Posted on 08/26/2019 7:17:23 AM PDT by Trump.Deplorable
Such a good question, Madeline! What does Asbury Park Public Schools do with all that money, even as enrollment declines? With schools all over the state cutting costs, why is this happening? I mean, $42K a kid? Those students must be academic superstars! After all, that’s the basis for New Jersey’s Abbott decisions: As Education Law Center explains,
ELC’s legal and policy advocacy, which includes such landmark rulings as Abbott v. Burke, has significantly advanced the provision of fair school funding, high quality early education, safe and adequate school facilities, and school reform, especially to schools serving high concentrations of at-risk students and students with disabilities and other special needs.....
Is that happening in Asbury Park? Because, let’s face it, $42,382 a kid seems like a lot and, thus, came up in that Twitter conversation last week. State Aid Guy, more knowledgeable about New Jersey school finance than anyone I know, often notes on his blog that Asbury Park is the “most overaided” district in the state:
The topic of Asbury Park has special resonance these days in New Jersey...... After all, the cost per pupil seems awfuly high* (all in, including pension costs, overhead, etc.) for a district where four out of five high school students don’t meet expectations in reading and six out of seven don’t meet expectations in math.
To drill down further, I looked at the reading levels of third-graders, a benchmark for success in higher grades. At Barack Obama Elementary School, 11% — barely over one out of ten — third-graders met expectations for reading. .......
(Excerpt) Read more at njleftbehind.org ...
In Japan, they want their country to succeed.
In August 2009, they renamed the school (at great expense) a few months after The Won was inaugurated. They HOPED that their school would improve; they HOPED that naming it after him would motivate their kids; they HOPED that things would CHANGE.
I just love that the left named the biggest failure factory of a school after the biggest failure of President. It is such a failure that even the leftists on Wikipedia don’t even list it as a place named after Obama. They oddly skipped it
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_things_named_after_Barack_Obama
Yes, I’m absolutely certain that there are aspects of the Japanese system that just wouldn’t fly here.
However, this part would be a good way to return American public schools to a shadow of what they used to be, as well as establish some behavioral expectations for students:
“The schools and the parents expect kids to behave and show great respect for their teachers. If a kid gets in trouble in school, he’s going to be in trouble when he gets home.”
Unfortunately, it looks like the concepts of American exceptionalism, strong work ethics, healthy respect for authority, respecting the founding fathers and principles of the country, and doing the right thing, have all given way to a multicultural mish-mash where every other culture on the planet is respected and embraced except for our American culture. The left successfully took over academia and we’re seeing the results all around us, not the least of which in the self-hating white people who whine and apologize about being born white.
Even if we couldn’t incorporate every aspect of the successful Japanese system, we could use at least that one part to make a difference.
Peach
But that is simply not true...you don’t retire from any state job at 45 and start collecting with the exception of state troopers. Being a teacher sometimes warrants combat pay...but you don’t get paid your pension at 45.
To give you an idea of the respect shown teachers in Japan, a teacher is addressed by ‘sensei’ rather than the ordinary ‘san’. Teachers can never refer to themselves as ‘sensei’. Teachers who make a big impact on a student’s life might well expect little gifts of respect for the rest of their lives.
To give you an idea of discipline expected, my wife and I toured a middle school in rural Japan. All of the teachers and staff were in the language lab evaluating the language teacher’s techniques. The rest of the classes went on as normal with no adult supervision. This was a 3-story school. We’d open a door and kids would look up from their work—but they’d all been working. Doors weren’t cracked open so they could see us coming, and since we were inside we were wearing slippers rather than shoes.
Teachers and administrators work for the national government and are usually rotated out schools every five years. The local community pays for the building and equipment.
The kids do get to relax and be a bit wild at lunch time. But after lunch they spend a half hour or so cleaning the school, sweeping and moping the floors, etc. It’s one reason why the schools are tidy. But then Japan tends to be a pretty tidy place for the most part.
BTW, school supplies cost next to nothing. Office supply juggernauts like Staples, WB Mason and Office Max have driven down costs enormously. Here, you can get a box of 150 #2 pencils- enough to supply a classroom for a year - for about $12, or eight cents each. I’m sure school systems can purchase in bulk and bring the price-per-pencil down substantially more than that.
This is so true, if you look at a school budget, supplies are not even 1% of most school budgets, if there is a shortfall and need more money (raise taxes) school supplies is the first thing they threaten to cut, that and textbooks, arts, music, vocational programs, athletics. The programs that students and parents see and like the most. They never threaten to cut the Assistant Supervisor to Language Arts Curriculum (At 130K per year at fully benny package) because nobody would care...
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