Public education

Public education is schooling provided by the government, and paid for by taxes, in countries other than England where public schools are privately funded. Public education emerged in the late 18th century, as political philosophers argued that an educated citizenry was an essential component of a democratic society. While in colonial America, as in Europe, schooling was often regarded as a prerequisite for religion (in the Protestant Reformation concepts such as the priesthood of the laity or the importance of the individual conscience and the supremacy of Scripture had made widespread literacy take on greater importance), the Northwest Ordinance of 1787 provided that "Religion, morality, and knowledge being necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind, schools and the means of education shall forever be encouraged."

National Public School Systems

United States Public School

In the United States, public education has traditionally been under the control of individual states, which frequently delegate the task of day-to-day operations to school districts operating at the local level. This is different from many other countries where the public education system has been highly centralized at the national level (France, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan). Local school districts, with elected school boards administer the public primary and secondary schools according to guidelines established by the state government. Recently, the expanding role of the federal government in public education has become a subject of heated debate.

Related Topics:
France - Japan - South Korea - Taiwan - School district - School board - Primary - Secondary school - Federal government

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The nature of public schools involves the following:

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• tax funding,
• compulsory student attendance,
• use of textbooks which satisfy curricular requirements established by the political majority, and
• state-supervised teacher certification,

History

The Land Ordinance of 1785 established a mechanism for funding public education in the United States. Until at least the 1840s, however, most schools continued to be privately owned and operatedhttp://www.servintfree.net/~aidmn-ejournal/publications/2001-11/PublicEducationInTheUnitedStates.html.

Related Topics:
Land Ordinance of 1785 - 1840

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Coeducation and the emergence of modern high schools; the expansion of compulsory education. The growth of extracurricular activities (1890s-1950s). The principle of equalization becomes a standard to achieve.

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The United States Supreme Court's ruling in Brown v. Board of Education was a hallmark in education. It forced previously segregated schools to integrate, and led to the rise of desegregation busing across the country.

Related Topics:
United States Supreme Court - Brown v. Board of Education - Segregated - Desegregation busing

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Funding

A number of issues swirl around the problems of public education but these concerns dominate conversations regarding school finance, at least in the state of California:

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• private and public good of education
• Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations discusses, at length, the importance of an educated populace. Studies show comparisons of the cost of one year of school to the cost of one year of prison demonstrating that prison is far more costly. Though the links between education and prisons are debatable, evidence suggests a strong correlation between lack of education and likelihood of committing a crime and being incarcerated. States with low-dropout rates have a lower rate of incarceration.
• The public good comes into question as well when considering how school districts set their boundaries, granting and limiting access to students based on their physical and financial positions in the community. Debates over the borders of school districts frequently involve issues of race and class.
• autonomy
• Responding to criticisms of failures of management because of highly centralized structures, site-based management has come to the fore as a way to improve academic performance with localized solutions.
• fiscal federalism
• Funding is multi-layered. While it is generally the local tax base which is responsible for supporting the schools, a certain amount of funding is also passed on from the state and federal levels. Recently, as the federal government reduces support for education the schools are forced into painful fiscal adjustments as promised moneys never arrive.
• special needs funding
• efficiency
• equal opportunity (Title IX, No Child Left Behind, Brown v. Board of Education, Proposition 13)

School vouchers

Since 1873, Maine has financed the education of thousands of kindergarten through 12th grade students in private schoolshttp://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=1505. This type of system is known as a school voucher program.

Related Topics:
1873 - Maine - School voucher

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In recent years, politicians have criticized the public education system, arguing that it has failed in some areas (particularly inner-cities). School performance is generally measured by student performance on standardized tests, typically administered by the state. One major problem facing the modern education system is how to fix schools that consistently "underperform" - have large numbers of students who score poorly on the test.

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One solution advocated primarily by the US Republican Party is the use of school vouchers. Students in districts with underperforming schools would be given money by the government to attend the school of their choice. Proponents argue that this would put the public schools in competition with private ones, and that competition would result in better choices for the public. Critics argue that this unnecessarily saps much-needed money out of the public school system without giving the student enough money to attend private schools (which generally cost considerably more than the vouchers provide). Another, perhaps more serious criticism is that private schools, unlike public schools, are not required to accept any student who comes through their doors. Furthermore, the use of tax-supported vouchers to support private schools amounts to a government subsidy for those schools. Because the state, unlike in the case of public schools, has far less control over the curriculum and operation (including employment policies) of these private schools, critics of the voucher scheme argue that it would violate both the principles of "no taxation without representation" (unlike a public school board, the trustees of private schools are not elected by the populace), as well as of the separation of church and state (vouchers would help pay for creationist curricula or for hiring which discriminates against remarried divorcees).

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Alternative/Charter schools

Also in recent years, there has been a proliferation in alternative schools. Most prominent of these has been the movement towards charter schools. Charter schools are publicly funded schools which are run independently of the local school district and tend to have less bureaucracy. Additionally, charter schools can have a "theme": some specialize in teaching mathematics and science, others in teaching students who are considered "at-risk." A recent report showed that charter school students' performance on standardized tests was below regular public schools students' scores.

Related Topics:
Alternative school - Charter school - Standardized tests

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Bilingual education

Bilingual education, the teaching of students in more than one language, has become a contentious topic in recent decades. See bilingual education for main article.

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Proposed abolition

The Alliance for the Separation of School & State and various Libertarian groups have proposed abolishing public education. In 1963, Nathaniel Branden wrote an essay, Common Fallacies About Capitalism, which devoted a section to excoriating public education. Branden compared education to shoes, arguing that private enterprise is more efficient at providing goods and services than the government. Branden's essay was published in Ayn Rand's Capitalism: The Unknown Idealhttp://www.noblesoul.com/orc/books/rand/cui.html.

Related Topics:
Alliance for the Separation of School & State - Libertarian - 1963 - Nathaniel Branden - Ayn Rand

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Such proposals face considerable barriers, as many state constitutions mandate public funding of education. For instance, Article VIII of the Virginia Constitution requires the legislature to "provide for a system of free public elementary and secondary schools for all children of school age throughout the Commonwealth"http://legis.state.va.us/Laws/search/Constitution.htm.

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