Poorly Funded Public Schools

Joshua Finley

Monique Williams

English 1A

01 October 2013

Poorly Funded Public Schools

When you start thinking about low funded schools a main thing that would to come to mind is school resources and materials. School material is a very important factor when it comes to student’s education. They need books, writing utensils, and materials for various activities. By students not having these materials it can really weaken their learning abilities. In the book Savage Inequalities by Jonathon Kozol they talk about how low funded schools are drastically affected in many different ways; one being school materials. They describe schools in New York being very crowded and not having enough room to teach their kids. A quote I found says, “Textbooks are scarce and children have to share their social studies books.”(104). This explains how schools who can’t even provide enough space for the kids, won’t even be able to give the proper textbooks so kids can at least have their own. It shows how the low funded schools don’t get proper funding and suffer because of lack of attention.

            Comparing the book from my research is very mind boggling. When I look at the lowest achieving schools a huge long list pops up listing all the schools that are lowest in the state. One thing that caught my attention is that 8 schools within 10 miles are at the top of the list in Alameda County. When you think of it as Alameda County schools not getting enough funding it shows how our schools are treated less than other schools in the area. This information relates to my paper focus because these schools that are the lowest achieving explains the fact that schools in the county are overcrowded which inflicts the students because they are limited to the materials they can receive. In Savage Inequalities they say, “we don’t have encyclopedias in classrooms,” she replies. “That is for the suburbs.”(105). This quote really explains how even teachers see that higher funded schools have more materials then where they teach. Materials should be the main focus because it gives the students the best opportunity to learn if they have more resources to learn from.

            Understanding that education is something very important it is sad to even see the book Savage Inequalities  be published because even though the problem is recognized, the problem isn’t be resolved. Also it is ridiculous that they have a list of low achieving schools in California on the government website because this shows they know what schools are being neglected and still don’t do anything about it. If they see these number highly effecting kids in schools and know that these kids lack the materials needed to be successful in school then something should be done immediately. We see that schools are heavily overcrowded and according to Savage Inequalities it hurts kids because they have to share these materials that are provided. “I can’t set up a computer lab. I have no room. I had to put a class into the library.”(108). I found this significant to kids not having the materials or resources because it shows how schools want to provide computers and resources to student’s but are not able to because of the number of students they have there are not enough to do so. If schools were funded more equal, students would get the materials they need which would change the horrible numbers we see from poor funded schools.