Even though we’re in an economic downturn and the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) recently showed that American 4th graders have shown no learning gains in the last year, the funding for education will likely increase over the next decade. This funding will reveal itself in the form of a larger and better paid staff of educators and administrators as well as better facilities and study materials. The government knows that reforming education is not a sprint, but rather a marathon of dedication and persistence.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) has increased the federal government’s contribution to public education to 15% of the national total. This is a very substantial number since 640,000 jobs saved by the federal stimulus package have been in the public education sector.

Yet we haven’t seen improvement in our classrooms? This is not deterring the government however, with projections of higher funding packages for the future. To grow our educational world we must work in stages. The infrastructure is being put in place to then apply massive attention to subtleties that will eventually show a positive difference. The projections of future funding is close to $90 billion – the job must be to spend the current and future moneys effectively and efficiently.

According to researchers, “Persistent claims that school districts are in fiscal jeopardy, often reported by the media, are misleading, say the researchers, driven by the fact that school-district budget cycles aren’t synchronized with state and federal legislative appropriations processes.”

The fact is that in the last century, public schools have an increasing work force per student and the salaries of teachers and administrators have gone up, not down. Teacher’s salaries have increased by 40% in the last 50 years and will continue to do so. Moreover, employment in public education has increased from 200,000 to 900,000 since 1970, even though enrollment in these schools has been stable at 50 million.

The job of the news is to spin hype to sell papers. The job of the education system is to educate its students, and it has been given more and more funding and opportunity to do so in the last century than not. The next century is going to spell the same story in terms of support, and hopefully will end on a happier note in terms of our students’ achievements. Join the beautiful struggle – check out the teaching programs available to you today.