Friday, March 24, 2006

How much is enough for public education?

We seem to constantly have stories in the news about school cash shortages. I bet there is a headline in your paper right now talking about how underfunded education is in your city, county, state and country. This great sink hole absorbs more and more money and yields less and less results. American education is dropping against foreign competition every year. Why?

Human Events has published an article that clearly deals with this question.
Do Public Schools Need More Money?

Here is a couple of quotes.

Among the universal truths of life are “death,” “taxes,” and “public schools need more money.” Of these three, two are true. Let’s discuss the third “truth,” which is anything but true.

-Snip-

In his book “Education Myths,” Jay P. Greene points out that education spending has been on the rise for fifty years. The Department of Education’ s own records show that after World War II, in today’s dollars, we spent about $1,214 per student. By 1955, that had doubled to $2,345. By 1972, it doubled again to $4,479. Since then, it has doubled yet again to $8,745. And ABC’s John Stossel, in his recent series entitled “Stupid in America,” says the per-student outlay has now reached $10,000.

We even have a case in Oregon, Arkansas, Texas and New York where families and schools are suing the state for lack of education funding. How crazy will this get. Will the state demand a complete disclosure of how all moneys were spent to prove a shortage. Just because they want more doesn't necessarily mean they are short of funds. Mismanagement of money and resources should fall under heavy scrutiny.

The monopoly of the public school system constantly holds our society down. Those who can afford private education are getting so much more. Private schools are doing it for around $5000 per student with no government assistance. These families are pay taxes to feed the sink hole of public education as well as pay out of their pocket for a real education for their children. Would you be surprised to learn that a major percentage of educators are those paying for private?

Somehow we need to take back education from the many teachers unions. We need a return to the basics; reading, writing, math and history. We need to put an end to the feel good indoctrination and return critical thinking skills to our children. We can't afford to wait any longer. Waiting only drains are pockets and hurts our children and our nation.

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1 Comments:

Blogger A Jacksonian said...

When you form an institution around a problem, the problem becomes a part of the institution and never goes away. Johnny couldn't read in 1958 and everything done since then, every program, all the money, all the resources have yielded the *exact same reading rate*. It is time to end the institution and put accountability on the money. That is *if* it can even be addressed by money. Pay for what works, don't pay for what doesn't and watch the results.

5:42 AM, April 24, 2006  

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