Sometimes it seems that the purpose of the false reform movement is to keep us diverted from the center ring, where America’s public schools are being starved of the resources they need while expected to do more and produce ever higher test scores.
While we battle rearguard actions to stop the attack on teachers and the escalating demands for more testing, elected officials defend privatization and implement tax caps (see Cuomo, Andrew, exhibit A).
Yet not all common sense has departed our fair land! In Kansas, the state’s high court ruled that the state must spend more on its schools.
“TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas must spend more money on its public schools, the state Supreme Court ruled Friday in a decision that could jeopardize Republican Gov. Sam Brownback’s desire to make his state a tax-cutting template for the nation.
“The high court’s ruling, which found that Kansas’ school funding isn’t constitutional, came in a 2010 lawsuit filed by parents and school districts. Instead of balking, Brownback and other leaders of the state’s GOP-dominated government said they were pleased because the decision stopped short of telling legislators exactly how much the state must spend on its schools overall, leaving that responsibility to a lower court.
“It was not an unreasonable decision,” Senate President Susan Wagle said. Republican leaders also believe the court left the Legislature substantial leeway in providing adequate aid to poor school districts and pledged to get it done before the session adjourns in late April or early May.
“Education advocates and attorneys for the parents and school districts saw the decision as a rebuke to the GOP-led state and in line with past court decisions that strongly and specifically laid out how much needed to be allocated to provide adequate education for every child.
“This decision is an important one in sending a message to states across the nation that need to reform their financing systems to get their house in order,” said David Sciarra, executive director of the Newark, N.J.-based Education Law Center, which filed a brief in the Kansas case.”
We are a country that likes flowery rhetoric about education and children, yet is unwilling to take care of our children, nearly a quarter of whom live in poverty and unwilling to fund our schools equitably so that all public schools have the resources they need.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The Republicans are all about “states rights” when it serves their interests. Individual states do have the option of funding their own educational needs, without federal aid.
“PublicPolicyPolling @ppppolls Mar 7
When we polled KS recently we found by a 59/29 spread the voters hoped the Supreme Court would rule funding for schools had to be increased”
People want their public schools funded, but our lawmakers aren’t listening to us. They continue to focus on opening privatized schools, funding private schools, and an endless, gimmicky, faddish list of measurement schemes for students, teachers and schools.
Every poll says people want public schools funded. Every politician talks about everything BUT funding. Obviously, they don’t care what we think.
I laugh that politicians in Kansas are OUTRAGED that a court had to step in. They aren’t doing their job and they’re mad that a court had to, that they went so far they actually violated state law?
Why don’t they do their job, then? How much time did they spend last session on the latest teacher measurement scheme? Maybe they should be figuring out a way to fund their public schools. Worry about doing their own job, instead of someone else’s.
Nice to have some legal precedent to accompany all the data! Good post!
Public schools in the U.S. spend more money per student than any country in the history of the world. Whatever issues we have in this country with respect to education, money is not the problem, and money will not fix the problem.
Baloney. Take your talking points somewhere else. Repeating a lie often enough doesn’t make it the truth.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-education-spending-tops-global-list-study-shows/
If you have data that shows otherwise, feel free to share it.
Then please tell President Obama that the $30,000+ he’s spending on his daughters’ educations (each) is wasted money.
And you actually believe that if we spent that much per pupil everywhere that we would get the same results?
Ah btgiv, that is the thing…that $30,000 WELL spent would make a huge difference. That $30,000 spent on PROVEN actions would do great things…like smaller class size, especially in high-poverty schools….like universal preK….like wraparound health and human services at the school level…like after school programs of enrighment and tutoring…definately NOT on all these unproven and proven-to-be-wrong things like….charter schools and vouchers….more and more tests….value-added evaluations…merit pay….exorbitant salaries for charter school CEOs…all the reformy bs…
I agree with you about the suckiness of all the reformy stuff, but I don’t think there is any program you can design that will accomplish what you think it will. The experience of Kansas City should tell us that pretty well:
http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/roddreher/2010/03/why-did-kansas-citys-public-schools-fail.html
Now I know that the first impulse is to criticize this or that about how KC did things and to argue that “if only they had done this other thing” everything would’ve been fine, but experience does not support that belief.
Sidwell Friends does not deliver a $30k education — it delivers exclusivity. And the exclusivity of its students explains its academic success. Spend the same money in Podunk, Arkansas and the results will pretty much be what they are now. Spend only $10k per student at Sidwell, and the results would not change much there, either.
Hey! Podunk, Arkansas is my Alma Mater. By asserting that the quality of education is determined solely by socio-economic status, aren’t you simply defending the status quo?
btgiv–your right in that giving more money per student isn’t going to change any low performing school, and may I add, as long as reformers are running the show.
But what money can do is to provide services to low performing schools that are not necessary in high performing schools. If you believe that every child has individuals needs, so do schools.
On the other hand, we are seeing kids even in high performing schools with a rise in autism, behavioral issues, undiagnosed psychological problems (anxiety, post-traumatic syndrome, ADHD, other mental health issues). I’m not a psychiatrist, but just perhaps testing and standards are eating away at kids and teachers not to mention that many come to school with these symptoms.
Those damn rubrics that ruin self-esteem and well-being. How can a kid set/reach his/her own goal when the goal has already been determined?
Money paying for the right things is what it’s about.
Are you saying to just keep cutting? What is your point? Taxpayers want their money used to educate their children, not line the pockets of charter CEOs
In Ohio, Bill Phillis has been working on this inequity in Ohio schools since 1992. Courts ruled that the funding here is inadequate. NOTHING substantive has been done here to alleviate the problem. Schools and teachers have been required to do more, much more, with less. The only way the districts could afford much of the demands was to flatline teacher salaries. The monies from RttT don’t actually go to the district but to the “consultants” who show up once for a half hour and leave teachers with questions, not answers. The process is despicable.
Indeed. In Ohio the courts tell the legislature their funding of public ed is unconstitutional and the legislature simply ignores the ruling. Forgive my cynicism, but keep track of Kansas and their ed funding after this moment.
Ask poor kids who attend schools that receive less dollars than their wealthier counterparts at schools across town if money doesn’t make a difference. We have inequity in funding across this country while other countries spend equally among all. I worked in a high poverty school for 20 years and recently worked in private schools in the same community (yes, public dollars spent serving kids with speech impairments in private schools) Money makes a big difference for kids in well funded schools.
Don’t all state constitutions have something in each of them about it being the state’s responsibility to adequately fund PUBLIC education? How do they get away with it? Why do they allow the federal government to keep setting these unfunded mandates? Isn’t it time to say “enough is enough”?
You could say that about a LOT of things the states put up with these days. Why do the states allow the feds to armtwist them with RttT money and NCLB waivers?