Education Needs a United Front

The last thing education boosters -- and that should be everyone interested in a sustainable democracy and economy -- need is to start fighting amongst themselves. Elementary school, high school, university, vo-tech -- all important, all worth funding to the hilt.

But the rhetoric of internecine warfare is starting to bubble up from the depths, and that worries me. First we get Rep. Kirkeby's proposal to study closing a state university campus. Now Canton School District Superintendent Terry Majeres points to the funding discrepancy between K-12 and higher ed:

Canton Superintendent Terry Majeres says a 2.5% increase isn't enough to accomplish specific goals in his district, which include offering more challenging courses for upperclassmen and giving teachers raises. But he isn't expecting to get any more money.

"We've gone from getting 38% of the budget to 31% and of that 31%, more and more goes to higher education than K12 so K12 has been getting less every year," he says [emphasis mine; Karla Ramaekers, "Educator Speaks Out About Funding," KELOLand.com, 2008.01.06].

We're not talking civil war yet, but these public statements indicate that a number of folks who want more funding for K-12 education see the situation as dire enough that they might need to turn against the higher ed lobby to get the funds K-12 needs.

K-12 needs that money to compete in the job market. Says Majeres, "Our teachers receive an average of about $6,000 less than the average of states around us. I'm tired of the teachers having to pay the penalty for that" [Ramaekers].

The DSU doctoral student writing this blog and earning a paycheck from the Board of Regents holds that we need to invest in education at all levels. It makes no sense to cannibalize one sector of education to fund another. We need to find the political and fiscal will to pay every teacher, from kindergarten to graduate department chair, what every teacher is worth. We need to look for ways to cut administrative overhead at all levels and get more classroom and laboratory bang for our education buck.

But Majeres and others taking the K-12-vs.-Board-of-Regents tack have a potentially powerful argument that could turn into a lose-lose situation, where no-tax reactionaries take advantage of the fracas to deny the university system funding increases and keep K-12 funding in its current abysmal state. We need to turn this argument into a win-win: acknowledge that education is the best investment we can make with our public dollars and give both K-12 and higher ed sensible funding increases.