From preschool to college, a quality education is becoming an illusion for a growing number of working-class people. Education is a priority for nearly everyone, especially workers and their families. But under U.S. capitalism, everything is defined by its profit-making potential. Providing high-quality education to the vast majority of society is not a priority for the capitalist class and the politicians who serve it.
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The education system in the United States is wrought with problems from preschool through college. Preschools in most states are not free—they are not publicly funded and run. This has a great impact on the number of children who can attend.
About 70 percent of four-year-olds and less than half of three-year-olds attend preschool programs. Yet, numerous long-term studies have shown that having attended preschool positively affects student’s academic and social achievement.
The absence of universal preschool is not due to a lack of resources. According to the National Institute for Early Education, the cost of providing a quality preschool education to every three- and four-year-old in the United States would be under $70 billion a year. This amount would fully cover program costs, including facilities, administration and support services. Seventy billion dollars is less than one-tenth of what is spent each year by the federal government on the military.
Universal preschool is particularly important to working-class families who face exorbitant childcare costs. Sometime one family member’s pay does not cover the full cost of childcare.
Elementary and secondary education
Public elementary and secondary education—while more accessible than preschool—is mired a crisis characterized by under funding and institutionalized racism. This denies the working class equitable access to quality education.
The federal government takes a minimum of responsibility for school budgets—contributing only nine percent to the cost of public education with the state and local governments funding the balance. Only 2.3 percent of the $3 trillion 2008 federal budget is earmarked for elementary and secondary education.
In contrast, over half the federal budget is spent on the U.S. military. Additionally, public funds are being lavished on prisons. Between 1980 and 2000, state spending on prisons increased by 189 percent, while education spending increased only 32 percent. By 2012, California will spend $100 million more on prisons than on education.
Not only is education funding an afterthought, often it is among the first social benefits on the chopping block. States and cities across the country have “solved” budget crises by cutting funding for education.
School districts from California to Texas, from Minnesota to Massachusetts are cutting teachers, staff and specialists; slashing art, special education, sports and language programs; increasing class sizes; and reducing school weeks or hours.
One striking example is Harvey Milk Elementary, a public school in San Francisco. It was allocated a mere $32 for its supply budget for the entire 2008-2009 school year. This outrageously small sum would not suffice for one classroom for a day.
The capitalist politicians commonly claim that they have to make cuts and allocate small budgets to education because the resources just do not exist. That is a lie. The decimation of education is part of a program of prioritizing war and exploitation over people’s needs.
Leaving children behind
One of the most insidious ruling-class attacks on public education was the 2002 No Child Left Behind Act. Congressional Democrats and the Bush administration enacted this law, initiating a full-fledged attack on the existing public education system. There is a reason that teachers and administrators more appropriately call it the “Every Child Left Behind Act” or the “No Child Left Educated Act.”
The NCLB transformed federal education funding by attaching it to standardized test score requirements. One option for schools that do not make the grade on standardized tests is “reconstitution”—put bluntly, staff replacement.
Under NCLB, schools that do not meet consecutive benchmarks and targets can be reorganized. Teachers are forced to work longer hours with excessive oversight. The standardized testing craze is an attack on students from working-class backgrounds and oppressed communities. The tests are based on a white, middle-class reality that is alien to many students at urban schools.
The tests do not measure what students have actually learned or their real abilities. NCLB is forcing teachers to abandon student-specific quality education that utilizes students’ experiences to facilitate learning and the acquisition of new skills and understanding.
National Assessment of Education Progress—a body that administers standardized tests to evaluate the country’s educational progress—recently said that NCLB has hurt education standards overall. Reading proficiency for eighth-grade African American students has dropped from 13 to 12 percent since NCLB was instituted. Proficiency dropped from 41 to 39 percent for eighth-grade white students.
At least 24,470 U.S. public schools, 27 percent of the national total, did not meet the federal requirement for “annual yearly progress” in 2004 and 2005. For the past six years, the majority of students have not been able to do the necessary grade-level math or English.
Privatized learning
Education in this country is also beset by the move toward privatization. The community-based struggles of the 1960s won more resources and access to education for working-class students and students from oppressed community. Since that time, the ruling class has been carrying out a relentless campaign to turn back those gains and destroy public education. This has led to a real crisis in education in the country. Charter schools and school vouchers are the most prominent devices used by the ruling class to roll back public education. Both systems are demagogic answers that don’t offer real solutions, yet continue to siphon millions of taxpayer dollars from funding for public education.
