Now my children are divided between public and private schools in Canberra, Australia, our home for the past four years. We're moving to Virginia this summer, where our children will attend Fairfax School District, one of the best in the nation.
At any rate, I've been in or exposed to a wide variety of educational environments as student, teacher and parent. One thing is certain: Money and class size do make a tremendous difference in the quality of education.
Statistics support the statement: In 1997, Utah spent $5,257 per student, with 43 percent of high school seniors attending college, while Fairfax spent $10,159, with 93 percent of their seniors attending college. I prefer more personal metrics: The difference school funding makes in the daily lives of teachers and students.
During my short teaching career, I was much more effective in smaller classes. The kids had problems, including poor English, being on parole, living with Grandma and serving as stand-in parent for younger siblings and having to work after school to provide money for rent. In the smaller classes, I was able to tailor the lessons to these students' individual needs. In larger classes, the kids with extra needs acted out, affecting the learning environment for everyone; only "classroom control" methods alleviated the situation, without addressing the
needs of the disruptive students.
As a teacher, my salary affected the time and money I had to devote to lesson preparation. When I had to spend an evening fixing a rattle-trap vehicle, or making teaching props that otherwise could have been bought, I had less time to prepare lessons. While I often spent personal funds for the classroom, I would have been more effective with more to spend.
During the times of the year when a teacher's workload spills heavily into the home, I couldn't have afforded a babysitter in order to address that need. I'd have waited until past bedtime, putting in the additional hours afterward. The students would suffer for my lack of mental sharpness the next morning.
A common local argument against school funding is Utah's ratio of students to taxpaying adults. However, our roads don't suffer for it, nor does our power grid, sewage treatment system or landfill, even though they're affected by the ratio no less than the school system.
When Utahns carry on about administrative waste and propose such counterintuitive measures as dividing school districts, they miss the point: Teachers need a responsible wage. In order to stem alleged bureaucratic waste, impose a teacher salary increase, on the spot, and calculate the funding increase to exactly correspond with it. Tie the funds to the wage increase, thereby binding the districts to spend the money as directed.
Let's fund education properly. If we do, more good teachers will stay in the state, or in the field of teaching, as the case may be. Let's reduce class size to match the internationally accepted norm wherein good teaching can occur. The long-term result will be a stronger economy, lower crime, less welfare and wealthier taxpayers.
Who can argue with that?
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* JAY R. WILLIAMS is a Foreign Service specialist with a degree in choral conducting from the University of Utah. He has taught every grade, K-12, in eight different classrooms.
