Department of Education Home Page Chart (I can't believe this is there!)

U.S. Department of Education Web Site ^ | Dept. of Education

[FreedomPoster]

You've posted it yourself. I guess I don't understand what it is you are asking for.

[RippleFire]

bump

[MattMa]

It is on the front page of www.ed.gov.

[nepdap]

Whoever designed this graph must have, uh, gone to public school. And be careful how you interpret it. What the chart shows is average reading score plotted against total expenditures. That is a worthless comparison. In order to be useful, the chart should plot reading score vs expenditure per child. As it is, there is no accounting for increase in number of children served.

It appears that in the past 30 years or so, total expenditures have increased by a factor of 10. I am curious how much the public school population has increased in that time.

BTW, we homeschool. ;-)

[Maria S]

Two of a long list of Communist goals from "The Naked Communist," by Cleon Skousen:

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers' associations. Put the party line in textbooks.
41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents.

[Kevin Curry]

Inflation has been relatively low for the past 15 years--especially over the last ten. The number of students has also remained also relatively low, especially compared to the baby boom generation.

I strongly doubt the the vertical peak of bureaucratic fecklesness depicted by this graph can be attributed to inflation and an increase in student enrollment.

[ClearCase_guy]

Perhaps the gov't will try to make the case that the ONLY reason that reading scores are "holding steady" is that expenditures have increased tenfold.

Now, if you want those scores to UP, well ... that's gonna cost you some really big bucks.

[redbaiter]

An ill-conceived graph but still disturbing.

[FreedomPoster]

We've been in private school for the last 7-8 years. ;-)

My hope for the future of this country is with the increasing numbers of home- and privately-schooled citizens, along with those who manage to get a good education in spite of attending government schools.

[banjo joe]

the chart should plot reading score vs expenditure per child.

Correct, but we must also consider that until the illegal immigrant boom, enrollments were declining. These declining enrollments resulted in the "special needs" ed boom. Suddenly you had schools where the majority of students were abruptly found to be "special needs" students. Sooooo - now you have room for yet more union "specialists" and individual attention, smaller class sizes...

[GOP_Proud]

I might be totally wrong, but it seems to me that I've read that the public school population is declining or holding steady. Yes, it's bursting at the seams in some places (Texas and California come to mind...illegals), but I think it's declining elsewhere. So maybe overall this is near correct.

[OXENinFLA]

http://www.cato.org/pubs/handbook/hb108/hb108-28.pdf


Chapter 28. Department of Education

Congress should
. abolish the Department of Education and
. return education to the state, local, or family level, as provided
by the Constitution.


www.ed.gov/offices/OUS/Budget02/History.pdf


And if anyone missed it the Founder and Pres. of CATO was on C-span on Sun. the 6th. it's worth going to C-span and watching it when they put it up.

[Motherhood IS a career]

Yes, the graph is definitely ill conceived, since the reading scores and billions of dollars spent are like comparing apples and oranges, so you can't measure these on the same axis, which this graph attempts to do.

However, it does convey the very clear message, which is no surprise to me, that the amount of money dumped into the school system has little, if anything to do, with quality of education. I think this has been proven time and time again, yet school administrators shamelessly blame lack of adequate funding as the #1 excuse for poor performance.

[nwrep]

The reading scores and $$s are not on the same axis, but on 2 diff. Y axes. Please see the graph again.

[Moonman62]

They obviously aren't spending enough. Isn't that the solution to everything these days?

[savedbygrace]

This might help a little:

http://nces.ed.gov//pubs2002/digest2001/tables/dt040.asp

If I'm reading this correctly, it seems that enrollment has increased by less than 20% from 1985 to 1999.

[mfulstone]

Hmm.. Seems obvious that we need to spend more money to bring those reading scores up. NOT!

[Spiff]

HeHe...I really pissed Pournelle off 10 years ago. I wish I had saved the letter he sent me. He's got quite a temper.

Anyway, this is a great chart. I'm going to send it to the folks at Separation of School and State Alliance.

[KarlInOhio]

Also, are the NAEP reading scores normalized? For example, IQ scores are normalized so that 100 is average. Even if everyone gets smarter or dumber, 100 will remain the average. If that is happening, then the NAEP score would be good for comparing one school to another at a given time, but it would not show any significant change in the average over time.