Posted on 06/15/2010 5:34:02 PM PDT by rhema
The school year is drawing to a close. Time to balance the educational accounts and see what’s been learned. Though not by my kids. I don’t worry about them. They’re geniuses like your kids and soak up knowledge the way a sponge (or a SpongeBob) does. Muffin, in sixth grade, has learned that Justin Bieber is very talented and doesn’t—really, Dad—sing like a girl. Poppet, third grade, has learned how the Plains Indians made tepees. (They waited until after dinner to announce that their “Lifestyles of the Cheyenne” project was due tomorrow so that all the Cheyenne dads were up until one in the morning gluing dowels and brown wrapping paper to a piece of AstroTurf.) And Buster, kindergarten, has learned he can make himself giggle hysterically by adding “poop” to any phrase. The Little Engine That Could Poop.
No, the accounts that I’m balancing—and it’s quite educational—are bank accounts. What’s been learned is that it costs a fortune to send kids to school. Figures in the Statistical Abstract of the United States show that we are spending $11,749 per pupil per year in the U.S. public schools, grades pre-K through 12. That’s an average. And you, like me, don’t have average children. So we pay the $11,749 in school taxes for the children who are average and then we pay private school tuition for our own outstanding children or we move to a suburb we can’t afford and pay even more property taxes for schools in the belief that this makes every child outstanding.
Parents of average students believe it too. According to an annual Gallup poll conducted from 2004 through 2007, Americans think insufficient funding is the top problem with the public schools in their communities. But if throwing money is what’s needed, American school kids
(Excerpt) Read more at weeklystandard.com ...
I believe the public school system should be ended.
Public education worked just fine, until it was taken over by the Department of Education, the NEA, and the teachers’ unions. Now its just another government-controlled sinecure for leftists.
I guess it must have been tough for the Cheyenne girls with no Dads to help out...
Link is broken, unfortunately.
Private pay or private charity. Go, P.J., go!
As a single dad, I raised and sent all four of my chillins to private school, all the while paying for public schools too. That’s double screwed.
I agree with you! IMHO we would save a lot of money by having a set of good teachers teach via closed circuit TV where kids would never have to leave their livingroom or parents could pay for the kid to sit in a supervised location for the schooling.
“Now its just another government-controlled sinecure for leftists.”
My old Mom taught public schools for 35 years with a passion. She’s currently rolling over in her grave at the state of things.
I agree, that way parents are able to keep a tighter rein on the indoctrination attempts; families might save enough money that Moms who want to stay home with the kids would be able to do so; less dangerous for the kids...
“I believe the public school system should be ended.”
Me too. I think parents should be responsible for feeding, clothing, educating, and giving medical and dental care to their children.
If they don’t, then either charity, or extra family should step in.
If they willfully don’t, then the government could step in for criminal neglect.
This would be a grand idea! End the Dept. of Education, and allow States to administer Education as THEY see fit! Even if they want to OUTSOURCE Education to PRIVATE groups, religious institutions or corporations — it ought to be the RIGHT of parents to select WHERE and HOW their childrfen are educated...
Public education was never perfect but it was vastly superior fifty years ago compared to what we have now. In my mother’s day it was even far better than in my day. Now we have college graduates who couldn’t have passed the final for the seventh grade in my day and certainly not in my mother’s school. We have baby sitters instead of school teachers.
Back in the fifties there was a lot of worrying going on that the public schools were not up to the level they needed to be on. None of those who were worrying could have ever imagined that the schools would sink to where they are now.
Oh, sure, there are exceptions, just like there are exceptions at the IRS who look at the inanity of seizing someone’s account to collect ten cents and simply hit the delete key. While others dispatch 3 agents at $140 an hour, plus two sheriffs at $120 an hour, and everyone gets to collect stipends for lunch and maybe even a hotel room, as they seize someone’s property because dang it, that dime's gotta be collected.
It infects our elected officials too, who give themselves a retirement package. A retirement package for an elected official. Think about that.. A position which has no real job requirements which can be gained by anyone who happens to win the lottery of an election when everyone running is unknown. On top of this, they give themselves a nice health insurance policy, fully at our expense, and, gosh, give themselves allowances and salaries and benefits galore.
So long as public service is a never ending ATM, no amount of money will save schools. More and more of those dollars will go into pension funds and health benefits and - huh? Stuff for students? We don't have any money for that stuff! Let's make the parents pop for more...
I mean, consider it, if you looked at a classroom as a business: You have a single employee, the business grosses, if you've class size limits of 20, a gross of 230,000 a year. Basic overhead is really minimal - discounted power rates, buildings done cheaply and reused equipment. Even if text books run $120 a student, that's still only a percentage of your gross.
Where does all that money go? Right to that one employee and their ‘support staff’. And it'd better keep going up, because that pension fund just blew another 20 billion in bad investments and you gotta make it up now. Oh, and the health coverage is more expensive too, because what are you going to do, tick off all your employees by requiring a change to another coverage? Oh, and you need a substitute to teach that class for a month a year so that that your employee can take vacations...
No matter how much is poured into schools, not a penny of it will actually make it to the student. The best case scenario is that maybe they'll maintain what students have today if you throw enough money around, rather than cutting back once again. Oh, but those students had best be good little sales people, as they're required to go out and sell cookie dough, and wrapping paper and - where does THAT money go?
It'd be great, actually have student sales to pay for new computers, or projection screens or SOMETHING. You're welcome to go down to your local school and ask that embarrassing question: What did that cookie dough sale purchase? Show it to me. Nothing, another few thousand dollars down the maw of public employees, and the students get nothing to show for it.
From the article:
Here’s my proposal: Close all the public schools. Send the kids home. Fire the teachers. Sell the buildings. Raze the U.S. Department of Education, leaving not one brick standing upon another and plow the land where it stood with salt.
“Wait a minute,” the earnest liberal says, “we’ve got swell public schools here in Flourishing Heights. The kids take yoga. We just brought in a law school placement coordinator at the junior high. The gym has solar panels on the roof. Our Girls Ultimate Frisbee team is third in the state. The food in the cafeteria is locally grown. And the vending machines dispense carrots and kiwi juice.”
Close them anyway. I’ve got 11,749 reasons. Or, given the Cato report, call it 15,000. Abandon the schools. Gather the kids together in groups of 15.4. Sit them down at your house, or the Moose Lodge, or the VFW Hall or—gasp—a church. Multiply 15.4 by $15,000. That’s $231,000. Subtract a few grand for snacks and cleaning your carpet. What remains is a pay and benefit package of a quarter of a million dollars. Average 2008 public school classroom teacher salary: $51,391. For a quarter of a million dollars you could hire Aristotle. The kids wouldn’t have band practice, but they’d have Aristotle. (Incidentally this worked for Philip of Macedon. His son did very well.)
Another reason for separation of school and state.
I’d feel a lot better about the tens of thousands we have spent on school taxes in the last decade if so much of it hadnt gone to illegals.
It would be really nice if the whiney parents took responsibility for the state of most schools today. THEY sat back and let the left take control and then want to whine and moan about how bad they are.
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