Pro vs Con

The federal government has never met the pledge to fund the costs of educating the disabled. And now it's failing its part in keeping college affordable. In 1975-76 a Pell grant covered 84% of tuition at a four-year public school—now it only covers 40%.

Everyone knows teachers aren't paid well, especially in comparison to their importance. The reality is that teacher pay has decreased by more than 3% over the past 10 years when adjusted for inflation. We will soon face the largest wave of teacher retirements ever, and younger teachers are leaving the classroom at alarming rates. This is a market-based society. Salaries have to be competitive. Surveys show that teachers are less likely to leave schools with competitive pay.

We all want kids to learn and get a good education. Standards and testing are important, but we need to move beyond snapshots on a standardized test. We must evaluate portfolios of work over time, graduation and dropout rates and teacher retention and training. In the end, however, it isn't enough to measure the problem—we've got to support the reforms and invest the necessary resources to enact a solution.

Sure, there are bad schools that waste money. But too often schools are the scapegoat, serving as the front line in dealing with problems outside the classroom. Kids who go hungry, or who don't have decent access to health care, or who come from a troubled family background have a harder time learning. A child who is sick and lacks medical attention has a hard time concentrating. Schools in poor neighborhoods do worse in large part because of what happens outside the classroom not what happens inside.

Bush and Congress broke the president's promise to fund the No Child Left Behind law, leaving it short by more than $13 billion for 2006 alone, with more than $55 billion in broken promises since the law was enacted [1]. Given this failure it should be no surprise that so many schools are being labeled "in need of improvement." The testing involved in the NCLB program deters teachers from actually teaching, instead public school teachers are spending increasing amounts of time teaching to the test and promoting "rote memorization and a drill and grill" learning, not intellectual development [2].

We know how to build public schools that work—we do it in communities across America. But it takes resources, reforms, accountability, and skilled teachers. We need to provide the basics to every child. That will take more investment not less.