Private Fortunes vs. Public Education
AUGUST 13, 2024
BY SAM PIZZIGATI
The United States essentially invented public education. Back in the 1780s, notes the Center on Education Policy, federal legislation “granted federal lands to new states and set aside a portion of those lands to be used to fund public schools.” By the 18th century’s close, most Americans had embraced the notion of “using public funds to support public schooling for the common good.”
In the mid-20th century, amid growing levels of economic equality, that public financial support for public schools would expand mightily. The results would be impressive. By 1970, graduation rates from American high schools — institutions, notes historian Claudia Goldin, themselves “rooted in egalitarianism” — had quadrupled over 1920 levels.
But that era of growing equality and expanding public education would start fading in the 1970s. Over recent years, a new U.S. Senate report makes clear, that fade has only intensified.
In fact, details this Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee report, state funding for the nation’s public schools has “barely increased” over the past decade, rising just an average 1 percent a year after inflation. Over the same time span, “state spending on tax breaks and subsidies for private schools has skyrocketed by 408 percent.”
More:
https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/08/13/private-fortunes-vs-public-education/