Indeed.

“Education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don’t need little changes. We need gigantic, monumental changes. Schools should be palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be making six figure salaries. Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense.” – West Wing

It’s not really free, of course. It’s paid for with taxes. But I wouldn’t mind at all forgoing a couple of aircraft carriers and scrapping some fighter planes to direct the money toward education. It’d be a much better investment for us on so many fronts.

Yep. You are stupid.

“…half and divide it equally, on a per student basis, among every school district in the nation.”

Costs vary depending on where you live. It costs less to hire a janitor in rural Iowa, for instance, than it would in downtown New York City.

Congratulations, you just fucked over urban students.

“The additional money, coupled with a marked decrease in federal regulation and the costs involved in abiding by and documenting compliance, will tremendously reduce the percentage of educational spending on bureaucratic overhead.”

How much is spent on overhead now, compared to private schools?

“Here are some other ones: make teaching more like other jobs. That means things like merit pay and streamlining the process for removing bad teachers.”

Merit based pay for teachers? I knew you would bring this up. I knew because it sounds smart, but anyone with any real experience in the field would know it doesn’t work.

You realize the number one determining factor for a kid’s education is parental involvement? And this is something the teachers have no control over.

That would be like asking for merit based pay for personal trainers. They only get paid if you lose weight. However, personal trainers have no control over what you are eating. So you could go home and eat a quart of Ben & Jerry’s every day and then complain your personal training is failing at their job.

“Investigate why the costs of college have been going up so much faster than the inflation rate.”

Investigate? Wouldn’t that be a job of the DoE? The Department you just axed? And more overhead! Oh no!

“Shift some college funding towards trade schools and technical colleges.”

Again, no DoE, so this doesn’t happen. Secondly, you are messing with market forces, are you not? YOU are determining where money goes to, instead of supply and demand. Thirdly, there’s too long of a delay here. By the time you implement this change, educate people, and get them into the market, the market will have changed.

It’s been tried. It doesn’t work.

“What are YOUR ideas?”

More teachers. More specialized teachers to help with kids with special needs. More money to train teachers. More pay for teachers. Get rid of standardized tests, because it encourages teachers to teach for the test, not teach kids to learn.

“Or are you just going to find some way to call me a racist…”

If it quacks like a duck.

By the way, I laugh every time one of you right-wingers complains about me calling you guys racists. A.) You guys bring it up more than I do. B.) If you don’t want me to call you racist, don’t act racist. Don’t support racism. Don’t pretend racism doesn’t exist.

And the next year? With the Dept of Education gone there would be no DoE budget from which to give half to local districts. So is this intended to be a one time surge after which the districts are back to what they currently have? (Less, actually, since they do already get some money from the DoE which, with no DoE, they would no longer get.) Or would the Dept be gone but the funds continue to flow? Wouldn’t there then have to be some thing in place to manage that?

Second question: What percentage of educational spending is spent on bureaucratic overhead? Enough so that a reduction in it makes a significant difference in the overall money available to schools? And how to you assure that we don’t end up with the bureaucracy just pushed down to local districts?

Mind you, I’m not opposed to getting rid of the DoE if it makes sense to do so. Similar arguments could be made for getting rid of several other Depts (Commerce, HHS, etc.) if one wanted to. But I do see “get rid of it and give the money in its budget to local districts” as more of a knee-jerk “get the Feds ’cause that’s always a good thing to do” solution rather than any rationally argued one.

Here are some other ones: make teaching more like other jobs. That means things like merit pay and streamlining the process for removing bad teachers.

Investigate why the costs of college have been going up so much faster than the inflation rate.

Shift some college funding towards trade schools and technical colleges.

What are YOUR ideas? Or are you just going to find some way to call me a racist, as you do with knee-jerk predictability whenever you can’t find some other argument to make?

J.

I’m sure you will. And I’m sure you will ignore Sean’s points.

Another point you will likely ignore… It costs a whole lot more to build and maintain schools in D.C. than it would in Nebraska, for instance. This will throw off the curve.

There is a strong correlation between class sizes and test scores. It costs money to build more schools and hire more teachers.

