In TE 401, we recently did an activity that asked us to look at and interpret data about the school funding policy in Michigan, and the gaps between the highest and lowest funded schools. From this activity, I was able to see that some schools receive up to 7,000 dollars PER STUDENT more than other schools. This seems incredibly unfair to the students in these poorly funded schools. There seem to be two opposing sides to this debate; one side argues for equal funding for all, and the other mindset is that if parents are wealthy then their children should be able to go to a school that receives a lot more money than students of poor families.
I can understand the people who want to say that their children should have advantages in school if they are working so hard for their money to reach the elevated status they are at that allows them to make such good money. However, I think that it is completely unfair to children to start them off at a disadvantage simply because their parents are not as wealthy as someone in the next town over.
School funding can literally be drastically different for schools that are not even ten minutes away from each other. I had the opportunity to visit a school in Lansing, and one in Okemos, and the differences literally took my breath away. I was angry when I walked into the school in Okemos and saw the entire school was completely carpeted, the library was three times the size of the one in Lansing and filled with books, the classrooms in Okemos had all kinds of supplies and resources, whereas in Lansing the teachers might be lucky to have half that much to work with.
I don't know how others feel, but I think that putting children into a hierarchy based upon their parents occupation and economic status is wrong.
1 comment:
I completely agree. I think that the funding of schools is a major problem in America and all over the world.
It is true that better schools have better funding, and richer parents send their kids to those schools. But lets not forget what types of schools were are dealing with. The types of schools that rich people send their kids to are most likely private, and rely on funding from private sources. The places the not so rich send their kids are public, and are funded mostly by the government. Here, in lies the problem.
The failed "No Child Left Behind" act punishes those schools that need funding the most. The act hinges on test scores. Therefore, better schools receive better funding, while less equipped schools, in need of funding, are punished for not being able to afford the materials needed to get higher scores. Poorly performing schools have to cut good teachers, can't afford to hire good ones, cannot buy new books or teaching materials, or update their buildings to create a better learning environment for students. This system is backwards: it rewards those that don't need rewards and pushes those that are already down even further down.
It is my hope that the new President Elect will make the changes necessary to begin to repair the education system, and I look forward to my years as an educator in his system.
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