Blog #7 school funding

After listening to the class debate, reading peer blogs and reading articles on line, I realized just how much school funding inequities are affecting not only Illinois, but the entire country. It is not a fair statement to say that all children in the United States receive an equal education. Because schools receive the majority of funds from property value, the schools in affluent areas receive far more money per student then the schools do in poor areas, creating extremely unequal educational opportunities for children living in poverty stricken areas. With this system in place, poor children are at an incredible academic disadvantage. http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Cyprus/6547/classwar.html
With all of the out of school factors that children in poor areas face, such as abuse, malnourishment, neglect, poor living conditions, broken families, drug and alcohol issues among family members etc… unequal school funding just adds to the injustice. In my opinion, unequal school funding is largely to blame for the continuation of the cycle of poverty. It was stated in http://www.geocities.com/schoolfunding/equity.html that, “The current funding situation creates a typical catch 22--poor districts cannot afford to fund their schools because of a poverty level that is virtually guaranteed by lack of educational funding. Depriving students in poor communities of their ability to succeed after graduation essentially serves to institutionalize a caste system in the United States—one from which children in impoverished neighborhoods can entertain little hope of escaping.”
Public school funding inequities in the United States is not only an issue of SES, but also an issue of race. “African American and Latino students are consistently over-represented in those districts that lack adequate funding for education. This racial bias in educational resources can help to explain, amongst other things, lower SAT scores, grade point averages, and college achievement, as well as higher rates of remedial education amongst African American and other students of color.”
http://www2.edtrust.org/NR/rdonlyres/31D276EF-72E1-458A-8C71-E3D262A4C91E/0/FundingGap2005.pdf