Those who want to want to improve education in the United States should, I have argued for years, find out what works, and imitate it. Since different nations pursue different education policies, there are useful lessons to be learned from international comparisons.
The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development runs the Programme for International Student Assessment every three years. It's a comparative study of fifteen year old students in many nations. (You can find the "league tables" comparing different countries here.) I'll have more to say about the latest results some time next year, but I thought you might be interested in this succinct explanation, from the Economist, of what Britain has done wrong.
The results show that many countries get excellent results without spending much money, whereas others such as Britain have splurged to no avail. According to Andreas Schleicher of the OECD, only 9% of the variation in achievement can be explained by how much is spent; the rest is down to how it is spent. High-achieving countries have large classes taught by great teachers. Poor performers employ less effective teachers for smaller classes, recruiting the extra staff from further down the ability range.
The better studies of American schools have been finding similar results for decades — but few policy makers in this country seem to know about those results.
Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics.
Posted by Jim Miller at December 14, 2010 09:48 AM | Email ThisPesky facts and empirical results aren't allowed to get in the way of dogma!
Posted by: Shanghai Dan on December 14, 2010 11:39 AMGovernment has and is continuing to price it's educational programs along with just, about everything else, out of business. Plus, their educational programs are producing less and less SAT scores yet, continue to cost the taxpayer more and more. There is a choice! Its called homeschooling and provides superior results. Yes, Government doesn't like the competition and with the UN are trying regulate as much as they can to the point of outlawing homeschooling.
There is the paradoxical hope that as our economy collapses it will motivate more practical and sensible policies about education in America.
The thugocracy represented by the syndication of the NEA the DOE and the state level union associations are the real problem.
The sad part all around is what these groups are doing to our future as Americans. The hopeful part is that there are people who understand the problem and are working on it despite the legions of pretentious leftists gangsters currently in charge of America's education system.
[The UK's declining performance] is almost entirely due to poor performance in Wales, where pass rates in school-leaving exams have also been falling compared with those in other parts of Britain. Simon Burgess of the University of Bristol blames the slump on the devolved Welsh Assembly's decision to stop putting out school league tables.
Whether or not Simon Burgess got it right, even a drastic decline in Wales does not invalidate the performances of schools in Scotland, Northern Ireland, or England, where the overwhelming majority of the UK's population lives. Had Jim read the entire article, instead of stopping at the point where he (erroneously) thought it agreed with him, he might have seen it does not validate his thesis.
Anyone who thinks for even a moment about education should understand that reading comprehension is a tricky subject, and we might expect a monolingual, monocultural country (e.g. Finland) to outscore multilingual, multicultural countries (e.g. United Kingdom, Luxembourg, United States). The OECD information Jim cites (but does not quote) reflects this reality:
Criticism has ensued in Luxembourg which scored quite low, over the method used in its PISA test. Although being a trilingual country, the test was not allowed to be done in Luxembourgish, the mother tongue of a majority of students.
It has been suggested that the Finnish language plays an important part in Finland's PISA success.
Finnish has the distinction of having one of the most difficult grammars in the world. A verb may have up to fourteen possible conjugations; when we say "he leaves Helsinki in the morning," we conjugate the verb differently than when we say "she leaves Helsinki in the afternoon." Not all languages, or performances in them, can be considered equal. Indeed, there is an old joke about how the United States and United Kingdom are "two cultures, separated by their common language." Read one of Ian Fleming's novels about his fictional secret agent, written fifty years ago, and you'll see a version of English which is almost as foreign to us as Shakespeare.
Another point made in the evaluation was that students with higher-earning parents are better-educated and tend to achieve higher results.
Which indicates that increasing concentrations of wealth can defeat increased educational funding, but Jim rated that doubleplus unpossible, and so relegated it to the Memory Hole.
Posted by: tensor on December 14, 2010 07:43 PMWe spend more on education, as a percent of GDP, than Canada, Australia, the UK, South Korea, Japan, Hong Kong, and several others that beat the US in standardized testing. Apparently, it's not the amount of money that guarantees a high result (otherwise Cuba would dominate, and Japan and Hong Kong wouldn't be right near the top in current scores).
Perhaps it's not just money, but approach? Maybe the current US system that is set up to protect institutions and teachers rather than actually educate children is the problem? After all, we spend a lot more than many places that get much better results.
