Wtf are you talking about? It has nothing to do with the rich people becoming poor. It has to do with milking the middle class at every possible opportunity.
I'm sure that problem will be fixed by privatizing everything
Why should actual taxpayers in welfare hellholes be taxed through the nose to pay for inmate factories?
A new report has revealed a red state has the best education in the US. Residents have seen high graduation rates and low tuition for colleges, but falls short in elementary school math scores.
Sure, high end boarding schools cost that, but there are a lot of private schools that are WAY less than that. The average private high school cost is about $15,000
Some actual numbers. I live in a suburb of Seattle and have three kids, two in private school and one in the local public schools, which are excellent. I have two in private school because before moving, the local public schools weren't so great. They'll transition to public in middle school.
1.) We pay about $12,000 in property taxes annually. Our house is worth close to the median sales price in our zipcode, maybe 5-10% more.
2.) Our local school district spends $14,000 per student and has revenue of $19,000 per student. According to US News, 60% of school district spending are related to instruction, 35% to "support services" and the rest to other. It's unclear where retirement costs for retired teachers and admins comes in.
3.) The local school district where our private school is located has revenue of $23,700 per student.
4.) We pay $24,000 for tuition at our private school. We love this school, and in my opinion, it's better than the local public school.
From my personal observations, there are three major things driving education costs:
1.) Explosion of admin and other non-teaching positions
2.) Retirement costs for all employees. Here in WA, teachers can retire very young and get a pension. Many or most will be compensated more after they stop working than while they're working.
3.) Catering to special needs kids. A special needs kid by state law is guaranteed to have their educational needs met. For many very needy kids, this means a one-on-one helper during the day. So the rest of the kids are in a classroom with a ratio or 25 or 30 students to one teacher, while our special needs kid has 1:1. Without the special needs kid, you could literally halve the size of the class. Private schools don't have to and usually don't accept kids that would require one-on-one care during the day. Many other special needs kids don't necessarily need one-on-one assistance all day, but might need one-on-one care for an hour a day, or three or four to one attention, again drastically reducing the resources that can be spent on the other kids. This is a huge issue in poorer school districts where kids coming from poverty or homes with more screens than books would really benefit from that 13:1 student teacher ratio, and instead the resources a getting sucked away to benefit needy kids with assertive parents.
The student teacher ratio at my daughter's school is 19:1. Her classes have 30 (or more) kids in them. Why? Special needs kids.
I work as a online math tutor with students around the country. A few students attend private schools on the east coast with tuition costs in excess of 40k per year. Those schools has trouble with retaining teachers year to year (one student had three different math teachers over the course of a year) which is why they work with me. I find it hard to believe the education is better at these schools with so much turnover and it's clear to see those funds aren't being used in the average teacher's salary.
The biggest problem with education in the US is that teaching is not considered a prestigious occupation. It used to be, more than it is, and in many other countries, it is prestigious.
This has so many negative effects it would be hard to name them all, but one of the biggest issues is the vicious cycle where struggling schools reduce the status of the profession, which reduces the quality of the schools, etc.
The biggest problem with "education" is that kids from middle class and up families come in ready learn and expected to succeed. Kids from bad socioeconomic situations are way behind and often come from homes where education is not valued.
If you swap the faculty from the "good" school to the "bad" school, you'll get the exact same outcomes.
I worked with "At Risk Students" in a public school for the last twenty years of my teaching career. The biggest issue mentioned socioeconomic creates a home environment where surviving is more important than thriving. Far too often my high school students had to bring home money to help the family. Several shared that report cards were less important than pay checks. It is not that education is not valued in those homes, it's that the time committed to supporting education is not affordable. Hence the reason why a student from difficult socioeconomic communities deserves every break that society can give them to continue their education.
My district receives 12.5k per student per year from the state. 82% is spent on instruction. Under 3% on administrative costs which include special education administration. Nearly 10% is spent on implementing federal and state initiatives. The school district where I work is highly successful, although funded in the bottom 1% of state schools. The reason the funding is so low is one of the top 5 reasons the school is so successful---clientele. That's how the formulas work. Low income, highly diverse, lotsa free lunch kids= more money.
