The funding system for public schools in the United States relies heavily on local property taxes. Property values vary considerably from neighborhood to neighborhood, district to district. This means that children who may need the most help in school in fact receive the least, since they live in areas with cheap housing and correspondingly low tax contributions.
For example, one school in a poverty-stricken district reports that while there may be four or five stalls in the girls' bathroom, only one might be in working order. Another described broken windows, peeling paint and cracked floors that cannot be repaired due to budget constraints. Yet another said it cannot even provide chalks and toilet paper — never mind textbooks for each student.
With regard to elementary schools, they often cannot afford to hire teachers for non-core subjects such as music, physical education and art, and therefore students never have proper lessons in them.