What Are the Real Problems with American Public Schools?

By Roberta.

This is the last post on education in this series.

Part 6 Competing Demands for Funds

In all modern western societies there are competing demands for tax dollars. The elderly Vs children. Education Vs health care. Military Vs social issues. Cities Vs rural areas. Big business Vs small business. Higher education Vs elementary and secondary education. It is difficult even in good economic times to balance all of the competing demands, needs, and wants of constituents for tax dollars.

Demands For Health Care

There have always been restraints on local, state, and federal budgets. However, since the end of World War II expenditures for heath care have especially strained public budgets at all levels of government.

Since the 1950's Americans have spent huge sums on health care. Health insurance has long roots in America but really took off in the 1940's during WW II when there were labor shortages and the government imposed wage controls. To attract more workers many employers began to offer health insurance as a fringe benefit. Except for a few plans in the public sector, this was the start of employer based and paid for group health insurance plans. (Source: Associated Content, Inc.) In 1942 Congress gave employers tax deductions for heath insurance plans, and in 1943 made employer-provided health benefits tax exempt for employees. Due to these tax breaks enrollment in these plans soon jumped from 7 million to 26 million, or 20% of the population.

By 1950, now that 20% of the population had health insurance, the cost of insurance began to rise. As Gomer Pyle would say, "SURPRISE. SURPRISE. SURPRISE!!!!!" National health care expenditures that year were $12.7 billion, or 4.5% of the Gross National Product (GNP.) That very same year, and under pressure from the American Medical Association, most states agreed to bar prepaid monthly group fees and replace them with fee-for-service provider plans. The fee for service model has been with us ever since and is one of the big reasons medical costs are so high in America.

Ten years later, in 1960 health care spending had more than doubled and was $27 billion, 5.1% of GNP. By 1970 health care spending was $73 billion, 7.1% of GDP. By 1980 health care spending was now three times higher than in 1970, and at $257 billion, about 10% of GNP. Also in the eighties, Reagan under his new federalism program transferred a lot of the costs of insurance and public-aid programs to state and local governments.


Now how does all this relate to schools and education? If you remember from earlier posts (Parts 2 and 3) public schools receive the largest share of their funding from the local community and the individual states, not from the federal government. Now under Reagan a larger share of health care was shifted to local and state government. The feds were supposed to send federal dollars to help offset this additional burden on states and local governments. I am sure I don't need to tell you how that turned out. Since the 1980's while local and state taxes have increased, the costs of health care has increased even more. Therefore, the amount of tax revenues that is left and that can go to education has shrunk accordingly. Public expenditures on education have only managed modest increases since Reagan because they are competing for funds with the ever increasing health care monster.

Source for the figures in the previous two paragraphs are from here.

Military Spending

Another huge competing demand for tax monies these days is the military budget. More money for the military simply means less money for other important programs, including education. We saw this recently with Bush's War in Iraq. Specifically, due to the ever increasing money pit of Iraq, Bush never did fully fund No Child Left Behind. Therefore NCLB, while helping to raise reading scores in some districts, was not able to achieve as much as it could have and should have had it been fully funded. The military budget and increasing demands for homeland security competed for tax dollars and again schools and children lost out.

Reflecting this trend in many teachers' lounges across the nation these days you will see a poster that says, "It will be a great day when our schools have all the money they need and the Navy has to hold a bake sale to buy a ship."

Personal Profiteering

There is more, even worse, regarding competing demands and NCLB. There is the Bush family's profiting from NCLB. An executive of one of the major elementary textbook and testing companies is a longstanding close friend of the Bush family and sits on the Board of the Barbara Bush Foundation for Family Literacy. Initially it looked as if the NCLB bill would make this company the only company that would be approved to sell reading textbooks and supplies to NCLB schools. The other major textbook companies cried fowl and lobbied and got that provision stricken from the bill. Nevertheless, there was much pressure in some districts to purchase reading materials from this one publisher.

Then there is the story of Neil Bush whose company sells educational computer software and testing materials. Bush's company has greatly benefited from the NCLB federal funds. Talk about your basic family profiteering! Again, politics and money was more important than teaching children to read. This is the ultimate and most cynical of competing demands for funding.

Special Education

The last competing demand for funds I want to talk about is special education. In 1975 Congress passed the Individual With Disabilities Act (IDEA) a companion piece to the Education for All Handicapped Children's Act. IDEA requires that school districts must provide a free appropriate public education in the least restrictive environment to children with disabilities, no matter how high or low those costs are.

According to The New America Foundation, "The population of students identified as disabled has grown twice as quickly as the general education population. During the twenty year period between the 1984 and 2004, the special education population increased by 36 percent. In contrast and during that same period, the general education population increased by only 20 percent..."

"Primarily because of the quickly expanding population of children with disabilities, special education spending has increased at a much faster rate than general elementary and secondary education spending. "In 1987, state funding accounted for 56 percent of special education spending and local funding accounted for only 36 percent. In 1999-2000, the average state share of special education spending had dropped to 45 percent, and the average local contribution had risen to 46 percent, based on data from 39 states." (Source: The New American Foundation)

Bottom line, with the federal and state share of educating children with disabilities falling, the costs have more and more been shifted to local school districts. Some school districts have estimated that about 30% of all new money they receive from local tax dollars is now, by law, allocated for special education programs.

None of this in any way should be construed to mean that America should not educate children with disabilities. Special education and children with disabilities are a legitimate competing demand on our nation's limited resources. Living up to the lofty philosophy of the Declaration of Independence, "That all men are created equal," costs money in the real world of competing demands for resources.

In closing, if the economy worsens these competing demands on our limited tax dollars will only get tighter as regards funding schools and our children's education. We all have to learn to live with less. Many schools have already tightened their belts and have cut teachers and other staff, tutoring programs, extra curricular programs, after school programs, summer school, new textbooks, and more. The saddest part of all this is that the end result may be that the gains made in reading, math, and science recently may suffer setbacks.

As we balance these conflicting demands for tax dollars we as a nation would do well to remember what Thomas Jefferson said, "If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and will never be." Or as Robin Cook said, "Education is more than a luxury; it is a responsibility that society owes to itself."