School Finance
- on 01.14.08
- Fund The Child, Funding Reform, General
- 1 Comment
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Recently, the Daily Herald did a 10 piece story on School Finance in the State of Illinois.
- Public schools’ revenue growth outpaces inflation
- Chapter 2: Unequal state equalizer
- Chapter 3: Suburban taxpayers’ heavy share
- Chapter 4: 1 of every 2 education dollars stays in classroom
- Chapter 5: Non-class costs weigh heavy on schools
- Chapter 6: Administrator pay vs. teacher paySuper pay for superintendents
- Chapter 8: Unit districts get by on less
- Chapter 9: Schools falling further into debt
- Chapter 10: Only 1 in 5 high school graduates are ready for college
The solution for many is to give the schools more money:
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The Illinois Education Association has called for a constitutional amendment to increase the state contribution to public schools. The Illinois Federation of Teachers has called for “comprehensive changes in the state’s fiscal system.” The Illinois Association of School Administrators wants to increase state funding and amend or repeal laws that limit the amount schools can collect from taxpayers. The plan supported by Gov. Rod Blagojevich would have imposed a new tax on business and generated an estimated $7.7 billion extra for health care and schools. The plans all draw on a basic premise: The main problem with the public school system is a lack of money. |
From the data provided it is fairly obvious that the money currently going into the public school bureaucracy is not being spent efficiently or effectively in educating our children. The question from this becomes, how do we fix this problem. The answer is definitely not more money. The Daily Herald hints at the solution when they finished their recommendations with this quote: [Emphasis mine]
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A bureaucratic system never changes on its own. The only people who can change it are those who control the money. In this case, that’s taxpayers, who must be willing to demand a better return on their investment in the next 10 years than they got in the past 10. |
The Daily Herald is absolutely correct in stating the public school bureaucracy will never change on its own. What they failed to recognize though is that the system has become so bloated and self serving that the taxpayers will never be able to turn the system around alone. The only solution therefore, is to put the money in the hands of the parents by funding the child. This empowers the parents to demand accountability and thus change. Without this direct control of the funding, public school bureaucrats will always find a way to thwart the will of the taxpayer. The empowered parent will be much harder to circumvent, since they can take their child and their money to another school. The solution is simple: fund the child instead of the bureaucracy.
You might study how d46 is dumbing down opportunity for the gifted and middle of the road through their hap-hazzard implementation of RTI. http://www.wrightslaw.com/info/rti.index.htm
Ask them why they won’t tell the parents about it, and have actually forbidden faculty from doing so.
It’s a travesty