And I noticed you missed this point…

J.G.Thayer: “And it’s no sin to point out that the biggest opponents to meaningful educational reform are the teacher’s unions…”

Me: “It may not be a sin, but it is factually incorrect.
What you call ‘meaningful educational reform’ is likely, very likely to be complete shite. A waste of time at best, counter productive at worst.”

I would love to hear how you would improve the educational system.

Which reinforces my initial point — simply spending more money on schools is absolutely no guarantee that it will do a damned bit of good.

And I don’t like the idea of the federal government setting rigid controls on education — that should be left up to the states and local communities.

With literally thousands of schools trying thousands of different approaches and ideas, we can see what works and what doesn’t. One size quite definitely does NOT fit all.

As far as I can tell, simply throwing more money only guarantees one thing: calls that the money isn’t enough.

J.

I’m assuming you meant that first link to get to the “correlated with -log(PublicEducationExpenditurePerStudent1998)” link (here). It’s the only mention on the page you did link to that seemed to have anything to do with educational expenditures. And it does seem to have the numbers you refer to (MD at 13, NV at 40).

But the second link, which shows SAT Rankings by state lists MD at 36 and NV at 41. So I’m not sure what exactly you’re looking at.

In any event, as reported by you only 19 of 51 are within 10 digits of each other on the two lists. So how does that suggest anything could be said about expenditures vs performance when the data is all over the place?

Far better would be if you had some data on HOW money was spent. For example, when spent to reduce class size more money correlates with higher performance, when spent to provide additional classroom materials no noticeable change in performance, when spent on extracurricular equipment performance drops.

But I would think that data would be hard to come by as it would need detailed breakdowns and considerable analysis having been done. Probably at a more district or even school by school level. When looking at things on an overall state level everything averages out too much.

Of the 50 states and DC, how many have both rankings within, say, ten digits? 19.

What is the average discrepancy? 16.

Number of states with perfect correlation: 2 — Maryland, 13; Nevada, 40. (Congratulations, Oliver!)

Greatest discrepancy: DC — 1 in spending, 51 in SAT scores.

Greatest discrepancy among actual states: Tennessee — 10 in SATs, 49 in spending.

Hmm… I might have to save this work, and possibly use it elsewhere. It’s interesting. Thanks for the prompting, Strowbridge.

J.

I bet you can’t back that up in a comprehensive fashion.

“Washington, DC is widely acknowledged to have some of the worst public schools in the nation. They also spend the most per student.

On the other hand, some of the best public schools spend below the average per student. Here in New Hampshire, our schools are pretty damned good, and we rank fairly low on spending.”

Wow. Two examples. And absolutely no figures.

Not impressive.

“And it’s no sin to point out that the biggest opponents to meaningful educational reform are the teacher’s unions…”

It may not be a sin, but it is factually incorrect.

What you call ‘meaningful educational reform’ is likely, very likely to be complete shite. A waste of time at best, counter productive at worst.

That’s why I said “In the past 3 years..”

Thanks for making my point for me.

* The vast majority of people facing mortgage foreclosure willingly signed voluminous piles of documents specifying precisely what the mortgage entailed and outlined the penalties for defaulting thereof.

Sure. Now you’re phrasing them as vague generalities which can be harder to refute, but the point you’re trying to make is easily shown to be bogus.

Just to take the first one, for example. “The vast majority of unplanned pregnancies are the result of people consensually engaging in the activity that leads to pregnancy.” Yes, that’s probably true. Given the total number of pregnancies that occur a small percent are the result of rape or acts in which one participant is unwilling. But a key thing to include, which you conveniently leave out, is not whether the participants are willing, but whether they know their acts carry a risk of pregnancy.

“You can’t get pregnant the first time.” “If she’s on top.” “If you rinse afterward.” “If you do it standing up.” “If you use the rhythm method.” “First thing in the morning.” And literally hundreds of other sometimes astoundingly unbelievable misunderstandings of when pregnancy can occur.

Class size,Class size, Class size….I can’t say this enough.

Better spent money is part of the solution. Merit pay for good teachers. Streamlining the firing process for bad teachers. Less money on senseless, redundant, pointless bureaucracies.

