It is rare that a city has enough funds to cover every need of its population. The division of a city’s budget and funds among its various programs and needs seldom goes without controversy. There are usually aspects that are looked over or neglected, leaving many people unhappy. A city’s legislature must create a budget that negatively affects the least amount of people. One thing that cannot be looked over or forgotten when creating a budget is education.
Every home and business owner in Colorado pays a property tax which goes towards public services for the state, such as education. A budget that is determined by the state governor and legislature allocates a portion of funding for education, and for each school district in the state. For the 2004-2005 school year, Denver Public School received funds in the amount of $1,385,047,912. Although nearly one and a half billion dollars appears to be a large sum of money, it has proven to be insufficient in covering the needs of an entire school district that serves around 75,000 students. The schools in DPS are not performing well, and the education of students is suffering.
For the upcoming school year, a 6 to 8 percent cut is expected for state education funding. Currently, 57 percent of students that attend Denver Public Schools are attending a school that fails to meet district performance standards. This means that the students attending these schools are not doing well on tests, such as CSAP (Colorado Student Assessment Program), and in class. The schools are not catering well enough to the students’ needs for them to be academically successful. In order for these schools to improve, they need more funding to hire better teachers, use better materials, and put better programs in place.
Teaching is one part of the problem plaguing Denver Public Schools. In a Denver Post article, Jeremy P. Meyer writes about the substandard quality of teachers in the school district. He writes that “about 55 percent of Denver teachers believe teaching quality in the district is substandard.” The majority of teachers themselves believe that the teaching quality could be improved upon. It is a necessity for DPS to better its teaching quality, because it is teachers that are the ultimate deciding factor in whether or not students fail or succeed. A teacher, even one that teachers in the most desperate of school systems, has the ability to give students academic success.
It is a child’s experience in school that prepares him or her to enter the world as an adult. A school should teach not only math and reading, but also how to be successful. A student that does not do well in school has a lesser chance of doing well in college or having a job. Denver Public Schools, and other suffering school districts nation-wide, need better funding in order to create higher achieving students. Education is not something that can be neglected when creating a budget, as it is what leads to success in life.
I enjoyed reading your blog, you had really good evidence that supported your claims well. You stood on the side of education, talking about the negative spiral of less funding for school, means that the students are not getting the education they need to succeed, so the future could be gloomy, and continues on this path. It’s scary that only 57% of the schools meet the district performance standards. In my family education was always the most important thing, even if it means sacrificing something else to get a good education. So I think it is bogus to be cutting funds for education, when there are other resources that are not as important. I live next to a park at home, and they seriously water the grass more than necessary, so they could water the grass less or something. I don’t think the grass is as important as the future generation. You talked about lacking resources to provide students with a good education. I think you could further explain this reason. I watched this episode on Oprah and she talked about the differences in the level of education from a well off neighborhood compared to poorer neighborhood, and there’s a dramatic difference (resources, class size, teachers…) So these schools needs more resources because every student deserves the same quality of education. Sorry for all the tangents but your paper was really good, with really good supporting evidence.
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