So here's something that's been on my mind a lot lately. Why do we distribute funds to public schools in the way we do here in the Untied States? Funding for public schools is based on property tax, so a neighborhood with a lot of well-off families will have well-funded schools. And that's great. I'm all for well-funded schools. The problem starts when we look at neighborhoods where families just don't have the same assets. Neighborhoods that pay less in taxes get less back in their school systems. I still can't figure out why we do it this way. It only perpetuates the vicious cycle: students don't get a quality education in the public schools, many drop out of school (Why should they stay if they're not going to learn anything anyway?) and end up in low-paying, dead-end jobs, so that when they have kids, the cycle can start over. I admit that I came from an affluent neighborhood and from a school that had enough funding to educate its students well. But looking back, the day my AP Chemistry teacher threw a sizeable chunk of sodium into a bucket of water just to show is that it explodes was probably not the best use of funds. Why can't we take some of the funding away from the rich suburban schools and redirect it in a way that can be beneficial for American schools as a whole? I am ashamed to think that some schools have money to literally throw around, while others do not have what they need to teach adequately.