Starving America's Public Schools

[EV_Ares]

Wall Street’s excesses blew up the economy. Now the question is who pays to clean up the mess. And across the country, our children are already paying part of the bill – as their schools are hit with deep budget cuts. A new report – Starving America’s Public Schools: How Budget Cuts and Policy Mandates are Hurting our Nation’s Students – released today by the Campaign for America’s Future and the National Education Association looks at five states to detail what this means to kids in our public elementary and secondary schools.

Every study shows the importance of early childhood education. Analysts at the Federal Reserve discovered that investments in childhood development have, in the words of Fed Chair Ben Bernanke, such “high public as well as private returns” that the Fed has championed such investments, noting they save states money by reducing costs of dropouts, special education, and crime prevention. Yet across the country, states are slashing funding for pre-kindergarten and even rolling back all day kindergarten. Now only about one-fourth of 4-year-olds are served by pre-K programs. Ten states have eliminated funding for pre-K altogether, including Arizona. Ohio eliminated funding for all-day kindergarten.

entire article @: http://bit.ly/qQGsah

[AwareOne]

1. All part of the plan, starve the public schools until they fail

then the Republicans can say "see, the public schools are a failure, we need to privatize them", along with the post office, the prisons, the parks, the military and anything else owned by the public to serve the public. It seems that the people are finally waking up, now that there is a knee in the middle of their back and someone is standing on their necks.

[Orrex]

2. duplicate thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=439x2126763

[judgegblue]

3. The repubs want to destroy public schools

to appease their fundie supporters who will get public tax support for their religious based schools through vouchers.Also, the repubs don't worry about public schools since their kind can afford private schools.