Oh, and while Finnish may have 14 different conjugates, Mandarin (or Cantonese - you get to learn both in Hong Kong, and they ARE different languages - a person speaking Cantonese cannot communicate with a person speaking Mandarin) has somewhere over 47,000 UNIQUE kanji characters to learn. And you can't sound it out - you either recognize and know the entire symbol or you don't. Reading complexity is just a bit higher with 47,000 characters versus the 30-odd that make up Finnish...
Posted by: Shanghai Dan on December 14, 2010 11:38 PMAnd wouldn't it be wonderful if Republicans had the same open minds about health care? Most Republicans seem to feel that, since every other country has imperfect healthcare, we can't learn anything from them and must move even further away from their systems, even though they have better outcomes than we do. America should have the confidence to study what works in education, healthcare, and other fields and adapt it to our circumstances and values, rather than blindly adopting or rejecting it because it fits some preconceived ideology.
Posted by: Bruce on December 15, 2010 03:44 AMBut given the CEA, NEA, ACLU, & the politically correct dogma of the Left (fairness & feelings first)...the agenda for the dumbing down of America is almost complete.
Posted by: Susu on December 15, 2010 07:48 AMA. If math were a color, it would be , because .
B. If it were a food, it would be , because .
C. If it were weather, it would be , because .
Posted by: Smoley on December 15, 2010 08:44 AMIf anything, we've learned from the links provided here - and from experiential data from other countries - that simply spending money on a program does not guarantee, or even well-correlate, to success.
We spend considerably more - on a percent GDP basis - than many nations that soundly trounce our results in education. We spend more - on a percent GDP basis - than many nations that arguably have better healthcare systems.
We spend more, but get less. The solution usually proffered by the liberal side of the political spectrum is to spend more. Yet examination of data shows that to not be the case.
We know - from all around the world, any time it's been tried in the last 200+ years - personal reward and responsibility WORKS. Tie future employment to performance; tie future raises to performance. Let the chaff go - hire the best and reward them WHEN THEY SHOW RESULTS.
I suggest that until the liberal side of the political spectrum is willing to roll back it's demands of higher spending, and is willing to forgo protected-class-status for those in the education field, we'll never see improvements, just ever-increasing expenditures with falling results.
Carrots and sticks do work for motivation; the problem we have is that we have guaranteed an unending and ever-expanding supply of carrots with never a hint of the stick, nor even a restriction of the carrots depending upon performance.
Posted by: Shanghai Dan on December 15, 2010 09:13 AMAs it is, I am sure there are hundreds if not thousands of examples within our country of public schools that can be considered reasonably successful as far as academic achievement for the types of students they have. There are probably also thousands of examples of failures. While the solution isn't as simple as throwing more money at the problem, we also know that you don't solve the problem by taking away a huge portion of the funding.
Posted by: Doug on December 15, 2010 12:17 PMRead the comments on the page I linked; it's outlined. And since it does include higher education (colleges), it's even WORSE for the US, as countries like Canada, the UK, Australia, and others provide even BETTER funding for university students than in the US. Meaning they're spending even less on their K-12 grades, and outperforming the US.
It's not the dollars spent, it's HOW they're spent and what they buy. The system we have in the US is pretty much broken, and it's maintained by the unions and bureaucracies in place that benefit from the current broken system.
Posted by: Shanghai Dan on December 15, 2010 03:40 PMWhen you are ready to hear about some individual schools that have shows academic achievement success for their students I will let you know. However, since you want to know any of OUR schools whose students scored better than countries who performed better on this specific test, I will not even go there. As you know, the test was only taken by a handful of students and it would be impossible to find within our state a significant number of students in any school, let alone the chances that they are from one of the more successfull schools, are highly remote. Please come back when you can be reasonable.
Shanghai Dan, Since it does include colleges when calculating education spending as a percentage of GDP, I'll have to say using those numbers is really a very, very, poor indicator. Last time I checked around 40% of all money a country spends on education is spent post-secondary. I also believe the $ as a percent of GDP includes Private spending (spending at Harvard, endowments, private pre-schools, etc.). My guess is that in the end we may be marginally higher than most when it comes to public dollars spent as a percent of GDP, but that might only be because as the wealth of a nation increases then it's priorities change to more service oriented products such as education.
