According to the National Education Association, the national teachers union, Oregon spent an average of $10,476 per enrolled student in the 2009-2010 school year. Add in reported debt service spending, and that figure leaps even higher to $11,540 per student.
Are we getting our money’s worth? Nationwide, spending has more than doubled since 1970, but improved outcomes have not followed. While fourth and eighth graders are doing slightly better on the nation’s most stable educational measurement―the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP)―any early gains are lost by the time they reach the finish line: 17-year-old students have not improved since the U.S. Department of Education first started measuring their math and reading performance in the 1970s.
Likewise, international evidence confirms that spending is a poor predictor of educational outcomes. While the U.S. is among the top spenders for education, we place in the middle of the pack of developed nations for performance.
Decade after decade, our leaders promise better outcomes if we just spend more and incorporate “better oversight” and “increased accountability.” It hasn’t worked. It’s time we turn the system on its head and empower teachers and administrators at the ground level to use their talents―and parents and students to find the educational program that will best help them thrive.
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Does that figure include things like building costs? They like to leave those out.
Boy I wish there were some way to start a gradual transition whereby parents and their children could take at least a certain percentage of their public education dollars with them to whatever qualified educational program they chose. I think the best place to start is by allowing choice to occur at grades High School Junior and Senior. I think a community college like Portland Community College could easily absorb such a new market, and provide both effective and targeted education for these students. Other private based alternatives could also do a fine job here. This would also inject a new vibrancy in the current public education monopoly as well by making it compete for retaining students.
Yes, indeed, it IS time and past time to “turn the system on its head.”
Government-run, tax-funded schools (GRTFS) are the core of the problem. Until we can admit that, how can we find solutions? It is hard to get the right answers if we start by asking the wrong questions.
Government is about power and control. Is that a good paradigm for education? Is it a good context for education? We need a system where those who lead our educational systems are not chosen with the ballots we use to elect our mayor and our governor.
Are not parents naturally responsible for feeding, clothing, and educating their children. How can we circumvent their responsibility in any of these areas without detriment to the children and to society?
I can understand Bob Clark’s wish for “start[ing] a gradual transition” toward empowering parents and children. Unfortunately, government monopolies rarely allow gradual transition to occur. Adding an entrenched, self-interested, politically powerful union into the mix only makes things more difficult.
Privately funded vouchers (especially for low income families) is an important key to empowering parents to obtain a quality education for their children. (CSF-Portland deserves your support.) Providing tax credits to donors to private voucher programs that are designed to help less fortunate families send their children to the private school of their own choice (the Arizona model) is as close as I want the government to the education of our next generation of citizens.
The separation of school and state is the logical and necessary corollary to the separation of church and state. If it is wrong for the state to compel the conscience of the citizen, how can it be right for the state to form the conscience of our children? (And if we expect no impact on the conscience, why feign shock over Thurston and Columbine?)
Google “separation of school and state”; read Market Education, by Andrew Coulson; or any of the books by John Taylor Gatto (who had the audacity when receiving New York City Teacher of the Year Award to give an acceptance speech entitled “Why Schools Don’t Educate”).
Think for a minute. You have your favorite grocery store and I have mine. What if the government built stores all over town where you could get groceries “for free” because they were paid for by tax dollars? How long would any existing stores stay in business? What does it say that private schools have survived for 150 years since state governments started compulsory, free schools? What does it say that the typical private school can educate better for less money per student?
Challenge yourself to consider what works in education and what doesn’t.
Are you willing to challenge the prevailing paradigm and search for truth?
Quite correct. Money isn’t among the top several common factors of successful schools. Nor is the constantly overused issue of “class size”. It seems common sense that smaller classes would benefit students and, in fact, it does, but the improvement is so modest that it doesn’t remotely justify the increased costs. In fact, numerous studies have found that class sizes have to be below (_well_ below) 10:1 before the improvement becomes significant. Imagine the cost of _doubling_ the number of public school teachers in the U.S. when we can’t afford those we already have!
I teach at a private school, where we charge about 5000 a year for tuition. Considering students getting discounts, we do the job for about 4000 per student. A union person would say that is an apples oranges comparison, and it is in one sense: While we do accept special ed and ESL students, contrary to many perceptions out there, we do have the authority to remove students who are blatant and repeated in their disciplinary problems, where a public school nominally does but in reality is afraid to because of lawsuits and such. A partial voucher system would allow more students access to private education and as a consequence public schools would have to compete for students and we may see some real innovation