Money is NOT the answer!
Education in America is our biggest disappointment. It is, in my opinion, our biggest problem.
Worst of all, the American education system is effectively un-American. What has made America great is the availability of opportunities for ambitious, hard-working folk. In today’s world, the lack of an education closes just about all of the doors.
A good education will reduce the racial tensions in our nation to tolerable levels (you’ll never eliminate racism until you start executing stupid people). It would do more to win the War on Drugs than all the CIA missions in Columbia and Bolivia combined. It will make the American Dream possible for any American.
The system is broken, and no one will take the issue head on because it would cost them their political career. Democrats pander to the Union of Ineffective Teachers National Education Association, and Republicans pander to drunken powerful Democrats like Ted “blonde in the pond” Kennedy. (I regard Bush’s capitulation to Kennedy by removing vouchers from the now-ineffective “No Child Left Behind” initiative his biggest failure to date, including the steel tariffs.)
No one can deny that there is a tremendous gap between the performance of white and African-American students, yet this is not a subject that is “PC” enough to talk about – so we don’t. (Well, bloggers do because no one can fire us. The media ignores it and politicians are too frightened to touch it.)
But a pair of highly respected authors have published a book called No Excuses: Closing the Racial Gap in Learning:
If you read just one book about American education all year, this should be the book. It not only goes into the causes and cures of racial disparities in education, in the process it punctures many of the fads, dogmas, and pious hypocrisies of the education establishment.
First, the existing gap: Black high school students graduate an average of four years behind white students in academic skills. In other words, the high school diplomas they receive are given?not earned?for a junior high school education.
One item that is near and dear to my heart that the authors address is the simple fact that more money is not the answer: While federal spending has skyrocketed upwards over the years, student performance has not changed, and in some instances, has actually declined. Essentially, we have wasted $321 billion of our federal budget since 1965.
This chart shows the amount of dollars spent per pupil (in beige) charted against each state’s SAT scores (the red bars). Clearly, there is little to no correlation between the two. While it is silly to suggest that money is not necessary at all, there must be other factors.
Study after study has shown that more dollars spent per pupil does not guarantee better learning. Nor is the answer smaller class size.
“Class size makes a small difference, but doesn’t have a substantial effect. There are other kinds of interventions that can have much more powerful effects.”
Fifteen years ago, Dr. Willms thought differently. But after analyzing the effects of reducing class size in more than a dozen countries in a massive project for OECD, he now says other measures have a more significant impact. These include improving relations between teachers and students, hiring literacy specialists, intervening earlier than Grade 2 when a child is having trouble learning to read, teaching educators better classroom management, encouraging parents to read to their children in the evenings, and offering early childhood education programs.
What is not said here but is of supreme importance is the encouragement that parents give to their children to not only pass in school, but to excel. The other half of the equation is the creation of an environment where teachers can teach, which means disciplining or kicking out disruptive students that frustrate teachers.
Legislation to provide voucher’s for 2% of the children who need it the most in Washington D.C. has bogged down in the Senate due to partisan politics. For this, we all suffer.
Perhaps we should take up a collection, buy 100 copies of the book, and send them to the Senate. But that would assume that the occupants therein can read, and want to fix the problem.
Education Spending
AlphaPatriot addresses the relationship of school performance and money (i.e., there isn’t one). Of course, our politicians only response to anything is to throw money…
I’d be interested to know when education became a right in this country. It wasn’t always so. It used to be that everyone had to pay to send their children to school. The ones that couldn’t afford it worked, instead.
I think the cure to what ails our education system is privatization. Competition is the only sure-fire way to bring performance and quality up. I don’t think education is any different in that respect. That’s why I favor vouchers. Let schools compete for dollars instead of begging for handouts. If they want federal money, let them earn it. We’ve been throwing increasing amounts of money into these gladiator academies for ever-diminishing results.
While I agree with your points about the keeping the federal government out of schools, I disagree with your assertion that, “Education in America is our biggest disappointment.” This idea that our schools are failing is a false impression created by a news media who only focuses on what happens in the big cities.
Yes, most schools are falling in the big cities, but this shouldn’t be suprising considering the other social problems occuring there. In the rest of the country however, this isn’t the case. The vast stretches of suburban and rural America are filled with numerous great schools, ones that I’d put up against any in the world.
Of course, you never hear about schools that are succeeding, because then there’d be no reason to agitate for more money on behalf of cities that want the rest of the country to pay for their failures.
I’m using IE 6 at 800 x 600… for me, your first chart is obscuring some of the text off to the left.
Stormy, I agree that there are successful schools. I have long contended that a lot of the problem is cultural. I live in Memphis which has a large African-American population. We also have more failing schools than the rest of Tennessee combined.
Disruptive students can’t be kicked out and disciplinary actions are ineffective. We have schools in which over 80% of the students are in a gang. Students that try to learn are accused of “acting white”.
