The Thief in the Classroom

How School Funding Is Misdirected, Disconnected, and Ideologically Aligned

Jeff Swensson, Lynn Lehman, John Ellis

• Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781475860290
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education Administration

An undetected thief lurks in America's classrooms: funding for public education. Dynamic instruction, robust learning, and student futures are stolen when funding for public education is inadequate and inequitable. The devastating impact of this thievery is examined throughout this book. Student engagement with the potential and promise of traditional public education is stolen by funding formulas crafted by state legislatures. Theft in the classroom results when these funding schemes misdirect and disconnect the resources required to educate all US students. Called upon to deal with an ever-changing cascade of mandates, standards, legislation, and counterproductive testing marathons, but provided with funding so inadequate that instruction is often little better than anemic "test prep," public educators in pursuit of the common good are robbed by insufficient funding. Although funding for public education is a topic unlikely to command frequent public discussion, no topic is more consequential for achievement, adequacy, and social justice in the learning, lives, and futures of America's children and young people.

Table of contents

• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Dollars and Sense: The Basics of Public School Funding for Educational Programs
• 2 Grab Bag Funding: Promises, Problems, and Prizes
• 3 A Case Study: Weeds in Indiana’s School Funding Field
• 4 What Does School Funding Pay for?
• 5 Are We Really Paying for What We Get?
• 6 Public Education Is a Test
• 7 The Magic and the Consequences of School Funding
• 8 The Thief in the Classroom
• 9 Funding for Public Education: Is There a Bottom Line?
• 10 To Catch a Thief
• References
• About the Authors