According to the “UCLA Charter School Study,” charter schools do not generate higher academic achievement, nor do they enroll more disadvantaged students. Smaller class sizes are made possible in charter schools by corporate contributions. Having less qualified, non-certified and non-union teachers offsets this advantage.
Without a union, charter school teachers are asked to work longer school days, hold mandatory meetings during lunch and after school, train other teachers, conduct counseling and take on administrative tasks. All the while, there is no job security and principals can fire teachers for any reason.
Education in any country is as a concentrated reflection of the social system. U.S. public education clearly reflects the institutionalized racism built into society. The public schools that suffer the most tend to be in the poorest neighborhoods and cities of the country. The populations served by these schools have a higher percentage of African American, Latino and other oppressed nationalities.
According to the California Department of Education, only one in seven Latinos graduate from high school after four years and complete the courses required to enroll in college. In Los Angeles, “[t]he worst schools—the seven exhibiting serious problems with teachers, curricula, and facilities—collectively educate a population that is 94 percent Black and Hispanic.” Not one school that is predominately white faces these problems (The Atlantic Monthly, July-August 2004). Capitalism ensures that students from oppressed communities face far greater obstacles to receive a decent education.
The same barriers exist for those who want to become teachers. Getting a teaching degree is not an inexpensive prospect. In addition to tuition and books, student teachers pay for a multitude of tests and other requirements. Many programs require that teachers refrain from working while enrolled. There is little to no affirmative action practiced in these programs. In 2005, white teachers were 85 percent of the total teaching force. Yet, they are serving populations that are almost a reverse image of the teaching force.
Nothing accessible about education
College, like preschool, is considered the burden of a student and his or her family. In the 1970s, need-based grants made up 61 percent of all federal student aid. Today, they make up only 22 percent. Families with yearly incomes of $25,000 or less can be asked to pay as much as 71 percent of those earnings to send a child to college. Families with incomes over $99,000, however, pay only 5 to 6 percent. Non-federal loans through banks and private lenders amounted to $7.5 billion in 2003, an increase of 41 percent from 2002 alone. The student loans industry is a thriving business for the capitalists.
Meanwhile, college tuition and costs continue to rise, even at public schools. Tuition and fees at public two- and four-year colleges and universities has increased dramatically in recent years. Adding tuition, room and board, and other expenses, public institutions cost an annual average of $14,000 for an in-state student and well over $21,000 on average for an out-of-state student. Private schools cost between $30,000 and $55,000 per year.
This situation is ridiculous. The burden of education should rest on the society that prospers as a result of the skilled workers trained by the education system. But capitalism turns the tables on working-class students. The system and its guardians make you pay to be trained. Once you have acquired marketable skills, your labor is then stolen from for the rest of your working life. With the cost of education placed on those seeking to learn, many people are denied access to the benefits that an education can provide.
The question for working-class people is: Are the Democrats and Republicans—the parties that serve the corporations, the banks and the war profiteers—really going to attempt a real solution? No, both parties are part of the problem. It is up to the working class to come together and fight for real, truly democratic education for all.
The La Riva/Puryear vote PSL presidential campaign differs with all the capitalist politicians in demanding free, quality and universal education from preschool through college as a right. Every PSL national, state and local candidate sees this as a top priority.
A program to mend the broken education system must be implemented immediately. The solution is not to turn education into a corporate venture, but to massively expand funding for public education. This should include increased protection for teachers and education workers’ unions. The money should come from immediately slashing funding for the prisons, the police and the military. The NLCB must be overturned now.
All of this is possible, and more. Local committees of teachers, education specialists, community members, students and parents can be established to determine how schools should really run to serve working-class students. Districts can establish resources centers that provide teachers with all the necessary materials—instead of expecting them to buy or create their own individually. Affirmative action programs can be required of all teaching programs. A national advisory committee can be established to recommend options for eradicating racism, sexism and bigotry from schools through a concentrated effort.
None of these demands are unreasonable and all of them are necessary. Let us work to reorganize the education system in the interests of the working class. Building a movement that can make this happen is more important than ever.
