by AFT President Sandra Feldman
February, 2003

Short-sighted school funding cuts
will do long-term harm to our kids. 

New York Times education writer Jacques Steinberg recently painted a disturbing picture of impending educational disaster at the Jeremiah E. Burke High School in Boston. Steinberg reported that state and city budget cuts had eliminated 12 Burke teachers, resulting in class sizes of 30 or more and an increase in disciplinary problems. What makes this story especially tragic—and instructive—is that these cutbacks reverse policies that led to the school’s remarkable turnaround a few years earlier.

In 1995, Burke was doing so poorly that it lost its state accreditation. Instead of giving up, the school used state and community support to make improvements. It reduced average class size from 34 to 20, raised academic standards, and hired much-needed teachers and aides.

While turning around a struggling school is never easy, the reforms adopted so effectively by the Burke community have proven successful in troubled schools all across the country, from Seattle to Baltimore and Hartford. They are reforms that work. But they also require additional resources, and too many lawmakers and public officials are using revenue shortfalls as an excuse to cut education funding. They’re looking at the wrong bottom line and turning tough budget choices into bad education policies.

When it comes to education and other public services, “short-term solutions” are often a contradiction in terms. The cutbacks at Burke High School represent half of the instructors hired to turn the school around; letting them go will have long-term consequences for many students there.

These are not easy times for our schools. Every day brings new threats, from budget cuts to phony cure-alls like vouchers. But improving our public schools can’t be done on the cheap. It can’t be done through bake sales, vending machines, or auctions. And it can’t be done by cutting taxes for the wealthy. It requires spending wisely on what works. And it requires local, state and, especially, national leaders to make education a priority.

The recently enacted “No Child Left Behind” law makes especially critical the need for adequate, sensible, and targeted federal funding to help improve our public schools. And fulfilling the goals of this law will require Congress and the President to match their rhetoric with the investment they promised. Equally important, it will require a sustained commitment, especially to vulnerable urban schools that have recently been making real progress. If these things don’t happen, we will quickly see how easily even the most disciplined school can fall into a downward spiral.