I teach at a school in Ward 8, and every day I drive past dilapidated school buildings in the area. When I attend professional development seminars in school buildings in other parts of the city, they look nothing like the building I teach in. Those schools have amenities that, unfortunately, my school building in Ward 8 doesn’t claim: walls to separate each classroom, new doors in all of the doorways, ample technology for each classroom, and no sign of rodents. It is a travesty that in our nation’s capital, so many of our schools are falling apart, particularly in neighborhoods serving the neediest student populations.

According to the Council of the Great City Schools, school buildings in large urban districts are rapidly deteriorating—so much so that facilities’ decline is hindering the very mission of these schools: educating children. The Council’s report suggested that “students in deteriorating buildings score between 5 to 11 percentile points lower on standardized achievement tests than students in modern buildings.” To be sure, facilities conditions are not the only factors contributing to learning loss for these students as studies show other elements such as teacher quality have major influence on student achievement, but the Council is not alone in recognizing this trend. One 2008 study discovered that there were significant implications for student achievement in reading, language, math, and science, based on the design of a school. Another study found ties between student behavior and academic learning spaces.

D.C. Public Schools alone contains 111 school facilities, and like many other urban districts, DCPS is no stranger to the rapid deterioration of its school buildings and the negative effects these conditions can cause.

Councilmember David Grosso recently lamented the spending in the District’s schools during the city’s most-recent budget negotiations. Grosso has said there are at least 26 schools in the District that have not been touched, despite the District’s plan for school modernizations. Many of these schools are in low-income neighborhoods east of the Anacostia River.

However, Grosso is not the only one who has been advocating for better budgeting with school improvements. Councilmember David Catania expressed similar concerns about facilities budgeting in 2013. And DCPS has had this issue for quite a while: in 2004, students at Coolidge High School complained of learning conditions so terrible that they “couldn’t think.”

The 21st Century School Fund is an organization whose mission is to “build the public will and capacity to modernize public school facilities so they can support high quality education and community revitalization.” They regularly put out updates, publications and news about school construction projects. Most recently, they published the DCPS Capital Budget for 2016-21 on their website and analyzed school projects by ward. The organization came up with some interesting results.

Based on the data in the Capital Budget, the 21st Century School Fund found that funding across the district for the next five years is not equitable. The wards that are receiving the most money are Wards 1, 3 and 4, which are in the wealthier and safer parts of the city. These wards have an 8.2%, 8.2% and 14% poverty rates respectively and 1.5, 1.5 and 7.5 violent crimes per 1000 people. In comparison, Ward 8, which has been typically known as one of the worst parts of the city, has a 37% poverty rate and 19 violent crimes per 1000 people.

Last month, I reported about Orr Elementary School and the issues school leaders have been facing in trying to get appropriate funds for their school to be renovated. Orr, which is in Ward 8, is one of the schools affected by this Capital Budget plan. One would think that schools that serve higher need populations, such as those in Ward 8, would receive more money. But, so far, there are only eight schools  that are east of the Anacostia that will be receiving funds for renovations.

Luckily the D.C. Council seems to be paying attention. Councilmember Grosso will be holding Town Hall Meetings to hear from residents, parents, students and education stakeholders about public education in D.C. I strongly suggest as many people as possible get out to in order to explain how urgent it is that our schools be funded more equitably across the entire city. The quality of students’ education depends on it.

Amara Pinnock is an elementary school teacher in DC. Reach her via email or Twitter.

In the last few months, Congress invited 18 education experts to share their thoughts on the reauthorization of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act during a series of hearings. Only three of them were current teachers.

Congress should care more about what teachers think, particularly when crafting such teacher-centered legislation.

For example, I don’t know many any teachers that are fond of standardized tests. However, here we are, 14 years into No Child Left Behind, and we have one of the most difficult and stringent tests yet—the PARCC tests. And while PARCC was not created by nor is mandated by Congress, the results from these tests could potentially be used for a lot of things that won’t please educators — including job evaluations, school ratings, and to secure government funding for education.

However, if I could weigh in on the ESEA reauthorization, here’s what I would say:

Standardized tests don’t work.

Teachers, students, and parents have expressed their views that standardized testing does not work for measuring educational quality. There are so many variables that affect a student’s performance on any given day, particularly in low-income communities, where students face greater outside pressures. We need to find other ways of evaluation that don't involve such high-stress measures.

Students should be taught how to learn, how to think, and how to create (not how to take a test).

Some of the best school systems in the world, such as Finland, have curricula that include much more than your basic arithmetic, science, and reading. They have classes in music, art, sports, religion, and even textile handcrafts. It is widely known that many American schools, particularly those in impoverished areas, have cut a lot of their extracurricular activities because of funding issues. Oftentimes these subjects are the ones that get at the essence of learning and encourage curiosity and inquisitiveness. In order for students to be ready for the work world—and more importantly, life—they need to learn how to think critically and solve problems. Academic study alone cannot provide these lessons.

Make school funding truly equitable.

A huge mistake that No Child Left Behind made was not providing any additional resources to struggling schools. This move is counterintuitive—schools that aren’t performing well need more funds than schools that are doing better in order to make improvements to their schools and provide additional supports for kids. This move would make funding equitable. And while NCLB does provide additional money for high-poverty schools through its Title I Funding, those funds are often not enough because typically states and districts give less money to the schools serving the students who need it the most. In other words, Title I money cannot create school finance equity unless all schools have at least the same amount of funding. Congress must do more to make sure that states and districts hold up their end of the bargain and provide disadvantaged students with at least the same, if not more resources than their peers.

