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Your Call

What's behind the country's public education funding crisis?

Photo by Paul Hart used under CC BY 2.0 via Flickr

  

On this edition of Your Call, we’ll look at public school funding. Investment in K-12 schools has dramatically declined over the past decade. Why have states cut public education funding so deeply and what are the consequences?

 

 

California ranks 41st among all states in spending per K-12 student. In West Virginia, educators are taking part in a statewide strike over stagnant pay and rising health care costs. Underfunded districts have cut school to just four days a week in Oklahoma. How are cutbacks affecting students? And how are public education advocates fighting back?

Guests:

Mike Leachman, director of state fiscal research at the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities

Mike Ambrose, staff attorney at the California School Boards Association, which speaks for school districts around the state

Katherine Bishop, exceptional needs teacher and vice president of the Oklahoma Education Association

Heather DeLuca Nestor, middle school teacher and the leader of the West Virginia Education Association chapter in Morgantown, West Virginia

 

 

 

Web Resources:

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities: A Punishing Decade for School Funding

The Economist: What’s the Matter with Oklahoma?

Fortune: West Virginia Teachers Are Planning To Stage a Walkout This Week

Rose Aguilar has been the host of Your Call since 2006. She became a regular media roundtable guest in 2001. In 2019, the San Francisco Press Club named Your Call the best public affairs program. In 2017, The Nation named it the most valuable local radio show.