Little Restored Schoolhouse
The New York Times
By George Allen and Paul Goldman
October 12, 2009
“MORE than a half-century after Brown v. Board of Education, the dream of a world-class education is still being deferred all across the country,” President Obama declared in a recent speech to the N.A.A.C.P. “There are overcrowded classrooms, and crumbling schools, and corridors of shame in America.” So we have come together — one Republican, one Democrat — to develop a common-sense solution to fix the problem of crumbling schools in a manner that doesn’t require the federal government to tax, borrow or spend one dime. Our School Modernization and Revitalization Tax Credit — Smart Credit — is also guaranteed to create hundreds of thousands of private-sector jobs, critical at a moment when unemployment has reached a 26-year high and threatens to climb even higher.
Go to the Department of Education Web site and search “How Old Are America’s Public Schools?” Click on the very first link and the “shame” President Obama spoke of becomes evident: The average age of America’s schools is 42 years. Twenty-eight percent of our schools were built more than 50 years ago. “After 40 years, a school building begins rapid deterioration,” announces the department study. Worse still is that this analysis was done a decade ago, and too little has been done since.
Several studies show a statistical connection between outmoded schools and educational underachievement and the schools most in need of modernization are disproportionately in inner-city neighborhoods and rural areas. But to fix these schools, Congress need only make a simple, one-sentence change to a little-known clause in the federal tax code.
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