Posted by: Doug on December 15, 2010 03:57 PMI say we make it illegal for ANY public employee to join a union. That goes for cops, fire-fighter, school janitors and ALL teachers at EVERY level of education. I've had it with kowtowing to the public employee unions!
We should to to these unions what Reagan did to PATCO: fire 'em all and replace them with people who appreciate the job and are willing to work for what's offered, which ain't too shabby! Those people make GOOD money!!
Check the comments at the bottom of the page I linked; your questions will be answered. It's consistent across all countries in how it's counted, and it's NOT including private spending (which is decidedly higher here in the US than in most other nations).
We spend more, we get less. Even if we're at-par in terms of GDP spending relative to Canada, the UK, and Australia, why is the achievement of our students markedly lower?
It's NOT the dollars available; it's the way they're spent and the bureaucracies that control the system. Ask yourself why the school establishment never states how much is required; it's always "more", not "this is what's required". Because if they put a number out there, and it's met, and they continue to fail - well, the game is up.
Posted by: Shanghai Dan on December 15, 2010 04:41 PMShanghai Dan...Doug, in my opinion, has proved himself to be less than earnest and honest with his posting and is a complete waste of time.
And wouldn't it be wonderful if Republicans had the same open minds about health care? Most Republicans seem to feel that, since every other country has imperfect healthcare, we can't learn anything from them and must move even further away from their systems, even though they have better outcomes than we do. America should have the confidence to study what works in education, healthcare, and other fields and adapt it to our circumstances and values, rather than blindly adopting or rejecting it because it fits some preconceived ideology.
Yet all I hear from lefties on health care is SINGLE PAYER, SINGLE PAYER, SINGLE PAYER! Not much nuance coming from you guys.
Posted by: Crusader on December 15, 2010 06:08 PMIt is not complicated. All we need to do is inject a little of the same meritocracy as we see every day in private corporations. If we took money away from unions and other waste and put it towards teacher salaries while at the same time removing tenure and seniority for teachers the problem would be solved. It would immediately create a competitive environment for teaching positions as there is at Microsoft for jobs. And once bad teachers could be quickly fired instead of protected by unions, the quality of instruction would go way up.
We can do this. Teachers unions and other government unions need to be outlawed because the government already has a monopoly.
Posted by: Jeff B. on December 15, 2010 06:51 PMBTW...You sound a lot like poor confused tensor. Are you and him one and the same? I wouldn't be a bit surprised. After all, you are now, spelling you name with a small "d" as though you're not use to spelling your name the same as you started out with. How come the change? What a Phony!
Posted by: Daniel on December 15, 2010 06:57 PMNo, but it would decrease in incidence. Conservatives need to take a more active role in fixing the deteriorating educational standards that have beleaguered this country, thanks to the administration of the NEA/Democratic Party - one of the reasons why we are outsourcing - duh !!!
Awaiting to hear the typical circular arguments from a resident liberal progressive.
Posted by: KDS on December 15, 2010 07:11 PMNo, but it would decrease in incidence. Conservatives need to take a more active role in fixing the deteriorating educational standards that have beleaguered this country, thanks to the administration of the NEA/Democratic Party - one of the reasons why we are outsourcing - duh !!!
Awaiting to hear the typical circular arguments from a resident liberal progressive.
Posted by: KDS on December 15, 2010 07:12 PMI think we should work towards abolishing the department of education. K-12 education belongs at the state level first and hopefully the states make the right choices when it comes to funding the schools, second, and as well how to formulate then measure standards. However, I think abolishing the dept of education in one fell swoop is a pipe dream and any "conservative" who thinks it can and should be done probably isn't really a "conservative" but rather a libertarian who yells at everyone that they aren't conservative because they don't believe in their libertarian ideals.
I imagine the way to get rid of the Dept. of Education is first to keep funding parts of it then folding it into other departments where it would be more easy to defund and deregulate what the Dept. of Education has done. I think that is a practical approach to getting rid of it.
Posted by: Doug on December 15, 2010 09:35 PMBruce, since you are actually simple minded enough to believe that any other country in the world provides better medical care outcomes than America does why not pack up your supercilious self and move there? Vancouver B.C. is only a few hours away by car and they accept dim-witted American liberals. In fact they love them because liberals are silly enough not to realize that "free" Canadian "healthcare" costs considerably more per-capita than the very best American care.
