Sep 2, 2008 6:17 pm US/Central
A Closer Look At Impact Of School Funding
CHICAGO (CBS) ―
The organizer of the Chicago school boycott says he wants to highlight the difference in school funding. CBS 2's Kristyn Hartman takes a closer look at what that means.
The students at Chicago's John Marshall Metropolitan High School don't' test to get in. It's a neighborhood school, and one where poverty is an issue.
"It's a different dynamic, where when parent's missing, there are things the school more and more becomes," said Principal Juan Gardner.
He told CBS 2 money goes to support those special needs, which leaves less for academics.
Chicago Public Schools calls Marshall one of its struggling schools. The state report card puts its graduation rate at 46.9 percent. CPS puts the spending per student at about $9,775.
That's certainly less than at New Trier where the graduation rate is just about 100 percent and where spending per student last year was roughly $16,856.
Offerings at the North Shore school include Japanese and forensic science.
But Laurence Msall of the Civic Federation, a non partisan watchdog group, said "There is little evidence that just merely adding more money to a budget is going to change results."
Payton College Prep in Chicago might prove that point in some respects. It is a Chicago school, with a graduation rate of nearly 95 percent and it spends $9,447 per student.
That's less money than at Marshall, but students at Payton Prep can choose to benefit from everything from Chinese language classes to an astronomy lab.
But according to CPS those kids also test to get into the magnet school and are highly motivated across the board.
It's not quite the same situation at Marshall, where administrators say they have more to balance in the way of socio-economic and scholarly demands.
"There is a pressing need for students who don't have the kind of a family base of support," Gardner said.
"We're proud of our kids...once they're exposed they're gonna move mountains," Gardner added
He believes the legislature needs to figure out how to get more money to schools like his.
One suggestion from the Civic Federation: look at reforming things like the benefits paid to public employees.
The Illinois constitution says it is the primary responsibility of the state to fund education, but local property taxes end up covering a lot of the cost. For New Trier it's more than 89 percent -- for cps it's about 44 percent.
(© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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