This is one of your better points. Teaching is a hard job and if your not cut out for it, find another profession. Kids futures are at stake. On the money issue, there is a way to cut down on wasteful spending in education but I can’t emphasize enough the “cut education” crowd (Republicans and thier whining on spending in the stimulus) is causing firings across the country. Unlike you Jay, I believe that every person is entitled to an education. The John Stossel crowd doesn’t believe this and preaches “free market…what is thy will my Lord?” but fails to realize that demolishing public education will bring about: richer=better education, poorer= tough breaks kid.
Merit pay is becoming the topic du jour in my field lately. I am not opposed to this but do worry that if not properly regulated will make teaching a solo job and not working as a team.

Why, Quaker? Why is “well-funded” so important?

Compare public school quality on any objective standard vs. dollars per student, and there seems to be an INVERSE relationship — the more money spent on schools, the worse they are.

Washington, DC is widely acknowledged to have some of the worst public schools in the nation. They also spend the most per student.

On the other hand, some of the best public schools spend below the average per student. Here in New Hampshire, our schools are pretty damned good, and we rank fairly low on spending.

“More money” is obviously NOT the answer. Better spent money is part of the solution. Merit pay for good teachers. Streamlining the firing process for bad teachers. Less money on senseless, redundant, pointless bureaucracies.

Hell, can someone explain to me why college tuition has been rising far faster than the annual inflation rate for decades?

“More money” is NOT the answer for education reform. “More money” is the answer to “how can we best perpetuate a failing system?”

And it’s no sin to point out that the biggest opponents to meaningful educational reform are the teacher’s unions, who have solidified their position as a key Democratic constituency (or, dare I say it, “special interest group”) the old fashioned way, with cash and campaign volunteers.

J.

Zython: “No it’s not, dumbass. Just because you don’t want to talk about sex ed, since it makes you uncomfortable, doesn’t mean it’s irrelevent to the topic at hand.”

It is relevant as long as it has a connection to the topic at hand. But if you bring it up a few times, they’ll start calling you Sex Ed Zython.

Actually, with the abstinance-only sex ed programs in place (put there by George W & the Republican congress), you kinda do.

And rubbers don’t cost that much money.

Again, lack of sex education = not know about condoms or how to properly use them.

Spider, you’re offering up a red herring. I’m not talking about sex ed so all of this blather about “abstinence only” education is a deflectio

No it’s not, dumbass. Just because you don’t want to talk about sex ed, since it makes you uncomfortable, doesn’t mean it’s irrelevent to the topic at hand.

You might have heard of him

No, I only pay attention to things that matter.

You pay for roads even if you don’t own a car. You pay for police service even if you don’t call the cops after being robbed. You pay for schools even if you don’t have kids. You pay for a fire department even if you burn your house down on purpose and don’t call them.

We in a democratic society get to decide which things we want our government to do, and fire protection, roads, police and public schools all get on the list because they improve our society.

If you don’t like these public services, no one forces you to use them, but if you choose to own land, you will pay for them. There is no free lunch in the world, so quit your whining about how your needs are more important than everyone else’s. You don’t have to live in a society, but some of us choose to.

Why is a durty librul like me making this point against Jay? Oh, that’s right — for all of his bluster about the free market, he’s the guy who received life-saving socialized health-care at my personal expense but somehow doesn’t register that as a government hand-out.

Idiot.

Don’t worry, Mr. Tea. With luck, we won’t have another Republican-controlled Congress before you retire. That’s the only thing I can think of that would prevent you from collecting your Social Security.

Uh-oh, Mr. Tea. You went and gave away the game that time.

You see, most of the folks who oppose vouchers (and there are lots of us–voucher programs have been voted down in plenty of elections) don’t really talk about the teachers’ unions all that much. Mostly, we just want the schools our kids attend to be well-funded.

No sir, the concern with the teachers’ unions resides mostly on your side of the aisle.

The drive to de-fund public schools through “choice” would allow a select few students to enter private schools while leaving the remainder in a less well-funded public system.

Why on earth would anyone promote a “choice” that works to the disadvantage of the majority of students, Mr. Tea? It wouldn’t be to attack the unions, would it?