Education Reform Needs New Revenue Stream

There is no doubt there are many reforms that need to be made to our current educational systems.  Although the design is to ensure quality, equal education to all people regardless of religion and gender, it is clear that is not always the case.  The following article by Linda Darling-Hammond

(https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CC4QFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.stanford.edu%2F~Idh%Fpublications%2FLDH%2520-The-Color-Line.doc&ei=9jCOU4e6FlmvsATpulHYDW&usg=AFQjCNGln4sovo90Dn4bnbj8SvfAfLz6Ww&sig2=paVKivNzDphFqjmUtFC0OQ

focuses on the following three points (and a brief synopsis of those points)

– recruit new teachers – scholarships and forgivable loans for higher quality teacher education for fields that are currently experiencing shortages

– strengthen teachers preparation – using grants to incentive and support reform

– improve teacher retention and effectiveness – enact clinical training during the early stages when teachers are more likely to drop out

In my opinion, these are basically unarguable improvements.  Who can point out a legitimate reason why all of these suggestions shouldn’t be immediately put into place?  Any readers out there think we shouldn’t be working to recruit new teachers?  Are people of the opinion that improving teacher retention and effectiveness is a bad thing?  There is only one problem I could come up with.  How do we pay for these reforms?

Sadly, in this country, money talks.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing either.  It is a result of the capitalism our country is built on.  The government has a very difficult job deciding how to allocate the funds they receive from tax paying citizens.  Every individual have their own ideas as to what their priorities are, mostly resulting from their own personal biases.  This makes it very easy for people to complain about their preferred interests not receiving the funding they request.  I believe that most people would agree an emphasis should be put on funding education.  Educating our youth is a vital public good and one that is incredibly important. However, it is my belief that attempting to change the government’s allocation of funding is not the way to make true educational reform.  I am not saying we should overlook this piece and ignore asking for a bigger piece of the proverbial pie.  These efforts can lead the government to making slight tweaks and could increase the amount of funding schools get marginally.  Unfortunately, I do not think it will be enough.

Many states are facing budget deficits, and my state of Pennsylvania is no different.  Here is a recent article from Morning Call (Allentown, PA), which discusses what Pennsylvania is currently facing (http://articles.mcall.com/2014-06-02/news/mc-pa-corbett-legislature-budget-0602-20140602_1_corbett-tax-hikes-severance-tax).  The bottom line is governments are being forced to continually cut funding, in all areas, and education is going to be one of those.  My alma mater, Penn State University, is constantly asking Harrisburg for more money but year after year since I enrolled in 2006, their allocation from the government has gone down.

Sick of proposing reforms that would help education with no real way to actually pay for these policies, I came up with a theory in class as to where this money could come from…and I never would have thought of it if the my graduate school wasn’t located less than a mile from a recently legalized Pennsylvania casino, The Sands Bethlehem Casino (at its closest point, it is mere blocks away from Lehigh University’s campus). We need to find a new state sponsored revenue stream and use the new taxes the state makes off that revenue to fund these educational reforms.

When Pennsylvania proposed legalizing casino’s across the state, it was met with many differing opinions.  While far from the first state to legalize games of chance (with Atlantic City, NJ less than 100 miles away from the state border), there were many detractors to the idea, including those inside the government, mostly Republicans.  However, Republicans realized the state need the money and decided to legalize gambling in the state of Pennsylvania due to the massive amounts of revenue the government would receive.  This would help eliminate the budget deficit.  Pennsylvania’s tax rate on casinos is very high, so high in fact in 2012 the state of Pennsylvania led all states in taxes earned from gambling revenue, exceeding states known for games of chance like Las Vegas and New Jersey.  And gambling in my state is just one example.  Colorado and Washington just recently legalized marijuana in the same vein.

Therefore, it is my belief that for true, wide-spread and long-lasting changes to be made to the educational system, the state will need to find an untapped revenue stream and use that funding to pay for the changes Dr. Darling-Hammond discussed in this article.  Now, unfortunately, I don’t have a particular untapped revenue stream in mind.  I have some ideas, though I can’t guarantee any would be effective enough to raise the kind of money we need.  An extension of legalizing gambling would be to go the next step and legalize online gambling in the state.  Putting tolls on some of the state interstates has also been discussed.

So, I didn’t figure out how to make these educational reforms. Sue me.  But I think we did identify a key step in figuring out how to make these educational reforms more affordable.  We can’t keep expecting the government to change their allocations.  It’s just not going to happen.  The key is a new, untapped revenue stream.  And with all the smart people reading this, I’d love to hear your ideas for potential untapped revenue streams.  Making a difference starts now so let’s