Inequalities In Public Education Funding part 1 Essay - 3,050 words

Inequalities in Public Education Funding Inequalities of the public school funding in the United States had become one of the most important social issues. It is very significant to offer to all the people equal rights in education. However, there are many vivid examples of inadequate funding of public education in different cities across the nation. This paper is aimed to discuss and to research the inequalities of education funding in the state of New York and especially in the New York City. New York City can be described as the city of contrasts. Here along with rich people there is a big number of poor.


The territorial distribution of the population according to income level becomes the primary reason for unfair distribution of the funds for education. A strong public understanding of all the negative aspects of inadequate and unequal school funding and of its influence on the education level of students had created a number of disputes over the financing of educational institutions. In the state of New York, community-based organizations had been pursuing the building of the public knowledge on this issue by using school finance lawsuits. These public organizations are demanding to create specific strategies, which should reduce huge gap in educational quality. The Campaign for Fiscal Equity (CFE) was engaging citizens and advocates in New York City for the seven-year equity lawsuit. It was aimed at attracting the attention of wealthy suburbs and of other parts of the state for helping to develop a definition of sound, basic education.


The definition that was created by citizens, greatly helped to make sure that the public would support the court with its favorable decision in Campaign for Fiscal Equity. Public would be responsible for holding the state accountable for implementing new approaches. In January 2001, the New York State Supreme Court had ordered the state to develop new cost-based school finance system in order to ensure a sound, basic education principles for all the students. Besides, there was supposed to be effective accountability system aimed at ensuring that the resources are properly used in providing education. CFE in cooperation with League of Women Voters continues to discuss enlisting New York citizens help in designing the court-ordered accountability system. What is the actual distribution of the funds aimed designated on the education and what areas have better resources available to provide better levels of education? Statistics shows that small schools mainly in urban areas offer many advantages. The level of education in these schools is quite high.


Despite the belief that such kinds of schools are financially not effective to run had been proved otherwise by recent researches. The benefits include lower dropout rates and higher rates of postsecondary enrollment (Funk & Bailey Small schools, big results: Nebraska high school completion and post-secondary enrollment rates by size of school district, Nebraska Alliance for Rural Education, Lincoln, Nebraska, 1999). Besides, small schools also reduce harmful effects of poverty on student achievement (Howley & Bickel, The Matthew Project: National Report, Rural Challenge Policy Program, Randolph, VT, 1999). The researchers had proved that students perform better and acquire more knowledge in intimate settings, where their attention is aimed mainly on education and is not disturbed that much by issues not related to studies. It also becomes possible for teachers to pay more attention to each student, which makes teachers able to boost students academic achievement, curiosity, raise self-esteem, and promote interest in education, which is also a very important part in gaining knowledge. In contrast to schools with the big number of students, such a special attention towards each student is not possible. Besides, social factors (family income level) play also an important role.


The reason for this is the desire of a student to be socially acceptable, and to be noticed, which is a normal thing. However, it all becomes harder to do in the place with a big concentration of people, such as huge urban school. Unfortunately, each year it becomes harder to find small public school. Since the beginning of the century, the number of small schools had dropped significantly. The reason for this was the growth of population in urban areas. I think that there is not need to accent on the growth of population in the New York City, where even today it is continuing to increase.


Small public school started to be less effective in providing education, especially in the highly populated areas. This was primarily due to their ...................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................

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Essay Tags: new york, york city, funding, public education, school funding

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