The War on Schools
There's something surreal about the fact that the United States of America, the richest, most powerful nation in history, can't provide a basic public school education for all of its children.

Actually, that's wrong. Strike the word "can't." The correct word is more damning, more reflective of the motives of the people in power. The correct word is "won't."

Without giving the costs much thought, we'll spend hundreds of billions of dollars on an oil-powered misadventure in the Middle East. But we won't scrape together the money for sufficient textbooks and teachers, or even, in some cases, to keep the doors open at public schools in struggling districts from Boston on the East Coast to Portland on the West.

In Oregon, which is one of many states facing an extreme budget crisis, teachers have agreed to work two weeks without pay, thus averting plans to shorten the school year by nearly five weeks. A funding crisis in Texas, where the state share of school financing has reached a 50-year low and is expected to go lower, has local officials preparing for cuts in everything from extracurricular activities and elective subjects (like journalism) to teachers, counselors and nurses.…

Similar stories can be heard in state after state. In New York, more than 1,000 students, teachers, administrators and activists traveled to Albany on Tuesday to march against proposed state budget cuts that are so severe they mock the very idea of the sound, basic education the state is obliged by law to provide.…

There is no way to overstate the gulf between the need for funding and the reality of funding in urban school districts. And that gulf is widening, not narrowing.…

Education is the food that nourishes the nation's soul. When public officials refuse to provide adequate school resources for the young, it's the same as parents refusing to feed their children.…

It's unconscionable. It's criminal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/03/06/opinion/06HERB.html