes away money from other areas. Others believe that funding the arts makes the arts programs too dependent on government money.  Many people believe that the arts should be funded because of all of the opportunities that are afforded to students through the arts. This week I am going to explore the benefits and drawbacks of publicly funding the arts in our schools.

The arts play an essential role in the development of students from a very young age.  One of the primary goals of teaching the arts at a young age is to give students some basic background information they will need for academic success.  This information that early arts programs is meant to teach includes the basic shapes and colors. It also needs to be noted that teaching the arts is not an easy task.  There is a lot of grey area included in the subject matter instead of black and white answers to problems. Not only do the arts teach basic information, the arts can also teach important skills.  When students are in their early childhood ages, communication and socialization skills are not yet fully developed. Students often struggle with controlling their temper and working with other students; the arts help to develop these skills.  The way that most arts programs and art classes are setup is heavily based on discussion. Because the arts include so much grey area, discussion and communication are necessary to gain the essential knowledge that the students need.

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The arts make students become more engaged in the classroom, especially for the students who are typically underserved in other areas.  These underserved groups of students include students that come from low-income families and special needs students. As of right now, these are the students that are showing the greatest academic improvement in their studies with an implemented arts program.  Unfortunately, these students who need the arts and arts education the most are often the last to receive this kind of education due to lack of funds.

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The arts were once successfully funded by the government and government programs, now under President Trump’s administration funding is in danger of being drastically cut.  Trump’s administration is pushing to cut the NEA and stop funding the arts altogether.  Under the Obama administration, the NEA funds were barely a dent in the total federal budget.  Our current administration largely believes that the arts should not be funded, but there are organizations like the NEA that are fighting to not cut funds because they can see the positive effects the arts have on students.

The NEA distributes its funds to both individual artists and organizations.  Many of the funds go to poverty-stricken areas that need the most funding. The funds are also given to prison programs, people with disabilities, and hospitals.  These funds are carefully given out through an elected board of directors. The board receives application requests for grants and funding and then panels go through the applications; the chairperson of the NEA then looks at the final round of applications and makes the ultimate decision of who will receive the funds.  This process ensures that the funds are distributed to those that need it the most.

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In today’s society the arts are looked down upon, especially in education.  The two big subjects today are math and science. The Space Race can be to blame for the shortage of artists and the lack of support for the arts.  When America fell behind in the Space Race, there was a push for science and math in the education system.  Americans believed that we needed our citizens to be better trained in these subjects to be able to be the best country in the world.  Along with this idea that science and math were the most important subjects, came the idea that there needed to be a correct and an incorrect answer for everything.  This is why subjects like reading and the arts, where there is more room for thought and creativity, fell behind. The fact of the matter is, even in a world where science and math reign supreme, the arts can help emphasize these subjects.  As was mentioned earlier, the arts can enhance core subjects and make students think more critically, which could potentially push America to the top in the fields of science and math, as well as reading and the arts at the same time. 

The arts have the capability to create informed, educated, productive citizens in society. The benefits of the arts are positive and they could help to put America’s education back on top. Policymakers and the current government administration need to be informed about the positive effects of arts integrated education. Instead of cutting funds, policy makers could find alternative ways to fund the arts and not take more money out of the federal budget as well; we just need to get creative! 

Another new addition to the Education timeline that I have been talking about over the past couple of weeks is the implementation of the Common Core State Standards. This is really the big thing that parents, students, and teachers in many states have been talking about in recent years, and maybe some of you have even been a part of common core curriculum.   The Common Core State Standards are much more complex than meets the eye of many people, including many working in the education field and this leads to a lot of misinformation and misinformed opinions on the topic.

The Common Core Standards were started with the idea of critical thinking as the main goal; the standards were really built on critical thinking and incorporating that critical thinking skill into all subjects. Another interesting facet of this initiative is that it is based in english and math (surprisingly not science) and then using the english and math skills that students develop across other subjects as well. According to Education Week, today, there are only four states – Virginia, Nebraska, Texas, and Alaska – that have never adopted the standards. Minnesota is also interesting because the state has only adopted the standards in English and Language Arts, not Math. As of 2017, there were 11 states that had announced they were rewriting the standards or replacing them with something else as well. The state of Pennsylvania adopted the standards on July 2 2010, and the curricula were fully implemented throughout the state during the 2013-2014 school year. Despite the fact that over half of the states have adopted the standards and are not changing anything to them, there are obviously other states that have different opinions. Let’s take a look at what common core actually is before we get into why there is such a divide between people who like it and people who hate it.

