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State school

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Public education is education mandated for the children of the general public by the government, whether national, regional, or local, provided by an institution of civil government, and paid for, in whole or in part, by taxes. The term is generally applied to basic education, K -12 education, or primary and secondary education: it is rarely, if ever, applied to post-secondary education, advanced education, or universities, colleges, or technical schools.

Public education is a civil institution; that is, the primary decisions about access, curriculum, and allocation of resources are made by a civil authority (government) or by the employees of a civil authority. Public education is inclusive, both in its treatment of students and in that enfranchisement for the government of public education is as broad as for government generally. Public education is often organized and operated to be a deliberate model of the civil community in which it functions.

Public education may be provided by a national or regional government (provice, state, territory, etc.), or it may be provided by a local (non-state) government. Where public education is provided by the state or a regional government, it is often referred to as "state education", a term which is rarely used when public education is provided by a local government.

Public education is typically provided to groups of students (classrooms; the "one to many" model of delivery), with a number of groups of students clustered in a school. However, the term "public education" is not synonymous with "public schooling". Public education can be provided in-home, emplolying visiting teachers, supervising teachers, and/or distance learning. It can also be provided in non-school, non-home settings, such as shopping mall space.

The term "public education" is not synonymous with the term "publicly funded education". Government may make a public policy decision that it wants to have some financial resources distributed in support of, and it may want to have some control over, the provision of education which is not public education. Grants-in-aid of charter and private schools, and voucher systems all provide examples of publicly funded education which is not public education.

Public education often involves the following:

  1. compulsory student attendance (until a certain age or standard is achieved);
  2. certification of teachers and curricula, either by the government or by a teachers' organization;
  3. testing and standards provided by government.

The United Kingdom provides an anomolous use of the term "public school". In England the term "public school" refers to an eleite of privately funded independent schools which had their origins in medieval schools funded by charity to provide education for the poor. (The anomoly points to one of the fundamentals of public education, which is inclusion: in times past the commitment to inclusion was demonstrated by reaching out through charity.)

History

Sparta in classical Greece had a system of general public education. After that, basic education was generally by private tutors to the wealthy, or by religious organisations such as monasteries or cathedral choir "song schools" which educated the priesthood rather than the general populace. In the middle ages grammar schools were founded in many towns, and universities were founded by the church to train the clergy.

Scotland led the way in implementing a system of general public education with free provision for the poor, starting in 1561 during the Protestant Reformation, with support from taxation being introduced in 1633. Reformation concepts such as the priesthood of the laity or the importance of the individual conscience and the supremacy of Scripture made widespread literacy important. In the late 18th century provision of public education emerged in other countries, 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 on the basis of the same Protestant Reformation concepts, the Northwest Ordinance 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."

In the 19th century, industrialization and the rise of democratic nation-states led to the more widespread systematization of public schools. In France, for example, the state used public schools to foster national identity and linguistic conformity at the expense of separatist movements and regional dialects. The public school system in the United States has also been credited with being an important instrument in the assimilation of large numbers of immigrants. Education, at least at a primary school level, was made compulsory in some American states in the mid 19th century, in Scotland in 1872 and in England and Wales shortly afterwards.

Overview

Public education is generally available to all. In most countries, it is compulsory for children to attend school up to a certain age, but the option of attending private school is open to many. In the case of private schooling, schools operate independently of the state and generally defray their costs (or even make a profit) by charging students tuition fees. The funding for public schools, on the other hand, is provided by tax revenues, so that even individuals who do not attend school (or whose dependents do not attend school) help to ensure that society is educated. In poverty stricken societies, authorities are often lax on compulsory school attendance because the children there are valuable laborers. It is these same children whose income-securing labor cannot be forfeited to allow for school attendance.

In some countries, such as Germany, private associations or churches can operate schools according to their own principles, as long as they comply with certain state requirements. When these specific requirements are met, especially in the area of the school curriculum, the schools will qualify to receive state funding. They are then treated financially and for accreditation purposes as part of the public education system, even though they make decisions about hiring and school policy (not hiring atheists, for example), which the state might not make itself.

Proponents of public education assert it to be necessary because of the need in modern society for people who are capable of reading, writing, and doing basic mathematics. However, some libertarians argue that education is best left to the private sector; in addition, advocates of alternative forms of education such as unschooling argue that these same skills can be achieved without subjecting children to state-run compulsory schooling. In most industrialized countries, these views are distinctly in the minority.

National public school systems

Scottish education

Main article: Education in Scotland

In 1560 the Protestant Reformation established the Church of Scotland as the official state religion in Scotland, and in the following year it set out on a programme to provide a school in every parish controlled by the local kirk-session, with education to be provided free to the poor, and the expectation that church pressure would ensure that all children took part. In 1633 the Parliament of Scotland introduced local taxation to fund this provision. Schooling was not free, but the tax support kept fees low, and the church and charity funded poorer students. This had considerable success, but by the late 18th century the physical extent of some parishes and population growth in others led to an increasing role for "adventure schools" funded from fees and for schools funded by religious charities, initially Protestant and later Roman Catholic.

In 1872 education for all children aged 5 to 13 was made compulsory with "public schools" (in the Scots meaning of schools for the general public) under local school boards. The leaving age was raised to 14 in 1883, and a Leaving Certificate Examination was introduced in 1888 to set national standards for secondary education. School fees were ended in 1890. The Scottish Education Department ran the system centrally, with local authorities running the schools with considerable autonomy. In 1999, following devolution from the Parliament of the United Kingdom to the new Scottish Parliament, central organisation of education was taken over by departments of the Scottish Executive, with running the schools coming under unitary authority districts.

United States public schools

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.

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 operated[1].

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.

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.

Funding

A number of issues swirl around the problems of public education but these concerns dominate conversations regarding school finance:

  • 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 schools[2]. This type of system is known as a school voucher program.

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.

One solution advocated by Milton Friedman and advocated politically by the United States 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. In addition, a recent publication by the United States Department of Education has admitted that the average cost of public education per pupil is slightly more than double the cost per pupil of a private education, even though public schools have more students per teacher. Thus, there was no economy of scale as the per pupil cost should theoretically decline the more students there are per teacher.

Milton Friedman has argued that this is the result of public schools having no accountability to the market, and subsequently no accountability to parents or students. This lack of accountability, he believes, not only contributes to an inefficient use of resources and taxpayer dollars, but a poor education that does not fulfill the needs of students and parents. The vouchers would offer choice to parents and students if a public school did not provide them with the quality education they desired, as the voucher could be used at other public or private schools. Schools that lose students lose money, and schools that gain students gain money, thus providing a strong incentive to become efficient and accountable. Friedman does not deny that some schools will be hurt or close as a result, but he argues that it is necessary to eliminate the deadweight from the school system to bring efficiency and accountability back to education. Friedman and supporters of the voucher system believe that the market accountability will create positive results that can be emulated by even the worst public schools.

Opponents of the voucher system believe this will sap money from public schools, potentially destroying them. Another 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. 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. Because of this, critics of the voucher scheme argue that it would violate both the principle of "no taxation without representation" as unlike a public school board, the trustees of private schools are not elected by the populace. In addition, some critics argue it would violate the separation of church and state (vouchers would help fund schools with religious curricula or that may hire and fire based on criteria such as remarriage after divorce.) Others note that is a broad reading of the constitution.

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[3].

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.

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 Ideal[4].

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"[5].

See also

References

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