Posted on 03/08/2010 8:08:29 AM PST by reaganaut1
While government leaders attempt to tackle budget deficits that are ballooning to historic proportions, 55% of Americans say the government does not spend enough money on public education.
A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey shows that just 20% think the government spends too much on public education, while another 21% say the amount it spends is about right.
Sixty-seven percent (67%) of Democrats and 55% of voters not affiliated with either party say the government does not spend enough, a view shared by just 42% of Republicans.
Among all voters, 45% believe it is more important for the government to aid low-income students than to help the best and brightest pupils, up four points from a survey last May. Twenty-six percent (26%) see helping the best and brightest students as more important. Twenty-nine percent (29%) more are not sure.
Most Democrats (63%) and a plurality (46%) of unaffiliated voters see aiding low-income students as the priority. Republicans are more narrowly divided: 41% say helping the best and brightest is more important, while 26% think the emphasis should be on low-income students.
Married voters are closely divided on the question, too.
Seventy-five percent (75%) of all voters say they have been following recent news reports about proposed cuts in public education funding due to state budget problems.
Last August, only 17% of Americans believed teachers should be asked to take furloughs or pay cuts to help deal with the budget crises that are facing many school systems nationwide.
President Obama has said U.S. children need to spend more time in school to make them more competitive with students from other countries, and 49% of Americans think the president is right. Thirty-seven percent (37%) disagree.
(Excerpt) Read more at rasmussenreports.com ...
Actual numbers: (2008) Government (non-charter) K-12 children: 49,299,000 Government (non-charter) K-12 teachers: 3,180,396 Cost per student (non-charter K-12): $10,889 (does this include federal money?) Cost per classroom per year: $168,789 Government (charter) K-12 children: 1,407,421 Government (charter) K-12 teachers: 88,000 Cost per student (non-charter K-12): $6,585 Cost per classroom per year: $105,317 Direct cost of government schools $520,643,954,000It actually costs much more than that, as the opportunity costs of not educating our children properly may run to a net present value of $2-3 trillion per year in lost future productivity.
ping
This point needs to be hammered home. It's also essential to roll back all the liberal pedagogy. This is where the failure rate is coming from. It shouldn't take 30 or 40 thousand dollars a year (9 months) to teach kid reading, writing, arithmetic, history and science. They don't need stuff like environmental awareness week for heavens sake.
Yeah, look at what D.C. gets for all the money spent on their schools. Half+ of America is stupid or at least ignorant.
This is jaw-droppingly stupid of the American people.
bookmark and ping
Unfortunately, most of those 55% were educated, or as I like to say Feducated, by government schools. Those of us who were past school age when local control was relinquished and the Communists took them over yelled and screamed foul but parents were too busy working to pay sky rocketing taxes and pay to listen. The more money poured into education the less true education resulted. Suddenly Johnny couldn’t read. History books were revised. God and His wonderful Handbook To Happiness was forbidden. Classes which taught self discipline such as penmanship were discarded. Or that taught home making skills were dropped. Instead of being taught how to think, kids are taught what to think. The latest trend is to bypass recess so that the kids won’t get the physical activity and fresh air needed in order to focus well in the classroom! And now we are witnessing the grave results. 55% of people think we should throw more money at the schools, and 49%
think our Communist president is doing a good job! Can we be far from the Soviet States of Amerika, or are we already there?
Ugh, people are so gullible.
I, and most of my friends who homeschool, spend anywhere from $200 to $2000 per year to school our kids.
Some excellent private schools around here charge $6000 per student yearly.
Our school system here spends some $10,000 to $14,000 per child yearly.
The first two groups score higher on standarized testing than the third.
Money does not good education make.
First thing we do then is cut out school lunch program spending and put it on EDUCATION itself.
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Jerry Pournelle (the science fiction writer) did research on predicting which students would do well in college base on their high school.
It was an honest study. The results were so “sensitive” that they gave him a degree, even though no publication dared to print the results. Turns out that some of the most highly touted suburban schools turn out students who are unprepared for college. If you didn’t live in the area and compare the schools, the variance between supposedly equal schools (by cost-per student, race, income of parents, etc.) is astounding.
The top 5% of schools (government, private, parochial) are amazing. The bottom half are appalling, and in the bottom 20%, the parents would be better off paying for an arsonist so the kids would be somewhere else.
And if the kids don’t sabotage the standardized tests, the schools will.....
Georgia Schools Inquiry Finds Signs of Cheating (especially in Atlanta)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2449671/posts
I talked to some seasoned citizens who took the first SAT. The guys drew race cars, the girls did sewing patterns. Since it didn’t affect them, as the first year was to standardize the test results, a 500/500 SAT means you can do a sewing pattern with the dots on the test.
Of course, now there is an essay part. I’d rather have them graded in India, where they would be less likely to know how to grade based on political bias.
It’s so very sad to see how many folks are terribly misguided. I’ve often joked, I’m not getting a return on my education dollar, when the kid behind the counter can’t make change unless the machine tells him. It’s beyond a joke though, because when students can’t figure simple math when it comes to making change, how will they know when the government is robbing them blind?
But, but "good" schools keep your property values high, dontcha know?
3/4 of my property taxes go to the public schools, which in my state usually battle with Miss and Ala for bottom of the rung.
Not only that, but local sales tax (1%) goes to the schools. Taxes for a new jail get voted down each election, but the teachers, who conveniently have "teacher's work days" scheduled each election day, always vote themselves more money, and vote in the school board members they want.
it’s not the money foolish citizens
How many of these people know how much is spent?
If you told them that, for example, Minneapolis schools get 12K per student would they thing that a quarter million dollars is not enough to educate a single class room of 20 kids? Really?
Charter schools do a better job with only a fraction of the financial resources and they are subject to the same rules.
What???
The only way to ‘fix’ public schools is for parents to be more involved in their kids education. That, and non union teachers, is the primary difference between a Charter School and a Public School..
$10,560.94 per student. I’m sending my kids to a conservative college which costs less than that, including room and board, and actually teaches them something!
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