I went to part-time in my profession and started a program for a Masters of Education to become certified to teach. What I found was that the Education program was set up with that sort of indoctrination...to push the idea that more funding was needed.
In looking at the evidence, it appears to me that there’s a base level of funding that’s needed (obviously, if the kids have no heat or no paper or whatever, then it will impede learning), but beyond that, further funding doesn’t really seem to help very much (and at highest end, can hurt).
What’s needed is *appropriate allocation of funding* so good teachers get more and poor teachers get pushed out of the field.
We had an interesting situation in WA State this year as school began, teachers in Bellevue,WA went on strike. Now, strikes are illegal, but no one made a move to do anything about it. There demands were that they wanted more control over the curriculum and higher raises than were offered.
At issue was the fact that the school district is not the highest paid in the state, just the third highest and that the demand for a district wide curriculum of excellence, puts too much stress on some students, even though the district curriculum has resulted in the schools being ranked among the top schools in the country for several years running.
What the district does is limit class size to 16 students and push all students through a college preparatory curriculum. The teachers claim that this might not be suitable for all students, that some students might be harmed by it, made to feel inadequate and that it is unequal to the kids in the schools in Marysville, where they went on strike last year and were forced to increase their class size to 30 students to meet the teachers’ union pay demands.