Free, public education in this country comes at a price. When the country hits turbulent financial times, like the recent recession years, it takes its toll on the quality of education available in our K-12 schools, and it can even take decades for the true deficiencies to show.

When town and city administrators are forced to curtail the hiring of new teachers, or force the retirement of older teachers, class sizes then increase.  The teacher-to-student ratio expands accordingly meaning less face time per student, reducing the overall effectiveness of educational institutions.

An economic crisis does not just affect the schools in terms of budgets.  Financial difficulties within students’ families also play a huge role in the educational problems of the United States.  With more parents scrambling to make ends meet, there is less parental involvement with their children.  As a result, students may become unmotivated and slack off on assignments.  They may become problematic at school, meaning more time and effort from school administrators, leaving less time to improve their various systems.

Most American homes are dual-income, with both parents working one or more jobs to try to meet their financial obligations. There are also many single parent families, where the time for work and domestic tasks takes away from one-on-one educational work with children. In nearly every family situation, the time parents have to give their children any type of grounding in basic knowledge is severely limited.  The result is children starting school without much of the very basic knowledge children had in generations past.  Without that early foundation on which to build, children find themselves forever running at a deficit.

Furthermore, testing regimens for our children are anything but uniform. Some children are over-tested to an extreme; States like Massachusetts may be venerated for their stringent policies and standardized testing, but that level of stringency does not necessarily carry over to other states. In fact, many other states are not nearly as rigorous in their own testing procedures, preferring to do only what is required to ensure that they receive federal education funds, and nothing more.

This level of inconsistency then becomes yet another problem for students.  Given the economic climate of the nation, many students may find themselves moving from state-to-state as their parents pursue employment or better jobs.  Inconsistency among state’ standardized testing procedures may result in students who have relocated suddenly finding themselves under a lot of pressure to do better than what was required in their previous school.

The Difference between Then and Now

In generations past, children starting school came into the system with far more knowledge already in hand.  They knew their letters, they knew how to count, and some of them already knew the fundamentals of reading.  This, of course, stems from the fact that most families had a parent who stayed home during the day and was therefore able to spend more time with the child. There were also less electronic distractions from the basics of reading.

Teacher retention is also difficult, stemming from economic factors. A number of the accelerated teacher certification programs, such as weekend and online programs, have good intentions but are turning out teachers that are unprepared to the meet the challenges that they soon will face in troubled classrooms.

Although these teachers are inexpensive since they are brand new and have not worked their way up to better pay scales and benefits, they are more likely to jump ship and leave the school system instead of staying to nurture their profession. Of course, the next group of teachers to replace them is new and inexperienced, too, but provides fresh bodies in the classrooms at an inexpensive level – so the cycle repeats itself. This is good for the budget, but not so good for long-term performance, morale, and achievement.

Certainly, the economic situation affects the task of balancing budgets, by the school system, government entities, and parents. Conversely, more money does not necessarily mean more improvement – but not enough causes a host of its own problems too.

America spends more per student than any other nation in the world, and yet we see meager results. With this kind of money being pumped into the system, why are our school systems in the state that they are? There’s no arguing that our schools need to be well funded in order for our children to succeed, but clearly our schools need to do a better job utilizing the funds that they already receive too.

How can public schools continue to thrive, even in difficult economic times?

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