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As I mentioned earlier, common core is based around the idea of developing critical thinking skills for students. These skills are able to be transferred in both technical careers and college education. Before Common Core was implemented, each state had its own, written set of standards that schools had to adhere to. This makes sense, because schools need to be held accountable in some way for teaching their students what they need to learn, right? The current standards are called “common” partly for this reason: the states that adopted the curriculum all have the same standards. These standards are literally written out in a chart that outlines grades k-12 and states what students should be able to accomplish before they further their education. The Common Core standards were written to be more complex than state’s previous educational standards. This seems all well and good at first glance, but let me give you an example of one of the state standards for kindergarten students in English and Language Arts.

“With prompting and support students should be able to identify the reasons an author gives to support points in a text.”

Think about this for a second. The children are 5 or 6 years old and they are expected to support evidence from a story? Yes! And it can be done. As an educator, no matter what standards are pushed your way, you need to do everything you can to meet those standards and help your students meet those standards. Don’t ever tell kids that something is too hard, instead they must be pushed in order to believe that they can do it, it just takes a little time. For example, if students are reading a book about dogs, the question might say, “Why did the author say that dogs cannot eat chocolate?” and a kindergarten student might say, “Because dogs eat bones.” and voila! The standard is met, as scary as that may sound.

Despite the fact that students can do anything, common core limits that “anything” to “only a certain way”. As I mentioned earlier, part of the reason why the standards are called “common” is due to the commonalities between the states, but the other reason is because there are a lot of limits as to how students can solve certain problems and write certain things. The place where this is seen the most is in the math standards.

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Common Core focuses a lot on using models and using very complex ways to do simple math like addition and multiplication. When I see math problems that make something a lot more difficult than it needs to be, I think to myself, “why does this make sense?” and usually it doesn’t! Here is one of my favorite examples of a common core explanation for math problem.

“Add 26 + 17 by breaking apart numbers to make a 10. Use a number that adds with the 6 in 26 to make a 10. Since 6 + 4 = 10, use 4. Think. 17 = 4 + 13. Add 26 + 4 = 30. Add 30 + 13 = 43. So, 26 + 17 = 43.”

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Really? Was that explanation easier to understand than just adding the two numbers together like normal “old-fashioned” math? I personally do not think so. I also do not believe that math and english or any school subject should be so difficult that it should make students cry all the time when they come home to do their work. No first grade student needs to cry over math homework because it is too complex. Because this is happening, I would say that is a sure sign that there is something just not quite right with Common Core. I encourage you to take a look at the links I included above just to get an appreciation for what the standards really say and mean for students and educators today.

Teacher accountability is something that has become undesirable for many educators, today. So far, I have tried to give you somewhat of a timeline for funding and standardized testing, which are all interconnected in layers. This week I am going to add another layer to the education salad and talk about what exactly it means to be an accountable educator, because it is not all about standardized test scores and your students’ performance.  

There is accountability in every job. Most jobs actually have reports that bosses need to fill out to make sure all of their employees are performing well and not hurting the company. These reports are also used to fire people that are not performing to the company’s standards. In education, once teachers receive their tenure, which is reaching a certain number of years in a school district, they are very protected. Once a teacher is tenured, it is very difficult to fire them, even if their students are consistently not performing well. Often times, if there is a teacher that really should not be teaching, the school district must go through court to get them fired because of the union protection. Teacher accountability is making it easier to fire bad teachers because there are policies written into the union contracts in many states that allow the school district to terminate these employees.

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There has always been some form of “accountability” for educators, and they were reports based on the principal or superintendent observing the teacher in class. This sounds like a great idea, but often times these reports were treated as a joke and “satisfactory” marks were given out like candy. According to a 2009 report from TNTP, 98% of teachers were deemed satisfactory. The interesting thing is, the students are often the ones who know that some teachers are bad. I’m sure you could walk into any school district in the United States and ask the students what teachers are good and which ones are bad. The students will tell you about the bad teachers and why they are bad. How can students see these things but the other professionals cannot? Why are the principals and superintendents blind to the bad teachers? Like I said earlier, they aren’t blind, they just cannot get rid of these teachers because of their protection.

On one hand, these teachers have great jobs once they have tenure! They really don’t have to worry about losing their jobs or losing money. They can practically do whatever they want and many of them do. One of the most difficult things about being a teacher is that you can only care for your students when they are in class. Because there are other factors that contribute to students’ lives, there are other factors that contribute to the performance of the students as well. If your job is protected, then you do not have to worry about having some students that do not perform well or behave badly. On the other hand, in a new, emerging world of teacher accountability, teachers do have to worry about these other factors that are a natural part of students’ lives. Sickness, family deaths, poverty, these are all things that might cloud a child’s mind and make it difficult to perform well in school.

