When government budgets are tight, education is often the first thing to be shaved down. It can feel like a relatively painless fix, because the full effects of cutting education funds only crystallize years later. But such cuts scrape away at that most iconic expression of American democracy and opportunity -- the public schools.
Because of an outdated tax-based funding model, scholars say, it's the poorest regions that feel these cuts the hardest, making it even more difficult for America's poor to attain a better quality of life. Some advocates say it would be fairer to fund schools out of state or federal coffers, insulating the finances of a public school from the relative poverty or prosperity of its locale.
Reading isn't alone in its troubles. As the U.S. economy hobbles along, schools across the country are still hurting. Twenty-six states will spend less per student in 2013 than the year before, according to a recent analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. Arizona, Alabama and Oklahoma all have cut school spending by about 20 percent since 2008 -- the largest state decreases in the country.
A total of 35 states spend less today on education than they did before the recession began in late 2008. This reduction comes despite the $98 billion in federal stimulus money allotted for education starting in 2009. States relied on this one-time cash injection to close one quarter of their budget gaps and to save 420,000 education jobs between 2009 and the 2010-11 school year.
But those federal dollars dried up at the end of last year, and employment numbers among teachers now work out to a net loss. Since June 2009, a recent White House report noted, more than 300,000 teachers have lost their jobs. In August 2012 alone, schools cut 7,000 educators from their payrolls. The result: an increase in the student-to-teacher ratio for the first time in a decade.
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