Our preoccupation with the immediate crisis of financial capital is causing us to overlook the bigger crisis in America's human capital. While we commit hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars to Wall Street, we're slashing our outlays for public education.
Education is largely funded by state and local governments whose revenues are plummeting. As consumers cut back, state sales and income taxes are shrinking; three quarters of the states are already facing budget crises. State revenues account for about half of public school budgets and most funding of public colleges and universities. In addition, as home values drop, local property taxes take a hit. Local property taxes account for 40 percent of local school budgets, on average.The result, across the nation: Teachers are being laid off and new hiring frozen, after-school programs cut, so called "noncritical" subjects like history eliminated, schools closed, and tuitions hiked at state colleges and universities.
It's absurd. We're bailing out every major bank to get financial capital flowing again. But we're squeezing the main sources of our nation's human capital. Yet America's future competitiveness and the standard of living of our people depend largely our peoples' skills, and our capacities to communicate and solve problems and innovate not on our ability to borrow money.
It's our human capital that's in short supply. And without adequate public funding, the supply will shrink further. Don't get me wrong: I'm not saying funding is everything when it comes to education. Obviously, accountability is critical. But without adequate funding we can't attract talented people into teaching, or keep class sizes small enough to give kids a real chance to learn, or provide them with a well-rounded curriculum, and ensure that every qualified young person can go to college.
So why are we bailing out Wall Street and not our nation's public schools and colleges? Partly because the crisis in financial capital is immediate while our human capital crisis is unfolding gradually. Headlines scream what's happening to our money but not to our kids.
As our state stares a $3.5 billion budget deficit in the face and as our school division considers what and whom will be axed, Reich's words ring with a sense of authenticity. When will people wake up and start investing in the foundation of education in our country?
Some will say that the educational system has all the money it needs and that there is tons of waste embedded within the system. As a teacher, I've learned that there is some merit to those arguments. Waste does exist in the educational structures, but that waste generally is does not filter down and enrich anyone at the teacher/student/classroom level.
The greatest waste both financially and instructionally is the propagation of the ridiculous national and state accountability systems. These mandates, which are easily recognized by their acronyms- SOL, NCLB, and AYP, strike fear into the hearts of communities, administrators, teachers, and students. The tacit threats attached to them have encouraged the development of a seemingly slimy accountability business resplendent with guides, formative assessments, data-driven analyzation tools, and testing materials all peddled to frightened school divisions by data sharks.
The ultimate result of this destructive movement, is that the real art and process of teaching has become hopelessly caged and filtered. The intentions may have originally been good, but the results have been destructive.
So I'm with Reich. We do need to bail out the public education system in America. We need to bail out of the myopic accountability mandates. Accountibility is important. Teachers must be accountable for what they teach, but parents and students must be held accountable for their end of the bargain as well. We need to bail out of inferior funding formulas for our schools. State and local governments must be held accountable for providing funding that is more than basic. The nonsensical SOQ game our state plays with public school funding as it seeks to further and further reduce and shirk its responsibility for fully funding its share of the budgets for our public schools needs to stop. We need to improve the physical infrastructure of our schools, reduce class size, fully fund preschool initiatives, and attract highly qualified professionals with highly attractive wages and benefits. Education needs to be the priority.
If you don't bail out a canoe as it charges head-long down a turbulent stream, it will eventually sink.
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