And you get ONLY what the government will allow you to have.
Each time you post here it shows how superficial, arrogant and intellectually challenged you are and how little you actually understand about anything.
Posted by: Amused by Liberals on December 15, 2010 09:39 PMSince education is a service or commodity the government, by its nature, is incompetent and inefficient at providing it. Also the tendency to force feed government propaganda to unformed minds is a serious and ever present danger.
Obviously the solution is to phase out government education. The savings would be immense. Just eliminating the Department of Education would save 60 billions dollars.
Posted by: Bill K. on December 15, 2010 10:15 PMHowever, the idea that you can compare by percentages of GDP is laughable. In many industries, you spend a higher percentage so you can make the innovations necessary to get more efficient. When you get good at what you do, then the spending levels off as you get more efficient. If a country is behind, say militarily (U.S. c1930s), then spending on military as a percent of GDP necessarily must increase dramatically before they are superior. At a particular point in time one can complain that the military is not as good as say Japan or Germany given the spending as a percentage of GDP. It's part of the cycle.
Posted by: Doug on December 15, 2010 10:19 PMLike Jaun Williams said, somethings really wrong there cause it was illegal for that guy to have a gun.
Those progressive liberals that follow progressivemind.info and Mediamatters.org. are enlightened people who know better than doing that.
That school board full of conservative meanies who did something bad to that enlightened liberal progressive guy.
Oh wait, that school board was full of leftists that follow progressivemind.info and Mediamatters.org. as well?
More than likely the only conservative there was the Security Guard who stopped the whole thing.
And thank God liberals are lousy shots.
Hmmmmmmm.
Posted by: Amused by Liberals on December 16, 2010 12:27 AMDan, go back and read the citations I provided. They cast doubt upon the entire premise of "standardized testing." (What does that even mean, in the context of differing languages and cultures?)
Oh, and while Finnish may have 14 different conjugates, Mandarin (or Cantonese - you get to learn both in Hong Kong, and they ARE different languages - a person speaking Cantonese cannot communicate with a person speaking Mandarin) has somewhere over 47,000 UNIQUE kanji characters to learn. And you can't sound it out - you either recognize and know the entire symbol or you don't. Reading complexity is just a bit higher with 47,000 characters versus the 30-odd that make up Finnish...
Thank you for making my point. If a speaker fluent in Cantonese cannot be understood by a speaker of Mandarin, then reading comprehension must be hard to measure via standardized tests, right? Which, um, completely invalidates the point Jim was trying to make.
(And, bonus points for conflating characters and grammar. You understand they're completely different, right?)
My point was that English has one conjugation, where Finnish has many. Having the conjugation of the verb provide context (Finnish) makes reading comprehension easier then when it does not (English). We would therefore expect a reader of Finnish to score higher on a reading comprehension test than a reader of English. Ignoring this built-in advantage shows the folly of Jim's (and your) thinking.
Posted by: tensor on December 16, 2010 01:47 AMYou're obfuscating. We spend more than lots of other countries that do a lot better than we do, and their languages are more complex and difficult than English. How does that work? We spend more, we get worse results - provably so. Your own point shows that it's even worse, in that other countries have HARDER times with reading comprehension, for instance.
When I lived in Belgium, it was standard for students to have had 8 years of Flemish, 4 years of English, 4 years of German, and 4 years of French by the time they could graduate from high school. Yet the Belgians do better on standardized testing than Americans, who have but a single language to master.
So your point only furthers Jim's point: we get a lot less for our dollar than other nation's get. And the solution - throw more money at the problem - has never worked in the past. What makes people think it will work now?
BTW, in China, to graduate from high school one must take 4 years of English and show a "mastery level II" comprehension of written and spoken English, equivalent to a 4th grade US vocabulary. In addition to Mandarin (and, if you live in Shanghai, Shanghainese - another dialect that has less than 10% overlap with Mandarin).
As far as conflating characters and grammar, learn a little Mandarin...;) You'll find the order of the characters will change the entire meaning of the phrase, even if it sounds like it should be the same and "grammatically" it should be the same when diagrammed out. Idioms and position of characters are used in the language, especially for tense or gender since there IS no way to indicate that in many cases (for example, "ta" indicates he, she, or it).