Engaged families change everything in education. Schools can play a positive role but cannot fix societal problems. Great communities make great schools and vice versa. I don't want to undervalue the work that I and my staff do. It is vital, but, schools don't control enough variables in the lives of kids to completely alter the trajectory of failing students and families. But, we still try.
Private schools are required to offer no special education, follow few or no state or federal mandates and can turn away anybody who is rough around the edges. It isn't the same playing field. BTW, I've hired 1/3 of my staff away from private schools as they can't compensate teachers at a reasonable level.
Dirty secret in educational research: the number one thing that can be done to close achievement gaps is.........forced integration. If you want good schools for all, ban the charging of tuition for schools, require all kids to attend their neighborhood schools, then artificially integrate populations to offer a diverse mix of the citizenry and focus on lifting up those in the lower tiers of traditional success. This ain't happening any time soon as we hate those who aren't like us and have no sense of duty to others an an increasingly alarming level.
Until or unless you've worked in a school for a decade, I'd advise you STFU.
A note about teacher retirements. Pensions work similarly to any private retirement plan like a 401k. In my state, a teacher must put in 7.5% of their income into the state retirement fund. The employer puts in 7.5%. All of this money is pooled in a state investment fund and payed out monthly. In my state, full retirement age is 65. Teachers who retire early take significant penalties. Yes, you can retire at 59 and take 60% less.
My district receives 12.5k per student per year from the state. 82% is spent on instruction. Under 3% on administrative costs which include special education administration. Nearly 10% is spent on implementing federal and state initiatives. The school district where I work is highly successful, although funded in the bottom 1% of state schools. The reason the funding is so low is one of the top 5 reasons the school is so successful---clientele. That's how the formulas work. Low income, highly diverse, lotsa free lunch kids= more money.
Engaged families change everything in education. Schools can play a positive role but cannot fix societal problems. Great communities make great schools and vice versa. I don't want to undervalue the work that I and my staff do. It is vital, but, schools don't control enough variables in the lives of kids to completely alter the trajectory of failing students and families. But, we still try.
Private schools are required to offer no special education, follow few or no state or federal mandates and can turn away anybody who is rough around the edges. It isn't the same playing field. BTW, I've hired 1/3 of my staff away from private schools as they can't compensate teachers at a reasonable level.
Dirty secret in educational research: the number one thing that can be done to close achievement gaps is.........forced integration. If you want good schools for all, ban the charging of tuition for schools, require all kids to attend their neighborhood schools, then artificially integrate populations to offer a diverse mix of the citizenry and focus on lifting up those in the lower tiers of traditional success. This ain't happening any time soon as we hate those who aren't like us and have no sense of duty to others an an increasingly alarming level.
Until or unless you've worked in a school for a decade, I'd advise you STFU.
A note about teacher retirements. Pensions work similarly to any private retirement plan like a 401k. In my state, a teacher must put in 7.5% of their income into the state retirement fund. The employer puts in 7.5%. All of this money is pooled in a state investment fund and payed out monthly. In my state, full retirement age is 65. Teachers who retire early take significant penalties. Yes, you can retire at 59 and take 60% less.
THANK YOU! So many armchair jerks on a running messageboard have no idea what they're talking about.
Heartbreaking video shows a little boy named Corey running as fast as he could on a treadmill. His father, Christopher Gregor, allegedly thought he was fat a...
Florida's education system is terrible. Best in the nation my foot. Test, test, test, three times a year they take the state tests, blocking out a week or two of education each time. The students aren't prepared for the tests and they don't get to see what they did wrong or to correct it. They have enormous shortages of teachers because they pay so poorly. There are enormous racial gaps. They don't even fund full season sports teams until high school, something to give kids a reason to be excited about coming to school. The legislature is more concerned with breaking teachers' unions with constant new mandates than setting them up for success.
