From Oregon to New Hampshire, from sea to shining sea, America's schools arereducing the length of the school year, laying off teachers, and putting more kids back into classrooms. It's happening because state governments are mired in the worst financial crisis since at least World War II. The recession hit them with a vengeance. Revenues from sales taxes and other sources have plummeted.
It's worth noting that the nation's public schools will be short by a total of $40 billion this year, which just about the same as the increase in this year'sdefense budget, not counting what will be required to wage war.
The Bush administration has decided against bailing out the states out in favorof a big tax cut. So the states are now cutting most services -- including aid to local schools. School districts depend on state governments for almost half their funding. Which means many school budgets now have to be cut. Call it trickle-down fiscal policy.
To make matters worse, a new federal law requires states to do more testing, retrain teachers and tutor kids in failing schools. But Washington won't be paying all these extra charges. Vermont officials, for example, estimate the new law will cost them more than three times what they'll be getting from the feds. Other states predict a larger shortfall.
More testing, less money. What's the likely result? Well, relatively wealthy suburban towns where a lot of families still have kids in public schools will probably raise local property taxes to fill the funding gap. After all, these families want good public schools, the market value of their homes depends on good schools, and with their federal tax rates going down, they can afford to pay more in property taxes.
The residents of most other communities will resist higher property taxes. I mean, most people feel pretty stretched these days. Of course, the pressure will be on the schools to show that kids are passing the new standardized tests. So we can expect that a lot of what remains of these declining school budgets will be used to prepare kids to take the tests. Better than nothing, but learning how to take a standardized test isn't exactly the same thing as getting an education.
