Mislabeled as Disabled by Kalman R. Hettleman

Author:Kalman R. Hettleman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: EDU026020 Education / Special Education / Learning Disabilities, EDU034000 Education / Educational Policy & Reform / General, EDU029020 Education / Teaching Methods & Materials / Reading & Phonics
Publisher: Radius Book Group

A Federal Guarantee of Adequate School Funding

Even apart from rock-bottom states like Texas and Mississippi, states like California and Colorado spend about $4000 per child (roughly $100,000 per classroom) less than Maryland.15 These disparities are far more than differences in regional costs of living.

Are the kids in the lesser-spending states just out of luck? Should each child’s ability to learn to read depend on which state or school district she/he lives in? It takes someone pretty hardheaded and hardhearted to say, well tough luck. That’s just the way public schools are run (and run down) in our country.

That the system works this way is another count in the national indictment of educational abuse. There is no rational reason why states should vary so dramatically in the educational opportunity afforded their schoolchildren. This book’s Chapter 8 describes the folly of state and local control of some basic elements of K-12 schooling. For example, how does it make sense that most of the 50 states and about 15,000 school districts have different standards for English, math, science, and social studies and different tests that measure proficiency in those subjects? And with specific reference to the educational abuse of struggling learners, why should there be vast differences in the amounts spent per child on RTI and special education based solely on where a child lives, bearing in mind that where a child lives and attends school is closely correlated with economic and racial class?

The answers to these questions are self-evident. And so is the fact that there is no rational reason why adequate school funding should not be realized nationwide for all struggling learners. As a condition of federal aid, Congress could require states to fund adequate education on a wealth-equalized basis. That is, the amount of federal aid would be based on equal tax effort by the states, taking into account their relative taxable wealth.

With so many of our students ill-prepared for higher education, the workforce and civic participation, we are, in the title of the famous 1983 report on the state of our public schools, “A Nation at Risk.”16 We’re more at risk now than ever. As a nation! And so there must be national action to address the failure of state and local governments and school systems.

A federal guarantee of adequacy is not as far-fetched as you may think. Polls, time after time, year after year, show that taxpayers will pay for higher school spending if they think the money will be well spent. And it can be accomplished without forcing state and local school systems to relinquish major control, as shortly discussed. Sooner rather than later—aided by the political strategies outlined in Part IV of this book—we may as a nation come to our senses and truly guarantee equal educational opportunity for all our children.

Still, more money is not all that Us/we owe our schools. There are two other insufficiently understood ways in which we impede school reforms including RTI. One is micro-management, the other is the “disability of ideology.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.