After all, no nation spends more per pupil on education than the United States. And based on some Cato Institute research, I suspect the OECD estimate of about $15,000 per student is a low-ball estimate of the burden on American taxpayers. Posted on 10/27/2013 8:55:02 AM PDT by Kaslin
You would think the bureaucrats who run government schools would want to focus on the basics, such as teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic.
After all, no nation spends more per pupil on education than the United States. And based on some Cato Institute research, I suspect the OECD estimate of about $15,000 per student is a low-ball estimate of the burden on American taxpayers.
So what do we get for all this money? To be blunt, the results are miserable, with Americans ranking well below average compared to our overseas competitors.
Here are some comparisons on both literacy and numeracy from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. You’ll have to click the images to get an enlarged view. But maybe you won’t want to do that since it’s depressing to see that Americans are near the bottom for math skills and well below average for verbal skills.
Geesh, this is embarrassing. I like Slovaks, but I don’t want Americans to be less intelligent. I also like Belgians, but why are they kicking our tail? And I really like Estonians, but they’re putting us to shame.
So how is the education establishment dealing with these dismal results?
Well, they keep asking for more money. But as this remarkable chart from the Cato Institute illustrates, throwing more money at the system is a great way of building bureaucracy. But is sure doesn’t do much for kids. 
So you could say this is a form of child abuse. But that would trivialize the plights of kids who are grossly mistreated. So let’s say that the sub-par education provided by government schools is a form of child victimization. Or mistreatment. Or some word that signifies how they are not well served by the government’s education monopoly.
But let’s also remember that sub-par education is not the only bad thing that happens in government schools.
We also have amazing (in a bad way) episodes of intrusive and abusive political correctness.
Here’s a story from Massachusetts about a student being punished for doing the right thing.
It’s tough for Eleanor Cox to talk about how heartbroken her daughter Erin is over the punishment she received for doing what she thought was right. …Two weeks ago, Erin received a call from a friend at a party who was too drunk to drive. Erin drove to Boxford after work to pick up her friend. Moments after she arrived, the cops arrived too and busted several kids for underage possession of alcohol. A North Andover High School honor student, Erin was cleared by police, who agreed she had not been drinking and was not in possession of alcohol. But Andover High told Erin she was in violation of the district’s zero tolerance policy against alcohol and drug use. In the middle of her senior year, Erin was demoted from captain of the volleyball team and told she would be suspended from playing for five games. …the parents of Erin’s teammates have started a petition to support her.
I’m dismayed, of course, that the school wants to punish someone who didn’t do anything wrong, but what really irks me is that the school wants to regulate and control behavior that takes place off school property and outside of school hours.
To be blunt, it’s none of their you-know-what business. Parents should have primary responsibility for their kids and law enforcement has a role if they’re breaking the law.
Let’s now travel down south and read part of a report about how some mindless school bureaucrats punished an autistic student because he drew a picture of a bomb and brought the drawing to school.
…it all started when her son had made the hand-drawn picture of the bomb during the weekend at home. Parham said Rhett is a fan of the video game Bomber Man and drew the cartoon-ish like explosive. She told FOX Carolina on Monday that her son took the picture to Hillcrest Middle School, and that’s where problems arose. Parham said she was told that her son showed the picture to some older children, who reported him to school administration. …She said her son was suspended indefinitely by the school.
Fortunately, the government backed down after the story generated some unfavorable attention for the bureaucratic drones.
But we should ask ourselves why it even got to that stage. And perhaps get some counseling for the little brats who snitched on him. Sounds like they’re future IRS agents in training.
Sadly, this is just part of a pattern we’ve seen in government schools, with bureaucrats hyperventilating over normal kid behavior. Here are some other examples.
Now ask yourself to key question: Do we want to maintain and perpetuate a failed government school monopoly, or should we implement school choice to get better results and less political correctness?
Heck, we should be able to reform our schools if there’s already choice in countries such as Chile, Sweden, and the Netherlands.
How much more funding would there be, if we weren’t committing ourselves to trying to educate the children of Mexico?
Go to other countries and you will immediately see why our education system is so bad.
They don’t have the discipline problems that we have.
Make education a privilege , not a right, and get rid of those who screw it up and our system will be fine.
To understand the present situation, it helps to suppose that the public schools are not failures but solid successes at achieving their goals.
It also aids the understanding to assume, just for the moment, that the faceless grey bureaucrats lurking in the institutional establishments are not parasites, but predators.
IMHO, the best hope is for America’s children to offer massive but passive resistance to this socialist nightmare - play hooky by the millions!
If that doesn’t work, then I guess they’ll just have to escape, one by one, like my generation.
A $10k tax deduction for every American child under 16(that’s right-16) would solve the problem overnight. That long with eliminating ALL education funding.
I’ve seen evidence that much of this is arguably related more to demography than actual differences in education.
Children of Swedish ancestry in America outperform average Swedes.
Children of Japanese ancestry in America outperform average Japanese.
Children of African ancestry in America outperform average Africans.
Etc. By just about every country. The difference is that America averages in a lot (and increasing numbers) of people who are from low-performing ethnic groups.
Millions are, in effect, already that via home schooling.
Parents don't let the government indoctrination centers fill your kid's head with commie mush. Home school them or enroll them in a quality private school.
“Parents don’t let the government indoctrination centers fill your kid’s head with commie mush. Home school them or enroll them in a quality private school.”
I absolutely concur!
Coaching HS baseball had a way of undoing some of the damage.
Though look for an uptick of leftist attacks on competitive sports in general.
“Competition? Aaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!”
Google “Frankfurt School” for causation.
In 2008, we took important steps toward remaking the New Orleans school system by working with the Legislature to approve a landmark scholarship program for low-income students in the city who were trapped in failing schools (a program that we later expanded statewide)....Since 2007, the percentage of students in New Orleans who are reading and doing math at grade level has more than doubled. And, New Orleans is the number one ranked school district on the Brookings Choice and Competition Index.
See my post above. Your odd thesis fails in the face of real evidence.
Good for New Orleans and Governor Jindal
Holder is trying to stop him. Racist bast@rd.
btt
1. They don't need more funding.
2. If you have something against Mexicans, you might be glad that their children are getting a cruddy education instead of learning to read and do math.
Well said.
When I was a student I thought attendance was taken to ensure our safety.
I didn’t know for many years that it was to tally the day’s funding for the school.
The sad fact is that the purpose of students is to provide income for the teachers.
If that wasn’t the case, a sane system would rid itself of kids who screw it up for others.
Thanks Kaslin.
Philly city council wants socialism taught in schools - in praise of mass murdering dictators
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/3084189/posts
Common Core, the United States and the Unified State
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/bloggers/3084179/posts
But don't make the case with bad data.
Most countries don't test all of their over-12s the way we do. So, they screen the test-taking population (wisely) to select those with a good chance for success. Also, since ethnic groups, all over the world, vary widely in intellectual ability, until you match US students of similar ethnic backgrounds with overseas competitors, you really can't make much sense out of it.
How many native American children with American citizen parents have had their education held back by unprepared non-American children or children of non-American citizen parents, who require more time and attention in the classroom?
How much better could the education of American children be if school finances were not redirected to ESL programs?
How much better could the health of American children be if the public hospital emergency rooms were not filled to capacity with non-Americans seeking non-emergency care?
This is a public resources issue, not a racial one, as there’s a place for the public education of Mexican children. It’s in Mexico.
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