Education Not Incarceration

ESEA May Do More for Prisons Than Schools 

By Dave Arnold

Mark Twain once told a story of a small Missouri town where the townsfolk thought the school was too expensive to operate. So, a town meeting was called to vote on whether to close the school.

An old farmer stood up and said, “You wouldn't save a darn thing by closing the school because we would have to build two jails in its place.” The matter of closing the school was never brought up again.

Unfortunately, President Bush may not have heard Twain's story since he purports spending so much more money on prisons than schools. A group of educators and social justice activists based in California formed a group called "Education Not Incarceration." This curriculum workgroup compiles data for school lesson plans.

According to the group, the following monies were CUT FROM the education budget and the prison budget in 2003:

•  Education:      $300 million
• Incarceration:  $57 million

In California, for example, the state spent $6,887 per student this year. Prison inmates cost the state $28,502.

ESEA Testing

Since our government implemented the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA), every student across our nation is tested each year. Why? So our government can determine whether or not schools are giving students a quality education. I think they are looking for ways to justify the discrepancy in spending between schools and prisons.

I'm a little bit angered by this. OK, I'm downright ticked off! How can you base the performance of a teacher or a school on a test score? I've been in enough classrooms to know that a child's mood is the biggest factor that can affect a test score.

If a child is in a good mood, they will likely do their best. But on the flip side of the coin, if they are in a bad mood, perhaps due to a souring experience at home the previous night, then they will care less how they do on a test. Some students will purposely throw a test as a way of, perhaps, getting even with their teacher or parents for some reason or other.

The president has good intentions, but as they say, "the road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Under the Bush plan, one student's poor test score can be a killer for the entire school. This might sound exaggerated, but this is exactly what happened in a small school district in Central Illinois.

One student purposely did as poor as he possibly could on a mandated test. His action helped in a big way to lower the school's total score to the point that the school was put on the government's watch list. If the school has a failing grade for two or more years, a student of that school district can choose to attend another school at his school district's expense.

Each state chooses what test will be given to schools in that state. Every school in the state receives the same test. What could be fairer than that? Well, the problem is that each school receives a different amount of funding from the federal government, state government, and local taxes.

A Budget's Impact

Local taxes in my state of Illinois are generated from property tax. Some states rely upon sales tax, while others choose to use income taxes as their primary source of revenue. Public funding for public schools is high in some areas and average (or worse) in others.

I have had people tell me that there is no correlation between the amount of funding a school receives and the quality of education that school can provide. I say #*#*! That is as ludicrous as saying there is no relationship between the number of gallons of gas pumped in a car and how far it will travel. I have said it before, "cars run on gasoline and schools run on money."

What really ticks me off is that my state spends nearly twice as much each year to house a prison inmate as it does on the education of a child. This is upsetting, though I believe educating prison inmates is important too.

A report analyzing U.S. Justice Department data has found that a high percentage of prison inmates are uneducated, while educational opportunities in prison are declining. The report, "Education and Incarceration" was issued as a policy brief by the Justice Policy Institute.

It shows that two thirds (68 percent) of prison inmates had not received a high school diploma and, between 1991 and 1997, the percentage of prisoners who reported taking educational programs while incarcerated declined from 57 percent to 52 percent.

The Education Not Incarceration Web site states that "in the United States, there are 2 million people living behind bars, the highest rate of incarceration in the world." From 1977 to 1999, nationwide growth in spending on corrections was 2.5 times greater than on education:

• Corrections spending increased:  946 percent
• Education spending increased:    370 percent

In California, state budget cuts have meant:

• $300 million in lost general funds, most of which comes from reductions in childcare provisions and reducing the amount of money available for families who receive welfare
• $164 million cut from funds for low-income schools
• $220 million cut in instructional materials
• $129 million cut from maintenance
• $139 million cut in childcare
• loss of teacher recruitment and training programs
• loss of elementary reading intensive programs
• no additional cost of living adjustments for teachers

Funding Matters

I lobbied hard to keep the vocational education classes in Illinois prisons after state legislators were going to give these programs the cost-cutting ax. These programs are necessary given that almost 80 percent of prison inmates dropped out of high school.

My thinking is that their best chance at rehabilitation is to receive an education. This will not only increase their employment opportunities upon release, it might prevent them from returning to the old habits that lead to their incarceration.

Still, I don't believe that we should spend twice as much money to keep someone in prison as we do to keep them out. If the Bush budget team were as wise as one old Missouri farmer, they might choose education over incarceration.

(Dave Arnold, a member of the Illinois Education Association, is head custodian at Brownstown Elementary School in Southern Illinois.)

The views expressed in this column are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NEA or its affiliates.