Find ways to cut that administrative cost and direct more money specifically to classrooms and textbooks and I'll almost guarantee public schools will get better over time.
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."
"Stossel is an idiot..."
If they identify Stossel as an "idiot" then imagine what they'll do to your kid!
At some point what people actually know is going to trump some checked box on a resume. That's already beginning to occur. The technological field actually leads in this area, but business and other areas are soon to follow. Engineering, medical, and other sciences will still require traditional educational outlets, but much if not most or nearly all of those curriculae actually are relevant to the final outcome.
In undergraduate school, one can get a business degree with as few as 10 (or 40 or so) courses actually having any direct meaning or purpose to one's professional aspirations. Reading, writing, and math can be self taught and more and more people are doing just that due to the incredibly low, and faltering, standards of the public schools. More and more people are spending money on tutoring or the like as well.
Most of the classes taken in undergraduate school for non-technical majors are just fluff BS. Most of it is spun so liberally that it's nauseating.
Once the ridiculous structure we have that equates a degree with knowledge, intelligence, or expertise is "adjusted," more room for people that don't have the credentials but have the common sense and knowledge will open up giving way to a new framework within this realm. I.e., just like techies can get "certifications" or other qualifications via testing, IMO so too will others be able to do the same.
Also, not saying it's gonna be any less expensive to pursue necessarily, but the general framework will have to change.
Find ways to cut that administrative cost and direct more money specifically to classrooms and textbooks and I'll almost guarantee public schools will get better over time.
In California, the schools receive 50% of the entire state budget. They are still hungry for money. I remember a few years ago attending a PTA meeting hearing sadly that California ranked 49 out of 50 of the states in order of quality of education. More $$$'s does not necessarilly mean more quality.
It's also true that rural public school districts often have less spending per student than urban districts...but take a guess which ones have better test scores and higher graduation rates?
For the difference between public and parochial, 25% of the children would need to be autistic or palsied. What we have instead is manufactured and enhanced "LD's" such as ADD, ADHD, etc.
This is how they get to the amount of money they spend..that plus the incredible number of administrators and attorneys they employ.
Is Belgium immune from CP and autism?
Even most Republicans would agree with the following statement: "Schools in America are underfunded."
Point is, it's not going to change.
We're just going to keep throwing more and more money at teh schools, because that's what Government does.
Government fails on purpose, so it can justify ever increasing budgets and bureaucracy.
Put it in other terms. For a high school of 1000 students, that would be about $10,000,000 or about $200,000 per "educator" in the school. So where does the money go? If teachers get on the average salaries of about $50,000 a year, and of medical benefits abour $10,000 a year, and even if we add in defered retirement benefits of about $25,000 a year, how DO we get to $200,000 per person?
The teacher's Union has a lien on Fort Knox.
Actual education is not the goal of most public school educators.
Their desire is to produce graduates who are Tolerant Environmentally Aware Socialists.
Of course it takes that much money per kid. After all, they have to pay the $100,000 pension to a former superintendent and his wife for the last 12 years or so it the city we used to live in. Not counting the retirement for all their friends who they got high paying positions for the last few years of employment so they could enjoy that benefit, too.
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