Name: Tyler Bischoff
The Overview
Why is School Funding Important
School funding exists as an issue today because parents always want their kids to get the best education possible and to get to the best schools possible. This creates an issue where people who can't afford to get their kids into the best school possible have their kids go to the local school.
Due to this only 57% of people in poverty could read at a basic reading level in 2005. While 81% of people not in poverty could read at a reading level above theirs.
​
School funding determines a lot of things in public schools. The amount of buses that the school can offer is a major thing that takes up a lot of a school's funding. This then determines how much a school can provide on free and reduced lunches for children who need that support. This also affects how many teachers a school has, as well as the quality of teachers that a school has. This can even trickle down to the support that schools can offer kids, the number of resources that kids have to learn with, and the available facilities at a school to provide extracurricular activities and opportunities to kids in school.
​
School funding determines a lot when it comes to kids' education and how low some states, districts, and schools are for funding, makes it very difficult for students and kids to get a good education when not all schools can afford to give them that good education.
​Concerns Around School Funding
The largest concerns come from schools needing to rely on property taxes to fund their schools. This can vary between wealthy areas and impoverished areas. These create funding gaps that leave many students out of luck when their neighborhoods have lower property taxes than others in wealthier neighborhoods. The additional concerns coming from district sizes also change funding levels. An EdBuild study shows that predominantly white districts are smaller, but receive more than 23 billion dollars in funding. This becomes a concern when larger districts that have a higher diverse race ultimately receive lower funding.
The concerns also come from the spending differences that can differ between states and counties. The differences can cause major differences in what kinda education different communities receive.
​
Many damaging concerns also come from not adapting to the increase in school populations. Many schools that have a high population density in the surrounding cities can provide larger funding such as New York or Connecticut, these schools are provided with more money and push to fund their schools better than others. According to the Economic Policy Institute, many schools that have low population density have less of a drive to provide funding for their schools. The takeaway is to look at how there is a problem with where funding is coming from and how we can help different socioeconomic classes get an equal education.
Solutions to School Funding issues
According to the School of Education Blogs, these funding inequalities that exist are not inevitable and there have been some k-12 funding reforms that have worked or are working. In Utah, school districts that serve low-income students receive approximately 21% more funding than districts serving affluent students. This kind of reform also happens in states such as Ohio, South Dakota, and Georgia.
​
Other states, such as Minnesota, Massachusetts, and New Jersey also have had success in some of their funding reforms. They have also been providing more funds to schools with disadvantaged students, but they have also done things such as raising the standards for teachers and principals and investing more money into pre-K programs to provide more access to quality early childhood programs.
These funding initiatives have so far worked out really well, especially in states such as Minnesota, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. These three states have all seen significant improvements in their states overall reading and math performance. This is especially relevant in New Jersey where the majority of the state population are minorities.
​
I believe that the investments made by the second set of states would be a really good way to increase the inequality gap that exists in school funding. This seems to have an effect on what has already been done and there is, what looks to be evidence backing this up.