Business-Managed Democracy

• Introduction

• School Funding
• Reduced Taxation
  • Budget Deficits
  • Federal and State Tax
  • Property Taxes
• Outcomes
• Underfunding
  • US School Poverty
  • US Funding Lawsuits
  • Australian Schools
• Funding Inequity
  • US Inequities
  • Private Schools
• References

• Commercialism

• Sponsored Materials

• Business Campaigns

• Schools as Businesses

• Standardised Curricula

• School Choice

• Privatising Schools


 

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Business-Managed Education

US School Funding Equity

In the US, there are enormous variations in government funding of schools because of the reliance on local taxes. The funding of schools varies from $3000 per student per year to $30,000. Much of this variation occurs within each state.

Rich people in the United States are able to buy some of the world’s finest education for their children, either in private academies or in well-financed, suburban, public-school districts. In contrast, children of the poor are often crowded into miserable rural or inner-city schools whose annual per-student support may be one-fifth or less of that in nearby, suburban publics schools… schools in slum neighbourhoods must contend with dangerous and decaying buildings, gross overcrowding, violence, and inadequate funding for even basic instruction.

Inequities are further exacerbated by the differing ability of parents to raise supplementary money for schools. While parents in poor districts struggle to raise a few thousand dollars for their schools, parents in wealthier districts raise tens of thousands and sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars for their schools.

US Funding Inequities – Some Figures

• 
  Reference: Jonathan Kozol, The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America, New York, Crown Publishers, 2005, pp. 45-6.
  In New York, government funding of schools can vary from $8000 per third grade child for a mainly black and hispanic urban school to $18,000 in a wealthy white suburb. This is despite evidence that low-income children need more help in schools than children from wealthy homes.
• 
  Reference: Winnie Hu and Ford Fessenden, ‘Data Show Wide Differences in New Jersey School Spending’, New York Times, 24 March, 2007.
  In New Jersey, government funding of schools can vary from $7400 to $33,800 per student.
  
• 
  Reference: Alison Cowan, ‘School's Deep-Pocketed Partners’, The New York Times, 3 June, 2007
  In Santa Monica and Malibu school districts funds raised by parent-teacher association vary between schools from $25,000 to $750,000 per year.
  
• 
  Reference: Jonathan Kozol, The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America, New York, Crown Publishers, 2005, pp. 45-6.
  Teachers in the wealthier schools can be paid over $40,000 more per year.
  
• 
  Reference: Jonathan Kozol, The Shame of the Nation: The Restoration of Apartheid Schooling in America, New York, Crown Publishers, 2005, p. 125.
  In suburban schools a typical class size is around 18 children whereas it is more like 30 in overcrowded urban schools.
• 
  Reference: ‘Urban Education’, University of Michigan, accessed July 2013.
  "31% of all students in the United States are concentrated in 1.5% of urban schools with total per person revenues that are only 89% of the average total pupil revenue."

Maine School Fundraising

The following table shows that in Maine the poorest school districts have to raise the largest amounts of money to operate their schools.

Links

• 'Equitable School Funding', University of Maine

Contributers' Updates and Examples

If you have any examples or updates you would like to contribute please email them to me and I will add them here. Please give references for where you sourced the information.