The state of education

The biggest adjustment we've made lately hasn't been moving to our new house, but rather adjusting to our son's new schedule at school. Last year, kindergarten was only 2.5 hours every morning. He learned an amazing amount that year in a short amount of time, in no small part due to his terrific kindergarten teacher.

Let me pause for a moment to give kudos to elementary school teacher, particularly those that teach kindergarten, first grade, and second grade. Some days I have trouble handling my own two kids, much less 22 kids (or, god forbid, in some schools, 32 kids). A teacher that teaches well at the elementary level is a special person. Watching my son with his kindergarten and first grade teacher reminds me of how much I love my own elementary school teachers. They really are like having a second mom.

Most of the teachers I know are doing a terrific job with the resources that they are given. My complaint is with the apparent lack of those resources.

When I was in elementary school (in the 1970s), schools didn't lack for funding. I assume that this is because the government gave enough money to the schools. But lately, it seems like every time the doorbell rings, it's a kid selling something for his school. Have we really resorted to having our children begging so that they can be properly educated? The schools have Market Day, which I'm sure is a huge windfall for the company that created it and not a huge profit for the school. Kids sell wrapping paper, candy, and other miscellanea.

In large part, I assume this is due to lack of government funding. And that, I believe, is due to a huge problem that we have with our political system. The senators and congressman making decisions about our education live in upscale towns with the best schools or send kids to private school. They make decisions about national health care, meanwhile they have their own terrific health care plan. They decide about social security when they receive pensions, honoraria for speeches, book deals, and who knows what else from their constituents. They send our children into war when few of their own children are in the military. I would really like to see our legislative branch populated with the common man who wants to contribute to the greater good, rather than a bunch of greedy rich lawyers who want to make a career of taking legal bribes from lobbyists. There should be reasonable salaries and term limits, and some restriction on donations and lobbying. This myth that is takes years just to learn the system is a crock. I learned most of the legislative system watching "I'm Just a Bill" on SchoolHouse Rock on Saturday morning when I was 7.

Another problem is the growing tutoring industry. Of course, if your child needs extra help, you have plenty of money, and you don't have time or the ability to provide it yourself, you will send them to a tutoring company. That's what will benefit your child and who can blame you. But your child can only get tutoring if you can afford it. I assume a larger percentage of lower income children need help, but they can't afford it.

The worst part is that the government is now paying for the tutoring! If children are underperforming according to the standards of the No Child Left Behind Act, the school can pay a private tutoring company to tutor them! That is outrageous! Why doesn't the government just give that money to the schools for more teachers and resources? Because then big business wouldn't be getting its cut. And that cut is estimated to be in the billions.

And don't get me started on No Child Left Behind. This is probably the worst education initiative in our lifetime. The teachers are now "teaching the test" to their students. They spend too much time preparing the students to perform well on the test, and too little time teaching them things like, oh I don't know, reading, writing, math, science, history, etc. Teachers are penalized or reprimanded if their students aren't up to par. The economist Steven Levitt proved that teachers in the Chicago Public School system were cheating for their students on the standardized tests. When the teachers inflate the test results of underperforming children, then those children won't get the help that they need. And let's not forget that No Child Left Behind is underfunded by anywhere from $6 to $27 billion.

You may argue that with donations and selling items for schools, the people who want to support the school get the opportunity, and those that don't want to can just pass. But education benefits everyone and therefore everyone should bear the burden. Who do you think will be running this country when you are old? Who do you think will take care of you when you are in a nursing home? Would you rather have educated or ignorant people making the decisions that affect your life? Life in an educated society is better for everyone in that society, not just the educated people.

The nearby town of Huntley is very fast growing. They grew from 6,000 in 2000, to 12,000 in 2003, to 18,000 in 2005. Almost 10,000 of those residents are retirees that live in Sun City. They banded together to fail a school referendum in early 2004 almost 10 to 1, partially due to low voter turnout among people with school-aged children. Later that same year, another referendum passed with a higher voter turnout. The Sun City residents complained that they couldn't afford the tax increase due to their fixed income. Hey, they chose to move into one of the fastest growing cities in Illinois! The lesson learned by the children of Huntley is "look out for #1". It will be amusing in 24 years when those kids have grown up, outnumber the retirees by 4 to 1, and decide "Hey, let's burn down Sun City and throw those old people in the street."

Another part of this problem is how Illinois funds their schools. The school gets its funding for the current school year based on how many children were enrolled at the start of the previous school year. Not the end, mind you, and not a projection. This means that in a town with a constantly growing population, the school is always underfunded.

It doesn't help that maximum impact fees are rarely charged to home developers. Impact fees are those paid by developers for each house built, as a stopgap for the year in which no property taxes will be paid on the new home. In Oswego, the population doubled from 2000 to 2005. In 2003, it was reported that no developer had ever paid the maximum impact fee. Deals were always made to entice the developers to build. Frankly, the developers don't need any enticement to build, since they're falling all over each other to get into growing towns like this. And the difference between the maximum and the average is probably $1000 to $2000, which a developer can certainly afford; but more than that, they can just pass that cost directly onto the buyer! Someone that will buy a house for $249,000 will certainly buy it for $251,000. Once again, big business gets a break while the people of the community get screwed.

So back to the topic at hand, lack of school funds. In addition to sending the students out begging, the school is constantly barraging us with requests for volunteers in the classrooms and library. While my wife does volunteer at the school, I feel that we are already paying for the school (in the form of property taxes) and shouldn't need to contribute more. But since we believe in the greater good, my wife does volunteer.

I hope that with the recent changes in Congress, we'll see some improvement in educational funding. But since big business donates billions of dollars to elect our politicians and spend billions more on lobbying, who is more likely to benefit from new legislation - big business or me and you?

- schneid