Posted by: Shanghai Dan on December 16, 2010 05:04 PMPlease go back and read again, perhaps with assistance from a schoolchild. If a language gives context in a single conjugation (Finnish), the readers of that language have an advantage in reading comprehension over readers of a language which does not (English), because the latter readers must discern clues from context. The study Jim cited exactly suggested this point, yet neither him nor you proved capable of recognizing it. That you and Jim failed to learn reading comprehension does not mean that our educational system so failed the rest of us.
When I lived in Belgium, it was standard for students to have had 8 years of Flemish, 4 years of English, 4 years of German, and 4 years of French by the time they could graduate from high school. Yet the Belgians do better on standardized testing than Americans, who have but a single language to master.
Yes, a multicultural education is superior to a monocultural one. I look forward to your enthusiastic support of multiculturalism in our public schools.
(Also, many Americans are taught one language by their families, but are tested exclusively on another in school. What might that do to their test results?)
...we get a lot less for our dollar than other nation's get.
I wasn't aware that Finnish, Belgian, and Chinese schools were budgeted in dollars. Yet another "fact" available only here, for some reason! (And, in English, there's a punctuational difference between the single possessive and the plural possessive.)
Again, since you completely missed it: there are factors more important than per-capita expenditures on students. The evidence Jim cited noted this point, but Jim lacked the reading comprehension required to understand it.
You'll find the order of the characters will change the entire meaning of the phrase...
In other words, the context assumes an importance unseen in some other languages. Reading comprehension would therefore be more difficult. Thanks again for supporting my point.
Also, since concentration of wealth was suggested to have a detrimental effect on overall education, I'm sure you and Jim will now argue for greater equal distribution of wealth, because education is so incredibly important to you.
Posted by: tensor on December 17, 2010 12:51 AMYou make some good points about the imperfections of standardizing tests and school budgets between countries, but let's not assume that the American education system is wonderful or can't learn from other countries. The important point is that there are so many differences between countries -- cultures, attitudes, job markets, economic factors, etc. -- that help explain different test results. At the same time, statements that expenditures don't matter not only defy common sense, but reflect a misunderstanding of statistics (and the concepts of correlation and causation).
Posted by: Bruce on December 17, 2010 01:14 AMI think you mistake the conservative position. I do not think we are claiming that expenditures do not make a difference, just that INCREASED expenditures are not making a difference and that there is no justification for additional spending.
In inflation adjusted dollars, our spending on primary and secondary education has increased 380% (as of 2007), but our population has increased only 67% (I found no convenient data on student population.)
Has there been an increase in student achievement over this time? Now granted, costs of education have increased since back then we used slide rules and now we use power Macs, but that does not account for all the increased costs
Some interesting data I found from William Bennett, Clinton's education secretary (data from about 1996)
In 1960, for every U.S. public school teacher there were approximately 26 students enrolled in the schools. In 1995, there were 17.
In 1994, fewer than 50% of the personnel employed by U.S. public schools were teachers.
In Florida, it takes six times as many people to administer a federal education dollar as a state dollar: 297 state employees are responsible for $1 billion in federal funds while 374 employees oversee $7 billion in state funds.
In Arizona, 45% of the staff of the state education department are responsible for managing federal programs that account for six percent of the state's education spending.
After spending $118 billion since 1965 on Title I, the federal government's largest K-12 program, evaluations conclude that the program has been unable to lift [the] academic level of poor students.
other tidbits can be found at:
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/education/ed0033.html
Anyway, the point is that we need to look at what works and what the real causes of education problems are and not just assume more money is the answer.
Posted by: Eyago on December 17, 2010 06:33 AMYou've missed the irony of the list of nations I made, specifically the inclusion of Australia, the UK, and Canada, all of which have an official policy of English as the official language. They have the same linguistic basis as the US, spend less money on education, and have better results. I guess our English skills are worse because we speak "American", or we have more immigrants than the UK or Canada (both of which have much more liberal travel and immigration rules than the US)?
And I find it interesting that your now your point is it's not the amount of money we spend that affects education? Great - let's scale back the funding of schools to the level of many of those who trounce us. Willing to do that - cut budgets?
How about we do like most countries - make teachers accountable for the results of their work?
What would you do? Or do you choose to continue to deny our failing educational system and try to nitpick standardized testing?
