Posted on 01/18/2006 6:54:15 AM PST by Millee
"Stossel is an idiot who should be fired from ABC and sent back to elementary school to learn journalism." "Stossel is a right-wing extremist ideologue."
The hate mail is coming in to ABC over a TV special I did Friday (1/13). I suggested that public schools had plenty of money but were squandering it, because that's what government monopolies do.
Many such comments came in after the National Education Association (NEA) informed its members about the special and claimed that I have a "documented history of blatant antagonism toward public schools." "Stossel is an idiot who should be fired from ABC and sent back to elementary school to learn journalism." "Stossel is a right-wing extremist ideologue."
Not enough money for education? It's a myth.
The truth is, public schools are rolling in money. If you divide the U.S. Department of Education's figure for total spending on K-12 education by the department's count of K-12 students, it works out to about $10,000 per student.
Think about that! For a class of 25 kids, that's $250,000 per classroom. This doesn't include capital costs. Couldn't you do much better than government schools with $250,000? You could hire several good teachers; I doubt you'd hire many bureaucrats. Government schools, like most monopolies, squander money.
America spends more on schooling than the vast majority of countries that outscore us on the international tests. But the bureaucrats still blame school failure on lack of funds, and demand more money.
In 1985, some of them got their wish. Kansas City, Mo., judge Russell Clark said the city's predominately black schools were not "halfway decent," and he ordered the government to spend billions more. Did the billions improve test scores? Did they hire better teachers, provide better books? Did the students learn anything?
Well, they learned how to waste lots of money.
The bureaucrats renovated school buildings, adding enormous gyms, an Olympic swimming pool, a robotics lab, TV studios, a zoo, a planetarium, and a wildlife sanctuary. They added intense instruction in foreign languages. They spent so much money that when they decided to bring more white kids to the city's schools, they didn't have to resort to busing. Instead, they paid for 120 taxis. Taxis!
What did spending billions more accomplish? The schools got worse. In 2000, five years and $2 billion later, the Kansas City school district failed 11 performance standards and lost its academic accreditation for the first time in the district's history.
A study by two professors at the Hoover Institution a few years ago compared public and Catholic schools in three of New York City's five boroughs. Parochial education outperformed the nation's largest school system "in every instance," they found -- and it did it at less than half the cost per student.
"Everyone has been conned -- you can give public schools all the money in America, and it will not be enough," says Ben Chavis, a former public school principal who now runs the American Indian Charter School in Oakland, Calif. His school spends thousands less per student than Oakland's government-run schools spend.
Chavis saves money by having students help clean the grounds and set up for lunch. "We don't have a full-time janitor," he told me. "We don't have security guards. We don't have computers. We don't have a cafeteria staff." Since Chavis took over four years ago, his school has gone from being among the worst middle schools in Oakland to the one where the kids get the best test scores. "I see my school as a business," he said. "And my students are the shareholders. And the families are the shareholders. I have to provide them with something."
Truth to a liberal (NEA etc) is like Hell is to snowballs.
Strange how the clowns who run the school systems build these fantastic temples of learning full of greenhouses, planetaria, and the like, yet the graduates can barely spell "dog" or "cat" or make change on their summer jobs at Subway.
Stosell (sp) is right! Goverment schools are a trye form of child abuse.
Anyone have an address for Chavis? I have some old (but still good only 2 years old) computers I would gladly donate.
How about it Freepers?
Correction Government school are a true form of child abuse.
Here's a clue.
No matter how much money you give the "Public School", it is never, EVER, enough. They will always cry for more.
We educate each of our nine children at home for about $200 to $500 apiece, varying according to the complexity of their studies.
The Public School of the regional school district ("school collective" is a more accurate term) costs over $12,000 (TWELVE THOUSAND) per student, and that does not even include the bus contract, which is in the millions of dollars.
The single biggest problem in American schools seems to be the NEA.
I think he was surprised.
How much is enough?
I am sure we could give an urban school district hundreds of millions of dollars, watch it fail due to corrupt administration, and then hear the same administration (with the help of the teacher's union) complain that they didn't have enough money.
The problem isn't money. The problem is incompetence on the part of the people who are running the public education show. Schools need to get back to teaching the fundamentals and abandon all this touchy-feely garbage that they left continues to shovel.
When I was a young teacher, I was forced to write ten letters to people I knew, asking them to vote for a tax hike to fund education in my home town. These letters were collected in a box under the supervision of the union president. I was clueless about politics back then, but now I am quite embarrassed about complying with their demand.
John Stossel is not running our school system. The NEA is running our school system. So if there is a problem (and there is), then you know who to blame.
He'd rent space at a posh office park, have well paid professional tutors, and have the meals served by expensive caterers. He lays out the prices for all of this and it would still be less than what we're being fleeced for now.
For starters, I am not going to say that schools do not waste money. That would be an indefensible position. But I will say that schools do NOT spend evenly distribute that 10K per student. What Stossel neglected to even mention was the high cost of educating the special education students. Specialists for autism run in the hundreds of thousands per state. 1-on-1 assistants for the severely disabled are expensive. Residential and day center placements for the emotionally disturbed run into the millions per states every year.
By law, these children are legally obligated to an education. If a child has autism, he cannot be educated in a traditional manner. A child born with cerebral palsy may require specialized occupational training to learn how to hold a pencil so that she can learn to write and participate.
And before someone wants to blast me about how these services are unnecessary, that is a moot point. By law these kids are entitled to an education just as my perfectly normal daughters are. Their education looks different, but is still valid.
Some kids with special training will be able to hold a simple, menial task job in the future and will in essence give back to society. Some will not. But I would hope and pray that no one here sitting in the comfort of their home or office would point fingers at another's child and say "YOU do not deserve to be educated. Go home and watch TV." Our society is not yet that hardened.
So, can any of us educate our own children for 10k a year? Sure we can, but how about those Freepers with children with severe disabilities? 10K would not cover a month's worth of educational expenses.
Stossel made a right ass of himself by ignoring this fact and comparing our kids one-on-one to Belgian children.
And, in fairness, some administrators made even bigger asses of themselves by insisting the sky is the limit in terms of money. I was disgusted by their greed. They are part of the problem as are the unions.
It's really not about money in most places. It's about lack of competition. On the other hand, there are some places where more money would help, if you could assure that it would be used properly. The problem is that without competition, you don't have that assurance.
If the government gave me a voucher for my kids, I could supplement that voucher, if I did not think it was enough. Unfortunately, I don't have that choice.
My wife is a public school teacher.
One her complaints is that the school where she teaches gets new computers for the kids every two years, or so. No one uses the computers. They sit in a room with covers over them, and every time the state sends the new computers, the custodians have to find room for them so they, too, can sit is a room with covers over them.
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