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Accountability, though, is not just about test-performance, which is what many people believe, including educators. Instead, the accountability movement is making sure that teachers are performing as best they can. Today, teaching is regarded as being unprofessional and female dominated. I know for a fact that some people choose education as a major because they believe it will be “easy”. Accountability is working to change this misconception about education and its professionals. Making sure that teachers are diligently working to better their students’ lives and teaching them new knowledge, while not giving up on their students – that is the goal of teacher accountability.

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Because teachers have a responsibility to their students and the community, they need to be held accountable in some way. Engineers cannot make a bridge that crumbles without being held accountable. A doctor cannot diagnose someone incorrectly without being held accountable for it. Airplane pilots cannot crash a plane without being held accountable for it. In the same way, teachers cannot neglect to teach their students something new without being held responsible for their actions. There are always going to be other factors that contribute to a students’ success. As a teacher, you need to be willing to do everything you can to work towards achievement and success. Students can do anything if you give them a little push and your support. Students can break through boundaries and defy the odds as long as someone gives them a chance. As a teacher, you need to accept that you will be responsible and accountable for your actions, and work hard, just like doctors, lawyers, scientists, engineers, office managers, retail workers, and everyone else, despite these other factors.

In last week’s post I talked about school funding, and there seems to be a lot of intersectionality between standardized testing and school funding. This is due to all of the educational policies that have been created, starting with ESEA or Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 and ending with President Obama’s Every Student Succeeds Act of 2015. Because of the dire need for school funding, policy makers had to figure out a way to make getting those funds more competitive, because there is a limited amount of money. The solution was to make standardized testing more high-stakes and then give money to the best districts. Today, standardized tests are extremely high-stakes, especially when it comes to educators, because in some places, teacher’s jobs depend on their students’ performance on high-stakes tests; this is called teacher accountability (which I will talk about next week!).

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Let us take a moment and go back to examine the early beginnings of standardized testing in the United States. In 1890, Harvard President, Charles Eliot proposed a system of testing for their applicants. He felt that not everyone should be able to enter such an elite school and he wanted a system in place to ensure that only the elite would be admitted. Thus, the first standardized test was born. In 1916 the College Board started to develop their own comprehensive exams that they wanted students to score proficient on in order to enter college. In 1920, nearly half a million standardized tests are published and by 1925, there is significant research that suggests these tests are becoming the main way that students are being classified. That brings us to the next big year: 1965, which is when when the ESEA  was enacted to open the door for testing in elementary and middle school classrooms as well as the continuation of college admissions. Then we have No Child Left Behind (2000), Race to the Top (2010) and ESEA (2015-current day). Now, this timeline that I gave you is very brief, but if you want to know more about what happened in between the years I mentioned, this is a great resource to look at.

We have all grown up in this era of high stakes standardized testing. I’m certain that every single one of us can still hear our teachers saying, “Make sure you fill in the bubbles all the way and don’t go outside the lines!” Coloring inside the lines of a coloring page is tough enough for any third grade student, yet alone coloring inside a bubble that is the size of a raindrop. I actually can still picture the little diagram at the top of the scantron sheets that showed you exactly how to fill in the bubbles and exactly what not to do.

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Aside from the relatively simple task of coloring inside the lines, there comes along a much more daunting task to a third grader (and quite frankly many high schoolers) and that would be… the test itself. Part of the pressures that many young students feel when taking a standardized test is that all of the material may not have been covered in class. We are human; things happen. The weather messes up schedules, we get sick, sometimes the class gets off schedule because a lesson wasn’t understood the first time… and that is ok! Test makers, however need to understand that these things come up and account for that on the tests.

Today, on average, by the time a student graduates from high school, they have already taken 113 standardized tests. Let’s face it, that really is a lot of tests. But, even though testing has a lot of drawbacks, there are definitely some positives as well. First, schools might be able to get grant money if they have high-performance on standardized testing modules. This is a great thing for the school as a whole, including the parents, educators, students and administration. Standardized testing also allows teachers to see how much their students have learned over the year. They get to visually see the yearly progress of their classes. From an administration point of view, standardized testing also allows teachers that have students who consistently perform below a proficient level, to be fired or at least be more motivated to teach better if the union contract prevents their firing.

Standardized testing allows us to compare students at large levels as well, which is very helpful when it comes to educational research. Because teacher-made assessments might be subjectively scored and biased, standardized tests are made by government officials who really have no way of being biased because they are making a test for an entire state. Teachers and school districts also cannot manipulate scores or “cheat” on standardized test scores as much as they can manipulate the scores of their own, in class assessments.

