Chicago’s public school teachers remained on strike for a third day today. But as ThinkProgress reported yesterday, even when Chicago schools are in session, students have to deal with a host of should-be-embarrassing problems, including crumbling buildings, lack of art and physical education classes, and an abysmally short school day. (Chicago’s elementary school day is so short that some students are given just 10 minutes for lunch in order to cram in all the necessary instruction.)

These problems stem in large part from Illinois’ education funding system, which is one of, if not the most, inequitable in the nation. Illinois schools rely even more heavily on property taxes than the standard U.S. school district, which, as the Center for Tax and Budget Accountability noted, “ties the quality of the public education a school can give a child to the wealth of the community in which that child lives.”

Huge proportions of Chicago students come from low-income households, so the property tax base from which the schools are funded is not high. The Chicago Reporter outlined some of the practical consequences of this system:

– Due to the primary reliance on local property tax revenue for school funding, there are massive cumulative gaps in per-pupil spending, particularly in poor or minority communities. The 6,413 students who started elementary school in Evanston [a suburb north of Chicago] in 1994 and graduated from high school in 2007 had about $290 million more spent on their education than the same number of Chicago Public Schools students.

– Many of the school districts that spent the most per-student received at least 90 percent of their money from local property taxes. Yet, these districts tended to tax themselves at far lower rates than their poorer counterparts.

– The percentage of state contribution to school funding has decreased four of the last five years and is one of the lowest in the nation.

Illinois is also generally terrible at funding education, ranking 40th in per-capital education spending, despite being 15th in per-capita income. And the disproportionate lack of funding for low-income areas, particularly within cities, manifests itself in several ways. Besides the obvious lack of resources for students, wealthier districts can attract better teachers and pay for better safety measures.

As one Chicago school teacher wrote, “How can the discrepancy be so wide in school funding? The answer is simple; Gage Park [where she taught] is a violent, gang-­‐ridden neighborhood where the houses are very cheap. The worth of the properties will never rise due to the extreme violence in the neighborhood. Also, most of the living spaces are rented – there just aren’t that many people that own homes. Therefore, property taxes are low, virtually non-­‐existent.” By some estimates, it would take about $1.9 billion to bring Chicago’s students up to level at which they were meeting state standards.

Chicago’s public school teachers were on strike for a second day today, continuing a standoff with the city’s mayor, Rahm Emanuel (D). Negotiations stalled over a handful of issues, including teacher evaluations, the funding of charter schools, and class sizes.

Meanwhile, some 350,000 students are left missing time in the classroom. And a look at the statistics regarding the performance of Chicago students — and the facilities in which they try to learn — shows just how critical it is that the city both invest in new resources and get its teachers back on the job as quickly as possible. Here are the key facts about the conditions students in Chicago currently face:

– 33 percent of Chicago’s children were in poverty in 2010, versus a rate of 20 percent for Illinois children as a whole; 80 percent of Chicago students qualify for free or reduced lunches. Research suggests the academic achievement gap between children of differing income levels has now far outpaced the gap between back and white children, and income disparities can account for 40 percent or more of the variation in test scores.

– Chicago has a shorter school day than the national average for elementary schools, at five hours forty-five minutes (though secondary school days in the district are slightly longer than the national average). Many Chicago students are in class for 10 days less than the national average of 180 days. Emanuel and the teachers negotiated a deal to extend hours and hire hundreds of new teachers to deal with the increased workload. Studies have shown that expanded learning time can provide a significant boost for students, particularly those most likely to fall behind in the classroom.

– Chicago scores lower than other big cities on the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests, with just 20 percent of students performing at “proficient” levels in 2011. 60 percent of students performed at “basic” levels. However, the district has made big strides to improve student achievement since 2003.

–According to CTU, 42 percent of Chicago’s elementary schools lack full funding for arts and music teachers, even though the Dept. of Education called arts and music education “particularly beneficial for students from economically disadvantaged circumstances and those who are at risk of not succeeding in school.” Chicago schools also lack adequate funding and equipment for physical education — only 13 percent of middle school principals reported having enough physical education resources for their students in 2011.

– Many of Chicago’s lowest-performing schools are crumbling, but Chicago Public Schools acknowledged last year that it won’t invest in improvement projects for schools it expects to be closed in the next five to 10 years, instead focusing on other schools, including those that share facilities with charter schools. CPS allotted $25 million to six schools that it will no longer control next year, according to the Chicago Tribune, and many of the funds in the city’s capital improvement plan are disproportionately aimed at more affluent schools.

Our guest blogger is Kate Pennington, and education policy analyst at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

It’s no secret that effective teachers are the key difference-makers in public education. How and where teachers are trained, and if it matters, are on-going, controversial debates. As of this week, individuals with no formal teaching preparation in Wisconsin can take advantage of a new pathway to teach in the state’s public schools.

The Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction made the announcement on Monday: interested applicants with at least three years of nontraditional teaching—experience such as in a private school, workplace training center, child care center or postsecondary institution—can apply for a teaching license by submitting a portfolio of work to the DPI for review.

The new teacher licensure process has some traditional education school faculty concerned.

“What they’ve put together is a fairly complex process that’s asking for evidence of teaching competence, but there are some policy questions that remain to be answered about the implementation of this,” Jeanne Williams, professor of education studies at Ripon College and the president of the Wisconsin Association of Colleges for Teacher Education, told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Predicting teacher success is difficult and measuring teacher effectiveness is no different. According to suggestions from experts, licensing and certification would both reflect and predict teachers’ success in leading students to academic achievement. In most states, however, those predictors do not exist.

What we do know is that traditional routes into teaching do not produce more effective teachers than alternative ones. In fact, Teach For America teachers—an alternative teacher preparation program that trains their recruits in a couple of months prior to full-time teaching assignments—produced slightly higher math gains and equivalent reading gains as more experienced, traditionally certified teachers in the same schools.

Teacher preparation should not be taken lightly. There should be requirements for teacher candidates. But until a catchall solution is found, all pathways should be considered. Let’s put it this way: when you have a system that would have barred Einstein from teaching high school physics, a little rethinking of teacher licensure might be in order.

To hear conservatives tell it, the 2009 Recovery Act (known as the stimulus) was a failure. However, that is not the view of independent analysts, who credit the stimulus with saving or creating millions of jobs.

According to a new report from the Center on Education Policy, the stimulus was successful at saving education jobs as well, preventing layoffs in at least 31 states:

– ARRA grants helped to stabilize school districts’ budgets at a time of shortfalls in state and local funding. In roughly 52% of school districts with funding decreases for 2009-10, State Fiscal Stabilization Fund grants compensated for a majority of the decrease; in another 45% of these districts, SFSF money compensated for at least a portion of the decrease.

– ARRA saved educators’ jobs and reduced funding shortfalls in K-12 education. In 2010, approximately 69% of districts reported that they used SFSF funds to save or create jobs for teachers and other school personnel. In 2011, 31 of 35 states surveyed reported that ARRA and Education Jobs funds saved teaching jobs, and 27 reported that these funds saved other district and school-level jobs. In addition, the majority of districts receiving ARRA supplemental funds for the Title I and IDEA programs reported using at least some of those funds to save or create jobs.

Of course, this hasn’t stopped the economy from bleeding education jobs anyway. Last year alone, local governments cut 130,000 teaching jobs. In the last three years, government have shed more than 300,000 teaching jobs, as this chart shows:

And, as recent research confirmed, public sector job cuts ripple through the economy, taking private sector jobs along with them.