The reason that I believe our schools are our biggest failure is that education would solve so many of our problems race problems (like economic inequality), would remove the need for affirmative action, and would revitalize our economy because more small businesses would take off. It would reduce the number of “other social problems” that you speak of in our cities.
Until we can improve the scores for ethnic minorities and provide educational opportunity for all Americans, we will continue to be a nation divided against itself. Fortes in Unitate.
Thanks, Watcher. I put the text below the chart instead of wrapping it around.
My point isn’t merely that there are successful schools, it’s that the successful schools far outnumber the failing ones.
Far from being our biggest disappointment, the US education system as a whole works remarkably well. Some of the schools in it may be disappointing, but why tar the whole country based on the failings of a small portion of it?
Council Winners
Once again, it’s time to announce the weekly winners for the Watcher’s Council. Congratulations to Alpha Patriot for the winning Council entry, “Money is NOT the Answer!” and to Brain Terminal for the winning non-Council entry, “Michael Moore’s Call to…
THE COUNCIL HAS SPOKEN.
Not spoken, shouted! Congrats! To our two finalists this week: Our own AlphaPatriot, with Money is NOT the Answer, who sums up my feelings on school funding entirely; and Outsider Brain Terminal, with Michael Moore’s Call to Arms. Excellent bunch…
The Council Has Spoken ! !
The Winning Entries for the Watchers Council this week are: *drumroll* Money Is NOT the Answer ! ! by AlphaPatriot, and Michael Moore’s Call to Arms by Brain Terminal. I must give a special recommendation to this post from a…
Stormy, not all live in a district that has a school that provides good education. My son is grown and I have no little ones. However, if I had to bring him up in Memphis rest assured he would be going to a private school. Even if we had to work 2 to 3 jobs. I am from Texas. The neighborhood that our son was to go had no active PTA or teachers that really cared. They were their to collect their paycheck. Parents did not get involved. I enrolled our son in another district where a dear friend of mine had her kids go to and used her address. It was 15 miles from where we lived. But that school had a great PTA and teachers that really loved there job and kept us parents informed. In Memphis, it does not seem like some of the parents that live in poor districts have that choice. So, rather that keep wasting money they should allow school vouchers. Let the schools compete like private schools do and you will see a big difference in the teachers, parents and especially the children that will get a good education. This way no child will suffer because they do not have a choice. I don’t know where you are from or what school you went to, but I will tell you that when I grew up I lived in a below middle class neighborhood, mostly white families, I am Hispanic but the education I got was not great but good. The complaint I have is they did not prepare me for collegebound. I am 48 years old. In my area girls really did not go to college. So, I hope that the government gets smart or should I say the people that vote get smart and give these kids now a chance at a good education so they can earn a living. Because this is America we should have the freedom to go to any school we choose to go. The schools should be run like a business. I bet you we will not have any children that graduate and can not read.
Schools are so important for kids and the future of our nation. In so many places schools are not doing well, but there are always some who get good and even great educations. It all depends on the parents. From my own experiences with 4 now grown kids, parental involvement is key. When the kids attended school, it was a private one. We homeschooled for many years. That was the best. Always we were part of a support group; they were helpful and fun, great kids and families homeschooled. Having control of curriculium was great. The texts were not full of PC junk or watered down discussions of topics (like forgeting to mention George Washington).
I have the highest regard for those who tackle homeschooling. It requires a dedication to their children that is wonderful to see. And as a large number of homeschooled children are beginning to enter our colleges and workplaces, the method is being proven sound – they are smarter, have analytical skills, and are as socially developed as public school kids.
But I agree, parental involvement is the key – even if the commitment (or financial ability to have only one working spouse) for homeschooling doesn’t take place.
Some Monday morning linky-love
Miss Kelley has gone and announced that the much-anticipated Cul-de-Sac will be running a little behind schedule this week. Good for you, girl. It’s healthy to have a little too much fun every now and then. I doubt, though, that…
Smaller class sizes are an extreme help to “at risk” students, and are generally a good idea for all academic subjects. Ideally, that allows the teacher to focus on the needs of the individual student. I know this from my experiences as student and as a teacher.
As for homeschooling, let me just say two things. First, only a small portion of parents out there have the intellectual and nurturing skills required to be a sucessful educator. And of those, a portion of those insist on making religion the basis for their teachings. Simple minded folk think that anyone can just walk in and be a successful teacher, yet there really iss a reason that degrees in education are required before a techer is let loose in the classroom. the teacher of today is has alot more on their plate than our teachers did.
Second, many criticize homeschoolers for being denied the sociallization experiences that we public schoolers take for granted. This arguement is not about the difference between the social butterfly and the hermit, rather it’s about learning how to interact with and learn tolerance for people who’s ideas and morals may differ from our own. Children need to learn how to deal with these people through normal calm rational discussion rather than with fists and name calling. Home schooling providers have the luxury of choosing who is and isn’t allowed into their universe, which can lead to a child developing a myopic and warpped view of the world.
not that you’d know that I was a teach from the spelling mistakes in my last disjointed rant. The real lesson is to not try to rant and get other work done at the same time