For as long as they’ve been around, charter schools have been a controversial topic in education.
But the federal government has the power to settle this beef once and for all: Stop pitting schools against each other for funding and provide all schools with adequate budgets.
Despite what you may have heard, America has the money to do this.
Charter schools are publicly funded, but work independently of a hometown district. They are typically based around an academic subject such as arts, languages, or science. The schools aren’t subject to the authority of an elected school committee and have a legal pass around some of the state’s educational and special education requirements. Students interested in attending a charter apply through a blind lottery. The state has 81 charter schools right now, and a waiting list of more than 37,000 students.
The schools are funded by the per-student fees charged to traditional public schools that are sending students to charters — money that would otherwise stay in-district and aid the whole school district. So, if a school district is underperforming and students are fleeing it in droves for charters and school choice, the poor school becomes poorer and its chances of reclaiming academic excellence start looking like receivership.
The funding system is perhaps the most egregious problem with charters. The lack of public oversight and low enrollments from special education and non-native English speaking students aside, the fact that charters are set up to rob Peter to pay Paul — and both Peter and Paul are kids — is an asinine way to prepare a country for its future.
Since 2001’s ironically named No Child Left Behind, the federal government has established many rules about how public education should be delivered in the U.S. The deal with NCLB is that states don’t have to participate in the program, unless they want any funding from the state. NCLB requires local schools to jump through hoops to obtain funding, and schools lose money if they don’t perform correctly. Last year, the federal government spent $102 billion on education — that’s less than 3 percent of the nation’s $3.8 trillion budget, but still a lot of dough, according to National Priorities Project, a Northampton-based nonprofit dedicated to sorting out how the government spends money.
It’s time for the federal government to stop playing this shell game with limited school funds, put its money where its mandate is and properly fund all of public education. Because otherwise, traditional schools are going to continue to lose hundreds of millions each year. Last year alone, Massachusetts traditional public schools paid $369.7 million in charter school tuition and education fees.
So, where would this money come from? The bloated military budget, of course. Last year, the U.S. had $1.1 trillion in discretionary funding, and more than half of all that money — $600 billion — was spent on the military. For all the excellent protection and services the military provides this nation, being responsible with money is not one of them.
It’s hard to estimate exactly how much the military wastes. The books are so sloppy that $8.5 trillion in tax-payer dollars handed over to the military have been unaccounted for since 1996, according to an investigation by Reuters. But there are plenty of examples of the military pissing money away on war contractors and alleged warlords. Take for instance the F-35 quagmire. This fighter planes project has been in the works for decades and only just this summer, got clearance to participate in battle. Development of the fighters has been dogged by incompatible technologies, low speeds, and poor flying performance. When all is said and done — and who knows when that will be with all the delays this project has seen — the 179 F-35s the nation has ordered from Lockheed Martin will cost $1.5 trillion to purchase and maintain. P.S. This plane is slower than a 1970s F-14 Tomcat, has half the range of the 40-year-old A-6 Intruder, and in a recent demo dogfight the F-35 was trounced by the F-16, according to an excellent write up of the military boondoggle in The National Review.
When you have a hammer in your hand, every problem looks like a nail. Imagine if instead of a hammer, the U.S. was wielding knowledge. What would our problems look like then?
We have the money to make the American public education system better, which in turn creates brighter futures full of opportunities for our youth, less crime for our streets, and more breakthroughs in science and medicine. We just need to put less priority on the military.
And before anyone goes worrying about what a decrease in military spending might lead to, consider this: When you combine how much France, India, China, Russia, Germany, Saudi Arabia, and the United Kingdom spent on the military in 2014 combined, its still less than the $600 billion the U.S. spent.
Some discretionary federal funding that would have otherwise gone to lining defense contractor pockets — and building some poorly performing weaponry for hundreds of billions of tax-payer dollars along the way — should be used to create a fund for charter schools. Instead of charters grabbing money from traditional public school budgets, they could meet performance standards set by the feds that would qualify the schools for funding. It would be a No Child Left Behind for the charters, which sounds appropriate to me.•
Contact Kristin Palpini at editor@valleyadvocate.com.
