Myth: Schools Need More Money (John Stossel)

Creator's Syndicate ^ | January 18, 2006 | John Stossel

[RWR8189]

"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."

The NEA says public schools need more money. That's the refrain heard in politicians' speeches, ballot initiatives and maybe even in your child's own classroom. At a union demonstration, teachers carried signs that said schools will only improve "when the schools have all the money they need and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy a bomber."

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."

©2006 JFS Productions, Inc. Distributed by Creators Syndicate

[chaos_5]

At least we both agree on at least one point. Something must be done about the atrocity we call public education, and more money is not the answer.

[polymuser]

A voucher-less, market-driven solution is OK, too, but the entire fund sourcing scheme will have to change in most states.

In my state, property taxes, a portion of sales tax and some lottery profits fund public education. How to change that so a family in a rental unit can benefit from a change equally with a home-owning family receiving a property tax reduction is a tough one. Vouchers would keep the funding stream and per pupil funding amount in place. What changes then is only what can be accepted as a 'school'.

The neoMarxists are powerfully concerned about controlling education -- it's key to their success. For them, religion and religious schools are anathema.

[Thoeting]

Too bad Stossel neglected to mention that about 1/2 of DC charter schools perform worse than the public schools.

But that would have gotten in the way of a good story I guess.

[Tribune7]

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.

Bump

[FreeKeys]

Yet another addition to this ongoing series of articles is here: School Competition Remains "Unproven" (sarcasm)

[Old Professer]

My cousin's husband had a 23 foot daycruiser boat; it had a top speed of almost 50 mph but that wasn't fast enough to suit him.

So off he went in search of more speed; three engines and as many racing engine builders later it was finally impressed upon him by someone he believed more than me that his problem wasn't money and horsepower, it was hull displacement, drag and the consequent inertia.

He now has a 16 foot ski boat with a 460 Ford and twin dual pumper 780 Holleys, pops his fat little butt out of the water like a cork.