As the fiscal year turns wearily on its rusty axis, school districts nationwide are finding themselves once again strapped for funding. According to the Wisconsin State Journal, Madison's school district, renowned for increasing its number of high-scoring low-income and minority students, must cut around $10.5 million from its budget. Sadly, the district may be forced to cut the very programs that have helped Madison public schools produce such successful students.
Programs designed to limit classroom sizes, such as Student Achievement Guarantee in Education, are currently the first items being considered for elimination from the budget. The Wisconsin State Journal also reported that school districts statewide have been struggling to keep Student Achievement Guarantee Education, which focuses on maintaining 15 students per K-3 classroom and has significantly raised achievement in levels of students from typically low-scoring backgrounds. Seventeen percent of the districts dropped the program in the last six years, and that percentage will most likely rise over time.
The school districts in Madison and all over Wisconsin are restricted by the state's funding methods. Fourteen years ago, in 1993 (feeling old yet?), Wisconsin voted to impose revenue caps, or revenue limits, on the public school system. Public schools draw their funding from local property taxes and the state, and revenue caps determine the amount of money schools can use based on the number of enrolled students.
The system of revenue caps is sorely imperfect. Schools do not pay for everything on a per-student basis. If enrollment declines — as it has by 60 percent statewide — primary schools spend less on, say, crayons and other paintstuffs, but still must cover the costs of heating, public transportation, etc., which not only remain constant but continue to rise. Also, if the enrollment decline is spread across several grades, solving budget issues won't be as simple as eliminating a teacher or two without increasing class sizes.
These problems are compounded on a national level. The No Child Left Behind Act, encouraged for renewal during the recent State of the Union Address, stipulates that a child at a "failing" school may, if he (in a gender-neutral sense) chooses, move to a nearby, better-performing school. This provision may work well for an individual student, but hurts the school he leaves behind along with the students who are unable or too unmotivated to leave, due to the declining enrollment issues mentioned above. While No Child Left Behind does offer Title I grants to schools with higher percentages of low-income students, the grants may only be used to offer poor students programs such as tutoring or after-school programs. The use of these supplementary education tactics is ineffective. While there is a tendency for economically disadvantaged students to under perform, focusing solely on those students ignores the fact that the impoverished do not universally receive poor grades and should not be the ultimate target for federal funding in the education arena. Rather, it should be the ones who are actually struggling with the material. Improving basic needs of the school, such as class sizes, would benefit everyone by granting more individualized attention but negate the need for private tutoring. Yet under the current federal system, only schools with a high percentage of impoverished students — more than 40 percent — may use most of their federal education funding for schoolwide programs. I'm not even going to discuss the pratfall of standardized testing — I simply don't have the space or the relevancy to address it here.
For additional funding, school boards must struggle to invoke the generosity of the locals through referendums. Sadly, most of the hard-pressed districts' constituents appear to be either apathetic or, judging by the easily spotted stereotype at school board meetings, covetous retirees who prefer to huddle inside their estates, pleased by the scent of barely taxed property. As the Wisconsin State Journal reported, fewer than half of nearly 900 referendums in Wisconsin passed since 2000. As final recourse, schools have little choice but to cut programs that would otherwise be offered to improve the performance of their typically low-scoring students.
The ridiculousness of relying on referendums to provide sufficient revenue can be seen if we apply the case to the state, or even national, level. The national budget is not posted as a referendum because the majority of North-Central Americans is governed by apathy, ignorance, self-interest or easily manipulated emotions. Instead, we elect candidates based not on their qualifications but instead on the state of their secular diocese compared to when they first took office (to paraphrase the Gipper). They must keep their constituents in mind when making legislative decisions, and come re-election season, if the state of their district is so awful they can't lie their way around it, they get booted. The same checks apply even more so on a local level, where the impact of property taxes is felt more directly. More credit should be given to the local level to decide what our schools need and what is worth the cost.
Jack Garigliano ([email protected]) is a freshman majoring in English.
