Hsin-Ya Chen

12^th grade

School funding has been a serious and difficult problem in Ohio due to the complexity of Ohio’s socioeconomic structure. There is no plain and easy solution as to how to implement the school funding in order to achieve the greatest benefit. The “no student left behind” goal is another issue to consider about besides the school funding question. Examining the situation based on the goal, the immediate step that the government should take will be to focus on raising the quality of education in the less advantaged communities and to forget about advancing the systems in communities that already possess strong educational resources and performances. The reason for keeping the more advantaged schools aside is simple. For instance, when the government is trying to help the country’s economic growth and reduce the size of the economic gap in the U.S., it is necessary to pull the poor people that are living in conditions that do not even meet the lowest standard up and away from those horrible situations. Encouraging the rich people to live more luxuriously will not avail against the economy overall. Similarly, the top priority in advancing education will be letting every student at least be on the same, basic level.

School funding is generally generated from federal, state, and local revenues. Out of those three kinds, local revenues are usually the most easily differed from one area to the next. The different local taxes cause disparity in the funding that schools receive. Areas that are more impoverished and less developed usually have lower tax income; as a result, the school funding is incredibly little. Contrarily, schools in richer communities would have more resources. The students in poorer community thus obtain less learning opportunities. The less amount and quality in education will most likely result in their competitiveness in the future. After the students grow up and start working, it will be harder for them to meet the standards of the better, white-collar jobs. If their jobs do not provide a decent amount of emolument, they will not be able to pay enough tax money for their community for the school fund. As a cycle, communities with lower income will stay poor and communities with higher salaries will stay rich. Another possibility will be that students from poorer communities will try to find ways to leave the communities and go to more developed areas that have more chances for success. As a corollary, the community loses not only its source of tax income, but also the younger generation who would succeed to the responsibility to take care of the community once the adults become old.

The state of Ohio should set a standard amount of money to spend on each student who goes to public schools. Giving equal amount of this standardized educational fund to students regardless of which school districts they belong to seemingly is the fairest solution; nevertheless, distributing the same amount of money to districts that are not uniform will not guarantee equal opportunities for the students. For example, in order to rebuild school, to buy new textbooks, and to equip classroom materials all need money. The schools that have already been adequately financed will not need extra help to repair; the schools that need lots of improvement will demand more money. The solution to this particular problem will be creating special subsidies for the poorer school districts to catch up. Once the level of all Ohio public schools has reached the criteria, the Ohio government could move on to the next step and raise the overall standard of the school system. Taking exactly one step at a time, without being too ambitious and hasty, will be the most appropriate way to maximize the use of school funding for the situation right now.