School Funding: Public good, public cuts

The Economist

State budget shortfalls will bring a raft of cuts to public schools

Excerpt:

Some schools are now charging fees for certain classes or activities, a startling trend that violates some basic ideas about what public schools are supposed to do. The idea of asking people to chip in for schools is not unprecedented, but it is usually a bit more subtle. Elementary-school teachers ask their pupils to buy school supplies; high-school students sell cupcakes and wash cars to raise money for the prom. Parents may supplement a child’s education with extra services—a tutor, a week at lacrosse camp, a second-hand car, a new silver trumpet rather than the borrowed cornet, glottal with generations of spit. Asking pupils to pay fees for core activities or classes seems much worse. These services may be for individual students, but public schools are a public good.

Projected cuts around the country will bring forward some deeper questions about school finance. As it is, Americans already pay for public schools by virtue of where they live; schools are partly funded by property taxes. The richer the parents, the better the schools, or at least better resourced. That is a fundamental inequity of the American system, not a new one.

A broader question is whether money is the best way to improve schools. A 2008 study from the Centre on Reinventing Public Education at the University of Washington found that spending on schools, adjusted for inflation, increased by 29% between 1990 and 2005, without a commensurate gain in pupil achievement. Better strategies may not be more expensive. The cuts may force states to think creatively. That would be some consolation.

Read more at The Economist, here.