Flatlining Education

Accuracy in Academia ^ | August 10, 2014 | Gabrielle Okun

[Academiadotorg]

The constant debate of how to fix public education is far from over. However, The Heritage Foundation came across new research for an improved education policy. heritage foundation index of cultury and opportunity

Jennifer A. Marshall, Vice President of the Institute for Family, Community, and Opportunity, discussed new research to better the failing education system for children in low income areas. While the Center for American Progress argues that government needs to increase funding for better education, the Heritage Foundation suggests a different approach.

“The charts on public school test scores [over time] are the most boring ones in the book, because they are just a flat line,” Marshall asserted at a blogger’s briefing at the Heritage Foundation on July 29, 2014. Indeed, in the Heritage Foundation’s 2014 Index of Culture and Opportunity, Lisa Snell dissected the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) and found that student achievement has remained “static” for the past 40 years.

“In 1971, 17-year-olds averaged 285 points (out of 500) in reading proficiency; in 1999, the average had risen to 288 points, and in 2012, it dipped to 287—zero statistical difference since 1971,” Snell writes. “Changes in 12th-grade math and science NAEP scores look about the same.”

“Meanwhile, per-pupil school costs have risen substantially over the same four decades,” Snell observed. “In 1970–1971, per-pupil spending in public schools was $6,112, and by 2011, that number had grown to $13,507 (in constant 2013 dollars).”

Snell is the Director of Education and Child Welfare at the Reason Foundation. “International test scores also show that education funding and academic performance do not necessarily correlate,” Snell noted. “In a 2013 report, the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) examined the relationship between countries’ education spending and academic achievement and found that spending above $35,000 per student cumulatively between ages six and 15, is unrelated to performance.”

“In fact, nations that spend more than $100,000 per student cumulatively during those school years—such as Norway, Switzerland, and the United States—get about the same results as nations with less than half the per-pupil spending levels, such as Estonia, Hungary, and Poland.”

[Jim from C-Town]

Want to fix public schools? Stop Federal aid and Federal coercion. Let the Local and State authorities handle the entire process. Just lie the Constitution intended.

[cuban leaf]

The constant debate of how to fix public education is far from over.

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The good news is that if the kids in question are YOUR kids, you can do whatever you want. You don’t have to debate it with anyone.

[cuban leaf]

Want to fix public schools? Stop Federal aid and Federal coercion.

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Yup. The fedgov should not even be involved. It’s not their swim lane.

[Academiadotorg]

this is why even allegedly conservative attempts at top-down reform fail. A whole generation of lawmakers needs to be schooled in the principle of subsidiarity.

[The_Reader_David]

In this case, getting the Feds out won't fix the problem. The source of the problem is two-fold, one cause is nearly universal in our times -- the professional managerial class, in this case high-paid principals and superintendents, having become a parasite on the institutions for which they are supposed to have fiduciary responsibility (what I had dubbed "the Era of Bad Stewards") -- the other is particular to K-12 education -- the fact that almost every one of the several states, with no coercion from the Federal government, have given a monopoly on producing "qualified" or "certified" teachers to colleges of education whose curriculum is, by and large, a vacuous amalgam of politically correct rubbish ("whole language" reading instruction, Vygotsky's "social construction of knowledge", "discovery learning" as a substitute for actually teaching math facts and standard algorithms,. . .), and which, by offering the easiest to complete majors at their universities, attract precisely the people we ought not want educating our children -- from my observations, about 85% of "ed majors" are math-phobic ditzes. I pity the other 15% who actually have something on the ball and are likely to make good teachers, and I'm not sure how many of them actually finish, without being ruined by the rot that passed for "teacher training" and actually become the good teachers they started with the potential to become.

[Organic Panic]

School spending doesn’t go toward students. It goes to administration, teacher unions, and protecting the whole corrupt system. I don’t have kids but if I did they certainly would not be going to public schools.

[12th_Monkey]

“to better the failing education system for children in low income areas”

The reality is most of these children are feral when they come to school. How does one “educate” children that have no structure, no discipline and no social skills???

[Jim Noble]

Give me the students from Estonia, Poland, and Hungary, and I'll do it for half as well.

Send them our students and their system will collapse.

[pfflier]

“In 1971, 17-year-olds averaged 285 points (out of 500) in reading proficiency; in 1999, the average had risen to 288 points, and in 2012, it dipped to 287—zero statistical difference since 1971,” Snell writes. “Changes in 12th-grade math and science NAEP scores look about the same.”

Reason for celebration!! When we compare us to us we are the same.

The only problem is when you compare us to the rest of the world. Then, we are in 30th place in math, 23rd in science.

[Academiadotorg]

even in the smallest school districts