Joy Resmovits of the Huffington Post is quickly becoming established as among the very best education journalists in the nation.
She is thoughtful, clear, and gathers the facts judiciously.
In this article, she shows the immense damage done to children by budget cuts.
Budget cuts invariably mean laying off teachers, since teachers’ salaries are a big expense item.
Every time teachers are laid off, class sizes increase.
When class sizes increase, the remaining teachers have less time to help children who have difficulty learning, and less time for individual teaching.
The children who need help the most will suffer the most.
As states and cities “save” money by cutting the budget of schools and increasing class size, they guarantee far larger costs in the future as students arrive in the next grade in need of remediation and suffer the consequences of the cuts imposed now.
If our country doesn’t meet these issues with courage and intelligence, we will pay the bill for decades to come.
Cutting the budget for schools is the wrong way to deal with austerity.
It is time for “revenue enhancement,” the euphemism for taxes, levied on those who can best afford to pay them.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
There has been 4 straight years of budget cuts (called austerity on the world stage) at my school in Brooklyn, New York. Larger classes has been just one of the major effects of these cuts to our funding. Our seniors, who came to our school because of the promise of four years of math and science, as well as a diverse selection of electives, are now mostly only taking the minimum amount of courses, which does not include electives, math, or science. The budget cuts meant a tremendous cut in our after-school programs. Our students do not want to go home and sit in front of a computer by themselves, yet schools are increasingly telling our children to leave at 3:00 instead of offering robust after-school activities that will foster creativity while keeping our children “off the streets”.
Many people like hearing that “government” is being trimmed down and our city agencies are spending less, but do they really understand what the term “budget cuts” entails. It means a decrease in the amount of funding for; plays, musicals, dancing and drama clubs, yearbook, and newspaper. These activities help our students gain the necessary skills to compete in the globalized business world, skills such as innovation, collaboration, and the ability to produce results. The loss of courses has resulted in our children leaving school with less Math and Science just when they need it most. Electives such as Psychology, Criminal and Constitutional Law, Forensic Science, Organic Chemistry, Public Speaking and Debate, among others help nurture critical thinking skills of analysis and evaluation while exposing our children to subjects outside of the core that they may want to further pursue in college.
I must inevitably get political here, I tend to subscribe to Paul Krugman’s theory on how to solve the current economic problem. We should have spent more money not less. America and it’s localities should have reinvested more funding for schools to stay open after 3:00 and offer more courses for STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) clubs, more money could be used to better equip our schools with the latest technologies, we should have brought more teachers in with different specialties and added additional courses, and of course we should have reduced class sizes so that each child receives the individualized attention that he/she needs and deserves. Increased investment in our schools would not have immediate results for our children (although it would have kept thousands if not millions of educators at work and off the unemployment lines), but in years to come the country would see results that could never be measured by any standardized test. Our children would have learned invaluable skills from creating more science projects, exciting plays or musicals on stage, how to play instruments, and the ability to develop publications. These are skills that would help our country continue to lead the world in innovation. Extra money for our schools would have meant that our children entered college with a diverse academic background because of all the different courses they took. Instead we are now sending our children into the world with a limited academic background and little hands-on experience that comes from extra-curricular activities. All in the name of budget cuts.
People will tell me the local and national governments simply didn’t have the money so we had to have austerity, but somehow they found the funds to pay private text-book and consulting companies to develop countless tests and standards that have no real world meaning for our students.
Mike Schirtzer
Teacher- Leon M. Goldstein High School for the Sciences
Member of- Movement of Rank & File Educators- Social Justice Caucus of UFT
All I can say, is EXCELLENT!
Mike is right. We are a cash-rich nation, not broke. Banks and corporations now have about $3 TRILLION in cash on hand which they refuse to invest, spend, pay higher wages with, hire more workers with, or pay their taxes on. There is absolutely no reason to cut public schl budgets which disastrously increase class size and diminish school capacity. The only reason to cut budgets is to free up funds to transfer to the pvt charter startups, the testing companies, and the CEOs of these outfits. It’s a money-raid on public schools.
Mike’s comment will be posted in a couple of hours.
Diane
thank you for your inspirational speech yesterday at AFT Diane
Yes, thanks Diane. Was it covered by any of NY media?
And thank you Mike for posting this. When are PARENTS going to realize that our children are losing while charter school directors are earning salaries of $400, 000? It’s outrageous.
In our district, the taxpayers turned down raises for our teachers 3 years in a row. The economy suffered and it showed at the voting booth. I don’t think people wanted to punish teachers, I think it was the harsh reality of what people were facing.
Our district then went out and bought a large screen tv for the “media room”.
Oddly enough, they had enough cash to buy and install a large screen tv in the media room, one of the years the teachers went without a raise.
A pathetic message to taxpayers and teachers!!
Yes budgets can be cut if they are spending money on large screen tv’s.
” I don’t think people wanted to punish teachers, I think it was the harsh reality of what people were facing.”
Yes, there is a grain of truth in what you say. Most people I talk with admire the teachers for doing what we do. And many folks have lost much if not all their wealth, I know too many who lost jobs, couldn’t find another and subsequently lost their homes.
But the “harsh reality” to which you refer has been manufactured by those who have made a killing off of those less “fortunate”-those who prosper in these types of times are many times less ethical/conscientious/caring than the average person. Yes, they have rationalized it all in their own mind and it all may be legal. But legal is not necessarily what is just, just what those with the power and money determine to be in their interests. “Some will rob you with a six gun, and others with a fountain pen.” Woody Guthrie.
“It is time for “revenue enhancement,” the euphemism for taxes, levied on those who can best afford to pay them.”
Socialist! HA HA !!
Joke will be on them when the system comes crashing down for lack of equitable distribution of resources/income/wealth..
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Check out this NEA short film “Crowded Out” (27 minutes) from the 1950’s. It chronicles a good teacher, Miss Roberts, who decides to resign because her classroom has become so overcrowded due to the postwar baby boom and rapid suburban growth. After showing how creative and differentiated her classroom was, it shows how she is now unable to provide a good education to her students because there are too many and not enough resources to go around. It features a parent who is very angry about her daughter’s reading problems until she visits the school and sees the realities of overcrowding.
http://archive.org/details/crowded_out
The parallels between 50+ years ago and today are fascinating to see.
Thanks for the link. You bet there are parallels.
This is priceless. I love how they were advocating for differentiation and small group work!