Milton Friedman predicted back in the early 70s that increased spending on public schools would have a negative result.
To put this in a simple description...put twenty-five kids into an urban first-grade with an average teacher with no enthusiasm. Toss in lack of respect within the room, continued outbursts, and no authority figure within room or the school....then you come to the end of year one, with ten kids reading proficiently, five kids slightly less than average, and the remaining ten kids are all marginal in reading and other skills. From that day on...for eleven more years...the group will never match up or catch up with expectations.
To make up for this lose-lose game....you the administrator convince the school district to hire ‘helpers’...who really are there to occupy a pay-spot and really do no more than pull trouble-makers to the corner of the room so they can push your buttons and get you frustrated.
Then you, the administrator...convince the school district to buy laptops. More expenditure, no constructive results.
Then you, the administrator....convince the idiots to increase pay and benefits....to keep the better teachers there, but you can’t prove any of the kid’s numbers are any better....unless you invent a test that they can pass (you can guess the value of the test in real terms).
At some point, you the administrator....convince university gate-keepers to allow your marginal kids to be accepted (not the failed kids....but the ones who are really 9th-graders when they graduate). The colleges all play this game for a decade or two....but then start to admit that their system wasn’t made for this type of marginal intellectual to get a degree...especially a master’s degree or PhD).
Then finally...some of these marginal graduates end up as political figures and journalists...hyping up a problem that they know that exists...pretending that money or funding will fix it.
Did I miss anything?
Solution? Start back at the first grade...limit it to twelve kids...put retired Marines in the rooms for disciplinary issue punks...forget all other topics in the first and second grade except English and math. Drop the fed’s and state government out of each path...lay the entire blame on the local school board and the school management, and FIRE them if they can’t do the job...along with the teachers involved (revoke their certificates if they won’t regain control).
We talk a lot about paying people not to work but paying people not to teach properly and not to learn carry an equal or greater cost to society.
Education, beyond the purity of expanding one’s knowledge, has always been a survival skill.
It’s a fact that zoo animals that are fed regularly and become conditioned to a lack of predators and/or prey become listless and bored (that’s why they never move when you see them).
Take away the motivation to survive and thrive and you get...listless and bored people.
Interesting. Do you know where or do you have a link?
There may be some that genuinely believed there’d be an improvement in education,
but the string pullers have another goal - separating people from the money they earn.