Case in point: I teach in one of the bottom 40 performing schools in the District. My school is also severely outdated. Only two of our eight classrooms have smart boards; we have one computer lab; and each classroom has about two computers (many of which don’t work). Our bathrooms were out of paper towels for an entire week during the month of April. Our school was built in 1974 and has not been updated. However, another school in the district, Janney Elementary—one of the top 10 performing schools—got a new addition (complete with new rooms for the arts, sciences, and multipurpose use) in July 2014. (It is important to note that Janney is located in a much wealthier neighborhood and receives significant funding from its community.) Currently, District of Columbia Public Schools has 26 school projects in the works, but only five are part of the bottom 40 (and some schools in the bottom 40 have been updated in the past). Although NCLB aimed to make education more equal, this provision only served to continue to marginalize our struggling students.

Although well-meaning, a lot of the legislation surrounding education has yet to really improve things. To many, it’s only made things a lot worse. I think for any real change to happen, Congress needs to do what it’s supposed to: listen to the teachers.

Amara Pinnock is an elementary school teacher in DC. Reach her via email or Twitter.

If you have watched The West Wing, you know (and love) Sam Seaborn. Played by Rob Lowe, Sam is the deputy White House communications director under President Josiah Bartlet. In one episode, Sam, an unflinching idealist, expresses his views on education:

Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes; we need gigantic, monumental changes. Schools should be palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be making six-figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense. That's my position. I just haven't figured out how to do it yet.

In an idealized world, this would be the case. Schools would offer wraparound services, giving children access to the personalized academic, social, and emotional help they need for success. Students would be prepared for and guided into postsecondary programs, including those in career and technical education, that best meet their talents and desires. Our teaching force would be elite and better respected, mentioned in the same breath as doctors and lawyers, and compensated accordingly. Inner-city schools would be among the best in the country and help break disadvantaged students, who are disproportionately black and Hispanic, out of the cycle of poverty. There wouldn’t be a “skills gap” in our economy while we have an unemployment rate that is over 5 percent, over 10 percent for blacks, and nearly 7 percent for Hispanics.

As Sam said, bringing about these sorts of changes would be expensive. Yet the United States is already near the top in terms of education spending. In 2008, we spent more than 7 percent of our gross domestic product on education. That rate was the fifth-highest among countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, behind only Iceland, South Korea, Israel, and Norway. However, the federal government only accounts for 10 to 15 percent of that education spending, with the rest roughly split evenly between the state and local levels. In fact, in 2013, only 1 percent of our federal budget was reserved for education. And in President Barack Obama’s recent budget request for fiscal year 2016, which will find very little support in the Republican-controlled Congress, the U.S. Department of Education receives less than 1.8 percent of proposed funding. Out of a whopping $3.99 trillion, ED would only get $70.7 billion, and that’s in the idealized budget of a Democratic president. By comparison, the proposal would provide the U.S. Department of Defense with $585 billion.

So if we already spend so much on education, how can we start to make things better? One of the biggest reasons for funding disparities in our schools is the way that local education dollars are raised. Generally speaking, local funding comes from property taxes, meaning that higher-income areas with higher property values generate much more money for their schools. To address this difference, state education dollars, which come primarily from sales taxes and state-level income taxes, should be dedicated to at least equalizing funding levels for low-income urban and rural areas, if not providing them with even more funding than their wealthier counterparts. For its part, the federal government should focus on spurring large-scale, systemic improvements. Improving the talent pipeline for teachers and school leaders, offering strong incentives for working in disadvantaged schools, and funding research and pilot programs that find innovative solutions to tough problems are just a few examples. The federal budget should also reflect education as a greater priority in this country. That 1 percent should be 3 or even 5 percent, so that we can ensure that we have one of the best education systems in the world.

Unfortunately, this is not the type of system we have today. Poor schools don't have the most resources, many states aren't ensuring equitable funding, and the federal government tries to make up the difference with bulky formula funding programs. Rather than continuously trying to put federal Band-Aids on our gashed education system, we need to stitch it up with a new, holistic approach that will better align funding with our priorities. According to a recent poll by the Pew Research Center, people ages 18 to 29 list our educational system as their top policy priority for President Obama and Congress, even above the nation’s economy, and for good reason. But it will be difficult to make significant changes without commitment and cooperation at all levels of government. So what are we to do? Like Sam Seaborn said, we haven’t figured it out yet. But we need to.

Phillip Burgoyne-Allen is a legislative assistant at an education law firm. Reach him via email or Twitter.

UPDATED

Special education is an overly convoluted topic with the potential to torpedo a politician’s (or policymaker’s) career. As a result, most public figures and organizations give the subject a wide berth. Which is unfortunate, because the very reason for that convolution is what requires action: Special education is broken. It’s a broken solution to an important problem few are willing to speak publicly about. And even fewer are willing to invest the political capital necessary to make more than surface-level changes to the laws that protect our neediest children. No amount of retooling will fix the fundamental flaws of this system — we need an entirely different model.

Spend enough time writing and thinking about education policy and it’s easy to forget that policymaking is just as dependent on what doesn’t get discussed as what does. But if we step back from the conversation and think about what we should talk about, rather that what we should think about the things we’re already talking about, the shortcomings of our current discussion become a bit clearer. Here are three important ways to refocus the ed reform conversation now: