News Response Paper

PSC 201A

Dr. Schulte

Response Paper 3

In the New York Times article, “What’s the Matter With Kansas’ Schools?” by David Sciarra and Wade Henderson published on January 7, Kansas is facing a rigorous challenge on inadequate and unfair school funding for public education. Governor Sam Brownback who is a Republican and the Kansas legislature, which is led by Republicans, have made an excess amount of harsh budget cuts in addition to the cuts that they made several years ago. Parents filed a lawsuit to protest these funding cuts. The Kansas Supreme Court will have to decide whether the state will continue cutting funds or restore them. “The Judges called the school funding cut destructive of our children’s future” (Sciarra and Henderson, 2014). Federal education policies have ignored the issue of poverty for years. There are a number of research studies that have been found that the majority of students in public schools come from low-income families. Referring to the current school system, I think these large cuts in school funding would not only affect the children’s future, but also help to impoverish society in the long run.

Poverty is a substantial factor when it comes to education problems in the United States. According to the Washington Post (2013), low-income students made up at least half the public school population in 17 states, including some wealthy states such as California in 2011, which was a marked increase from 2000 (Strauss, 2013). Furthermore, social science research also has shown that two-thirds of student achievement is not affected by academic factors but economic status instead (Sirota, 2013). If the budget was to be cut, there will be more students who will not receive quality education. Meanwhile, the result of that will cause even more poverty.

“Education is the great equalizer but schools as they are constituted today are not equalizers” (Strauss, 2013). In fact, these inequalities are numerous. For example, on the Scholastic...