Public schools in the United States of America provide basic education from kindergarten until the twelfth grade. This is provided free of charge for the students and parents, and it is mandated by the state. With the completion of this basic schooling, one obtains a high school diploma as certification of basic skills for employers. Although free to the population, many do not finish and obtain their diplomas due to personal hardships and differences in educational quality and available materials across different school districts.
Local property taxes provide most of the funding for public school and this varies in accordance to the relative affluence of each neighbourhood. Reduced funding can limit available electives, or advanced placement courses. Cases such as these limit students and causes inequality in education because there is no easy way to gain access to those courses since the education system might not view them as necessary. The public education system does provide the classes needed to obtain a General Education Development (GED) and obtain a job or pursue higher education. Most of the disadvantaged population includes those in a lower income city or neighborhood. This population mostly deals with minorities. As Kozol talks about in his book, racial inequality, school infrastructure, as well as neighborhoods, play a big factor in who gets funded more or less. Some of these kids end up dropping out because they no not have support from parents or school faculty.
State and Local role in Education Funding
According to the US department of Education, the Federal Government contributes about 8% to funding US public schools. To fund the remaining balance per student in the public education System, state and local governments are mandated to allocate money towards education. The state allocates a percentage of its revenue, from sales and income tax, to use towards education. The funds that are set aside for education are determined by the State constitutions, Propositions, and the incoming Government officials. According to the National Conference of state Legislatures, States provide structure, equality, fiscal accountability, stability and support to the public education systems per state. Each state varies the level of support that the schools receive with the implementation of legislation.
The Local government allocates education funding from the revenue generated by property tax and other fundraising efforts. Local officials have the ability to influence the rate of change of property taxes that are used to fund local expenditures, including education.
Due to the varied levels of income throughout states and within local communities, education funding suffers from inequalities where some communities have excessive funding and others are lacking important resources to support students. According to the research on Equity and Adequacy in School Funding, "much of the current litigation and legislative activity in education funding seeks to assure "adequacy", that is, a sufficient level of funding to deliver an adequate education to every student in the state."
Video Public school funding
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Source of article : Wikipedia
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