Biden’s Education Plan Addressed Lagging School Funding: Now with a Democratic Senate Majority, He Needs to Act | janresseger

Biden’s Education Plan Addressed Lagging School Funding: Now with a Democratic Senate Majority, He Needs to Act | janresseger

Biden’s Education Plan Addressed Lagging School Funding: Now with a Democratic Senate Majority, He Needs to Act

President Elect Joe Biden prioritized public school funding as the center of his education plan during his campaign to be the Democratic nominee for President.  Why did he prioritize public school finance and why is it so urgently important in 2021?

Here are Jack Schneider and Jennifer Berkshire, in their new book, The Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door, explaining the problem: “Almost every state reduced spending on public education during the Great Recession, but some states went much further, making deep cuts to schools, while taking aim at teachers and their unions… Moreover, states including Arizona, Kansas, Michigan, and North Carolina also moved to permanently reduce the funds available for education by cutting the taxes that pay for schools and other public services.  In Wisconsin, Governor Scott Walker took aim at education through Act 10—what was first called the ‘budget repair bill.’  Act 10 is remembered for stripping teachers and other public employees of their collective bargaining rights.  But it also made $2 billion in cuts to the state’s public schools.” (The Wolf at the Schoolhouse Door, pp. 35-36)

In August of 2018, the late Jim Siegel at the Columbus Dispatch summarized an important report by Ohio’s school finance expert, Howard Fleeter: “Nearly 77 percent of the total revenue increase from state funding and local taxes in the past 20 years occurred before 2009, according to a new analysis by the Ohio Education Policy Institute… State funding increased 35 percent from 1999 to 2009, but in the past 10 years it has actually fallen nearly 2 percent CONTINUE READING: Biden’s Education Plan Addressed Lagging School Funding: Now with a Democratic Senate Majority, He Needs to Act | janresseger