Where does all the money we spend on schools go? And why do we continue to sink tens of thousands of dollars per student into a district school system that is clearly failing our kids?
Those are the questions that Bob Bowden, in the new tour through the house of horrors that is public school funding the US, The Cartel, opening Friday at the Chez Artiste here in Denver. I was lucky enough to attend the press screening, courtesy of the Colorado League of Charter Schools, and there’s a reason they sponsored the screening. The film is a powerful indictment of how our schools are funded, and the politics of how those funds are allocated.
The public schools and public school teachers in this country have unfathomable reservoirs of goodwill. I myself spent all but one year of my primary and secondary education in the northern Virginia public schools, and think they did a pretty good job. Up until recently, public schools routinely got capital building bonds they requested, and when polled, most Americans still don’t think we spend enough on schools. In large part, that’s because the teachers’ unions have done such a good job of equating teacher salary with overall school spending, when fact, it’s only a fraction of classroom spending.
But there are signs that some of that goodwill needs to be written down. The so-far successful campaign of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie to put a spotlight on the NJEA, the popularity of charter schools here in Colorado, as well as the progress of tenure reform through the state legislature, are all evidence that dissatisfaction is turning into action.
