California's future demands bigger investment in schools

11-30-2009

Opinion by Beatrice Motamedi/San Francisco Chronicle (Beatrice Motamedi, a former Chronicle reporter, is the journalism teacher and newspaper adviser at the Urban School of San Francisco and co-managing editor of the Oaktown Teen Times.)

I teach at Urban, and what stung me was its description as "an elite private school." As a journalist and teacher, this kind of thing gets under my skin. With tuition at $30,800 a year, it's inevitable that Urban will be stereotyped as a prep school for smarties who exist in a parallel universe of privilege. But as someone who has spent several years teaching in public schools, I also know that California's per-pupil spending rate of $7,571 a year - watch out, Mississippi, we're racing you to the bottom - doesn't provide even the basics, let alone enough for a truly decent education. My hometown of Milwaukee spends twice as much, and still only 46 percent of high school students graduate. The fact is that we could and probably should be spending four times as much on public education as we do now. (more...)

Document Actions

Print this

Personal tools

Sections

California's future demands bigger investment in schools

Document Actions