And while you've been obsessed over language test results, what about mathematics? That truly is a universal language. Why the abysmal math results for the US, relative to so many other monolingual, English speaker nations who spend less than us?
So tell us - how much money should we spend on education? Why is the US doing so poorly in these comparisons, and if the comparisons are invalid then what would you replace them with?
Posted by: Shanghai Dan on December 17, 2010 08:18 AMOne of the main differences between now and back then when it comes to students per teacher, is that now we spend so much money on special education and those teachers are used in the total calculations for student/teacher ratio. We still have 25 to 30 kids for the most part in most of the classes, however we have 3 and 4 FTE in with the special education teachers.
Now, some of our schools have done the right thing in that we decrease our class sizes in math and reading to 10-11 kids and make up for it with larger PE classes and the like, but that is a scheduling issue that causes lots of heartburn with elementary teachers and so it's slow to implement. By scheduling changes we could have schools do better by reducing class sizes dramatically (research shows that to get a benefit of reducing class sizes you have to get all the way down to 13 kids or less or it isn't worth doing) without adding much at all in costs -- I think it costs us about 2 more teachers per 300 students to do this and we could still improve on even that ratio.
As for your question on whether achievement has gone higher, you only have to look at what was being taught years ago - the kids nowadays are learning a heck of a lot more. Granted a lot of it we would consider a waste of time, but you can't argue with the advances in civilizations that has come from our students from our school system the last 20 years.
As for comparing OECD tests. I've been a part of tests such as those. The countries involved pick schools to do those tests. We don't choose our best schools, we don't choose our best students. This test's methodology reminds me a lot of comparing SAT results by state in our country. Why is it that Washington state students always score the highest or almost highest on SAT scores? That's right, some states require all schools to test, ours basically has only those who want to go to college do the test.
Your comment about only half of the people employed by the districts are teachers, can be taking two ways. Either that is very good or that is very bad. I'm not sure which you are saying. When you have class sizes of 30, you can improve the education by adding a qualified para-pro. Or you can improve the education a bit more by adding a teacher. One costs about $15K, the other about $90K. This is vitally important in special education where we can put 4 kids in a class with a $90K (salary/benefits) teacher as long as there is a $15K para-pro with them. Otherwise we have to spend $90K on another special ed. teacher.
This blog has a very strange political bent to it when it comes to administration costs. The 'conservatives' complain there are too many administrators and not enough teachers, exactly the same complaint that the teachers unions have. To me, this is really barking up the wrong tree. The union always argues to get rid of the principal, that you can pay a teacher to do that job. Yes, you could pay a teacher to do it, but you still have to pay the teacher to do it. Some how, their advertising has warped people into believing that there is too much administration, but when you look at the numbers, it really is amazing at how few management positions there are in public schools per employee, compared to other service industries.
Posted by: Doug on December 17, 2010 09:27 AMNow, some of our schools have done the right thing in that we decrease our class sizes in math and reading to 10-11 kids and make up for it with larger PE classes and the like, but that is a scheduling issue that causes lots of heartburn with elementary teachers and so it's slow to implement. By scheduling changes we could have schools do better by reducing class sizes dramatically (research shows that to get a benefit of reducing class sizes you have to get all the way down to 13 kids or less or it isn't worth doing) without adding much at all in costs -- I think it costs us about 2 more teachers per 300 students to do this and we could still improve on even that ratio.
The math doesn't work for me on this. If there are 30 students per class and you have 300 students, that suggests 10 teachers. Adding 2 teachers makes that 12 in all with an average of 25. If your goal is 13, that suggests 23 teachers, or an increase of 13. Anyway, I'd have to see how they break that down to comment further.
If we want more adults per child, maybe we have one teacher and two paras for a group of 40 kids which will get us a 1:13 ratio.
As for your question on whether achievement has gone higher, you only have to look at what was being taught years ago - the kids nowadays are learning a heck of a lot more. Granted a lot of it we would consider a waste of time, but you can't argue with the advances in civilizations that has come from our students from our school system the last 20 years.
There is no way to measure the "advances in civilizations" over the last 20 years as a result of our education. What we do know is that we have advanced in certain areas, which we had done in the past when we did not spend so much on education per child. Maybe we would have advanced MORE if we had done things differently. We have no baseline and so no way to say if the new and more expensive way of educating actually worked.