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Standardized testing is a tough topic in education. As a student, I hated taking tests, but I knew that I had to take them. That is kind of how I feel as a future educator as well. I hate the idea of taking creativity out of education. I hate the idea of simply “teaching to the test” but I understand why it is done. Colleges need a way to compare students and the government needs a way to compare school districts as well. However, students are not “common” or “standard” and that should be taken into serious consideration by education policy makers.

Education funding is one of the most talked about issues when it comes to education and its many flaws. How will we pay for textbooks? How can schools buy new curriculum to keep up with everyone else? How can we afford to pay all of our current teachers? How can we keep arts and music programs in schools? All of these questions have affected me twice throughout my K-12 education, and I have definitely learned a lot about budget cuts and education funding. Trust me, it is not as simple as you might think. Perhaps this is because money does not simply grow on trees. The essential question that I am going to examine this week is, how can we effectively fund K-12 education and still give students ample opportunities to thrive throughout their school years?

Education is funded primarily by property taxes. Because education is considered a state and local matter (due to the fact that it is not in the constitution as being a federal responsibility), school districts in wealthy areas simply have more money to go around. Each state then also has a portion of its budget set aside for education throughout the districts in the state. It wasn’t always this way, though. When President Bush was in office, No Child Left Behind was put in place. This program was meant to give money to school districts that performed well on standardized testing and showed significant performance improvement on these tests. Of course, this increased the stakes of standardized testing which is still present in classrooms today, but now, there is no money coming back into these high-performing districts. In the 90s and early 2000s, a large portion of education funding came from the federal government. President Obama also implemented a program called “Race to the Top” which placed a lot of emphasis on testing with the incentive of giving more school funding to high-performing school districts. This made funding education very competitive, and only few schools ended up receiving significant money in the end. Today, funds are back to coming mainly from property tax and the state budgets because the federal government is not very involved with funding; however, President Trump did increase the federal education budget for the 2019 fiscal year, which is a small step in the right direction.

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Despite these small strides made for education funding, there are still a lot of problems that are not taken into account. Because the federal government only covers about 9-10% of each state’s funding, the rest of the money comes from property tax, as I mentioned earlier. This means that wealthy areas inherently have better schools with more opportunities compared to poorer school districts with families that come from a low socioeconomic status. The worst part about this system of funding and inequitable funds throughout the nation is that the poorer school districts contain the students that need more. They need more special education programs, more guidance counselors, more tutors, more extracurricular programs, and better teachers. Because these districts have no money, they cannot afford these extra resources that are essential for the success of their students. The process is cyclical actually, because even when a good teacher or better programs come to these poorer school districts, the school does not have enough money to sustain them; teachers leave for better work elsewhere and programs are cut.

On the other hand, and what is most sad and frustrating, in my opinion, is that school boards and schools do not want to run out of money, or to not have enough money to fund all of their desired programs and teachers. School boards and administration are constantly looking for new grants, new ways to get funding; they are constantly working on how to most effectively fund their districts, and this is not an easy job. Because the physical school district is already built with its foundations in the ground and you can’t just pick the building up with a crane and put it somewhere where property taxes are high, you are really stuck. The state and the federal government can only give you so much of the budget because there needs to be enough money to go to all of the districts. In poorer areas, families cannot afford higher property taxes. You as the member of the school board are essentially stuck between a rock and a hard place because money does not grow on trees or rain down from the skies once a week (although that would be nice!). Throughout all of the budget proposals and meetings, the students are what seem to be pushed to the side and forgotten about. Personal vendettas get in the way and often times, so does a lot of other baggage. School funding and school policy is first and foremost about the students and their opportunities, and that is important to always remember.

Image Courtesy of Pottstown Mercury

There is, however, another solution that would entail changing the entirety of the way the education budget works, but it might be the most equitable and achievable solution. Many policy makers believe in and support this: do not distribute money evenly to every single school district. Instead, collect property taxes, then combine that money with the state education budget money, making a common pool of state education money. Using data like test scores, the number of faculty, the faculty to student ratios, the number of programs in schools etc… determine which schools are higher needs compared to wealthier, higher performing school districts. This would give poorer schools more money to pay for the resources that they need, and it would still allow wealthy school districts to keep their current programs and faculty because they would have enough money to continue to fund all of these things. On top of this, schools can still apply for grants for programs and activities that they wish to fund. No matter what, before we can tackle other education issues, we need to realize that education is not universal and education, the way it is now, is certainly not equal. Funding education is the most difficult education issue, but I do believe that we can achieve an equitable education system if people work together and think about the welfare of the students within the American Education system.