Just months after the release of Cascade Policy Institute’s StatusQuoLobby.com webpage, the Moving Picture Institute and Reason.tv have created a video which vividly explains the relationship between teachers unions and politics.
Illustrating how a great increase in per student spending in public education has coincided with staggering test scores, this video makes you wonder if increased public funding of education really does produce what everyone wants: Better Schools.
There is some relationship to per-pupil spending snd outcome-meaning there is an absolute minimum at which point a lack of funds does limit classroom effectiveness of teachers. But the relationship of money in the business of educating kids and outcome is tied in to many other negative variables, teaching can’t touch, like unstable one parent familes on welfare. Just as there is a top, there will always be a bottom. Spending tnes billions in an effort to eliminate the bottom is simply foolish.
For example the highest per-pupil spending in the US is in Washingting DC schools Yet the test scores and graduating numbers, do not show improvement when even more money is poured in to the DC school district. The outcome remains dismal.
I would think given our sinking economy and falling scores on many of the quality of life indices maintained by international organizations, US educators would realize that the basic education philosophy guiding our system is wrong and getting worse judging by our loss of ranking to those nations getting it right.
All the current tweaking and blame passing is like the stewards rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic as it hurtles toward the bottom. Or, since this is Oregon, chopping down a few diseased trees while the entire forrest is dying.
Educators should face the fact that regardless of how much money they throw into the schools, not every kid is going to take full advantage of the benefits bestowed by superior teachers and a challanging curriculum. Some are not smart enough, others have interests and capacity better served by technical and craft training, while still others are beyond the ability of any institution to help except maybe reform school or if suffering from a physical or mental disability placed in an appropriate facility.