It's very complicated to determine the dynamics that go into failing students. It's clear that spending an average of 37 minutes per day on homework even in high school for African Americans, about 50 minutes for Hispanics, 56 for whites, and 2 hr 14 minutes for Asian Americans has a clear result. 62% of African Americans scored in the lowest third of the PISA test, vs. about the same percentage of Asian Americans in the highest third vs. 43% of whites. Asians spend more than twice as much time per day on homework as whites, who spend about 50% more time on homework than blacks. We see this in SAT scores as well, over 1300 for Asian Americans, with large proportions over 1500, whites well behind, etc. Demographic factors don't diminish the gap between Asian Americans and whites, but they do diminish the gap between whites and blacks significantly, factors such as income, college education of parents, and proportions of two parent households. The feeling that education holds no promise of success is surely another factor for African American boys in the lower 50% of family income in particular, whose refusal to engage with work in class or at home leads to poor results. What is the source of these beliefs? Surely the history of racism in the country contributes to each of these issues, lack of belief, poverty, single parent households.
See: Racial and Ethnic Differences in Homework Time among U.S. Teens Allison Dunatchik and Hyunjoon ParkView all authors and affiliations Volume 65, Issue 6
Florida's education system is terrible. Best in the nation my foot. Test, test, test, three times a year they take the state tests, blocking out a week or two of education each time. The students aren't prepared for the tests and they don't get to see what they did wrong or to correct it. They have enormous shortages of teachers because they pay so poorly. There are enormous racial gaps. They don't even fund full season sports teams until high school, something to give kids a reason to be excited about coming to school. The legislature is more concerned with breaking teachers' unions with constant new mandates than setting them up for success.
Do you not expect racial gaps to exist? Do you think every group (and ethnicity) has an equal average IQ and values education in the same way?
By 8th grade, Florida's test scores aren't even in the highest group, putting them below the top 30 in some categories and outside the top ten in every category. The 12th grade tests aren't reported for many states but Florida falls much further out of the top scores. So, the 4th grade scores, which are pretty decent, illustrate that the Florida education system really begins to fail in middle school and only gets worse.
Actual Africans do not have the same history at all. They came to the United States of their own volition. They do not have that history of 350 years of legalized slavery and segregation in this country. Like other immigrant groups, they are driven to succeed and do so educationally with the highest or near highest educational attainment of any immigrant group.
I expect, and the data supports it, that educational gaps are dependent on access to books and interactions at home plus quantity and relevance of homework, in general, not speaking of individuals. I see Florida test results from particular teachers where upwards of half of some classrooms attain the highest possible scores. These kids have excellent home environments for school but they particularly excel in this class because they do the work the teacher asks them to do, which covers all the topics on the state exam in depth and with a lot of homework. It's really not about "general intelligence." As Asian cultures believe, it is about doing the work.
Sooooo.... you want to be surrounded by idiots? $5k to live in a society of people who can read, do basic math, function, etc. is a total bargain. While I agree government is not super efficient, I'm really not sure what your alternative idea is. Private everything is super expensive (exhibit A, healthcare).
The Department of Education didn't even exist until 1980.
Do you believe everyone was an idiot prior to 1980?
The DoE's budget is $90 billion this year and the only purpose it seems to have is making education worse.
That's $7.2 million for every school district in America that's been flushed down the toilet just to employ bureaucrats who serve no useful purpose and provide zero value to education or the students.
The Department of Education didn't exist until 1980 because prior to that, it was part of the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and prior to THAT, it was part of the Federal Security Agency. Before being named in an agency, education oversight was a function of the Department of the Interior. There has always been oversight of public education, it has just been administered differently.
The US spends less than 10% of its budget on education and 46% on the military. If you're worried about your taxes and where the money is going, start there.
Education does not exist in a vacuum. In order to education to be effective, students need secure housing, healthcare, and food. When that is not the case, education is not going to take a priority and is going to suffer. Those areas of the budget receive even less. It's really a selfish thing to be concerned about the money you think you're spending on education versus actually worrying about the students and what you can do to improve the system.
