"Thirteen million --- or one in five --- American children live in poverty, the overwhelming majority of whom attend schools that receive inequitable and inadequate school funding due to the dependence of poor school districts on limited property taxes to support public education..." —2001, General Synod XXIII Resolution, "Access to Excellent Public Schools: A Child's Civil Right in the 21st Century,"
The church's prophetic witness for justice calls people of faith to condemn inadequate and inequitable school funding, for in a nation with publicly funded, compulsory schools, it is the government's role to provide quality public schools for all children, wherever they live, whatever their race, and whatever their family's circumstances.
Advocacy at the state level is very appropriate, because public school finance is a responsibility defined in the constitutions of forty-nine states as a collaboration (usually uneasy) of state and local governments (Hawaii is the exception with one statewide school district). Federal funds pay for less than 10 percent of the total. Within the majority of states, funding levels remain inequitable among districts that continue to rely on the local property tax for the bulk of school funding, despite thirty years' of lawsuits that have attempted to increase equity by shifting the burden of funding to the state.
You are encouraged to take the leap and help mobilize your congregation or a group in your conference for witness and advocacy to reform in your state's school finance system. Jan Resseger, Minister for Public Education and Witness, will consult and/or provide resources. Because this subject can be opaque, inaccessible, and overly arcane, she will provide on-going guidance and support for framing a clear, strong, and motivating advocacy agenda and for finding ways to support witness and advocacy over the long-term.
Public School Budgets in Crisis
Real cuts in state budgets and threatened cuts in the federal
budget directly imperil course offerings, co-curricular activities,
class size, and availability of all-day kindergargen and enriched
pre-school programs across the states. Two new reports from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities and the Campaign for America's Future explain what revenue shortfalls mean for particular states and school districts. And, an October 10, Witness for Justice column examines federal and state budget priorities as they affect children and public schools.
January 2012: Rutgers University economist Bruce Baker and the Albert Shanker Institute revisit the age old question: Does Money Matter in Education? Baker looks at the things money buys: teachers and small class size, for example, and he concludes (in an in-depth report) that, of course, money matters a lot.
January 2012: John Kuhn, superintendent of the small Perrin-Whitt
Independent School District in Texas, describes what he believes are the causes of school funding inequity in his state: There's a hole in the bucket, Dear Liza, Dear Liza.
Public education funding in many places is being affected by state budgets that have been seriously reduced in the economic crisis and recession. Check out this information from the UCC Children's Staff Table on The Situation of Children in this Recession .
May 19, 2009: Schott Foundation for Public Education releases Lost Opportunity: A 50 State Report on the Opportunity to Learn in America,
a startling new state-by-state analysis of public schools according
to two primary indicators: (1) an opportunity to learn index that
measures the odds of access for historically disadvantaged students to
enroll in a high school where nearly all students graduate on time and
are college ready, and (2) a school quality indicator---the percentage
of each state's 13-year-olds who score proficient or advanced on the
NAEP reading exam. Besides ranking the states, Schott concludes that
students of color and poor students have access to roughly half the
opportunity to learn of their more advantaged peers. The Schott
Foundation has been a leader in advocating that the reauthorization of
the Elementary and Secondary Education Act address unequal resources,
not merely test score outcomes. The report ends with recommendations
for the federal government.
May 2008 report, School Funding's Tragic Flaw, demonstrates how federal, state and local funding factors conspire to create the situation where the most public money is spent on the wealthiest children and the least public money spent on poor children. Basic, clear, and to the point.
Whose Child Left Behind? Why? Between 2001 and 2005 a UCC Public Education Task Force was charged by General Synod 23 to, "identify systemic barriers to excellent public education and to recommend strategies to address those barriers." Four years later and after reflecting on site visits to schools in greater Cleveland, Ohio; Phoenix, Arizona; Hartford, Connecticut; and Wartburg, Tennessee, the Task Force reported on, "inequality in inputs from one place to another. Vastly unequal investment will inevitably deny opportunity for the children who attend poorer facilities, in larger classes, and with less investment in teachers' salaries and ongoing training." A study guide for this resource appears in the 2006 Message on Public Education.
Our Faith Informs School Finance Debate Our decisions about the level of public investment and its distribution are ultimately ethical as well as economic questions. In a land of plenty will we commit generously to tend God's lambs, to seek the lost, to bring back the strayed, and to strengthen the weak?
Important Links:
Education Justice at the Education Law Center
New York, Campaign for Fiscal Equity
Ohio Coalition for Equity and Adequacy of School Funding
Ohio Fair Schools Campaign
Institute for Wisconsin's Future
Rural School and Community Trust
