Abstract

Too many of America's children attend school in overcrowded and even unsafe conditions. According to the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES), nearly $127 billion in repair and renovation are needed to upgrade our nation's schools to good condition. Over the next decade, billions more will be needed to accommodate growing enrollments and remedy the overcrowding that hampers one-quarter of our schools. States and localities are struggling to meet the challenge of providing safe, decent facilities for their students. As a result parents, educators and state and local governments are increasingly turning to Washington for help meeting this challenge.

Obviously, none of this, independently, dictates that the federal government should intervene. However, the infrastructure challenges faced by schools are massive, the local and state capacity to meet them frequently is insufficient, and the importance of quality education so paramount that Washington should take action to address this problem. Unfortunately, a typical partisan breakdown has characterized school construction. Conservatives argue that there is no federal role in school facilities and that it should remain solely a state and local function. Liberals fall into a "Washington knows best" trap and support needlessly Byzantine proposals that frequently ignore the reality of public school finance. Both sides are wrong. Education is a national priority and responsibility and Washington can play a constructive role that complements and empowers state and local efforts. And, while more resources and modernized schools alone won't solve the serious problems that bedevil educators in this country, they are a key component of better schooling.

There is a Third Way solution to this problem: state or regional infrastructure banks capitalized by the Federal Government. Infrastructure banks offer flexibility for states and localities by offering a range of financial services to school districts and schools, including charter schools and small schools, but they are capitalized with federal money to leverage state and local funding. This synthesis offers a route, both substantively and politically, out of the quagmire of the past few years on the school construction issue. This paper examines the policy and political issues that surround school construction and illustrates how infrastructure banks would work and help address this challenge.

Sara Mead is a policy analyst for the 21st Century Schools Project at the Progressive Policy Institute.