Another thing we can look at are the high drop out rates and the high rates of functional illiteracy. Are those better or worse and would they have been better or worse with or without the new way to educate?
Your comment about only half of the people employed by the districts are teachers, can be taking two ways. Either that is very good or that is very bad. I'm not sure which you are saying. When you have class sizes of 30, you can improve the education by adding a qualified para-pro.
Actually, that is William Bennett's complaint, I just listed it as part of his over all concern about education back in 95 when he was Clinton's Secretary of Education.
This blog has a very strange political bent to it when it comes to administration costs. The 'conservatives' complain there are too many administrators and not enough teachers, exactly the same complaint that the teachers unions have. To me, this is really barking up the wrong tree. The union always argues to get rid of the principal, that you can pay a teacher to do that job. Yes, you could pay a teacher to do it, but you still have to pay the teacher to do it. Some how, their advertising has warped people into believing that there is too much administration, but when you look at the numbers, it really is amazing at how few management positions there are in public schools per employee, compared to other service industries.
Actually, I have no direct opinion on this I am not an idealogue. I tend to want to see the facts and let them guide my approach to problem solving. That approach generally leads me to conservative/libertarian views in most cases. However, the key point here is to evaluate the system and figure out what works and what does not.
The problem with a public system in many cases is the inefficient way efficiency is handled. politics are a much bigger factor than in private enterprises and thus decisions are less based on what meets consumer needs and more based on ideology and empire building.
What seems missing from the debates about schools is a frank discussion on what really accomplishes learning and what takes away from it. Lip service is paid, but no real action is taken since there are so many other "distractions" to the issue that cloud out the basic question of how to get children to learn. What seems most important in the education debate is not whether the children learn basic comprehension skills but rather what ideology they are being taught. The education debate is a cultural war, and our children are the grass beneath the elephants' feet.
It works, the point is to think out of the box and be willing to have higher class sizes in those subject areas that are not math and reading.
This is why I think it very important for conservatives to take the time and get onto the school boards if they have the time to give. What you can accomplish when you turn those freighters is really huge. Most schools have areas that can be improved greatly with just little changes that won't occur unless you have the right board members to do it.
Posted by: Doug on December 17, 2010 10:43 AMthe comment: If we want more adults per child, maybe we have one teacher and two paras for a group of 40 kids which will get us a 1:13 ratio.
When the ratios are given they only are given for CERTIFICATED staff per students. Those para-pros which make a fraction of the money are classified. So in that case you have a 1:40 ratio which looks bad on paper, but depending on the situation is absolutely fabulous. Take for instance PE class. We through 50+ kids in there with one Cert and one Classified and the ratio is 1:50 and there is sufficient amount of oversite. That allows more of our funding to be spent on Certified teachers to do math and reading which if you can get the numbers down to 13 and below, makes a huge difference.
State funding is based on a certain certificated to student ratio, but we can average that out across the school to meet requirements. The issues that are tougher is that unions don't like it when some of their teachers have a lot of students compared to others. It's reasonable, but the hope is that they are reasonable when it comes to an understanding on how we can still make it happen and have the teacher not overwhelmed.
Posted by: Doug on December 17, 2010 10:53 AMWe through 50+ kids in there with one Cert and one Classified and the ratio is 1:50 and there is sufficient amount of oversite. That allows more of our funding to be spent on Certified teachers to do math and reading which if you can get the numbers down to 13 and below, makes a huge difference.
who is "we"?
Posted by: eyago on December 17, 2010 12:08 PMThe most apropos comment here.
Education is a local issue inextricably linked with the family unit and cultural health of the country and so long as the federal government and liberal whackos run our American education systems it will continue to decay.
I imagine the way to get rid of the Dept. of Education is first to keep funding parts of it then folding it into other departments where it would be more easy to defund and deregulate what the Dept. of Education has done. I think that is a practical approach to getting rid of it.
Posted by Doug at December 15, 2010 09:35 PM
I agree with that - it would need to be defunded incrementally and by gradually folding it into other departments, where applicable. Defunding NPR would be simpler - in one motion.
For radical change to smaller government, there must be a process that bridges bloated government with way too much to smaller more efficient government with fewer departments, with a road map, much like Rep. Paul Ryan has done with the budget - it can be done and must be done if we are to survive as a Republic.
Posted by: KDS on December 17, 2010 01:41 PM