Chapter 9 Lecture: Public Education: Philosophy and Funding
Most young people in the United States, like most young people around the world, attend public school. Indeed, young people in the U.S. have to attend school becau education is compulsory, in most states to the age of sixteen or until the students reach ninth grade.
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A small percentage of American youth attend private schools, wither religious or cular schools, but the vast majority attend public schools. One distinguishing feature of U.S. public education that surpris many foreigners is that although there are some standardized examinations, there is no nationwide curriculum t by the government ministry of education determines the curriculum that all students study and the examinations that all the students take at a t time. Of cour, U.S. students follow a curriculum, and they take examinations as all students do. Although the federal government does influence public education by providing funds to schools for special programs such as education for the handicapped and for bilingual education, the federal government does not determine the curriculum or the examinations. Today I’d like to talk about the three levels of
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我的成长之路control within each state and then spend some time discussing where the money for education comes from and three issues related to funding.
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Control of education in the United States is mainly exercid locally at three levels. Let’s begin with the state department of education. The department of education of each of the fifty states has two basic functions. First, each state department of education ts basic curriculum requirements for all the schools in its state. For example, a high school might require four years of English, three years of math, two years of social science, and so forth. The state also ts the number of credits a student must complete in order to graduate from a high school. This total number of credits includes both required cours and electives. So much for the state part in education.
The cond level of control is the school district. The number of school districts a state has depends on the size of its population and the size of the state. A large metropolitan area would have veral school districts. A smaller community might have only one district. Each school district is run by a school board that is elected by the citizens of the
district. The school district is responsible for the specific content of cours taught in its schools. In other words, the school district determines what the students will study in each of their, let’s say, four years of high school English. The school district also decides what electives will be available for students. Besides determining cour content, the school district is responsible for the operation of the schools in its district, for example, the hiring if teachers and administrators. The third level of control is the individual school itlf, where teachers have primary responsibility for deciding how to teach the content of each cour and for preparing and giving examinations to the students.
Local control of schools may em very strange to some of you, but it will em less strange if you consider how public schools in the United States are funded- that is, where money to run the schools comes from. Only about 7 percent of the money comes from the federal government. The rest of the money comes from state and local taxes. The percentages supplied by the state and by the local districts fluctuate over tome and from state to state. Currently appropriately 49 percentage of school funding comes from the states and about 44 percent comes from the local communities, that is, the school district
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四级多少分才算合格Finally, I’d like to discuss three issues related to the funding of schools that have been receiving a lot of attention recently in the United States. The first issue deals with the inequality of educational opportunity that students face. Becau public schools are funded to a great degree by local taxes, this means that schools in poorer communities or poorer parts of large cities do not have the same amount of money as schools located in richer communities. This, in turn, means that children from poorer areas are less likely to receive a good education than children from wealthier areas. The cond issue, one that has been controversial since the beginning of public education, is the issue of funding for private schools, which are generally run by religious organizations. As you already know, the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution mandates paration of church and state. A little background on the history and development of public education will be uful here.儿童书法培训
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During colonial times, education was largely a religious concern and most schools were supported by religious organizations. However, during the nineteenth century, there was
widespread support and acceptance of public education paid for by taxes as the best way to provide equal educational opportunity for all children. Nevertheless, some parents have always chon to nd their children to either private religious schools or private schools devoted to academic excellence. Becau private schools are not funded by the government, parents have had to pay tuition to nd their children to private schools. People who have wanted to nd their children to private schools have long questioned why they should have to pay taxes for public schools at the same time as they pay private tuition for their children’s education.
Although this issue is not new, during the last twenty years or so, more parents have become unhappy about what they perceive to be the increasingly cular nature of public education and prefer to nd their children to schools where they will receive an education more in line with their religious beliefs. Other parents are concerned about the questionable quality of education in public schools. The concerns have led to efforts by the school system, and the government, to offer alternative educational opportunities, that is, educational choices. Two of the most important respons to the concerns have
been charter schools and school vouchers. Both of the alternatives to regular public education are bad on the idea that competition in the educational market is a good thing, but otherwi, they differ quite a bit. Charter schools are nonctarian public schools that compete with regular public for students. Charter schools operate under contract to a sponsor, usually a state or local school board. Charter schools are accountable to their sponsors, the parents who choo to nd their children to them, and the public that funds them through their tax money. In turn, charter schools generally have greater autonomy, that is, independence, over lection of teachers, curriculum, resources, and so on, than regular public schools. The first charter schools came into existence toward the end if the 1980s. By 2003, there were 2,695 charter schools with almost 685,000 students enrolled. This was a 15 percent increa over the year 2003, which shows how fast the schools are growing. There are many issues surrounding charter schools, but a study published in 2003 found that charter school students did a little better than their public school counterparts on a standardized exams.
