Community Investment Lack of Investment Essay

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Money can help bring about the truly necessary elements, however, and without proper funding the ability to give a good public education to eth hundreds or thousands of students most serve becomes a true practical impossibility. There are numerous elements of providing an education that require an investment of financial resources, and like most things in this world you get what you pay for when it comes to education. A higher price tag doesn't guarantee a successful and high-quality education, but a low price tag all but guarantees a poor one.

One of the ways in which underfunding makes it almost impossible for a good education to be delivered is in the selection of educators. If the overall employment arena can be viewed as a market system, and it is very common and very reasonable to view it in just this manner, then job seekers will tend to seek out employment that gives them the greatest level of utility, typically a mixture of personal satisfaction or aptitude and often more importantly, financial compensation. Simply put, people are going to take a job that pays them more, all else being equal, and only the people that can't get higher paying jobs are going to take lower paying jobs. From 1990 to 2006, the buying power of the average teacher's salary in the United States -- that is, the wage after being adjusted for inflation -- rose only twenty-three dollars, a raise of less than two dollars a year (DiCarlo et al., p. 2). Underfunding education means underpaying teachers, and this means that many of the best teachers are going to seek other jobs that use their skills and that give them better financial compensation.

This is not to suggest that teachers today are what's "left over" after all of the good candidates have selected other careers, but it does mean that communities in general are not being very competitive when it comes to attracting and retaining the best talent for teaching positions.

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While many teachers select their profession out of a real drive and passion for education and for their students, retention and turnover levels are not at all what would be desired, and compensation is a major reason for this (DiCarlo et al., p. 2). Increased funding would lead to more competition for teaching jobs, meaning the best educators would be put in place.

Another basic way in which underfunding leads to poorer education is in the amount and type of experiences students are able to have without adequate resources. It is a simple fact of modern society that doing things or consuming things costs money -- field trips require buses, drivers, often the cost of admission; science projects require materials to be purchased that won't be usable again; learning about computers and other technologies that are essential in today's world requires adequate access to relatively up-to-date machines, etc. Money does not guarantee a good education, but without sufficient money there is no way that any of these things can be provided. Underfunding education thus significantly limits the type of education that can take place by limiting the educational resources that are available to educators and to students, limiting the experiences and knowledge of students and thus their preparedness for adulthood and the larger world.

Conclusion

Local communities should begin to address funding problems in education by first holding public meetings regarding the need for education and funding. Local taxes and municipal bonds can be issued to increase revenue in order to fund education, and individual schools and even classes can engage in some fundraising. The bulk of education funding should come from state taxes, however, as states are large enough entities with enough revenue-generating power to actually make a real and immediate difference in education funding.

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