Education funding has been a primary function of the local and state governments in the United States. It is the communities and states, as well as private and public organizations, which inaugurate colleges and schools, define the admission and graduation requirements, and develop curricula in the United States. The American education structure also reflects this predominant local and state role. Considerable sums of money spent on education across the country are formed by the local and state sources. The overreliance on income generated through local sources to fund public education in the United States has resulted in significant funding gaps which have consequently led to inequalities and imbalances of education provided by public schools. Although the federal government of the United States contributes less than ten percent to the local public education budgets, it determines the majority of the policies and rules which concern how funding is used. The United States has been investing 5 percent of its gross domestic product (GDP) to fund public education across the country. At present, there are debates over the role of federal and state governments in funding public education across the USA due to a possible conflict of interests and the need for accountability, equity, adequacy, and quality of education as in ninja essay https://ninjas-essays.com/
Public education funding policies in the federal government
Over the past fifty years, the federal education policies and laws have played a critical role in the determination of what happens in the United States’ classrooms. The initial education department of the United States was established in 1867 with the primary mandate of collecting information on schools, as well as teaching, to enable the states to introduce an effective school system and program. The Second Morrill Act of 1890 gave the office of education the powers to administer support for the initial system of land-grant universities and colleges. Later, the federal government improved its aid to public schools through the vocational education under the 1917 Smith-Hughes Act. The 1946 George-Barden Act focused on agricultural, home economics, and indusial training for all the high school students in the United States. It was not until the Second World War that comprehensive federal government legislation was stimulated as the National Defense Education Act of 1958 was passed by the Congress with the sole purpose of ensuring that highly trained individuals were available to help compete with the Soviet Union technical and scientific fields. This program included support for loans which were awarded to college students
A set of comprehensive federal spending on public education was launched after the establishment of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in 1965. Title 1 of this Act provides the federal aid and grants for the needy students. The Act has been used to fund both the primary and secondary education while also denying the establishment of a national curriculum. Most of the coffers sanctioned under this Act are authorized and enabled for professional and resource development, as well as instructional materials, to support the education programs and promote parental involvement. The federal expenditure on ESEA in 2016 was $14.9 billion, which demonstrated an increase of over 43 percent. The current version of ESEA is the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) of 2001.The main purpose of the NCLB law was to raise the achievements of the US students and reduce the achievement gap through accountability, flexibility, and research-based instruction that do not leave any child behind. Over the recent years, the federal share of primary and secondary education expenditure has seen a meteoric rise from 5.7 percent during the 1990 academic year to current 8.3 percent of the total spending by the US federal government. The increase in federal funding for public education across the states in the USA has provided accountability for the study results which ensure that the taxpayers get the worth of their money. According to Rabovsky, the federal government spending on public education has been funneled to programs which cover low-income students, as well students with disabilities.
The current federal funding policies for public education are based on improving equity and adequacy. However, since the 1990s, the federal education funding policies have concentrated on adequacy rather than equity. Most of the policies determine whether the states are providing the local district public schools with enough funding, as well as resources, to give all the students the basic education.
Public education policy and funding in Texas
The Texas public school system consists of over 1200 school districts and charters, as well as more than 8000 schools. Over $1 billion is spent on a weekly basis to educate about 5 million students within the Texas public school system. Most of these state funding and finances to the public schools are availed through grants or formulas. The state government of Texas has established a public funding which is called the Texas Public School Fund under the 1876 Constitution which stipulates that certain lands, as well as all proceeds from the sale of lands, should form the Permanent School Fund (PSF).
Over the past decade, the Texas legislature has reduced the combination of federal and state funding for public schools by about $500 million. Currently, the funding for public education in the state of Texas is derived from the state, federal government, and local school districts. At the same time, the vast majority of public education funding comes from the local and state districts. The flow of money to the districts has been accused of being a complex process with the federal and state flow through the state appropriation processes. The handling of local funds in Texas is mixed due to several finance lawsuits in the past two decades. Also, some of the funds have been going directly to districts from the Texan taxpayers through different property tax payments. Also, through the “Robin Hood,” known as the recapture mechanism, local funds for public education in Texas often flow to the state so that they can be redistributed to other districts within the state.
On a historical perspective, the public education funding in Texas has experienced significant growth over the past decades. The increase has been far greater than that of population growth and inflation. In particular, the actual public education expenditure in Texas has grown from $31.6 billion in 1999 to $55.7 billion in 2010 academic year. However, the critics underline that if the state had a strict spending limit, such as the tie to the growth of the population and inflation, the total public education expenditure would have grown from $31.6 billion in 1999 to $47 billion in 2010. As a percentage, the public education spending in Texas has grown by over 76 percent over the past decade. As a matter of comparison, the growth of the Texas population and increase of inflation has grown to a combined 49 percent.
The critics of the increase of the public education funding and expenditure state that if this growth has improved the academic performance of the population, it would have been justifiable. However, this is not the case. Over the past decade, the Texas SAT scores have been averagely lower than the scores registered during the 1999-2000 academic year. DeBray-Pelot and McGuinn contend that the 4th and 8th grade scores have also been similarly flat, both in mathematics and reading. The conclusion here is that the Texas public education policies have increased the expenditure without having an impact on the academic levels of the state’s population.
Moving forward, Dougherty et al suggest that the Texas public education funding policies must include a pay scale which rewards excellence if the efficiency is to be grown. It is important for the Texas legislators and policy makers to make the existing public school’s system more efficient by eliminating several cost factors, as well as unnecessary state driven regulations, which make it hard for the school districts to achieve the biggest benefits for the money they invest in the education.
