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Two Americas, Two Educations: Funding Quality Schools for All Students

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This book needs the nation to read it so that we can respond to Dr. Cummins' suggestions as one--in the same way we did to Hurricane Katrina-- by coming together to fix our educational system.

This book is amazing-- it's engaging, a quick read, and full of hard data at the same time.

You will come away needing to DO something and Dr. Cummins, who has proven his answers succeed in well-known schools in Los ANgeles has the answers. Read it Read it Read it.

This book is an incisive analysis of what is ailing public education in contemporary America and, perhaps more importantly, what to do about it in terms of public policy and priorities. Although the book was written six years ago, the situation described by the author has only gotten worse, the dearth of funding and services for schools more pronounced and fiscal policy suffering its worst meltdown in generations. The numbers quoted in the book can merely be replaced with more dire current figures and today's situation will be perfectly described.

The author's intention is to pointedly bring down to earth the discussion about education reform and what its real costs are, which is something that is only referred to in generalities in our public discussions on the subject. Further, politicians and educators continually compare relative costs and efficiencies within the confines of the public education realm, accepting as a given certain conditions such as large class size, overloaded teachers and poor infrastructure for both student and teacher. Having founded and operated a successful private school on the west side of Los Angeles and involved in setting up several public charter schools, the author makes the informed case that it is not a mystery as to how best educate our children. The elite schools have been doing it for generations: small classes and properly compensated teachers with time to plan lessons and assess students in congenial surroundings.

Except in the more well to do communities, public schools in America fall far short of meeting any of these conditions and, with each passing year, move farther away from achieving them. The book is organized into four parts:

I - What Is, What Could Be, What Should Be
The opening section establishes the baseline for what the author asserts are the basics for a decent education: what it is that comprises an adequate school, e.g., physical plant (plumbing that works, desks for all, good lighting, heating and air conditioning, etc.), class size (maximum of 20 pupils), teacher work load (4 to 5 periods per day), materials including well-maintained text books and equipped labs and a diverse curriculum including the arts and languages with faculty that specializes in subject areas. One would think that these are a given in any system that calls itself adequate, but this is far from true and the author feels that voters in a wealthy democracy such as ours should not tolerate anything less, just as they wouldn't allow the government to ignore an outbreak of the bubonic plague. With this assumption, the author establishes the real basic per pupil cost for adequate services compared to what public education districts generally allocate for the same thing. The difference is staggering - the actual per pupil cost for a meaningful education is at least double what is spent now in public schools. The list of inadequacies seems endless, but the bottom line is that our society does not allocate anywhere near the money necessary for successful education although it spends three times more yearly on a prison inmate than what it spends for a student.

II - Correcting Existing Systems: The Corporations
In this part, the author argues for the reform of our national priorities and corporate tax codes, which rewards business not so much for what they contribute to the common good as for clever legal maneuvering to fatten their bottom lines, as is the case with offshore corporate tax havens. Or imagine, for instance, what the difference would be if we took 15% away from our defense budget ($935 billion) and put it toward education ($130 billion).

111- Correcting Existing Systems: Individuals
The second fiscal approach to financing reform would be to attack the imbalance in our individual income tax codes. The estate tax has long enjoyed protection from conservative factions as a regressive form of double taxation that harms, among others, the small farmer. This is one of many such myths, as the tax affects a tiny percent of Americans who have in excess of $2 million in assets at death and there have been no estates holding farmland in this category for years. In addition, the rich are paying less tax than they did 40 years ago and are still successfully lobbying for yet less taxation. Nobody enjoys paying taxes, but Americans have been duped into thinking that the Revolutionary anti tax fervor inherited from our forefathers is still a principled stand, all the while demanding more and more services. Taxes are the price of living in a civil society and part of that civility is education. It's that simple.

IV - Creating New Sources of Revenue
There is a plethora of innovative ideas to increase revenue for education. A wealth tax could be imposed. It would apply a small tax to the annually reassessed value one's total net worth and would serve to shift the tax burden away from the poor and middle classes where it has been increasing over the past 50 years and would, in theory, not discourage savings and investment or other economically valuable activities. Another approach would be reducing oil and agribusiness subsidies, which now serve to engorge those industries with excess profit and have the savings transferred to education. Merely increasing the enforcement abilities of the IRS would net tens of billions of dollars by almost any economist's estimate on the left or right.

None of the above ideas is particularly radical if we agree that society should bear the cost of educating its young. We have national priorities that now dictate massive defense spending, corporate welfare and favor the aging with entitlement programs. If we truly want the best for our youth, to give them skills that will sustain them in an increasingly complex world and very possibly affect this country's future prosperity, then we must reorder those priorities. The question, of course, is one of political will and while everyone agrees that education is a national priority, when our newly empowered conservative political establishment faces the reality that the most dysfunctional schools are populated in large part by children of color, educational budget cutting will likely be more draconian by far than under the more even-handed leadership of past governments.

"Two Americas - Two Educations" gives us a frank discussion of the fiscal obstacles we face in public education. It also explains why middle class families have moved their young into more salutary educational surroundings either by migrating to entirely new and wealthier communities or paying for private education - they can afford it. This leaves the residents of our inner cities, who cannot afford it, to fend for themselves in large underfunded urban school districts that are collapsing under savaged budgets and a shrinking tax base. These are precisely the schools that we are being asked to save and so far we are coming up with palliatives such as Teach for America and the charter school movement. These and other innovative approaches will do nothing if society does not realize that it cannot economize on something as vital as our future intellectual capital.