User:RK.Hawaii/Public school funding in the United States

Public school funding in the United States
In addition to that, inequalities exist not only on the national level, but on scales as small as within states, districts, or even between classrooms. This makes it even more difficult to pinpoint exactly how funding affects students.

While some people believe that the sheer amount spent on education has little effect on a student’s performance, others persist that the disparity in funding puts certain students at a disadvantage.

State and local role in education funding
According to the US Department of Education, “83 cents of every dollar spent on education is estimated to come from the state and local levels.”

Michele Moser says that, “states with more school districts tended to have a more equal distribution of education dollars,” but, within the individual states, there can still be inequalities.

According to Bruce Biddle and David Berliner, there are many states where certain school districts spend more than twice the amount than neighboring school districts. Even on a smaller scale,  there can be inequalities between the individual classrooms in a school. This goes to show that while there is a problem on the national inequality of school funding, the biggest differences may be on a much smaller scale.

While Moser indicates that the equality of spending between states was improving between the years of 1992-1995, there are key factors in which states receive more funding, teacher salaries, employee benefits, cost of living, class sizes, and demographics.

This just goes to show the difficulty in trying to equalize funding across the nation. While many people agree that it is our job to foster the youth, states struggle to find forms of fundraising.

Global Comparison
While the structure for funding public education in the U.S. has been consistent throughout modern history, certain foreign countries follow a different financing model, as well as overall structure. A statement that was highlighted in Biddle and Berliner’s analysis stated, “To my knowledge, the U.S. is the only nation to fund elementary and secondary education based on local wealth,” earlier, they said, “it would surprise most U.S. citizens to learn that disparities such as these are simply not tolerated in other developed countries.” While it is hard to eliminate all inequalities, there is a larger effort made in other foreign countries to mitigate these differences, or at the least, provide rationale behind the inequalities. Again, the irrational distribution strategy of the U.S. is displayed as it is compared to the Netherlands. It is stated that, “lower-class and minority children typically receive less than middle-class white children [in the U.S.].”

In Victoria, Australia, the educational structure is much more streamlined. According to Bandara Bandaranayake, who was a part of the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (DEECD) in Victoria, “there are no intermediary state boards of education or district-level school boards,” this means that the management of education goes from the government level, straight to the school level which provides a much closer relation between the two. However, funding, in the form of their Student Resource Package (SRP), still comes from the state level, but where it differs from the U.S. is that “state funds are allocated directly to public schools to manage autonomously”. Based off of Bandaranayake’s report, nearly all funding come from state government funding, with federal and local funds only making up a small fraction of the total funds. Bandaranayake goes on to explain that Victoria’s SRP “was designed to allocate funds with a higher degree of impartiality for each school, while also allowing for easy oversight of how the funds are used.” They do this by using a formula, that takes into account all the variables that may affect a school’s needs. The main distinction between Victoria’s funding and the U.S.’s, is that Victoria sends funds directly to the schools, instead of to the broader school districts.

Reform
The need for reform in the field of funding education in the U.S. is something that some recognize, but others insist is unnecessary. Whether or not more funding directly correlates to student performance, many U.S. citizens agree that it is only fair that every student gets a fair chance at success. Even so, it is not as black-and-white as giving certain schools more money. As Bandara Bandaranayake said, “Directing more revenue to achieve vertical equity can produce greater overall inconsistency in funding across districts and thereby reduce horizontal equity.” That being said, the deficit in funding not only on a national level, but even a local level, which has been shown through numerous studies, can be quite alarming. For example, in a table that shows the average annual expenditure per student, the highest state on the list, New Jersey, spends more than double what the lowest state on the list, Utah, spends on each student annually. Closing the gap is going to take some time, and a lot of conscious effort, but taking a look at foreign operations may provide some assistance. As mentioned earlier in the article, the U.S. sources a large portion of its education funding from local property tax. This inadvertently puts lower income districts at a disadvantage. According to Bandaranayake “90% of the revenue for public schools in Victoria comes from state government funding, while the federal government provides an additional 8%.” In addition to that, a formula, with set values attached to the variables that may affect a school, is used to determine how much funding each school gets. By doing this, they are able to mitigate the bias that lower income districts may receive by taking into account the variables that are not seen directly in the schools.